Category: Cats

Massif, but not decisif

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Rest and rehabilitation
Mighty Whitey bags some Zs on his Turkintowel while recovering from a nasty abscess.

There was a little fencing but no fireworks today at Le Tour, a stage in which nearly everyone seemed to be thinking, “Don’t fuck up.”

Super Spaniard flexed his quads a bit in the uphill finale, to no particular purpose, and pronounced himself content, though he had the Schlecks stuck to him like a couple of cheap tattoos.

Given the misfortune that has been plaguing the homeboys in this go-round it was nice to see Tejay Van Garderen ride strongly — until the final few kilometers, anyway — en route to the polka-dot jersey and the most-combative prize. And it was even more impressive to see big ol’ Thor Hushovd hang onto that yellow jersey on a hilly course, day one of two in the Massif Central. But right now Cadel Evans is looking like the man to beat.

All in all, it was a long day in the old VeloBarrel, and by the time I finally broke free for a short ride it proved very short indeed. The skies looked blacker than the Republic’s future under President Bachmann, and I wasn’t out a half-hour before the rumbling started, and then the rain. I just barely beat it home, for the second consecutive day.

The Turk’ was camped out on my drawing board, where he has spent much of the last week while being treated for an abscess under his right jaw. The big galoot is not exactly cuddly and we thought he was just being pissier than usual until he popped the damn’ thing. Talk about nasty. So off to the vet we went, and now we are both poorer and wiser.

Cats are strange beasts. If I had had that thing on me the Atlantis crew would have been able to hear me yowling from the International Space Station.

Continuing education

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Herself had a video-production class the other day and so we screwed around shooting footage of Miss Mia Sopaipilla and Turkish. She used a bunch of Mia clips, so I decided to give equal time to the Turk (a.k.a. Big Pussy, Mighty Whitey, the Turkinator, Turkenstein, et al.).

Using my little Flip HD makes the process pretty much a no-brainer — why Cisco croaked this product is a mystery to me — but I’d kind of like to try one of the newer Canon HD digital camcorders. I have a Canon ZR500 that records to Mini DV cassettes, but it’s kind of clunky, doesn’t do HD and spazzed out when Herself tried to add some of its clips to a collection for her class. Strictly stone knives and bearskins — I mean, jeez, the thing is 5 years old! If it were in Maine, it could have a job.

In unrelated feline news, do cats dream (if only of Hollywood superstardom)? National Geographic wondered that, too, and here’s what they found out, via Discoblog and Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, a dude who has his own feline issues. Plus he’s a Trekkie to boot. I wonder whether the old “Star Trek” episode the Drums and their cats were watching happened to be “Assignment: Earth.”