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mama snugged

oh, internets

avery, photopost, sup

Invented Bacon Turkey Chowder today.  It’s awesome.  The secret is, when you think you have enough bacon in there, quadruple it.

Also today, the Taverner fam went on a very cold jaunt into town so Adrian could try on some boots.  Said fancy boots are his Christmas present!  Yes, they are cooler than your boots.  Customizing takes (forever) 2-3 weeks, and after shipping… I don’t know if they will be making the trip to Canada this Xmas.  Ah well, fancy boots like these should see some strutting before being subjected to a Vancouver winter.  But I want them NOW.

It’s nearing 2am again, dangit.  This time I was distracted by some nonsense on Facebook.  I am stunned to see a recent round of recirculating garbage from a couple years ago.  Such as a news article claiming that a cure for cancer has been found in Canada, but Big Pharma isn’t interested.  Wrong on so many levels.  I’m not going to bother going into it.  Google it, if you must.  So I got a little mad, and did up a little graphic, and got into a little conversation… time passed.

And then there’s this latest nonsense about asserting copyright on Facebook.  Dude, Article TWO POINT ONE of the Terms states clearly that anything you post on Facebook is fair game – they can do anything they want with it.  It’s like, the tenth line of text or something.  And it’s not news.  It’s been like that since day one.  Had to be.  You can’t have a social network without sharing, and sharing means other people can get their hands on your stuff and post it to their own timeline.  Duh.  If you want to protect something, don’t post it on a social network.  Seriously, this is pre-kindergarten level stuff here, people.  In fact, Facebook recently released a major upgrade to their system that allows you to remove images from their servers (rather than just your own timeline).  They are the good guys in this particular case.

And the myriad confusion about privacy.  My god, people.  Just click Help.  It’s all there.  Change all your settings to “private” and “friends”.  Check the settings every couple months to make sure Facebook hasn’t backdoored you.  And that’s it.  Done and safe.

Whoever said there are no stupid people never met the internet.

I’m just saying that if one doesn’t know the facts about something, it’s best to shut the hell up on the subject until one can open one’s face without embarrassing one’s self.  And these days there’s just no excuse for it.  Unless one has never heard of Google.  In which case one has bigger problems.

All this negativity has been building since the start of all those variations of “Click image. Comment jump. See what happens.”

Nothing is going to happen.  If you think something will happen, you don’t know how Facebook works.  The owners of these pages just want to stack traffic so they can sell them.  You’re a sucker.  Same with all those brain teasers where the poster oh so cleverly gets it wrong and asks us for help.

I could go on, but now it really is 2am, and I’m not getting any more untired.  Nor am I really doing anyone any good with this tirade.  You’re all smart people.  Let’s get back to a happy place:

mama snugged

Awwww Bunny!

She’s talking now.  Not words.  English words, anyway.  I can’t speak to more arcane languages.  So not anything we can understand, is what I’m saying, but she is talking.  She’s making noises with intent, figuring that if we make noises and stuff happens, it must work for her too.  So far, she’s absolutely right.  Much (much) better than the previous options of squawk, very loud squawk, and now you’ve made me angry.

She’s very advanced.

I am really looking forward to Christmas.  But I have been forbidden to decorate yet.  Still!  December 1st, M says.  Though in a moment of weakness she did admit that with all the Christmasy things we’re doing (and feeling) it seems (almost) silly not to Christmas up the place right now.  I threatened to Strike Force Santa the place, and decorate while she’s asleep.  If it weren’t already 2am…

2:20am.  Yep, time for bed.  Hope I didn’t change the course of your day with my little rant back there.  I get frustrated that so many people don’t seem interested in helping themselves.  The day I stop learning is the day after they’ve stuck me in the ground.  It makes me happy.  And I want everyone to be happy.  And safe. And warm.

May you have a happy, safe, and warm Monday.  Cyber Monday.  Woowoo!

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The Hedgehog

the hedgehog

avery, photopost, random, sup

Hello, fellow nature lovers. Tonight let’s begin with a rare treat: video footage of the New York hedgehog in its natural setting. Everyone gather around quietly now… and click on the image below… there she is…

The Hedgehog

Oh, isn’t she just something else, girls and boys? Such a gem of the wilderness. You can see that she’s used to the cameras, but none too keen on them when she’s just woken up. What a little angel.

She certainly loves her sleep.  The New York hedgehog is unique in that she likes a certain amount of noise, and to be bumped around a bit.  Too much quiet during the day and she’ll be awake and grumpy.  And you can carry her around with you and she’ll sleep like a log for hours, but if you stop walking for more than a couple minutes, there’s the grumpy little bear again!

This little critter’s name is Avery, though everyone around here calls her Bunny, and sometimes Pepper, or Peppermint.  It can be confusing.  Good thing she can’t understand a word we’re saying!  Yet!  Ha ha.  Ha.

Like many of her kind, she thrives on a diet of the bountiful local breast milk.  She weighs almost eleven pounds – or close to 5 kilos – and she’s just about ten weeks old.  For a while there, she was putting on nearly a pound a week!  How does she do it?  Calories, calories calories.  She’s looking for food every chance she gets.  Here she is, caught with her hand in the cookie jar!

Hand in the Cookie Jar - Booby Trap!

Uh oh!  Booby trapped!

No harm done, though.  Just a little fun for the cameras.  What a rascal.

Here at the Taverner compound, pretty much the whole day revolves around the needs of this adorable little tyrant.  Between feeding, changing, and keeping her content when she’s not napping, there isn’t much time for her keepers to get much else done.  This is why they invented alcohol, girls and boys!  So the New York hedgehog’s keepers could cope!

Just kidding.  No need to call your parents.  Or child services.  Please sit back down, now.  Nancy, that means you.  Put down that cell phone and join the rest of us.  Good girl.  I wouldn’t want to have to tell your mother I know what she does on her “bingo nights”.  Never mind that.  We’re all friends here, right?

Where were we?  Oh yes, getting things done.  Well, Mr and Mrs Keeper returned the rented industrial strength breast pump today, and they’re back to using the noisy little angry electric bee.  We’ll see how that goes.  And Mr Keeper bought Mrs Keeper her Christmas present early!  A sexy little iPad mini!  True story!  Yes, he’s quite jealous, I can assure you.  But Mrs Keeper has been wanting an E-Reader so she has something to occupy her brain while Avery is hunkered in at the Milk Bar, and Mr Keeper wasn’t about to let Mrs Keeper spend good money on the bad rubbish they sell at Barnes & Noble, or on Amazon’s Kindle Fire, when we all know darned well that Mrs Keeper would end up wanting all the things those plastic gadgets won’t do, or can’t do at all well.  And believe me, he’s looked into it.  So, the iPad mini it was.  And Mrs Keeper loves it already.  Took it to bed with her.  Mr Keeper will just keep on lugging the dead weight of his Original iPad around until he blows his other knee, and he’ll like it just fine, see if he doesn’t.

Little Peppermint slept through the whole thing, of course.

So after that shopping excursion, they all returned to the compound, and enjoyed more delectable leftovers from Thanksgiving.  Mr Keeper had the luxury of working on some of the photos from the Italian honeymoon, and sent a few of them away to get printed on canvas.  Very nice.  Mrs Keeper, meanwhile, went to the considerable trouble of cooking up the turkey soup stock so Mr Keeper can invent Turkey Bacon Chowder sometime this week.  She’s very good to him.  Oh, my stars, youngsters, that chowder will be just… just wonderful.  Oh my, yes.

Now, run along, the lot of you!  This warden needs some shut eye.  Y’all come back now, y’here?

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