Ummm, pizza

We're meeting a friend Saturday night at the Red Savoy in St Paul. I can taste the Savoy Special--with sauerkraut--already. Best pizza ever and it was such an extra treat when this old-style windowless working class bar went smokeless.

Kitten Fix

We finally have kittens in our foster room again, after a long drought. The last two occupants of our foster room were chubby stray female cats with no spay scar. The humane society we foster for has to consider such an animal pregnant. In both these cases, they were not. So no kittens.

Of course it never rains but it pours. Someone brought in two pregnant cats and one with four 2-day old kittens. In the same week my shelter received two more pregnant cats and two pregnant dogs. We'll have a baby boom in no time!

The picture is one of the four, born March 18. The mom cat, I named her Bonnie Doone, is a little shy, loves to be combed, and an excellent mother. Three kittens look like this one, brown tabby, and I think longhairs. The only boy is a buff, probably shorthair.

Every day now they get cuter. Today at 2 weeks, eyes are open and vision is improving; ears are unfolding and hearing is improving; mobility is improving and they stagger around unsteadily. In about 2 weeks, they will be eating on their own and using the litter box.

I love being a foster mom cat.

Minnesota March

Western Minnesota doesn't have the problems that the northwest portion of the state does. But during our weekend trip to visit Alan's Dad, we found some of the 4" of rain seeping into the basement at the farm and spent a few hours rolling up carpeting and putting furniture up on 2"x4"s.

Driving back to the Cities on Monday, we saw many spontaneous lakes and rivers, adding exponentially to Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. We're experiencing what Alan calls the perfect storm of spring flooding: warmer than average temperatures, frozen ground, snow melt, rain. End result is much sandbagging in the flood plain of the Red River of the North and lots of flooded fields in the plains of western Minnesota. So odd to see ducks, geese, tundra swans bobbing around in whitecaps and corn stalks.

More smoking ban, please

We two Minnesotans attending a concert across the border tonight (wonderful Irish music and dancing) and innocently wandered into a bar for a nightcap. A wall of SMOKE hit us on the way in--we were in Wisconsin! No smoking ban and 10 people puffing away. We bolted down our drinks and escaped from Wisconsin. Thank you, Minnesota Legislature, for the Clean Air Act. And I say this as a reformed smoker.

Wally Lamb

I'm halfway through Lamb's "The Hour I First Believed" and I'm torn: I wish it would never end and I can't put it down so, damn it, it's ending. Well, it's also a library book so I have a deadline, so to speak.

This guy is a WRITER! Best book I've read in years. He weaves the story of a relationship around the Columbine school shooting. His descriptions and character development are absolutely riveting. At over 700 pages, it's daunting until you read that first paragraph. Then all you can do is hold on and keep turning those pages.

The Minnesota Zoo

I'm a longtime member of the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley. Since it's about 3 miles from our home, you'd think I would visit more often than I do but I've kept my membership just to support the Zoo.

I was surprised at the vitriol of another local blogger on a Zoo project to open in July--a children's outdoor playground. General Mills, sometimes called Generous Mills, and other private donors, are donating $1 million for the project. The blogger is of the opinion that the money is wasted on this project. Actually this particular blogger is mad about a lot of things so maybe s/he is just using the blog to vent and drop a lot of f-bombs.

The Zoo can't have too many beautiful large and small cats for my taste. The latest additions are Amur leopards that have heated rocks right next to the window so you have a real close-up view of these spectacular animals.

Is it just me?

Does it seem like there's more interest in politics lately? I've always paid attention to politics since it's the way the world works and all.

I was and am an Obama supporter, more so I believe because of the contrast between BHO and GWB. I know they're both politicians and sometimes have to do what is politicallhy expedient. But it gives me no end of pleasure to see/hear/say the phrase "President Obama." Not that I wish any of the Supreme Court justices any harm or misfortune but if a couple of them wanted to retire in, say, the next 3 years....

Of course anyone with a 401K or an ownership in stocks is paying more attention to what's happening in the world lately. I'm sure the state of the economy sparks the interest of even the most clueless.

So is it just me or are we paying better attention these days?