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Posts Tagged ‘animals’

As Pictured Below: Watercolor Cat

Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , on July 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »

cat of your dreams

I didn’t see this coming: I LOVE the camera on my new iPhone.

I barely get along with the family digital camera, so I didn’t think I’d have much going for this one. It is four shades of AWESOME, though. It’s always at the ready, and I can use the images without dragging out USB cords and the laptop for the transfer process.

As a bonus, it has some very cool special effects – note blogger bbum’s observations and examples of iPhone images shot by watercolor artist Paul Jackson. Movement of the subject or the camera can result in a gorgeous, stylized blur. Of course, it can also result in a simple bad-picture blur, but that’s what the trashcan button is for.

My husband shot the image above with his iPhone and e-mailed it to me while I was out of town for the weekend.

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Convenience FAIL, cat care WIN

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I found out the hard way yesterday that my mobile vet isn’t so mobile anymore. He sold his RV since our last visit.

Don’t you hate it when a great, well-thought-out endeavor fails?

I mean, what’s not to love about a mobile vet? For an extra $40, he shows up at the end of your driveway in a sparkling, sterilized RV packed with all the stainless steel instruments and medications that your dog or cat could possibly require – even an X-ray machine. Instead of driving around with my neurotic, yowling cats for 20 minutes, an act sure to cause both a rise in my blood pressure and a stress fight with the spouse, I could pack them in their carriers and walk them 20 feet from front door to RV door. I never told the good doctor, but I would have paid twice the fee to get him to park his RV outside my house.

But no. The one DYI that everybody in this city is apparently willing to do is to pack up their pets and drive them across town.

The one upside to this: I found The Cat Hospital of Madison, which I was extremely impressed with. Dr. Stephanie G. Gandy-Moody is compassionate and analytical, all in one rare package. The staff was superb, and the facilities were gorgeous. Even the clinic cats were fun.

Now if only they’ll buy that RV I’ve got picked out for them.

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As Pictured Below: I Can Have What?

Posted in As Pictured Below, Photographs, tagged , , , on July 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »

“What is this ‘cheeseburger’ of which you speak, and why aren’t you using standard English?”

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To camp or not to camp

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Since moving to Huntsville in 2007, I’ve been invited to go camping by everyone from co-workers and classmates to new friends and virtual strangers.

I’ve explained time and time again that as natives of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, my husband and I don’t camp. We rarely even discussed camping until two years ago, except to mock or feel sorry for those who felt the need to brave the sticky humidity, frequent rain, biting insects and frightful fauna of Southern Mississippi and lower Alabama.

Usually, these victims were fathers of Boy Scouts, lured into the wilderness by well-meaning but misguided troop leaders. Those who ventured out once got our pity, but those who went the next year after lodging a week’s worth of complaints about the first year’s mosquito-ridden disaster got nothing more than a good mocking.

Seriously, hotels are all around us. Use them. Love them.

The weather in Northern Alabama is admittedly more hospitable to camping. The humidity is lower (don’t even bother griping about the humidity here – I’ve been to Nicaragua in August), and at night, the temperature actually stands a chance of dropping below 85 degrees. There are still big checkmarks beside the boxes for biting bugs and snakes, however, plus coyotes seem well-represented up here.

There are, I suppose, a few events that could be made more fun by camping. I could get a really early start at the really awesome Tyrolean Traverse in Desoto Falls State Park. I could make it to some caves in Tennessee that local grotto members start exploring at ungodly times on Saturdays. Heck, I might even find myself at Bonnaroo next year.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m talking myself into camping. My love for indoor plumbing supercedes many adventure possibilities. You’ve got more selling to do, North Alabama.

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Retrieving memories from the shoebox

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Morgus (maybe)

This is Morgus, my mom’s long-lived dog. I found him in a cemetery when he was a puppy. Ever since I got my digital photo scans back from ScanCafe, I had been thinking it was Newsted, the psychotic hound dog that I found outside my high school gymnasium.

Obviously, I shouldn’t be in charge of naming animals or making sure their stories live on in memory.

I have to highly recommend ScanCafe. They’ve scanned a few hundred old images for me over the past couple of months, with impressive results from 35mm negatives, color slides, and even Polaroid prints from the 1970s.

It’s beyond cool to see old pics that were formerly just laying around in boxes brought to life on the computer screen.

Also beyond cool: accurate recollections of names and faces. But I guess sometimes a girl can’t have it all.

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25 Things I’ll Admit to in Order to Make the Tagging Stop

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 8, 2009| 2 Comments »

Fine. I gave in. Here are 25 Things About Me. If Facebook can suffer through it, so can you.

