63 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread

  1. Gigi the cat lady June 10, 2017 / 9:11 am

    This weekend is the Grand Prix in Montreal, I’m not a fan of F1 races but there is a street festival that goes along with it with lots of fun stuff so we’ll be going to that.

    I think Montreal is the Festival capital of the world, there is something going on pretty much every week, we already had The Giants (big mechanical marionettes) and the Tour de l’Ile (bike race through city streets) last week.

    Some street downtown are closed to trafic for the entire summer because it’s one festival after another, Just for Laugh, the Jazz Festival, the Film Festival, African Nights Festival and of course all the parades, Carabiana, Gay Pride, etc. And it’s Montreal’ 375 anniversary so there will be even more stuff to do this summer!

    • Murray C. June 10, 2017 / 11:27 am

      You had the giant marionettes??? Oh, how I love them! Spectacular feat if engineering and beautiful crafted. They’re called something like “Riesen” in German, I think.

      And you have a Laugh festival??? I love that idea. I have a couple of friends that I have coffee with after water aerobics that we call our “Laugh Circle”. We hope for a good belly laugh each time and it usually happens.

      Oh, and a report on Clementine, our female lop bunny. While she’ll continue on meds for another month, she’s doing incredibly well, hardly any signs of neurological tics, appetite great, very active, pretty much back to her old self. What a relief – this was a very difficult episode requiring intense care for the first week and a half. I feel I can relax about her,tho’ I remain vigilant if I see any signs of lack of appetite. Bunnies are so fragmile.

      Lovely puss.

      • Gigi the cat lady June 10, 2017 / 1:05 pm

        I’m very glad that Clementine is doing so well ?

      • Faye June 10, 2017 / 1:09 pm

        Good news Murray!

      • Smartypants June 10, 2017 / 1:26 pm

        So glad to hear Clementine is doing well!

        • Murray C June 10, 2017 / 3:58 pm

          Thanks, guys! I know you all understand.

      • Ricky's Mom June 10, 2017 / 7:23 pm

        So happy Clementine is doing better!

  2. N. Fritz June 10, 2017 / 10:34 am

    Greetings, Cutetropolitans! It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, especially now that all my seniors have graduated (ok… all but two, and one of them failed my exam so I’ll see him again in September).

    It was a freaking long day yesterday 6:45 am to 5:40 pm, just for the exams, then the graduation ceremony (I got home after 9 pm). But my students were sweet and I got honorable mention because I had 18 candidates in one day. The fellow who failed presented me flowers from the class and I also got coffee beans (sort of an inside joke).

    So today I bought a coffee grinder and a stovetop espresso maker and I plan to draw a still life with the coffee and the flowers. I also mowed the lawn and pulled some weeds and I’ve now settled in for some “dolce far niente.” There’s a music concert in the village and I should be able to hear it from the garden.

    Peace out!

    • Murray C. June 10, 2017 / 11:31 am

      Congratulations, N. Fritz! Enjoy your coffee and your music concert that you can stay at home for.

  3. debg June 10, 2017 / 10:41 am

    Company coming this weekend, so of course my downstairs shower had to flood. This happens every single time. If I can pull myself out of the glums, it will be a great weekend: we’re going to the Estes Park Sheep and Wool Festival tomorrow, then we’ll probably hit every yarn shop in northern Colorado on Monday and Tuesday.

    I should go downstairs and see if the waters have started to recede yet.
    Have a great weekend, everybody.

    And that’s a very handsome marmie. I like his/her wink.

    • Caz June 10, 2017 / 10:54 am

      Things always happen with me when i have company coming to stay, just got to remember they aren’t going to mind, they are there to see you, and you’ll get to see sheepies tomorrow!

      • debg June 10, 2017 / 12:24 pm

        Thanks, Caz. You’re absolutely right!

  4. Caz June 10, 2017 / 10:52 am

    Hay cutting day here, gotta make bales for the rather spoiled sheepies! Oh and last night i saw my first little bambi of the season, i think they are sharing the water with our woolly ones, hopefully get some photos of them soon 🙂

  5. AJ June 10, 2017 / 10:56 am

    Beautiful big and fluffy orange kitty. I would just love to go back to bed and snuggle with him all morning. Especially considering the weather – it’s June, and OMG it’s raining in SoCal!!!! This almost never happens here, very weird weather. And an even stranger coincidence. I get a daily poetry email and this morning’s poem was called “The Rain” Hmmmm.

