Baldur

Here is an interesting animated cat video with amazingly accurate cat behaviour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0ffwDYo00Q

Arw65

I have a soft spot for the Flintstones- My mother's name is Pebbles. The animated character, being 'born' 3 months before, is her namesake. - one year for Halloween my parents went as Pebbles and Bambam. my dad is a ridiculously strong guy- so the Bambam character fit him well- and my mom didn't even have to change her name.

indigo

I love Simon's Cat....THANKS! That is true cat behavior, HILARIOUS!

Dragon

I'm amazed at how much the times have changed since the Flintstones came out (well before I was around). I saw an ad from the '60's featuring Fred and Barney enjoying the smooth, cool taste of a pack of Winstons (or some other cigarette, I can't quite remember which) and just had to laugh. Could you even imagine the up roar if childrens TV characters (although really The Flintstones wasn't aimed solely at children) were hocking smokes on National TV.

lynnspotter

Happy 50th! http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=56697

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Randy Quaid, Andre' Rieu, Donny Hathaway, Julie Andrews, Richard Harris, George Peppard, Tom Bosley, Roger Williams, President Jimmy Carter, James Whitmore, Walter Matthau, Bonnie Parker, Vladimir Horowitz, William Boeing and King Henry III.

lilalee

Randy Quaid was in jail, wonder if they serve cake??

Baldur

.....certainly not the type with a file baked inside.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Mandisa, Tiffany, Kelly Ripa, Sting, Persis Khambatta, Chris LeDoux, Donna Karan, Avery Brooks, Don Mclean, Rex Reed. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., Graham Greene, Bud Abbott, Groucho Marx, Mahatma Ghandi, Saint Charles Borromeo and King Richard III of England.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to India Arie, Gwen Stefani, Clive Owen, Tommy Lee, Fred Couples, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Al Sharpton, Dennis Eckersley, Dave Winfield, Lindsey Buckingham, Chubby Checker, Gore Vidal, James Herriot and Langley Collyer (read story below).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collyer_brothers

Baldur

It's amazing whar curious stories are out there waiting to be discovered.

polenta

We had a case of compulsive hoarding here some years ago. The case was made public because the neighbors complained about the stink coming out of this man's apartment in the same building. He turned out to own some property and even if he was not a millionaire, he was well-off and didn't need to work. I don't know what the laws are but it seems it's not so easy to deal with such pathological cases.

Dragon

A&E has a whole show on people who are Hoarders. I find the show a little too depressing to watch though and I'm not really one for reality shows of that nature anyways. I think the absolute saddest cases are the animal hoarders because they think they're rescuing these animals but really they're subjecting them (and theselves) to horrible conditions, it really is abuse they're just so mentally ill they don't know it is.

I wonder if the cats they found in the Colyer house were the brothers pets or just strays who found their way in to feast in the rodents that must have run rampant through the place.

It was a fascinating story, must have been a big house to have all that stuff in it.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Alicia Silverstone, Armand Assante, Linda McMahon, Susan Sarandon, Bridget St. John, Tony LaRussa, Anne Rice, Roy Blount Jr, Jackie Collins, Sir Terence Conran, Alvin Toffler, Charlton Heston, Buster Keaton, Damon Runyan, Frederic Remington, Rutherford B. Hayes, Jean-Francois Millet, Richard Cromwell, King Charles IX of Sweden and King Louis X of France.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Kate Winslet, Bernie Mac, Clive Barker, Bob Geldof, Karen Allen, Steve Miller, Barry Switzer, Glynis Johns, Bill Keane, Donald Pleasance, Allen Ludden, Ray Kroc, Larry Fine, Robert Goddard, Louise Dresser, Chester A. Arthur and Denis Diderot.

Baldur

Baldur has been doing a lot of baking for someone who is on a diet.
The weight seems to come off quicker if you cook fattening foods and then do not eat them.
Maybe the temptation burns off calories. I must be on the Roman Catholic diet.
There was a recipe for a bar cookie called a 'Hermit' in a favorite cookbook of mine. These were always available in the local bakeries here in New England. They were a brown, soft spicy bar cookie, with raisins and walnuts in the batter. Mostly they were reminiscent of soft gingerbread but in Hermits the predominant spice flavor was cloves and not ginger.
Now when I baked the recipe on Sunday for afternoon tea the resulting cookie was quite good, but nothing like any Hermit I'd ever had.
The color was rather blonde, a hermit certainly would have used molasses for at least part of the sweetener and the spice flavor was quite subtle.
The texture was quite soft and wonderful so I decided to change a couple things and create a different recipe/
Baldur removed the raisins and nuts and added diced apples.
I doubled the cloves, tripled the cinnamon and added vanilla.
This new recipe in my opinion is better than the original.
Here it is:

Frosted Apple Bars

for the apple bars:
1+1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1+1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 tablespoons butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 medium apples, peeled, cored and diced

for the frosting
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons soft butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
up to 3 teaspoons of milk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F
Grease a 13" by 9" baking pan

In a bowl combine the flour, baking powder, salt, cloves and cinnamon. Set aside.
Combine the milk and vanilla. Set aside.
In a mixer cream the butter and brown sugar together.
Beat in the egg.
Alternately add the flour mixture and the milk mixture into the butter mixture, beating only until combined.
Remove the batter from the mixer and gently fold in the apples

Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes.

Prepare the by mixing together the confectioner's sugar, salt, butter, vanilla and 1 teaspoon of the milk.
Add another teaspoon or 2 of milk until you get a runny frosting consistency. Don't worry if there are a few lumps in the mixture, they will melt.
Remove the cake from the oven and spread the icing over it while the cake is still warm.
Allow to cool before slicing.

Baldur

Baldur omitted a word in the last paragraph. It should read:
'Prepare the frosting by mixing together the....'

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Melinda Doolittle, Tony Dungy, David Brin, Britt Ekland, Bruno Sammartino, Thor Heyerdahl, Carol Lombard, Le Corbusier, George Westinghouse, Jenny Lind and King Louis-Philippe of France.

Dragon

Dragon had a really crappy day today. It started off not bad, we had a really good laugh at work to start the day with but went downhill from there. My sweetie and I had noticed that my older cat Ozzy has not been himself and didn't seem to be eating much. He had lost quite a bit of weight in the last week or so and we were worried. I took him in and we did some bloodwork, he was so badly dehydrated that we couldn't get much blood but it was enough. It turns out he was in end stage kidney failure. It seemed so sudden, he's only 10 yrs old and had seemed so healthy before that this was really shocking for me. I had to make the decision to euthanize him. I suppose it wasn't a hard decision to make as he was likely suffering and I just couldn't let him suffer but I've never done a harder thing than sit with him as the doctor gave him that needle. I've had lots of pets before but I've never actually been the one to make that decision or been there for it.
I've been a wreck all day and I don't look forward to going back to work tomorrow.
Must go now, I'm just getting too emotional.

mdawrcn

Dragon, my heart goes out to you. I have three kitties and they are my babies. I wish there was something I could do to ease your pain. I will be thinking of you.