  1. I love coffee. I drink more coffee than anyone knows.
  2. I drive my dream car, a Mini Cooper S. It’s cute, fast and fun, and more affordable than most people seem to realize.
  3. I work out with free weights three times a week. A former co-worker who calls his muscle-bound arms the “pythons of death” used to call my arms the “blue runners of death.”
  4. I can’t wait for warmer weather so I can go caving again. I have never felt stronger and more dexterous than I do when scrambling over giant piles of rock.
  5. I always thought I’d have dogs, but I have two cats instead. They’re hilarious.
  6. I judge people based on how they treat animals.
  7. I’ve always had more male friends than female friends. I may be from Mars instead of Venus.
  8. My husband is the kind of guy I would be friends with. I’m pretty sure this is why we’re still married.
  9. I’ve been to England, France, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico.
  10. I have no children. This is neither an accident nor a tragedy. I’m cool with other people having kids though, and love my nieces and nephew.
  11. Hurricane Katrina flooded a third of my house. It’s barely worth mentioning compared to the damage other people had. That said, rising water and high winds still give me a little punch in the gut.
  12. I’m still pissed off about what happened to the people of New Orleans.
  13. Since childhood, I’ve had a recurring dream in which I had to walk across a yard while avoiding snakes of every type and size every few feet. That dream has been replaced by one in which water is rising in my back yard and I’m trying to move things higher in the house.
  14. I’ve never told anyone about No. 13.
  15. I had a casual smoking habit for about six years in high school and college. Nasty habit? Sure, but I miss it and wish cigarettes weren’t so bad for me.
  16. I miss clove cigarettes the most. A friend tells me it’s because I’ve always aspired to be Eurotrash.
  17. I’m really proud of my little brother for being such an awesome husband and father.
  18. I’m not sarcastic ALL the time.
  19. I decorate with objects that I love, which range from an old Royal typewriter to tea tins.
  20. The first concert I ever attended was Bon Jovi.
  21. I’ve seen Metallica in concert six times.
  22. I exhibited multiple signs of OCD when I was a kid. I remember wishing somebody would notice so that they could figure out what was wrong with me AND hoping that nobody would notice that there was something wrong with me.
  23. I think that my remaining obsessive-compulsive tendencies make me a better copy editor, writer and coder.
  24. I took Spanish in high school and French in college. When I try to speak either language I end up with a mishmash of both. Sacre gato!
  25. I’m pursuing my master’s degree in English mostly because I really enjoy the classes.

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My mom’s excellent taste in men

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , , , , , on December 17, 2008| 1 Comment »

Jerrel

This is Jerrel. When I tell a story that involves him, I’ll often call him my stepdad to save an explanation of my mom’s living arrangements and romantic life. More accurate wording is “my mom’s boyfriend,” since they’ve both been married a couple of times and aren’t interested in signing up for that particular institution again.

He’s so much more than a boyfriend, though, that I need another word to describe his role in my mom’s life:

  • He’s the man who drove my mom across two states when she received word that her father was dying, and then did everything he could to make things easier for her.
  • He’s the partner who quickly and calmly called for help when she woke up in the middle of a still-unexplained late-night seizure. He remained at her bedside at the hospital until the worst had passed.
  • He’s the brave soul who navigated a path through some 60 miles of storm debris two days after Hurricane Katrina to bring my mom to check on me and my husband. He also detoured to check on my in-laws.
  • He’s the homeowner who has added on to make room for my mom and her vast collection of shoes.
  • He’s the two-stepper who has danced with my mom countless times.
  • He’s the enabler who has helped her maintain her habit of spoiling small, bad dogs.

In short, he’s the guy who keeps her happy. And what more could I want in my mom’s boyfriend?

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Day of doom is here

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , on October 24, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Dear Creature Scratching Around in my Attic at 3:30 a.m.:

Meet Yang. He will crush you, see you driven before him, and hear the lamentations of your women.

Come on downstairs for some cat food and water. He’s looking forward to meeting you.

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Goats of Wrath

Posted in Photographs, tagged , , , , , , on October 15, 2008| 3 Comments »


I don’t have a thing for goats. Really. The photo at the top of this blog just struck me as a cool image, a unique moment in time.

The husband and I had just finished making our way through a north Alabama corn maze (an especially bad idea, given that I grew up spending summers on a Mississippi farm and knew how miserable a cornfield was in August). Making our way back to the car, we stopped at the advertised “goat walk,” and this is what we found. A lone goat on an elevated walkway. He wasn’t picking stocks or diving into a plastic pool. He was just walking. On the goat walk.

When I was about 2 years old, I’m told, I developed a terrific fear of goats. I got my signals crossed with the “Billy Goats Gruff” fairy tale and thought that goats were the bad guys. This may or may not have had anything to do with my grandfather, whose story embellishments were legendary.

At any rate, my fear of goats led me to pull my feet up anytime I sat down, proclaiming that the billy goats were going to get me. This lasted until my dad took me to the nearest petting zoo and introduced me to the goats, decidedly non-scary furry creatures. My phobia was cured.

So goats and I go back a long way.

The goat on the goat walk seemed a little embarrassed, like he knew how ridiculous the whole contraption really was, how futile it was to be part of a rural circus put on for city folk. I felt a little embarrassed for him, too.

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