Be Careful of What You Wish For

Pushy is BACK!!!!!

We were outside last evening working in the garden when our friend Caroleen drove up. As she got out of her car she started to babble excitedly in french and she and Peggy went nuts, scrambling around. When they finally told me what they were talking about, I joined the hunt.

Caroleen had seen Puskin, and the two were in hot pursuit. I asked Caroleen where she saw Pushy and told them to stop chasing. I asked them to go back to the garden and stated that I would try to get behind Pushy in a wide arc and see if I could get her to run to them. This trick did not work.

Peggy and Caroleen went into the house to work on some project (THE LETS GET PEGGY OUT OF WORKING IN THE GARDEN PROJECT) and I remained at the garden. After a while, just when I was about to water, Puskin came slowly up towards me. I sat down and grabbed a long thin leaf and started to twirl it and rub it against the ground. Pushy was putty in my hands for this game. She slowly stalked the reed and soon pounced. As she was now within reach I simply grabbed her and took her into the house; without too much scratching and clawing.

After securing Pushy into the house I returned to finish in the garden. I worked for another half hour of so and when I was cleaning up I heard the worst cat noise, and assumed it came from outside. When I got into the house Caroleen and Peggy were monitoring a vicious stand-off between Pushy and Munchkin, with poor Neko suffering as collateral damage.

My assumption was that the new 'wild Pushkin' was being the tough guy and giving her helpless, spastic sister trouble but nothing could be further from the truth. Poor Pushkin was trying to be nice to her sister and Munckin wanted NOTHING to do with her. It is so wierd. Yesterday Munchkin moped around looking and meowing for her sister. Now her sister was home and she was attacking her. Was it jealousy?

We think that it must be smell. And we think that Muchkin does not see well (explains more things). After running around outside with probably every male cat in site Pushy must smell different. We have contemplated a bath (get real!) but are now thinking of just wiping her down with diaper wipes and waiting for the smell to go away.

Also tomorrows trip to the vet (spading time) might help cure that tomcat odor.

Trip Summary

Our trip to the City was fantastic. We arrived Friday evening and made a beeline to our Greenich Village apartment.

After getting settled my lovely bride and I went out to a lovely dinner at a nice Turkish place.






We ended the evening with a nice scenic ride to see the Brooklyn Bridge and toured the New York side of the bridge.





After a lazy Saturday morning, we had lunch at Bar 6, a recommendation of a French speaking guitar player who lived in 'our' building. After a short interuption at Ray's we were off to Yankee Stadium.









Another lazy morning on Sunday and it was off to Staten Island for GG's 103rd birthday party. We celebrated till quite late and caught a late subway, ferry and subway back to 'our place'.





On Monday we bummed around the city. We saw a cop on a horse:



Saw a baseball field



Other distractions


Bought some art



Stopped at Pearl River and got some color ideas for our Zen Table


Checked out the John Lennon exhibit at a museum


And discovered (not the hard way) what happens when you park where you should not park in New York



On Monday we toured the Botanical Gardens in the Bronx, visited Greenich CN and made it to JFK in time to come home.

Come Back to Us, little Pushkin; We Miss You So

Poor little Pushy. We came back from New York to discover her absence. She has been fascinated with the outside world. She is a frustrated bird watcher. Perhaps the urge to hunt became too much. She answered the call of the wild.

The only way for her to escape was so Pushkin like. She must have jumped off the upstairs deck to the downstairs deck. Quite a leap, I hope she is not injured.

We are leaving food on the deck, we are leaving food on the porch, we are leaving our deck door open.

I hope she walks in and tells us about her wonderful adventures.

Pictures from NYC, words to follow

Waiting for the Subway. 9:30 PM Annadale, Staten Island; after a thunder shower.

Living Well in New York

"So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
Im very sorry, baby, doesnt look like me at all
Im standing by the window
where the light is strong
Ah they dont let a woman kill you
Not in the tower of song"

L Cohen

Peggy came back from her 20 plus years in France on December 8, 2005. Measuring from last Wednesday night, that was 1,255 days ago.

Peggy was the state debate champ in 1974.

On Wednesday night, after a fine dinner, I won a debate with Peggy....hands down. It was such a convincing win that I opened the large sliding glass door off our kitchen and shouted to the world that I had finally won a debate against Peggy. And then I did the dishes like a good boy.

Peggy does not want to hear it, but I have told her time and time again that Mr. Lou Pappas, Evergreen's debate coach (and also one of the football coaches) begged me NOT to go out for debate while in high school. Mr Pappas told me that I had it all going for me and that I should let some other people have a chance to reach success. As much as I wanted to debate, his argument prevailed and I did let the others have their chance.

Peggy had no chance in our Wednesday debate. It was advantage Walt from the get go. She made her first mistake after my initial comment and was thrashed mightily until she finally gave up and threw in the towel.

The debate covered three strong areas of my expertise. Time travel, Twinkies and the weakness of man. It was like three cherries coming up on the slot machine for me, I could not loose. I admit to spending way too much of my imagination speculating on time travel, I believe there is no higher authority on Twinkies, and as a man I have explored all the weaknesses.

The debate started with my comment during dinner that if I was to travel back in time, the one thing from this era that I would take with me that would make the citizens of that era grant me total domination would be a huge box of Twinkies. I proposed that early man would go absolutely ape shit over this delight from the future. Peggy tried and tried to counter with the current day propaganda about how bad Twinkies were for you, blah blah blah (I don't know I wasn't really listening, A KEY TO WINNING OBSTINATE DEBATES). I countered with the fact that A) no one would know this information back then and B) they taste so damn good and there would be nothing like them and 3) the life expectancy back then was about 30 years old so who would really give a crap.

And then, right then she made her big mistake. She stepped out and made a ludicrous statement (that although maybe true for her, just does not make sense to people who live in earlier times) that she had to retract and admit defeat.

She said that early man would rather eat cat poop than a Twinkie....and as soon as she said that she realized that she had lost.

Game / Set / Match or for you high brows Q E D !

I'm a New Man @ Matt's!!!!

Well if you know me, this will come as no surprise; and if you don't know me, what the hell are you doing reading this blog....get a life you web surfer.

The fast food ban was never going to work, was it? I mean come on, you know me. What am I without fast food? I just don't want to be that guy, ever.

I've made healthy, or rather smart changes. I am more cautious in my choices of fast food. I have drawn the line at chains, and really only seek out REAL food at fast food places; you know, hot dogs, pizza and tacos. Nothing mass produced.

But what I've said above is not really news. Nobody thought I was done with fast food, nobody.

What IS news is that Mr. Picky, Mr. No Sauces has made another quantum leap toward a normal life. After a six month experiment with mustard, I decided on a whim last week dive in whole hog. I had a Chicago Style dog, and I liked it!

Note: the Chicago Style dog is the one pictured on the right, it features mustard, sweet relish, tomato, onion and pepper and is lined with a pickle.

Just to reassure you that the universe is NOT ending, I will go on record here and now and say MAYONNAISE will NEVER make the cut. That is a NON ISSUE, don't want to talk about it. Mayonnaise is EVIL, end of story.

But back to the Chicago Style dog. It was easy. It was flavorful. It really was easy. The trick was to sit back and let the hot dog do all the work.