But Call Me Betsy

Remember that Ace of Base song, "All That She Wants...Is Another Baby?" Well, taking inspiration from this blog, Dan and I (mostly Dan) drew the cat version of that, presented here. If you have rewritten a pop song to add a cat to one of the central lyrics and would like it transformed into a cartoon drawing, let me know. We were thinking maybe Michael Jackson's "PYT" could be revised to reflect "PYC" (i.e. "Pretty Young Cat"). You see that we have a lot of time on our hands. Just a few more Philly pics before I forget that I took them. I saw this yesterday morning and was really tempted to read it. Was it a fairly benign, move-your-damn-car note like, "Hey, please stop parking next to this telephone pole. This is my telephone pole!" Or was it a love note like "since you won't answer my emails or texts, I was forced to leave this letter. Meet me at the Philadelphia Airport at 8 PM EST. I have two tickets to Barbados. W...

Did you know that it's possible to get lost in Philadelphia, even if you've lived here for going on seven years like I have? It happened to me last Friday, when I decided to walk to Penn's campus via Fitzwater Street. I figured that somewhere around 24th street, I could just cut North and West and find the South Street Bridge. Instead, I found myself faced with a sudden Naval Square and jumbled streets---Catherine meeting Christian, the numbered ones suddenly seeming to veer East/West. I'd accidentally found my way into the no man's land of Grays Ferry. Granted, I have a terrible sense of direction, but it was still a weird sensation not to have any clue which street to take, especially when I knew it was only a few blocks away. I found my way back via the modern version of following pebbles along the path--I used my map app on my i-Phone--the one that tracks your progress as you're walking, which I find to be in equal parts creepy and fascinating. So, this m...

Well, we can still get flooding from the Schuykill River which is supposed to peak at 2 PM today. I was briefly listening to Fox News this morning at the gym and one of the reporters said, We're taking viewers' questions and the one that keeps coming up is: "If this were a snowstorm, how many inches of snow would we have gotten?" That's maybe the dumbest question I've ever heard in my life. Like asking, If this had been squirrels falling from the sky instead of rain, how many squirrels would have landed and would they have survived or just been flattened? In any case, I categorized the devastation for you. Millimeters of rain fall flooding my street: Recyling bins filled with inappropriately heavy material toppled. Fortunately, the neighbor's blow up pool, which comes out at the first sign of spring and stays out until its frosted over by ice, did not fly away in the night. Little Paulie can continue to play in it rather than ever being able to go ...

As mom's are bound to do, mine is worried about me during this impending Rapture event known as Hurricane Irene. To set her mind at ease, here are a few photos to illustrate that, even though I have not sought out sandbags, I am still taking the storm seriously. To wit, last night, Dan and I cleared out the entire back patio. No possibility of flying projectiles of ceramic birds or wind chimes are present to shatter my back window. Side view. Please also note that my none of my nearby neighbors have large oak trees with long branches.  The back patio decorations have been stored inside. I kind of like having them around and may not ever move them out again. Cats have a full week's supply of food and back up food and two water bowls filled to the brim. My bathtub doesn't really have a plug that works (you're supposed to fill up the tub), so we found these instead. I am not sure what I'm supposed to do with this water, but it has something to do with flu...

Original artwork and other pieces can be found here .

Not time to write, but here are some photos for you. The first is not a cat in a window, but a lion in a yard. Stuck inside on a nice day. 

Remember that song by the Lemonheads? I still don't get what that means. In any case, here's my new ceiling fan (photo request sent in by Mother): Light off. If you look on the far wall by the door, you can see the fan settings--one button to turn the light on and off, and one button to turn on the fan. Very convenient. No real arm work required. The electrician who did it charged $175; I think that's pretty reasonable. Light on. Find the cats. Here they are. Sometimes, they can lay together nicely, and sometimes, they try to tear off each other's throats. They're huddled together b/c the ceiling fan is so effective. Dan also finished painting the back patio. If I ever had any guests over (which I never do), I would be proud to have them outside. The next house improvement will be the kitchen. If I can get myself to  commit to shelling out a few thousand dollars to buy the cabinets and  appliances. My friend Colin came up with some lovely d...

You can catch all kinds of not terrible programming on PBS, as I'm sure you know, and you can sometimes catch shows that you wish you liked more. For example, Dan and I tried to watch Masterpiece Mystery last Sunday night, hoping that it would be an episode of Zen , but instead, we got Lewis and Hathaway. Maybe we were both just tired, but it was a hard show to follow, mainly because we couldn't understand the accents (here's where Padhraig would say, "Racist") or the colloquialisms. I swear at one point, one of the coppers said, "Put a badger on the grill and smack off the what z-it." Not sure if this was an insult or a misunderstanding, but most of the rest of the show was like that--we were in need of subtitles. Later, Dan made me fall sideways laughing because he saw fat Emma Carol stretched out on the bed and said, in a British accent, "Look at you, you sack of potatoes, you like your crunchy food?" On Saturday, we watched the first hour...

I've been thinking that someone should write a story that's a modern day equivalent of the Cyrano/Roxanne story. It's so much easier now to hide your identity online--to pretend to be someone you're not and know a person for an extended amount of time just via the web versus real life. So why couldn't you write something about a woman or man who asks his/her friend to pose as him and write all of these love-causing things to the object of his/her desire? I suppose the only complicated thing about it would be that some of the ways we communicate now don't  necessarily lend themselves to deep contact; I'm not convinced that it's possible to fall for someone over text messaging or IM-ing. Someone must have thought of this idea already? After having worked for awhile as a letter writer for the President at Drexel, I toyed with the idea of writing a reversal of genders-type thing in a similar vein, but who reads letters anymore? You would then have to invent...

Yes, of course I have a few cat photos to make your Friday better. Here is one. And then his close up. In the upper window, see if you can find a doggie. This might be a little clearer. This dog lives on Carrie and Padhraig's street. He doesn't seem to bark much. Cat in jail. Last Friday, we went to dinner at a Vietnamese/Thai place off Washington and 1-th Street called Cafe Diem. I had some kind of rice paste and chicken. Very good. This is the last picture I have of Carrie and Padhraig without their baby. Carrie just had Seamus on Wednesday. We haven't met yet, but I'm sure he's lovely. If you look closely, you will see a baby deer aka a fawn. This is the last photo I took at Dan's old house. He moved on Monday. He is in a new house now with two bedrooms, a mud room, a front and back yard, and a full basement. Goodbye to the one bedroom with no oven, mo privacy, no working dishwasher. I haven't stayed at the new place yet, but I'm su...