One of My Favorite Pictures of Yoink

(click on the picture to enlarge)

Mamaw Update

My grandmother is out of ICU. Yay!

My mom was able to go visit Mamaw last week and said that her strength and alterness have steadily improved. I also heard from my cousin Amy, who said that Mamaw seems to understand when she mentions people's names and she even pats Amy's hand in response to hearing about family members. I'm so glad to hear that she's doing better.

This time last year...

... Mary and I were on our way to the Barrister's ball!
It was a fun night.

Below is a picture of us that we took before we went out.

Mamaw

My grandmother is in the hospital. She had a stroke yesterday. The doctors have stabilized her condition, but I don't know yet what to expect or what might happen as a result of the stroke. She can't talk right now because the part of her brain that influences speech was affected.

Please keep her in your thoughts.

Manatee Love

Elliot and I have a special place in our hearts for the manatee. I dare say that it was the manatee that catalyzed our romantic interest in one another back in high school. But that's a story for a different day.


Our dear friend Kelli found this book and snapped a picture of the cover for us:



Though I have not read the book myself, I have a feeling that Mary Manatee meets a strapping young sea cow named Elliot Manatee and they live happily ever after.

Our 13th Book!

Mary and I just finished reading Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It is a great light-action type of half thriller half cyber-punk sort of read. I highly recommend it. We both enjoyed it. This book makes 13 that we have read aloud to each other, mostly while driving.

One is the Loneliest Number

My snail, Nori, is no longer the only gastropod in Kenji's fish tank!

Nori has spawned 3 baby snails. I have named them Tsumi, Tsuri, and Tsuki... but dont ask me which one is which. They dont look distinct from one another yet, but I'm sure that I'll be able to identify each one of them by sight as they grow.

I'm a proud grandmother (of sorts)!



Nori and the babies are golden apple snails, and this is a picture of what golden apple snails look like.

Happy Birthday, Elliot!!!

This is Elliot's first birthday without wisdom teeth! He had them removed on Friday and he still cant eat solid foods. Which means no birthday cake today. Maybe I can get him some birthday yogurt. Or birthday applesauce. Or a birthday smoothie. Hmmm. Or maybe we'll just hold off on celebrating for a few days.

Once upon a time last weekend...

The cats were sooooo cute...



...that we decided to go to the duck pond!



And get a silly haircut!


What a fun day!

Hi Mom!

This weekend I went to stay with my mom in Sarasota and we had a grand ole time.

Here is a picture that we took outside a nice restaurant in downtown Bradenton.



I love you mom.


And here is a pretty sunset.

Happy Birthday Laura!!!!

Laura and me at the zoo last June

A new addition to the family!

It's name is Nori which means Law in Japanese. It is a snail. Here is a nice picture of it.



We also got a new tank, in which Kenji and Nori can peacefully co-exist. We also got another plant.

Check out the new abode.

Goodnight Moon

My Two Front Teeth

(Radar at the vet's office)

When we adopted Radar, all but 4 of her teeth had already been pulled. She still had her canine teeth. But they begun to fall out one by one until she only had one tooth left-- her upper left canine. Well, at Radar's yearly checkup, the vet discovered that her last little tooth was infected.

Radar had surgery yesterday to remove her tooth and it went very well. She has stitches all in her mouth, poor little baby, but she seems to be doing just fine. The only strange thing is that her meow sounds funny now. It sounds like she's been smoking cigarettes. Or maybe she's just hoarse from crying while she was at the vet's office. Can cats get hoarse? I have a hoarse cat with no canines.

Soup Bloggy Blog

I am cataloging delicious vegetarian soup recipes on a new blog. It is located at souperduper.blogspot.com. Each post is a different soup recipe, and some of them are recommendations by my lovely friends. If you have a favorite vegetarian soup recipe (or one that is easily converted into a vegetarian recipe), please send it my way. I love making soup.

Also, I realize that a blog isnt the BEST way to organize recipes. But at the bottom of each is post a little place called "labels" and they are hyperlinks to a page that will compile all of the recipes that have the same label. So if you see a recipe with the label "tomato" at the bottom and you dont like that recipe, but you want to see other tomato recipes, then click on the hyperlink and you will see all of the tomato recipes.

Another way to navigate the page is to look in the top left and find the archive section that is organized by month. You can click the little arrows next to each month to drop down all of the recipes that were posted. So if you are looking for specific recipe and cant remember exactly where it is, open all of the months and if you still dont see it, then click (ctrl + f) to open the find box and start typing one of the words in the title. The find box will help you locate the recipe you are looking for by highliting the word you type wherever it is located on the page.

So eat more soup. And send me some recipes to try!

Thank you, Maki!

Once upon a time in college I took a nice Japanese girl to a dance. It was the dance class final exam and her name was Maki. We went and had a nice time. We, well I, got a ribbon even. Then a few days later she sent me something in the school mail. It was a cute home-made puzzle that when put together looked like....

this!

How wonderful and cute of her! I just found it and thought I would share her niceness with the world.

Flower

Elliot took this pretty picture in Gainesville, Florida in 2004.

Newest Addition

Welcome to Kenji Valentino!

Elliot got me an early Valentine's Day present when we went to the pet store today. Kenji is a male betta. You can read more about bettas here.

He seems very happy in his new home (which is at least three times as big as the cup they were keeping him in at pet store). Elliot also got Kenji a banana plant to liven the place up.

He's so pretty!

PS~ "kenji" means "public prosecutor" in Japanese.

On Belay!

Mary and I decided to go rock climbing today! It was very fun and generally awesome. They taught us how to tie in and how to belay each other which is basically managing the ropes so the other person can't fall very far and then helping them down. When the climber is tied in and ready they must say "on belay!" Once ready the belayer must then say, "belay on!" Then the climber says "climbing!" and the belayer responds "climb on!" Then you can start to climb. When you are ready to come down you must yell "Hey, I am ready to come down now!" You get the idea. Mary and I both went all the way to the top of at least one of the walls we climbed. The walls are all at least three stories tall.


Here is a shot of me belaying Mary.


Here is a shot of Mary belaying me.

Atlanta with kitties!

This last weekend Mary and I went to Atlanta so that we might visit our friend Byron. Bryon has a cute little kitty named Sophie.

We went to numerous good restaurants and also visited the IKEA store, which was AWESOME.


Here is a picture with Byron and I