Carnival of the Cats #104

The 2nd Anniversary of Carnival of cats is being hosted by Kimberly over at Music and Cats.

There are some rather good looking moggies, but none as handsome as me.

signed: Rocket

First Time Ever

Yesterday Mr. C and I attended the *first ever* Steel Challenge Match at the CWSA range in Coupeville.

I really did not want to go to this match, but decided to get over my attitude, go and do my best. I think my attitude came from lack of sleep, nerves at not having shot one of these matches before, and it was so darn cold outside.

The day was cold, but after I had shot my first round, and heard the plunk- ring, plunk-ring sound of lead hitting metal, I knew I had performed better than anticipated, my attitude dissolved, and I kinda' enjoyed the rest of the day.

I did not have my camera with me to record the event, but Mr. C thought to put his into his range bag, so you will find pictures and a more in-depth report at Mr. Completely's

The Carnival Of Recipes #83

Richmond, at One For The Road says, "No better way for me to celebrate my first year of blogging than to host a CARNIVAL. I love a good party."

Richmond has done a fine job of organizing all the delectable recipes, so I suggest you stop by, to see all the tasty treats.

Calorie-burning activities

Proper weight control cannot be attained by dieting alone; however, many people who are engaged in sedentary occupations do not realize that calories can be burned by the hundreds by engaging in strenuous activities that do not require much (or any) physical exercise.

Here's the guide to calorie-burning activities and the number of calories per hour they consume.

Beating around the bush . . . . . . . . . 75
Jumping to conclusions . . . . . . . . . 100
Climbing the walls . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Swallowing your pride. . . . . . . . . . . 50
Passing the buck . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Pushing your luck. . . . . . . . . . . 250
Making mountains out of molehills .500
Hitting the nail on the head . . . . . . 50
Bending over backwards . . . . . . . . 75
Running around in circles. . . . . . . 350
Climbing the ladder of success . . . 650

IRISH BLESSINGS

May the frost never afflict your spuds.

May the leaves of your cabbage always be free from worms.

If you inherit a donkey, may she be in foal.

May your pockets be heavy and your heart be light,

May good luck pursue you each morning and night

May you live as long as you want, And never want as long as you live.

Recipe: Pikelets

1 egg
¼ cup sugar
¾ cup milk
1 cup flour
1tsp. Baking powder
¼ tsp. Salt
1 tbsp. Melted butter

Beat egg and sugar until thick and creamy, then add to the sifted, flour, baking powder and salt, along with the milk.
Stir until smooth, do not over stir.
Lastly stir in melted butter.
Cook in spoonful size on hot greased griddle.

Serve with butter and jam, or the way my family did, with jam and sweetened whipped cream.

I use a small 2tbsp. size ladle to get the uniform size

Pikelets are really like a smaller version of pancakes, and are cooked in the same fashion.

Thursday Chuckle

OIL CHANGE

A woman's expense: $21:00

A man's expense: $4,165:00


Mr. Completely has the whole story HERE

Signs Of Spring

It was such a nice day, I decided to see what was in bloom around the yard.

The primroses have done well this year.

We should have plenty of plums this year to make some jam.

The rabbits found my Daylily before I put chicken wire around it for protection.

Some of the culprits.

The Forsythia needs pruning.

My Hellabore is not a tasty treat for the rabbits.

Julian's Pavement Art

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Another chalk drawing from Julian Beever. Julian Beever is an English artist who's famous for his art on the pavement of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Beever gives to his drawings an amazing 3D illusion.

Carnival Of Cats

Rocket says, the carnival is up at justin's random thoughts, and you all need to go there to see the cats.

Carnival Of recipes # 82

You will find from Chowder to Cheesecake at this weeks Carnival hosted by Trouble in Shangri La, at her blog Dubious Wonder.

Drop by and check out all the wonderful recipes.

Boring Adventure

Rivrdog taking care of some paperwork while a couple of the guys thaw out their fingers

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Mr. C and I arrived home 10pm last night, a little worse for the wear.

As I said in my last post we were going to Boring, Oregon to help Douglas Ridge Rifle Club with their first bowling pin shoot.

Friday we left home around 11am, had a nice ferry ride across to the mainland, then set off south to Boring.

After travelling some distance, the weather turned nasty, we experienced heavy rain, light snow and hail, all this making the roads slick, and of course the inevitable accidents.

The first time we were stuck in a line of traffic for it seemed like hours, probably only about one hour, then after getting back up to speed once again, we came across another holdup due to another accident. As we crept by, we counted six wrecked vehicles, one vehicle was on it's side, and there could have been more that we could not see, and others with serious damage.

It was a good thing I had put together some sandwiches, snacks, and made a large thermos of coffee for our journey, we sure needed our picnic as we dawdled along ten feet, twelve feet, and sometimes even twenty feet at a time until the backlog of vehicles had cleared.

We arrived at our destination feeling as though we had both been dunked in starch, we were so stiff from the stress we could hardly get out of our RV and get our bodies moving. The one saving grace to the whole day was our dinner. Our friend Rivrdog took us out to Buster's BBQ restaurant where we stuffed our faces with nice greasy ribs, yummm ! you know you have had good ribs when you have BBQ sauce across your cheeks and almost up to your ears.

After a restless night, we woke up to the sound of Rivrdog banging on the RV, Geez, the birds were not awake yet! (no alarm clocks in our holiday home.) We then enjoyed a hearty restaurant breakfast before heading out to the range.

It was sooo! cold, did I mention I really dislike being that cold, anyhow, I braved the conditions and helped set up for the day.

All in all the day went by quite smoothly, there were the usual glitches when something new is being created, but nothing major.

