Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Emergency Missing Cat News Flash!

Please keep your eyes open for Cretin. She's little but she's no baby kitty...many years loved by Ann of Paradise Gift Shop...let's get her home, the little minx! Promise her anything but tempt her with something yummy.


MY CAT HAS GONE MISSING

I'm looking for Cretin last seen in beautiful downtown Dewy. Please call Ann Keegan
at 787-455-5605 if you see her. She may be headed back (to her house on the hill) to the Fulladoza Bay area.
Vitals:
Color: Gray and White
Age: 15
Weight: 7 pounds
Psychological Profile: Nuts
Favorite Food: Marseille Bouillabaisse
Languages: Fluent in Cat, Shanghainese, Awadhi and Mandarin (the language spoken between the fruit, not the people)
Cat she most admires: Jack Kerouac
Last Kindle Download: On the Road
Thanks for your help!

Pass the Catchup, Please


I was so into sharing those pages with you yesterday that I forgot what I was going to post, which was about growing things around here. Not a lot, just two. Or maybe nine, but...wait, it's just easier to put up the photos.


Yesterday I was checking on the bananas (now that I've noticed them, born full zoom like Athena out of Zeus' head) and yet more petals had pulled back, revealing bitty baby 'naners. Not only are bananas just one of Nature's perfectly designed foods, they also grow really wonderfully, mysteriously and fast! Um...once they actually start growing. After two years.



The chickens are also growing fast now. Suddenly they have gone from little fuzz balls to...well, chickens. They still don't have all of their parts and pieces, but there are little bits poking out showing where they will be. In the meantime their heads look sort of naked, but their feathers are getting right purty. And I now have a chicken feeder for when I go off island later this summer for a few months, so they better get to the egg laying stage toot sweet (yes, I know, it's actually tout de suite, but I'm an American, damn it and I only know one language and mis-spell the rest because this great country forgot to educate me properly), because that is the reward the chicken feeder is going to get.

Last evening was the Tuesday jam at the Library. I'd been meaning to go and kept forgetting but luckily I got there last night, as Ryan, the boat living conga player guy (and family) is going to be reincarnated as Ryan (and family), dirt dweller and school guy. The fun part is they are going to Portland, OR and I'll get to visit them when I'm out there seeing my daughter Sarah.


Ryan has sold his drum to Doug (aka The Other Doug), who has this pretty wild contraption already going on. I'm not sure if the new drum will be on its own or wired into the whatever he calls it. I forgot to ask about the jar of basil on there...next time. Is a jar still a jar if it's plastic?


Which was just a segue into today's last written offering, a cool thing called a reCAP for mason jars. I saw something about this for a fleeting moment awhile back and totally lost the reference, so I was really glad to read about it (and a lot more, but you can do that yourself) on a new blog I've been following called The Art of Doing Stuff written by this pretty quirky chick on all sorts of subjects. I came across her because I was doing some chicken research. Go figure.

Anyway, today's post was about the Kickstarter project and specifically about reCAPs. You can read all about them here. There is a contest on TADS to win one, so of course I entered, because truthfully, I am always looking for the perfect drink container. Every one I've ever had leaks, makes me dribble (MAKES me, yes) and just generally fall apart, leaving me with a mess either on me or in the bag I brought it along in.

I almost thought I'd re-found the perfect one when I saw Neal using his sippy cup, but really, sippy cups, as awesome as they are, are pretty small. And they leak if you tippy your sippy. So, back to this thing. Plus, mason jars are just cool. Of course, you cannot BUY mason jars on Culebra, so if I win this (and if I don't I'm buying one anyway), I'll have to go buy a dozen jars so I can have one big girl non-leaking sippy cup. Which is fine...I can figure out how to use eleven mason jars, easy!


I stole this photo from facebook (yep, reCAP has its own fb page) that I think was taken by  someone named Amber Reddinger. Amber wrote
Your fabulous caps arrived and immediately went to work! They work perfectly -- no leaks, easy on and off -- perfect! And besides, they just look so darn snazzy. :)

Hey, Amber, good to hear! But I stole it because it's about the best photo of the thing, even better than on the website in my opinion. I saw one photo where a crocheter uses it to hold her yarn, the leading part coming out the spout. And lots of photos showing them holding things you usually put in mason jars (ok, I do anyway) like beans and cereal and popcorn. All well and good, I definitely am going for the drinks factor. And good on the woman who invented this! I'll only say this about that. If you have an inventive itch inside you, yearning to see the light of day, you really should check out Kickstarter, it's pretty fine.


Have a wow! it's Wednesday! Wednesday. Wind something up. (Wind - the twisting roundy wind, and wind, the blowy thing...should NOT be spelled the same).

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Tidy Tuesday

There are a couple of pages I've been keeping open on my computer, pages I keep meaning to share here and forgetting about - but in the ongoing effort of putting order in my life, here you go!

This one, called Foodily is a recipe collection site. MJ, you might ask, don't we have enough recipes for food we never make/use/eat? And I would answer, no, I don't think so! Of course, at one time in my life I owned around 200 recipe books, so I'm not the best source of unbiased information on this subject. Truthfully, I usually only use recipes as springboards, especially since moving to Culebra where you can't just run out and get that not-usually-around-the-house item. But for that very reason, something new and different sparking my food imagination is a very good and welcome thing.

Am I too much a purist for these Tiger Shrimp summer rolls
to not rock my food world? I think not.
(photo credit unknown: source Food Republic)
The different sort of thing about Foodily is that, say you want a recipe for oh....sushi. Well of course you do, who doesn't? Instead of getting a big written list you have to blindly choose from, with this you get really nice visuals, and lots of various types of whatever your food choice might be, from many different sources. Maybe even too much variety, but I'm a purist when it comes to certain foods, which can be pretty boring. Choice is good! But there are also ways to personalize your choices and tailor them closer to your style. Which is pretty cool. There is also a blog and other bits and pieces to paddle around in. Enjoy!

Unsurprisingly, or maybe surprisingly, the other site is about home. It's a home design site, but a whole lot more. My brother turned me onto it because he is building a home in North Carolina and sent me a bunch of photo ideas from the site. I was immediately hooked. You can type in everything from tiny homes to houseboats to cabins to rustic kitchens to tree houses and get all sorts of visual eye candy (and just like any candy store, some will have that icky filling but you just keep going and find the good stuff - no one is watching, break 'em all open until you get what you want).

Just kidding, Pan
I'm in the process of re-configuring my tiny houseboat and Pan is the man who will be doing the work of it, so I keep finding things on this site saying I want that! and he keeps sending back email (I think he's just got a boilerplate copy by now) saying, let's just get the basics done first, MJ. Basics, schmasics! I want that clever little storage area and the awesome staircase leading up to the beautifully screened bedroom on top...um...that doesn't exist yet.

My dinghy is calling me. One more coat of periwinkle and it's flip over time!

Have a tidy it all up Tuesday! Do something tediously rewarding.