I am teh suck. Seriously, though, I really do suck at staying current. Part of it, I’m sure, is that I think I’d have a tendency to just start ranting about stupid drivers or the Neo-Cons. This time around, I’ll try to be better. On to the news.

I guess I should start with the new cats. Opie and Dolly are the rulers of the house, running roughshod over all the rules we had to keep the feline empire in its proper place. Here are their stories:

Opie: Opie’s mother had a litter of kittens in a woodpile in the backyard of a house on the south side of the lake. One day, mom decided to move the kittens — but forgot Opie! Well, the neighbor heard his cries and captured him. On the way to the Humane Society, she stopped in Maud’s work. Maud, convinced that I’d buy a gun at the Gun Show (despite my assurances that I wouldn’t), figured, “Well, if he’s going to buy a gun, I’m going to take this kitten home!” And she did. Opie is part Siamese and part something else that doesn’t make him as crazy as a pure Siamese cat. Thank the FSM for that! He is sweet and cuddly and everybody loves him. His dusky coat is reminiscent of an opossum and that’s why he’s our Opie.

Dolly: Dolly’s mother left her wandering the parking lot of Maud’s work and we both found her mewling at us as I stopped by after a business trip to D.C. She was just a ball of black fur and was covered in fleas. We had to save her but we didn’t know if she’d last long. We think she may have made it another day or two at the most. Flea medicine can be lethal for kittens but we had to do something. It turns out Dawn dish-washing detergent works great. We soaked Dolly in warm water and then massaged Dawn all over her. After rinsing her off, we had about 50 fleas dead… Dead I tell you!!! We are pretty sure Dolly was left behind as she was the oddity of the litter. She only had five toes per foot while her siblings and her mother all had seven. Dolly was named in honor of the hurricane making landfall during her saving and she is now our little hurricane. She is undersized for her age but she’ll be OK.

Here they are:

Opie (foreground) Dolly (background)

I probably have several stories that I need to post on here and I’ll make an effort to get the most interesting ones out of my brain. Top of the list is an account of the English relatives’ visit. I may also put something here about my deer hunt. We’ll see. Feel free to bug me via the comments. I’ll get an e-mail when you post something and that should get me off my buttocks.

ADAM

Just a quick link to Paulo Nutini’s cover of ‘Rehab’.

ADAM

There were thunderstorms in Chicago again so Kim got to come back and stay with us another day! Oddly, they said they could get her on a different flight and then she could get on the last flight out to London — but that flight was full. They wanted her to go anyway and then stay overnight in Chicago. That wasn’t going to happen so we rebooked for tomorrow. The forecast is clear all day for both us here and in Chicago. There is a slight change as she’ll now land in England at 7:50 in the morning Thursday (AA flight 66). In addition to us getting Kim for another day, we had an excuse to visit Famous Dave’s again. I’ll post any new information as necessary.

ADAM

UPDATE: Kim is in Chicago.  Her flight looks to be delayed by 20 minutes but that shouldn’t be that big of a deal.  With a good tailwind, she might even land on time.

As most of you know, the storms in Chicago caused Kim’s flight to be canceled yesterday so she got to stay another night with us.  She is confirmed on the same flight numbers for today with the same times (and gates, I believe).  I took another day of vacation but Maud will have to work most of the day.  She will be able to take off the couple of hours we’ll need to get Kim to the airport this afternoon, though.

We won’t have much opportunity to do anything today but we will try to get out on the lake and get the boat out of it this morning.  First, we’ll drive it around for awhile to make sure there’s nothing wrong.