    I had plans to run errands this morning but I think I’ll wait til later today or tomorrow. I still have one room with boxes to look in, see if I want anything from them and then put them in the storage garage. After that, I’ll get the room organized so I’ll finally be settled in the new place.

    Gigi, I think I want to move to Montreal for the summer. All those festivals sound like so much fun! And N. Fritz congrats on surviving another teaching season with an almost perfect graduation record. Poor Debg, flooding bathrooms aren’t fun but enjoy your guests, I have a friend that would love to join you on your yarn crawl. I think she’s either memorized all the yarn shops in the US or can sniff them out at 50 paces, lol.

    Happy Weekend everyone!

  6. Nancy June 10, 2017 / 11:11 am

    ?Right back at you, fluffy!

  7. Amyliz June 10, 2017 / 12:03 pm

    Beautiful kitty with a permanent wink!
    Last weekend was the annual art festival here. I got to watch a dance group perform Mexican folk dances; they were wonderful but they had to be sweltering, dancing in the hot sun and wearing elaborate costumes!

    Gay Pride parade here today but it’s going to be beastly hot so will probably only watch if I find a shady spot to stand!

    Happy weekend to everyone!

    • murkle46 June 10, 2017 / 1:04 pm

      It’s 30 questions,but it cycles from one to the next rapidly.I am a “sticky bun”.Who knew?

      • Murray C June 10, 2017 / 1:25 pm

        A lot of the answers given I would’ve answered “none of the above” – e.g., favorite sport – I dislike sports, especially professional team sports. (I do like the Olympics, especially the Winter Games). Anyway, I’m a Scone – tho’ I don’t think of that as a breakfast pastry – it’s for tea!

        • allein ? June 10, 2017 / 1:41 pm

          Yeah…there was no option for “my job pays the bills and I don’t dislike it enough to quit”…

          If I have to pick a pro sport it’s baseball. I’ve gone to games once in a while (I’ve mostly only been to minor league games — I have the Lakewood Blue Claws and the Somerset Patriots each less than an hour’s drive away — but I went to at least one Yankees and one Phillies game as a kid). I also like listening to the announcers on the radio sometimes. When I lived by myself in PA and didn’t have cable, during the World Series when there was nothing else on TV I would put the game on just for background noise. I find it relaxing, even though I don’t pay much attention to the actual game.

          Also, I picked Jerry, but I don’t actually like Seinfeld (the show; the comedian’s okay).

        • Amyliz June 10, 2017 / 1:48 pm

          Yeah, for me the sports question should have been which game do you dislike the least! Not a sports fan!

        • debg June 10, 2017 / 2:20 pm

          I too was a scone.

      • Amyliz June 10, 2017 / 1:29 pm

        I am a bran muffin! Actually, the personality description that came with the results was pretty darn accurate!

        • allein ? June 10, 2017 / 1:43 pm

          I don’t really think of a bran muffin as a pastry…(even though most muffins are basically cake, anyway).

      • allein ? June 10, 2017 / 1:35 pm

        I’m a scone.

        I don’t know that I’ve ever actually eaten a scone…

        • Murray C June 10, 2017 / 4:00 pm

          Wouldn’t that be funny if the highest percentage of Cutetropolitans were scones!?

    • dubravkamcvmd June 10, 2017 / 5:03 pm

      I’m a bran muffin. I wouldn’t eat a bran muffin unless I was paid a significant amount of money to do it. The personality description had me doing yoga or meditation first thing in the morning. Hah!

      • Amyli June 10, 2017 / 6:09 pm

        Hey now, we bran muffins aren’t the flashiest pastry (?) out there but we are helpful in keeping folks, you know…on schedule, shall we say? We are the work horses of breakfast breads! 😀

        • dubravkamcvmd June 10, 2017 / 8:18 pm

          Very grown-up of you. I’m a child about this stuff – bran, wheat germ, and cod liver oil – blech! I guess I’m dating myself with cod liver oil. Anybody else remember that stuff? I don’t remember what problem it was supposed to deal with though.

    • Duckie ? June 10, 2017 / 7:49 pm

      Hurray! I’m a bran muffin!

