COME OUT AND PLAY!

We're looking for players to come play word games with us on our blog, "Word Joust".  If you're interested, go to http://wordjoust.blogspot.com/   or http://lifeonalimb.blogspot.com/2010/01/word-joust.html

ELECTRONIC READERS

I got an IPod for Christmas.  I have been trying to learn how to load songs on it and have a gift card from ITunes.  I've got a whopping 3 songs from ITunes and some other ones that were already on my computer. 

Today I was listening to a cd on my stereo that I got for Christmas (6 Cello Suites by YoYo Ma).  I was thinking about the future.  I remembered a Star Trek tv show one time where Captain Kirk was in his quarters reading a book and someone came to visit him.  The visitor remarked about how the Captain was reading an "actual" book and he said something to the effect that there was just something about holding it in your hands.  Can't remember his actual words.  Anyway, I was thinking that in the future our houses will be so much more spacious, because people won't have cds or books or dvds.  Everything will be downloaded from some website.  You can already download cds and audio books from ITunes.  I'm not sure about movies, but I know it is possible to put them on your IPod.  I have a digital copy of the new Star Trek that I could put in my computer and transfer to my IPod if I wanted to.  I think all the movie rental places will go out of business and will become strictly online movie downloading.  You'll be able to buy a movie like a song on ITunes and just download it to your tv. 

A few years ago I quit buying video tapes and even got rid of all of my audio tapes.  I still have a small collection of video tapes, but I know it is just a matter of time until I get rid of those also.  But books is another thing.  My husband told me I should get one of those electronic readers for Christmas this year.  I read an article that said you really shouldn't buy one of those right now because they were impoving on them so fast that if you waited a couple of years they would have them more perfected.  I guess that is the direction the world is headed to.  I know my house would be a lot less cluttered if I didn't have books - I have 4 1/2 bookcases full of books!  And I'm talking very tall bookcases.  I think I'm kind of like Captain Kirk - there's just something about holding a book in your hands and turning the pages.

STAY-GO

I was thinking about this video yesterday when my husband and I were discussing whether we will stay in Ireland or go home. Stay-Go-Stay-Go???
It's really not our decision, just whatever my husband's company decides, which they haven't yet. Still waiting.....

A CONVERSATION WITH MY HUSBAND

Me:  I was looking through the freezer today and found some banana bread that you didn't eat while I was gone.
Husband:   I didn't know there was any banana bread in there.
Me:   Well I wrote "Banana Bread" right on the aluminum foil.
Husband:  I can't read aluminum foil.
                                :0)

CATS

Amber's post about Kaleb's cat made me think about the cat's I've had.  When I was quite small, we had a cat named KiKi. I don't remember this cat, but Inklings tells me she was white and orange like our second cat, Scamper. I really can't even remember what happened to Kiki.

We had Scamper several years. Scamper's favorite place to sit was in our maple tree that was in our front yard. She had a special place up in the tree where 2 branches forked. We even named that place, "Scampers Perch". I loved to climb that tree, and especially when Scamper was in his "perch". I would climb up and sit just below him and we'd both sit there observing the world go by. One day we were going to Primary (which was on Saturday mornings back then) and Scamper got out of the house. We didn't know it but he had gotten under the car to lay in another of his favorite places - just behind the rear wheel of the car. Well, I'm sure you can imagine what happened next, which brought about his demise. We were devastated, and Mom wouldn't let us get out of the car. Dad took him and buried him while we were at Primary. We looked all over but could never figure out where Dad had buried him. We spent a lot of time digging holes trying to find him. What we were going to do with his body if we found him is something I never figured out. :0) This at least is MY memory of what happened, which I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

About a year or so before we moved to Texas a stray pregnant cat adopted us. I promptly named her "Sandy". One night Sandy wanted to sleep in my room. I really can't remember if she always did that or not, but that night, at least, she did. She decided that she not only wanted to sleep in my room, but in my bed under my covers. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I moved my foot over to where she was and felt something wet. All of a sudden I realized that she was having her babies in my bed! I quickly picked her up and took her downstairs to the basement. She didn't want me to leave her and would meow very loudly when I tried to. I stayed as long as I could hold my eyes open, but since nothing exciting was happening and since I had to go to school the next morning, I finally left her and let her yowl. And did she ever! The next morning I went downstairs to find out that she had just delivered one baby and was in the process of delivering another. Twist thought this was fascinating and came downstairs to watch, but finally we had to go to school. I can't remember how many she had, but we managed to give them all away when they became old enough.

I didn't have any more cats until after I was married and we were living in Garland, Texas. One night I was cooking fish sticks and I heard something and looked up. Outside the kitchen window on the outside counter was a very pregnant cat. She meowed and meowed and looked so hungry and pitiful that I finally gave in and gave her a couple of fish sticks. That's all it took and she was mine. She was quite a weird cat, so weird in fact that we named her "Spaz", because she was literally so "spastic". She hated for you to point at her and if you were very close, would swipe at your finger. She was really spastic about brooms and would go ballistic if you got one out, even if it was just to sweep the patio. Needless to say, because she was so wild she was completely an outdoor cat. Spaz had several litters. Her first litter she had 3 kittens: Oreo (black with a white stomach), Smokey (gray), and Jack (orange - we originally named him Jack-O-Lantern, but shortened it). Of the three, Jack was the tamest. One day after they were grown, Smokey never came home again. Oreo was quite wild and no one could ever pet him except me. I had to be very careful, but if I was careful and moved slowly I could pet him a couple of times before he bolted. One day he too quit coming around, but I thought I had seen his body on a street near our house one day. Jack was a little more tame and he would even let the kids pet him. One day we were going somewhere and it was raining really hard. All the kids were in the car and I backed out of the driveway and ran over him. It was raining so hard that I just stopped long enough to go out and look at him, saw that he was dead, and got back in the car. I had planned on letting my husband take care of him when we got home, but Amber couldn't bear to let his body stay out there in the rain, and she got rain gear on (after we got back home) and went out and got him (crying the whole time). I can't remember what she did with him, but I think just put him somewhere until her dad could get home so he could bury him. Babs was just a little kid at the time and since everyone was crying because Jack had gotten run over, I guess it traumatized him. From then on and for quite awhile, whenever we would go somewhere in the van and it was raining he would be scared and cry.

