That sounds great, Liese.

I agree about 30 rock, Sean. It gets one more shot, but that's it

You sound fabulously happy, Liese -- you'd mentioned moving, but I don't think I knew the details before now. Yay mod cons!

Liese - you could see Jaguars!

Okay, it's a long shot -- but they are the largest cats in the Western Hemisphere.

(I can't believe you didn't know that Theo.)

And I love the line about the jaguar scattering the dogs like quail.

I am happy.

Oddly enough, I was griping and snapping at the SO on the phone even this morning, but I got over the last hurdle of the move I was worried about (being without a car when he's in AZ teaching for a week each month) when I took the bus to buy tomatoes and grapefruit and sourdough bread today. It was easy and cheap and the stop is quite near the house and the Seabiscuit survived happily in his kennel (the duplex has a kennel! the landlady is a dog person!) while I was gone.

Since then I've been content and well-pleased with the move. Now to get my office to not be inhabited by dozens of boxes.

It's sad to leave the old place, we'd made lots of Navajo friends, but we think the decision is the right one. And we lived in this town briefly five years ago when we first started the traveling music school, so we have a support system here, and I'm sure we'll make more friends and get tied in soon. Finances will be tighter, but it's a good trade-off.

And we hope to buy land here and build a home we'd actually own over the next couple of years.

Which I'm sure will be stressful and difficult and wonderful and terrible, so I guess I'd better enjoy the happy while it lasts!

Liese - you could see Jaguars!

I totally could! The tall tall ponderosa pines here a big change from my juniper/pinon scrub I'm used to, and it means a whole different set of wildlife. The landlady is also a bird person, and she's got dozens of feeders and birdbaths out in the communal area, so that's already been fun seeing the slightly different wildbirds.

I sure am talky meat tonight. Must be not having the SO here.

Well, definitely keep your eyes peeled for extra large felines.

Project Runway: I enjoyed Tim's visits to the designers but the second half with Laura's accusations against Jeffrey kind of soured the whole thing.

Oh, and I had no idea that Uli was from East Germany. . . . and had dreamed of moving to Miami since she was a child. It all starts to make sense now.

I just watched Cooking with Feminists on Colbert. Am dead from laughing.

Liese! That all sounds so awesome. I love ponderosas.

I am flea and Vortex with the better writing with fountain pens than other pens. My writing is basically cursive with a few printed lowercase letters and an occasional capital, but small and wee, the same size as the lowercase letters. I have no idea why. It used to be very pretty and girly, but I do have a tendency to swoop my Y and G tails, the final stroke of my capital M and N, and my capital Rs are fonky-looking. You can't tell what it is, except in context. I tend to close up on my lowercase L and E loops, but my caps are all lush and round. And whether it comes in the middle, begining, or end of a word, my lowercase A is never connected to the letter preceding. I've tried. I have to write with the concentration of a seven-year-old to connect it.

My dad and mom learned the Palmer method in school, even won prizes for their penmanship, of which they were very proud. Even when nearly paralyzed with Parkinson's, my dad's signature was firm, confident and level.

bon bon, rather than buckwheat or rice, which are grains and will attract critters, try making your heat-up pads with crushed walnut or pecan hulls. They won't be quite as heavy, but since those are non-foods, you should be safe. You could also add a little borax to the rice to prevent insect infestation, or cedar shavings (gerbil bedding at the pet store), lavender, and rosemary--not the scents, the actual plants, any alone or in combination. I have no idea how to deter mice, unless it would be to keep the pad in a metal container when you're not using it.