  8. allein ? June 10, 2017 / 12:10 pm

    Hello, all. No plans this weekend except the usual chores that I never quite get around to. I’m aggravated because yesterday I realized that the data I’ve been working on gathering for the past week-plus was something I had built several months ago in a way that was much easier to get and didn’t require restoring old files (I have less than full trust in the guys who keep our data since three of the months they restored were wrong–three times!). Thankfully, that easier method is a lot quicker and doesn’t require file-restoration because what I finally finished gathering looks way too high in several weeks so my reporting is not going to be right. That’s when I noticed the other database in the folder and started poking around and realized, oh $&%@ I could have done this in like, two days. I stayed late and ran five months worth in less than an hour, which means I can finish on Monday and built the reports. Of course it’s all for the VP of distribution, not just my own boss. Gah!

    Anyway, gonna be warm today (81 right now) and I slept too late, as per usual.
    Having some fruit for breakfast..

  9. Alice Shortcake June 10, 2017 / 12:14 pm

    A few days ago we had some torrential rain in Yorkshire, accompanied by high winds that blew a slate off the roof of the house opposite. The owner asked if he could have a look out of my front bedroom window to locate the damage. At the time I was using the Mighty Oracle Google to find a local painter and decorator, and it turned out that my neighbour, who I’d barely seen in the ten months since I moved in, is…a painter and decorator!

    • fkaWaldenPond June 10, 2017 / 6:18 pm

      Ahhhh! Serendipity! 🙂

  10. mariser June 10, 2017 / 12:22 pm

    all cats are beautiful, always. QED.

  11. Sowmya June 10, 2017 / 12:25 pm

    RIP Adam West, TV’s original Batman. (Biff!! POW!!) Will honour him by looking at some of the many Bat-Kitties that have graced this site.

    • Amyli June 10, 2017 / 7:24 pm

      Sounds like he was a pretty nice guy!

  12. Patty June 10, 2017 / 12:53 pm

    I don’t really have plans this weekend. Monday is my youngest daughter’s 22nd birthday, but since her sister was in town yesterday, we celebrated with dinner out, and cake and ice cream at the other sister’s house. I have 4 daughters, 3 live in town, one lives 2.5 hrs away in KC.

    For mother’s day, the youngest promised to go to the Escape Room with me, actually set up a bunch of clues that led me to find the written promise. We went last night, and did the Helter Skelter room. It was lots of fun, and we did escape, with 24 seconds to spare. I would’ve liked to take all the daughters, but one was out of anti-anxiety meds and wasn’t comfortable being locked in a room, and the other has a newborn breast fed infant, and wasn’t comfortable leaving him for a couple of hours, so it was just me, the youngest, and the one who lives in KC. We laughed a lot at our own “Duh” moments, and kept saying we were going to die, because we wouldn’t escape before the serial killer came back. It was a lot of fun, and we intend to do the pirate room at a later date, when everyone can go.

    • Claire June 10, 2017 / 4:35 pm

      Oh I love escape rooms! That’s a fun idea for a gift. I’ve done two – escaped once, and lost once, but lots of fun both times! It’s an interesting way to see group dynamics too; as time starts ticking down and people get frustrated, it doesn’t always bring out the best in people.

  13. Smartypants June 10, 2017 / 1:29 pm

    Very dashing kitteh! All he needs is a motorcycle jacket or a swashbuckling pirate coat to complete the look.

    • Murray C June 10, 2017 / 4:01 pm

      And an eyepatch!

      • Ricky's Mom June 10, 2017 / 7:29 pm

        I’m wearing an eyepatch, held on by my eyeglasses because the elastic has already detached itself from one side. Corneal abrasion. Horribly painful, the numbing drops I got a coupla hours ago at urgent care already worn off.

        On the plus side, Ricky the Dialect Dog has been doing increasingly better over the last coupla weeks.

        P.S. to SpellChequer, coupla is so a word in colloquial speech, so get over it.

        • dubravkamcvmd June 10, 2017 / 8:20 pm

          Corneal abrasion sounds really, really awful. Hope it fades quickly.

          • Murray C June 10, 2017 / 11:45 pm

            Ooooh, that does sound awful – I hope it heals quickly – I always hear that the eye does repair quickly – let it be so! Glad Ricky’s doing better.

