Wednesday, October 1, 2014

About cats and stuff

For a week I have been trying to write a post about the situation here and how we seem to be inexorably headed to WWIII with nucs.  It is too depressing so I am going to write about cats and stuff.

At 5:00 am, Tigritsa meowed at me to let her out.  Whoever defined a door as something a cat is always on the wrong side of had it right.  I have been awake since then though I tried to grab a couple naps to no success.  Today has been a two pots of coffee kind of day.

We have a bread making machine now and it churns out a loaf a day.  (Family like their share too, you know). Bonya is the cooking supervisor.  Whatever Tanya is doing at the counter, he is right in there to see what it is and sticks his nose into anything that looks new or interesting.  Tanya uses fresh yeast not dry so it goes into the pan first. So when Tanya added the yeast to the bread machine, he stuck his head right to the bottom of the pan to see what it was.  Nothing doing but Tanya had to give him some yeast which he ate readily.  We are crazy cat people, I guess.

The cats were all in sleeping this afternoon so I let Volk go for a run on his own cognizance.  He is welcome to the neighbours' cats if they are dumb enough to get caught. he seems to be recovering from Bobik's death but needs more company than he gets.  We need another dog.

On Monday, I turned 67 so we had folks for a 3:00 pm dinner.  Tanya asked what I wanted her to cook.  I said SIMPLE, not fancy.  Plov (an Uzbek rice dish) and Salade Olivia (traditional Russian salad).  Oh, sure.  When 11 of us sat down to eat, there were pickled mushrooms, smoked salmon, cheddar cheese, black olives, three kinds of salad - Olivia , Vinigrette, and a broccoli and grape salad she learned in Canada.  There was Plov, true.  And two roasts - pork and beef.  Dessert was fruit salad, ice cream and cake.  This is my wife's idea of a simple meal.

 Tanya was up at 6:30 am that morning putting bread on to bake and when I came down at 7:00 she was mopping the floor.  Seems the hot water pipe to the sink had burst.  The "Happy Birthday" had just a tinge of sarcasm.  The plumber was in yesterday to fix the pipe and again today to fix the taps at the sink and put on a new filter mechanism.  When we were in Canada I bought him a couple wrenches that were better quality than he could get here so he is happy to do work for us.

The roof on our outbuilding was in bad shape so Tanya hired a man to replace some of the broken asbestos panels with not bad old ones from our house roof.  Our house sure looks good now with the new brown metal roof and real eaves-troughs.

I have some wood now to build a dog house for Volk which I will do this weekend.  This is rough cut true dimension lumber so the house should be solid enough.  But it is green wood (pine?) so who knows how much it will shrink.

Enough ramblings for now.  Scary blog another time.


18 comments:

  1. My mouth is watering from the description of that supper!! Sounds like you had a good birthday, burst pipe and all. Love you.

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  2. I was surprised to see your reference about WW3 at the beginning of this otherwise domestic blog. Here in Australia your country's plight has almost disappeared from our newscasts. Oh and re those wrenches, we had a similar relationship with our plumber while living in Manila, where tradesmen expected to use your tools. Our plumber so loved my husband's wrenches he borrowed them for other jobs - with permission.

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    1. That is how it is here, too. Most tradesmen have few tools. So mine get used on a regular basis. Part of it is that the tradesmen usually have no vehicles other than a bicycle so are limited in what they can carry.
      And things here are getting worse, not better. But ISIS is sexier and do not have nuclear weapons, so beat on them, not Russia.

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  3. I, too, shall ignore the grim situation over there, and instead wish you a very happy (belated) birthday. I hope the pain has subsided after your feast! :-)

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  4. Thanks, Diane. It took a few hours for the pain to subside. As they say, this too shall pass.

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  5. Happy belated birthday, then. You're two years older than I. Quite a simple feast that you had there. Our Brewsky is an indoor cat, but if he were not, I guess I would install a cat door after reading your post.

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    1. Thanks, snowbrush. A cat door would be a good idea but winter is a problem.

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    2. Fear not there's more money in conventional wars as we can see. As to the meal I think I'd have to be back in my teens to eat all that. Oh what age does to us. As for the cat I think they actually make a doorbell for cats. The hard part is training them. :-)

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    3. Asbestos panels?
      the Ol'Buzzard

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    4. My daughter trained her dog to ring a bell to go outside. He ran it whenever he was bored and couldn't find the other dog. The bell went!
      Yes, roofing in the FSU was all asbestos panels. They are still available, cheap and butt ugly but they last and last.

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  6. Oh yes, winter, you get those don't you?

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  7. My wife's birthday was also on Monday and we also have a door opening service for our cats. There are eleven of the little fuzzballs in our house.

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  8. Focusing of cats and birthdays is so much more pleasant. Happy Birthday. and what a wonderful feast! Glad that you could enjoy it there at home.
    We keep hearing that all of the world is the same now, so it is a bit reassuring to hear that things are different there. It seems a bit charming to think of a repairman arriving by bicycle.

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    1. Thank you, aitbr. It was a good day.
      The world is definitely NOT all the same, in any way shape or form. In some ways the same, in some ways different. Like individuals.

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  9. Glad you are still alive and writing.

    For some strange reason, the final scene of Dr. Strangelove has been playing in my head. I do trust that is not an omen of things to come.

    Blessings and Bear hugs, good fiend!

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    1. Rob, that is a movie I have not seen. Should I correct that?

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