I'm going to try out a lot of different layouts.

Lucy (on right) and Georgette.

I learned two new words at my mishpocha Thanksgiving.

Grandniece Anabelle on the right, nephew Seamus in the rear, Norah on the left.
This picture wasn't taken on Thanksgiving; I took it a month+ ago. But every day I give Thanks for them and my grandnephew George, and Ildiko and Emese, my nieces by marriage. All the little ones. I got to smooch briefly with Ildiko (10 months old) on Thanksgiving; it was heavenly. Wish I'd taken my camera.

I'm posting this picture now just because I want to. I believe their mom, my niece, told me that the stove in the back is the entire source of heat for the whole house. Big house too. Out there on that mountain being buffeted by the winds. Brrrrr.... wish I was (were?) there. I love the cold weather.

These are the words I learned:
Buteo
(noun) A type of soaring hawk that prefers grassland and other open habitats. Buteos have broad wings, wide bodies and short tails, and are able to soar without flapping their wings for long periods of time. These birds are most easily identified by wing patterns and shape, though the large range of color variations within individual species can make identification difficult. Buteos prey on lizards, snakes, mammals and rodents. Buteos include red-tailed hawks, ferruginous hawks, red-shouldered hawks, Swainson’s hawks and rough-legged hawks.

Mishpocha
(noun)
(Yiddish) the entire family network of relatives by blood or marriage (and sometimes close friends); "she invited the whole mishpocha."

The group of people I was with on Thanksgiving are in-laws of in-laws, and Doug knew there was a Yiddish word that described that kind of gathering. At dinner, David -- a Jewish in-law of an in-law -- provided the correct pronunciation of mishpocha, telling me that you aim for a sound somewhere between a "B" and a "P."

And, finally, all of this came together in my head because a blogging friend posted a picture of hamantaschen.

Lucy (top) and Georgette. 7 months old.

The kittens are sweet and active and perfect. They play and frolic and leap and do many cute things. They also can be destructive and persistent and almost sneaky and fast. They don't seem to sleep all that much. They take cat naps. They beg for food a lot. While I type Lucy is napping just inches away, on my desk, just behind the computer screen.

Youtube was made for stuff like this. Use full screen to see it all. (These are not my kitties.)

Soap warning. Looks benign. Isn't. Leaves behind a LOT of waxy, thick stuff that will clog a drain just like that. Stick with original Ivory.

The village fox visits my tiny pond, then wanders away through a neighbor's yard.

Doesn't he look scrawny? I see him often and he appears healthy, just a little beat up. Maybe he's just old. I can relate.

Saw Fair Game yesterday. Good movie.

Movie made me mad all over again. Today I discovered that this exact feeling was mentioned in the opening sentence of the 11/8/10 New Yorker review: "'Fair Game' ...is an effective political melodrama that induces a peculiar emotion--the bitterness generated by an old anger that has faded into dull exasperation and now flares up again."

But more important, I think I found a continuity error, which I think is the right term. Near the middle of the movie, Sean Penn (playing Joe Wilson) is sitting on the stairs in his home in his tee shirt. The camera cuts to him 3 times as he sits there. In the first and third shots, you can see a little of Sean's (not Joe's) tattoo on his upper right arm. Joe Wilson doesn't strike me as someone who would get an arm tattoo.

If anyone watches the movie try to check this out. And let me know if I'm right. (It's really annoying to be a former editor who gleefully points out irrelevant errors wherever she sees them. So childish.)

Photo from Alt Film Guide (http://www.altfg.com/blog/movie/fair-game-reviews-naomi-watts-sean-penn/)

Poor bee. She had a load of pollen but drowned in her water tray before she could deliver it.

I've stopped feeding the bees, on the advice of two other nearby beekeepers with more experience than I. When the temperature gets above 50, and especially when the sun shines directly on the hive, the girls come out a bit and are still finding pollen somewhere. And I'm guessing that some bees come out for what are delicately called "cleansing flights." Bees don't poop inside the hive and have to wait until the weather cooperates before they can come outside and, you know, eliminate. I've heard that if the temperatures go up after a long cold spell you can see lots of yellow droppings outside their front door. Which reminds me....

Ever heard of the yellow rain charges in Vietnam? From Wikipedia:

Yellow rain was a political incident in which the United States Secretary of State Alexander Haig accused the Soviet Union of supplying T-2 mycotoxin to the Communist states in Vietnam and Laos for use in counterinsurgency warfare.[1] Refugees described many different forms of attacks, including a sticky yellow liquid falling from planes or helicopters, which was dubbed "yellow rain". The US government alleged that over ten thousand people had been killed in attacks using these chemical weapons.[2] The Soviet Union denied these claims and an initial United Nations investigation was inconclusive.

Surprisingly, samples of the supposed chemical agent supplied to independent scientists turned out to be honeybee feces, suggesting that the "yellow rain" was due to mass defecation of digested pollen grains from large swarms of bees.[3] Other scientists questioned the accuracy of the refugee accounts and the reliability of the chemical analyses presented by the US government. The majority of the scientific literature on this topic now regards the hypothesis that yellow rain was a Soviet chemical weapon as disproved.[4][5] However, the issue remains disputed and the US government has not withdrawn these allegations,[6] arguing that the issue has not been fully resolved.[2] Many of the US documents relating to this incident remain classified.[1]

Hey it's my blog and if I want to post a picture of my daughter in a Halloween costume I will.

The Beloved Daughter sent these pictures to me with no explanation. A quicker, more alert mom would have immediately said "oh of course, you're the bleeding unicorn from the famous Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestry." But this mom didn't say that. She said "what are you? A white cupcake with a candle on top?" Wake up mom. It's an art school joke, get it? I'm so not hip. (Note tail made, I guess, from silver ribbon.) Uncle Marv would have loved this.