Freaky Friday - Christmas Edition!

It's been waaaaaay too long since I've done a Freaky Friday, where I show you some of the weird things I've collected over the years, but right now I've got the perfect opportunity, because I just bought a bunch of NEW weird stuff as Christmas presents to myself.

 I bought this sliding puzzle map - anybody else remember being driven crazy by these as a kid?:

"Provides Hours of Entertainment!"  Or, in my case back in the day, minutes of frustration, followed by flinging it against a wall, at which point all the little pieces would fall out of the case and prove impossible to fit back in again.

 I got this elephant carousel mobile at the Tibet Store in Ithaca, which is a very cool little place to visit if you're ever in the area:

Okay, quick question:  Which deer-like species has the twisty horns?   Because I bought a model of one.  It has a hook on it for hanging things (CLASSY!), although right now I'm just using it as a decoration.  But I think I'm going to have to glitter it up at some point:

Yes we did!  We visited Yellowstone!  Back when I was ... twelve, I think.  Anyway, I've finally got the bumpersticker:

And finally, there is a house up around the corner from me that - no lie - has a confederate freaking flag hanging in one of the garage windows.  So I bought this flag in retaliation.  It's an Orlando Pulse memorial flag, with intertwining hearts and the phrase "Hate Will Not Win" (which you can't read in this pic because I took the pic from the wrong side - D'OH!):

I've got it flying off my front porch.  It's really BIG - 3' x 5'.  That way, my confederate-flag-flying neighbors can see it ALL THE WAY FROM THEIR PLACE.  Ha.  (Oh and look!  To the right of the flag, you can see my little rainbow horse in the front yard!  I'll bet the neighbors LOVE IT!)

So!  That's it!  Freaky Friday!  Hope you enjoyed it!

A Shot in the Arm

Literally.  I'm going to be heading over to my allergist's office shortly, to begin allergy injections.

Many, many months of allergy injections.

I've developed some pretty debilitating allergies over the past few years, to the point where I'm TIRED of coughing and sneezing and coughing and wheezing and blowing my nose and wiping my eyes and coughing coughing COUGHING all the damn time.  The standard OTC treatments have failed, so the allergist is bringing out the big guns.

Shots.

Two shots, once a week, for the next several months.  This is supposed to, I guess, build up my immunity to the allergens, though I'm a bit cloudy on how it all actually works, and how the injections will work when Flonase, Zyrtec and Delsym (my Holy Trinity) have failed.

Whatever.  I've got to believe.  I have GOT to get some relief, here, even if it's going to take a long, long time.

Here's my arm, doc!  Hit me up.

UPDATED TO ADD:  Well, THAT was a letdown!  Turns out I need some special super snowflake combination injection that the office hadn't had a chance to get formulated yet, so I can't start my shots until NEXT week.  And now I feel like Shirley MacLaine in that movie, except Shirley was yelling for somebody to give Debra Winger HER injection, and I'm screaming for ME.  "Give me my shot!  Give me my shot!  GIVE ME MY SHOTTTTTTTTTT!"

haha *sob*

What in the hell is THAT?!

For the last couple of weeks, I've had a game cam on the ground out by the birdfeeder.  Mostly what it captures is sneaky sneaky deer in the middle of the night:

And in the daytime it does capture birds:

And sometimes there's a whole lot of nothing:

Except ... what's this?  Is that someone cutting through my backyard?:

Hmmm ... let's take a closer look:

It looks like ... a man?  With a hood on? And an ... apron?  But where are his FEET?

I have my theories as to what this actually is - but what do YOU think it is?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Christmas at State Park

No words, just pictures.  Merry Christmas!

fmcetc. strikes again!

Every year, fmcetc. sends me a musical Christmas card.  This year, the card featured kittens:

When you open the card, the kittens meow-sing-yowl "O Christmas Tree". 

Awesome!, I thought.  Let's show it to the cats.  This outta be GREAT.

I wish I had some photos of the perma-cats reacting to the card, but I don't, because as soon as the card-kittens started yowling, the perma-cats started fighting amongst themselves.  I had to shut the card and separate the cats before bloodshed ensued.