            • Ricky's Mom June 11, 2017 / 6:32 am

              Thanks, pals. I have antibiotic drops to put in 4x daily for a week. Other than that, I think I’m just supposed to leave it alone, which is difficult at the moment, since it’s pretty itchy. But so far this morning no pain, for which I’m grateful. My eyelids are swollen in the affected eye, so my vision is a bit off; the top lid is swollen enough to cover about half the pupil. (The other half of the pupil is bunking off school, ho-ho.)

              I think I’d better get a new eyepatch, it’s more attractive than my puffy eye! Also I can practice my pirate accent. Arrrrr.

  14. Laura June 10, 2017 / 2:08 pm

    Hi, all. Sounds like people are having fun. I’m curled up sick with bronchitis, so I won’t be putting in an appearance at the block party scheduled for later — too many young kids on the block. Although our favorite, and Melody’s, is moving away next week — we hate to see them go!

    I hope everyone has a good week. And stays healthy! I haven’t had bronchitis like this in years; I forgot just how wretched it can make you feel.

    • Gigi the cat lady June 10, 2017 / 3:20 pm

      Bronchitis is no fun that’s for sure, I use to have them often when I smoked, even had broncho-pneumonia once. I hope you feel better soon.

      • Murray C June 10, 2017 / 4:04 pm

        Sorry to hear that you’re feeling so poorly, GiGi – it seems to me there is a LOT of this sort of thing going around right now. A neighbor came back from vacation and spent three weeks in bed with what came close to being viral pneumonia. I’ve escaped it for now but there are no guarantees. Feel better soon.

        • Murray C June 10, 2017 / 11:44 pm

          Sorry, I got confused! Laura, I hope you feel better soon and pay no attention to the person blushing behind the curtain.

      • Laura June 10, 2017 / 5:29 pm

        Thanks, Giagi. I quit smoking many years ago, and only smoked for a few years, so thank heaven that’s not a contributing factor. I think it’s just one of those germs floating around.

    • Amyliz June 10, 2017 / 4:28 pm

      Rest up and feel better soon, Laura!

    • Ricky's Mom June 10, 2017 / 7:25 pm

      Bronchitis is miserable. Get well soon!

    • Jan June 10, 2017 / 11:09 pm

      Take care of yourself, Laura! My mom’s bronchitis turned into a sinus infection that took her weeks to get over. 🙁

  15. Faye June 10, 2017 / 4:18 pm

    Hello everyone. Millie and I are currently closed up in air conditioning for the first time of the season. It is in the low 80s and not humid but did require ac.

    I have asked Mike to post a photo of a lovely gift that was sent to me by Murray. She gifted me with scratch board equipment and a lovely print and art book.

    It has taken me far too long to get my art desk cleared off and properly lighted. But now that I have I am looking forward to trying scratch board for the first time thanks to Murray. I can feel my mind composing small abstracts that could lead directly into linoleum printing!

    The kind of day I’m having is even on one cup of hot coffee and an iced coffee I still needed a nap and have accomplished nothing whatsoever. Ugh. I hate when that happens.

    • allein ? June 10, 2017 / 5:12 pm

      Yeah, my AC has technically been on for a couple weeks but it hasn’t run much until today.

      • Faye June 10, 2017 / 6:07 pm

        Thank you Mike. ?

        Murray’s lovely, inspiring gifts.

        Thank you Murray.

        • dubravkamcvmd June 10, 2017 / 8:22 pm

          Those really are lovely gifts.

          • Amyli June 10, 2017 / 8:31 pm

            Yes, nicely done, Murray.

        • Murray C June 10, 2017 / 11:31 pm

          You are more than welcome – may they take you to interesting and as yet undiscovered places!

          • N. Fritz June 11, 2017 / 12:50 am

            MurrayC, our resident patron of the arts! The world needs more people like you! <3

            • fkaWaldenPond June 11, 2017 / 5:45 pm

              I second this! 🙂

  16. Jan June 10, 2017 / 11:07 pm

    Who’s a gorgeous orange fluffy? You are! Yes, you are!

    Sounds like everyone is having great weekend! I’m still nursing the knee, but it turned out to be an unexpectedly lovely day here in the PNW, so I’m not complaining too much. Lily got herself locked into the garage without my realizing it. I could swear I had heard her crying earlier, but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, it seemed so faint that I thought I was imagining things. So later when I walked around the front of the house calling for her to come in, then I heard her loud and clear. Poor baby!

    Outside my window this evening was this handsome fellow:

    • Murray C June 10, 2017 / 11:28 pm

      Gorgeous – what a treat.

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