Spaz had 2 or 3 more litters, I can't really remember. In one of her litters she had Bandit. He was a cream colored cat with black ears and black around his eyes like a bandit's mask. We were never able to give him away, so he just hung out at our house. He was tame enough to let the kids pet him, but he hated coming in the house. Amber and the boys wanted him to come in and would coax him to come, which he would - but hated it if you shut the patio door. If the door was shut, I guess he felt trapped and would run around crazy and kept banging himself into the patio door trying to get out. My sadistic children thought this was quite funny and would let him keep doing it until I ran in and opened the door to let him out. It's a wonder he wasn't brain-damaged. Or maybe he was.... When we moved from Garland, we decided that we couldn't give Bandit away or take him to the pound because he was so wild. I told the kids that if we gave him to the pound they would euthanize him since he was so wild. Since he liked to hang out at "his sister's house" up the street, we decided to just leave him there because we knew he would eventually quit coming and just go to his sister's house, since whenever we couldn't find him we would see him coming from there. We hope that's what he did.

One of Spaz's litters was born on the day that the Gulf War (Desert Storm) started. We named our litter after that war: Patriot (white and tan), Desert (white and tan), Storm (all tan)and one more I can't remember - was it Scud? We gave all those cats away except Desert. We kept him for years and one day he came home looking really sick. He died that night. My husband suspected that someone had poisoned him. The day before we moved from that house, my neighbor came over and confessed that she had poisoned him because she didn't want him coming over to her house all the time. :0+

Spaz had about 5 kittens in her last litter. She had her box on our side patio which was close to the front fence. One day a couple of dogs came by and could smell the kittens and started barking furiously. Even though she was a spastic cat, Spaz was a good mother and climbed under the fence to defend her kittens. The dogs attacked her but she held her ground and ran them off. She ran behind the bushes by the front door. When I found her I could tell she was hurt bad. I was worried about her kittens, because they were only 2-3 weeks old and were still nursing. I finally decided to try to pick her up and carry her back to her kittens. It was a bad decision, because as soon as I picked her up, she jumped out of my arms and ran across the street. As she ran, I could tell she had a broken leg. She ran down into a gutter and we never saw her again. The next day I decided I had to try to save the kittens so went to the pet store and told him I had some baby kittens. The guy sold me a can of pet milk powder and told me he thought the kittens were old enough that I could teach them to drink the milk from a saucer instead of me having to bottle-feed them. He told me to keep pushing their faces down in the milk and they would get the idea, which they did. I don't know how long it was, but when I went to get the 3rd can of powdered milk (at $8 a can) the pet store guy said, "Are you still feeding those kittens?" When I said yes, he told me that they were old enough to eat kitten food and that I should sprinkle a little bit of food in the dish. Then every day I should sprinkle more food and decrease the milk until they were only eating the food. I did this and they weaned themselves. Then I was able to give 2 of the kittens away. I had 3 kittens left. One morning we went out to find that we only had 2 kittens. I wondered where the other kitten went, but because we had a "Free Kittens" sign on our mailbox, I wondered if someone had come and gotten one of the kittens. The next day, the other 2 kittens were gone. I couldn't figure it out, but thought the same thing. The next night I was coming home from somewhere and we saw a possum going through our front yard! The night after that, I was sitting in the dining room (which is where that side patio was). I heard a noise and went to peek out the dining room patio door. I couldn't believe what I saw! It was the mother possum that I had seen the night before! I could tell it was a mother because she had "nursing equipment". :0) We watched the possum and she was eating the kitten food that we had put out (in case the kittens had come back). We watched her eat all the food, then waddle through the back yard and through a hole in the fence to the alley. We wondered if that mother possum had either killed our kittens, or if she had taken them to her "nest" to be their mother because she couldn't smell the scent of their mother. We liked to think that it was the last option. I had my husband fix the hole in the fence the next day.

Another cat that we had when we had Spaz and her litters was Shadow (dark gray). Shadow wasn't one of Spaz's children, but like Spaz, adopted us. Shadow was one of my favorites, Oreo being my other favorite. Shadow stayed around for awhile and then we never saw him again.

I'll probably never have another cat since my husband is allergic to them and I can only have outdoor cats.

WHEN CHALLENGER FLIES

My mother-in-law sent me a link to this video about an American Eagle who was blown out of his nest during a storm and raised in captivity. Since he was raised in captivity he couldn't be released back into the wild, so this guy trained him to fly within closed places like football stadiums. When you watch the video, make sure you read the parragraph about the eagle at the beginning. His name is "Challenger" after the Space Shuttle.