Haha...my kind of scotch:

Ardbeg Uigeadail:

Many "peat freaks" call this the single malt king.Strong feinty, plastic notes with heavy peaty and medicinal aromas. A quick puff of spent fireworks. A hint of clove and a whiff of porridge. Chocolate with flowers and damp cut grass. Citrus, berries, and nail-polish remover... with notes of plasticine and pencil eraser. Light notes of cinnamon and cloves over a doused fire.

It's a knock-your-socks-off contrast that all malt maniacs should experience.

Meet Shadow...

We adopted her 3 weeks ago, but were quiet for fear of jinxing things. Sprocket wasn't happy the first week, but now they're like sisters. Shadow watches and copies everything Sprocket does, Sprocket gets to be the dominant kitty and Shadow pays attention to her feelings and even our training. She's at least 6 months younger than Sprocket, but isn't a super crazy kitten (although she definitely has her "omg I must leap in the air and run run run!!!" moments). It's a great match, Sprocket is back to being normal-level attention hungry, and we're not terrified of our cats attacking our head out of the blue -- not to say that plotted attacks on the head are not to be expected.



Never in a million years would I have imagined that I'd have cats, and 2 girl cats at that... Life is strange. =)

 K...I'm done with funerals in Phoenix in August . I understand not wanting to live through 109+ degree weather and all, but still...

Glad to be back home.

 If you had to write the story of your life as it was, is and as you hope it to be, in six words or less...what would you say?

Paul, Colin and Paul

I just made it through round one of our company pinball tournament. I figured I'd be out within 5 seconds. We'll see how round 2 goes.

Sprocket is such a cute kitty that my coworker has her as their background on their computer. =)

We're closing early today. 

I get to sleep in tomorrow.

My new Adidas shoes are super kewl.

Vote for jette!! She rocks. =)

 Happy happy birthday dear suzsqueak!!!
xoxoxo

From lots of people...

1. Go to www.flickr.com
2. Type in your answer to the question in the "search" box
3. Use only the first page
4. Copy the html and paste for the answer.

Hrrmm. This morning, when I was sitting on the couch in the living room having coffee with the hubby, a pigeon kept smacking into the window in front of me.

Just a minute ago, a big bee was smacking itself on my office window over and over, and then flew to the other side of the house/my office and proceeded to smack itself on that window.

I'm beginning to develop a complex.

Thank you so much for the awesome music recommendations!!

---

This weekend was an emotional roller coaster. Loki is doing really well in his new home with a kitty who can match his energy and level of play. Sprocket is thrilled as well. She immediately went back to acting like her old self, and is even playing with her toys and running around again. I'm glad that we did the right thing, but man that was hard.

P's gone for most of the week in Vegas. I might fly out there with Saint Linda to celebrate his birthday, or we might try to get friends together over here. The house feels very strange without him and Loki.

 I am in serious need of new music.

Any suggestions? What music are you loving right now?

Thank you for all of the bird advice. =)  I tried a few things that have helped a bit, but not stopped their window slams entirely. Keeping the blinds down but open made the room too dark (there's a big bush/tree outside the window that I'd love to trim down, but it provides privacy from the neighbors. For some reason the architects of the two houses made sure to perfectly align all of our side windows), and the birds still slam into the window, but a little less hard. Vinyl stick-on things were either too clear or light and didn't help. I now have the blinds down a little with colored shapes taped onto the windows, and they still hit the window a little, but aren't full on body-slamming it anymore. Yay for less bird injuries and stuff.

I've spent the last 4 or 5 days uber sick and going stir crazy. I missed out on family and friend time yesterday, but P was nice enough to hang out and watch a movie with me.

We found a new home for Loki. I'm really sad, and am not looking forward to how empty the house will feel without him, but it will be really good to have both kitties happy. It sounds like Loki will now have a playmate that will be able to keep up with him, and Sprocket can go back to being the supreme princess of couch land.

It seems that the birds living in the area have picked up the fun new hobby of slamming their flying bodies into my office window. I believe, as all tests have proven my theory to be true, that they sit outside watching me, waiting for the perfect moment. As soon as they see that I am deeply immersed in my work, bam, it's business time. So far, they're averaging about 7 body slams a day (sometimes more, but very rarely less).

If I close the blinds, they seem to do it less, but I feel like I am working in a dark cave and don't get to enjoy the sunshine at all. It I leave the blinds open and endure the panic inducing body slams, my back gets all jacked up from jumping up in surprise, and it takes me two to three times and long to finish whatever project I'm working on.

I'm beginning to develop a complex. I wonder if the problem is not that they don't see the window, but that they're actually trying to dive bomb me. 

The smears of white, fuzzy feathers they leave behind are pretty special. They remind me of when birds would try flying unsuccessfully in the yard at the house I grew up in. My brother and I would bury them with a little headstone, ceremony and all. We had quite the nice little cemetery set up, but, as we were naive and our world was still full of innocence then, we did not take into consideration that cats like to eat birds for breakfast, and are not half bad at digging. Maybe these dive bombing birds are trying to get me back for that.