Oh, fmcetc., what have you WROUGHT?!  :)

I guess the perma-cats, who are admittedly not the sharpest tools in the shed, thought that the card-kittens were real?  And fighting?  And thus, the perma-cats had to ... fight each other?

Yeah, I had no idea.

EXCEPT,  that it would be awesome to show it to the foster kittens.

What's that? Why, yes. Yes, I *am* evil, thank you for asking.

Okay, kittens, here we go!   (I had to weigh the card down with a remote at one point to get it to keep playing):

The fosters were ... perplexed.

They wanted to know where the other kittens were:

But in the end decided, meh, nbd:

And thus ends the experiment, and now all I have to do is decide which cats to FedEx to fmcetc.:  The fighting ones, or the confused ones.  (KIDDING I AM KIDDING)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

(and keep sending those cards, fmcetc.!  They always make me smile.)

The Rest of the Crew

Yes, I *do* have cats other than the Foster Campers in the house.

This time of year, there's a lot of snoozing going on:

And some wrestling.  Oh good lord these cats drive me CRAZY with the wrestling:

Bath time:

All three cats in one pic!  (Sodapop's under the fabric - he LOVES to ambush the other cats (and me)):

Hey laydee, you ever CLEAN dis thing?:

In addition to being the Tub Inspector, Sodapop's also my favorite placeholder:

While Tinks has visions of sugarplums dancing in his head:

Don't worry, Tinks, Christmas is almost here.

Love is love is love, indeed

Some of you may remember Bam Bam, the Foster Camper with a heart murmur who was taken home by another rescue volunteer.  I see the volunteer every Saturday when I go in to clean, and she says Bam Bam is doing great and is spoiled rotten.  She was kind enough to send me some pics:

 The dog here, Eko, has seizures and will be on medication for the rest of his life.  Evidently he and Bammer are kindred spirits, because they have taken quite a shine to each other.

GOSH, I love a happy ending!

ala Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon

So, the memory card pics!  I told the story on Facebook, and a friend (well, a Facebook friend, you know what I mean) shared that she bought a house that was previously owned by a well-known musician and found some undeveloped rolls of film, which she sent to the musician rather than selling them on ebay or something, which I thought was really nice of her.  But I was DYING to know who the musician was, so she messaged me with it, and I don't think he'd mind if I told my single-digits of readers here that it was

Ben Folds!

I like Ben Folds!  He does some great stuff!  And now I've got this song of his stuck in my head:

And there you have it.  Your earworm of the day.  You're welcome!

Whoooooo are you? Who, who? Who, who?

I bought a refurbished Nikon camera on Amazon a couple of weeks ago to replace my Fuji, which bit the dust.  While I was at it, I went on ebay and bought a couple of older, cheaper Nikons to have as back-ups the next time my "main" camera bit the dust.

And let me tell ya, ebay has some GREAT deals on little point-and-shoot cameras.  I picked up TWO Nikon Coolpix 5600s, one for seven bucks and one for fifteen bucks, including shipping.  Both of them came with memory cards, and one came with all the accessories, including the original box!  AND they both work fine!  GOD, I love ebay.

ANYhoo, the memory cards.  I tried out one camera and it worked fine, so I set it aside and grabbed the other one, and as I started snapping test photos, I noticed that the photo count was up to, like, 196.  The heck?

I hooked the camera up to the PC, accessed the card, and viewed ... someone else's life.

I contacted the seller and asked if he wanted the memory card back.  Of course, I have no idea if it was his own camera he had sold me, or one he picked up at a thrift store or an estate sale, or one he found in a drawer he was cleaning out.   He said to go ahead and delete the photos, but I looked through them first.  Because I'm nosy.

There were lots of selfies:

and an adorable little girl:

And what I'm guessing were vacation photos:

All of the photos were taken in late 2008 or 2009.  And now I'm thinking about how old the kids are today, and where they are, and how they're doing.

You can buy the darndest things on ebay!