The new boarder has apparently settled in…as if there were any question about that. She seems to have figured out the daily routine and grasps the fact that at certain times of the day, she can caterwaul as loudly as she likes, it still won’t get her whatever it is she wants. On the other hand, she’s terminally cute (Aren’t they all?)–four white paws, brown ears, white nose, gray & black torty-style main coat–any takers? She likes to watch football; we caught several games this weekend. She likes to sit (or lie down) on the upper deck, so to speak. Better view, I guess. She can get to most anything that she sets her heart on getting to, up or down, she’s a climber, did I mention that? She has also become acquainted with some of the myriad cat toys around here and she has her own collar, so I can have some inkling of where she might be at any given moment. This is a mixed blessing, at best.
Quite a fair number of news items lately about Dolly Parton–her business acumen, her talents as a musical artist, her role as a mentor to rising female recording artists. One of my favorite quotes of Dolly’s was, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.” Yup. (which reminds me of the Mae West one, “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”)
So….I see where NASA sent a sort of space-age EZ Bake oven to the ISS (International Space Station) so the various astronauts can whip up a fresh batch of cookies whenever the mood strikes them. Besides the oven, scientists had to develop a site-specific sort of cookie dough that would do the expected in zero-gravity. Chocolate-chip missiles floating around the ISS is clearly not an option. At least I hope they’re not going to be turning out any panfuls of lasagna. The whole lack-of-gravity thing makes doing stuff like that kind of tricky. The thought of having the entire interior of the place covered with tomato sauce makes what few inclinations I might have toward cleaning, just curdle up and die. I’m not much for cleaning on the best of days, that would be too, too much…and how would you be able to simply open the door and throw everything out?
Great new book title spotted in ?The Week? : ?The Body : A Guide for Occupants?. Author is Bill Bryson, who has written such other titles as ?A Walk in the Woods?, ?At Home,? ?Down Under? and (My favorite title) ?A Short History of Everything?. Would have to be more interesting–and probably more informative–than most of the usual health books found in schools. Actually, I don’t recall anything from a health textbook that was particularly interesting. We got most of our information about such stuff from the reference room in the Herrick Memorial Library, where we gathered to do homework…and look at the pictures in the medical books on the third shelf. I think that there was a whole collection of National Geographics with pictures that were as nothing compared to what can be found on some adolescents’ cell phones nowadays. Learning such stuff “on the streets”, so to speak wasn’t happening in Wellington. Not enough streets.
The Dyson people have long been at the forefront of up-scale household appliances. They make some cool fans that have no fan blades, just an open space that makes ambient air whoosh (quietly) out in whatever direction it’s pointed. Well, now they have produced a hairdryer which operates under the same principle (At least that’s what it seems to do. Same open space, same whoosh…with added heat and in a hand-held form. Haven’t actually seen one in the flesh, as it were, but I did spy the price tag in one mention of it in a magazine recently, and I believe that I’d have to grow a whole lot more hair to make it worth my while to buy such an appliance. Maybe it’d be a must-have item for somebody like Sasquatch (Is there still one of those being spotted around here or is it just black bears?), but at $400 per, one could almost have an on-call beautician to come in to do the honors. Scratch that one off my list for Santa.
Oh, and in that same vein, ?The Week? reports that the automotive royalty group, Bugatti has just sold out of a car they produced for kids. It’s a 75% scale replica of the 1924 Type 35 Lyon Grand Prix that the ”Big B” company made for grown-ups and it will set you back some $33,000. Let’s see THAT under the tree this Christmas. It can reach speeds up to 28 mph. Just what every kid needs, right?
More coming up on highly-touted Christmas purchases, some even more remarkable than that. I WILL be making remarks. Don’t I always?