Mr. C, and Rivrdog have more on our day, along with a couple of pictures, go on over and check it out.

KIWI WORD OF THE WEEK

Jersey: sweater

I believe Mr. C and I are going to be needing our warmest jerseys, as we are heading to Boring, just outside of Portland, to help The Douglas Ridge Rifle Club, with their first bowling Pin shoot.

The weather is reported to be very cold and wet.

Catch and Destroy

My family loves to play the game "catch and destroy" with me, where I attempt to capture the string as it is pulled across tissue paper. You should hear the fantastic sound the tissue paper makes when I roll on it and shred it with my sharp claws.

My tissue paper lasts only so long, and it seems every so often, all the small pieces seem to disappear, ( I am sure it is the female member of this family, who collects all the small pieces, and puts them in the trash) then pretty soon the tissue is all gone, but I know if I am really, really, good all year long, the Santa Kitty will bring me some new tissue this coming Christmas.

Chicken Pot Pie Muffins

Tired of sandwiches with your soup?
try a pot pie muffin with your soup instead.







2 c. Bisquick
2 c. cut-up cooked chicken
¼ c. margarine or butter
1/3 c. milk
2 tbsp. Vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
½ pkg. (10oz.) frozen peas and carrots. Thawed and drained.

Heat oven to 375 F
Grease muffin pan
Mix all ingredients until moistened, beat 30 strokes.
Spoon into cups (cups will be very full).
Bake until golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes.
Cool 10 minutes, then remove from pan.

Variations: replace chicken and vegetables with, chopped ham, grated cheese, and some finely chopped green onions.
Add some grated Pepper Jack cheese to the mix.

To make the muffins lower in fat, use Heart Smart Bisquit, eggbeaters for the whole egg, and low fat chicken soup. I use olive oil in mine.

Beer and Ice Cream Diet

Justification for beer and Ice cream! But stay away from the pizza!

As we all know, it takes 1 calorie to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree centigrade. Translated into meaningful terms, this means that if you eat a very cold dessert (generally consisting of water in large part), the natural processes which raise the consumed dessert to body temperature during the digestive cycle literally sucks the calories out of the only available source, your body fat.

For example, a dessert served and eaten at near 0 degrees C (32.2 deg. F) will in a short time be raised to the normal body temperature of 37 degrees C (98.6 deg. F). For each gram of dessert eaten, that process takes approximately 37 calories as stated above. The average dessert portion is 6 oz, or 168 grams. Therefore, by operation of thermodynamic law, 6,216 calories (1 cal./gm/deg. x 37 deg. x 168 gms) are extracted from body fat as the dessert's temperature is normalized.

Allowing for the 1,200 latent calories in the dessert, the net calorie loss is approximately 5,000 calories.

Obviously, the more cold dessert you eat, the better off you are and the faster you will lose weight, if that is your goal.

This process works equally well when drinking very cold beer in frosted glasses. Each ounce of beer contains 16 latent calories, but extracts 1,036 calories (6,216 cal. per 6 oz. portion) in the temperature normalizing process. Thus the net calorie loss per ounce of beer is 1,020 calories. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to calculate that 12,240 calories (12 oz. x 1,020 cal./oz.) are extracted from the body in the process of drinking a can of beer.

Frozen desserts, e.g., ice cream, are even more beneficial, since it takes 83 cal./gm to melt them (i.e., raise them to 0 deg. C) and an additional 37 cal./gm to further raise them to body temperature. The results here are really remarkable, and it beats running hands down.

Unfortunately, for those who eat pizza as an excuse to drink beer, pizza (loaded with latent calories and served above body temperature) induces an opposite effect. But, thankfully, as the astute reader should have already reasoned, the obvious solution is to drink a lot of beer with pizza and follow up immediately with large bowls of ice cream.

We could all be thin if we were to adhere religiously to a pizza, beer, and ice cream diet.

Happy eating!

Author unknown

Tuesday's Pavement Art

By Kurt Wenner

A Prize Indeed

While going through a box of books, I discovered this book, Birds of the Storm, I had received as a school class award back in 1963.

I was a kid who did relatively well at school. Average for the most part, and not often first in anything, so this award for FirstGeneral Excellence was a prize indeed.

These awards were given to students who were top of their class, or excelled in other various areas of school academia, at an end of year award ceremony at the Palmerston North Opera house, a rather large majestic theatre which had the capacity to hold all the students and parents.

I was so nervous walking across the stage to receive my book, knowing all eyes were on me, (I was the girl who always sat in the back row), and there was always the thought, “I wonder what crummy book they are going to give me this time “

Quite often you would receive a book which was of no interest to you at all, apart from the fact that there was an award certificate with your name and relevant information, pasted inside the front cover, this time it was a story of interest.

The story is of Marjorie Ozanne’s bird hospital on Guernsey in 1940 when the Nazis occupied the island.

Many of those who escaped the mainland left behind their pet birds, which Marjorie rescued and sheltered in her own home. Aided by her friend, Nell, she carried on her own secret “war” with the Nazis to save and protect the birds.

Marjorie would barter her clothes and shoes so she could buy food for the birds.

Her concern was such that eventually even the Germans helped her.

The award says, I was in 5th form (about 10th grade) first in class

Top picture is Marjori Ozzane, right, and Nell littleton, bandaging a gull's wing
lower picture, Calming a hen while putting its broken leg in a splint made with cotton-wool and sellotape.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

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I always take my camera to work to capture wonderful pictures.
From one day to the next, I never know what I will see to photograph, be it an eagle catching fish, or grey whales late March early April, or blue herons fishing for their dinner, or the squirrel who comes and peeps through the glass door of the spa, I have my camera ready to take that one of a kind photograph.