We paired pie with gifties for a young man whose b-day will be here soon, but he and we will not be together when the happy day arrives.

Nice assortment of grocs, and a sandwich counter. One employee, no evidence of customers. Sign said local produce. I saw two avocados, and thought local, um, has a flexible meaning. Perhaps?

Is it cruelty to put two dozen or so archaeologists in a windowless room on a gorgeous day for most of the afternoon? The saddest thing: we didn’t use the AV equipment (which is what needed the lack of light) at all.

I am trying a new weed control system. It took us a while to obtain the raw materials.

Several days ago I thought I noticed that Google was giving me quite different results when I searched for journal article titles. Today’s online wanderings confirmed it. I’m guessing JSTOR and others wrangled this? Or maybe there’s a transitional phase at the moment, with few pages returned? G-Scholar is effectively eviscerated.

When I was a kid we had a cat for a long time that was commonly called Fat Cat*. Actually, he was large, but not fat. And he was a black-and-white with semi-long hair. He adopted us after Dad fed him the leftover Thanksgiving turkey carcass Mom was saving for soup, a cooking strategy Dad wasn’t aware of, so he thought he’d give it to the clearly hungry stray.

I don’t think the cat ate quite that well after that, but he didn’t leave, either.

The Flat Cat, shown here, arrived later, I think in a Christmas stocking (but I may be artificially creating another commonality—a holiday connection—for these two Ef Cats). This one is also quite similar in markings (less so body type) to the famous JRB family cat, named TinTin, pronounced correctly (tan-tan). And the JRB family gave us the Flat Cat…so we would have a cat that wouldn’t trigger any allergies.

Actually, this was one of a pair of Flat Cats, but the other one got chewed on by Baby B, the offspring member of JRB, and thus it wasn’t pristine enough for long-term preservation. Of course, it looked like their other cat…Mieze (pronounced, by me anyway: mee-zuh).

* Fat Cat’s real name was Omar Ben Sufi, named by my bro for the cat in Edward Peple‘s lovely A Night Out (1909). As the Project Gutenberg version shows, the first sentence is: “Omar Ben Sufi was a cat.” Nice.

We stirred up the dust today. Flinging. That term should be patented (in a manner of speaking) by the infamous Super-Flinger, KW.

Domesticated tiger; the wife’s tiger was the “real” kind.

I finished Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife (2011), and never became as seduced by it as the many reviewers I read were. Lukewarm. Interesting details here and there. But.

Cruising through some pictures the Guru took the other day—whaaa?—reverse. Note that this vent is at the level of the first-floor ceiling.

Special Friday meal: chili. Non-standard chili. Smoky and pretty warm but not overwhelmingly hot. Mmmm.

Classy way to welcome the end of the week? (Standard work-week, that is….)

We call this German prosecco. It’s bubbly. It’s from Germany. And made from Italian grapes. Therefore, EU vino special? Ehhhh, German prosecco has a better ring.