What I know for sure

Here are a couple of things I know for sure:

• I know my name (but I'm not going to say it here). It's on my birth certificate and my driver's license. If the gubmint says that's who I am, it's good enough for me!


• I know my date of birth, and therefore my age. (Same documentation source and -- it's none of your business, thank you very much!)


• I know that I have three cats that call me Mom. (Well, actually, they call me Mao, but that's close enough!) I have their rabies certificates and tags, so I guess that's enough evidence that they're really mine.


• The sun came up this morning. I think it will go down this evening too, if the glare on my computer screen right now is any indication. (Squint squint.) The sun'll come up tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow... there'll be sun.


• I know I was born. I've been told that I'll die too. It doesn't feel like I will, but since everything else eventually dies, I guess I will too someday. Where will "I" go when I die (if anywhere)? Anyone's guess.


• Right now, I know that I have to go. See ya!

A Zen garden for humans... a private haven for cats

My husband had a secret... one he recently revealed to me. I'm now revealing it to you.

When he cleans the litter boxes, he somehow gets the surface so smooth you could see yourself in it -- if the substance were glass or water instead of cat litter. I asked him how he does it, but for a while he didn't tell me.

Then yesterday, when we were out shopping, he said, "I'll tell you my secret." Intrigued, I asked "What secret?" He replied, "How I get the litter so smooth."

We have a little two-part dustpan and brush set that we use for sweeping up after the cats have "done their duty." After removing the soiled bits, of course, my husband lightly flicks the flat edge of the dustpan across the litter several times, smoothing and leveling as he goes.

I tried it this morning and I discovered two advantages to the procedure. In addition to informing the human caretakers that a cat has entered his or her "private haven," it also provides a peaceful, Zen-like feeling as the caretaker rakes and tends the litter. All for much less than the cost of the little sand gardens you see in the holiday catalogs.

Just sharing the joy.

My Pirate Name

My pirate name is:

Dirty Anne Vane

"You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You tend to blend into the background occaisionally, but that's okay, because it's much easier to sneak up on people and disembowel them that way." Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org .

Silver Spring Jazz Festival

We had a great time this evening at the second annual Silver Spring Jazz Festival in downtown Silver Spring, MD. While we were there, they passed around a bucket a couple of times to collect money for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. It was an all-day festival, and it was awesome to hear that they had already collected $10,000 in donations throughout the day. They also mentioned that there are a number of survivors who were planning to stay in Montgomery County, MD -- and that some of them were in the audience tonight.

The concert was awesome. We got there in time to hear the Wynton Marsalis Quartet. The music was unbelievably sweet -- and spicy!

It was so amazing to see all the people leaning out of the parking garage to see and hear the show.



Here's a shot of the stage:



Finally, a shot I like to call "Moon over Silver Spring":



Enjoy y'all!

Vet's Liquor - Beer Wine Ice

Did you guys see today's Zippy the Pinhead strip (8/17/05)? It featured the Vet's Liquor sign. The Vet's beady eyes shine out over US Rt. 1 in Beltsville, MD. Here's a picture of the sign:

Vet's Liquor

Enjoy!

Yesterday's Adventures

Yesterday, DH and I took the day off together so we could go to the doctor and then do something fun. We had lunch at one of our favorite haunts, and then took off to Gaithersburg to wander around the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair for a few hours before we had to split for home. We tried to beat the traffic, but no such luck when you're going through the DC suburbs.

Anyway, we had a nice lazy time wandering through the animal barns and looking at the old-timey engines, the crafts, and the prize-winning veggies. We had a good day for it too... it was sunny and warm

Here's the best shot of the day. It'll show you what a nice blue sky we had yesterday.

Also, yesterday, I almost finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife. I'm having a heck of a good time with it, and I recommend it.

Enjoy your day! // Andrea

I bought these great Teva sandals at LL Bean this weekend. That, plus my recently pedicured toes, make for one beautiful set of feet, n'est ce pas??

I wish summer would never end!

Crawling out from under my rock

Way back in January, I swore to myself that I would start maintaining a blog. I would post pithy new articles to it every day. Well.... you can see what happened. Life got in the way.

To be more specific, school got in the way. I was taking Business Law I at UMUC and, while it was totally absorbing to me, it also absorbed nearly all my time. That, plus my piano lessons.

Now, here it is August, and I'm finally crawling out of my rock to commit anew to maintaining and publishing a daily blog. I'm pretty sure what will happen. In September, when I start my Human Factors in Information Systems class, I'll probably forget all about daily blogging. That subject is also very interesting to me, so we'll see how it goes.

By the way, I am now 35 credits away from graduation. I think that's why I'm suddenly making such a push to finish up. I would like to be the first in my generation of my family to get a college degree. I'm sure my niece will beat me to the punch, but that's OK.

Back to blogging. I figure that something interesting must be happening to me every day; I just have to figure out the story of each day. Yesterday, two main things happened:

• Now that I've joined Flickr, my interest in taking pictures has moved to the front of the stack. My old camera is really slow, so DH regifted me with a digital camera I got him for his birthday a while back. He never used it. It's a little quicker than my old one and has lots of new features. So now, I'm snapping pictures of everything.


• We had a wonderful dinner last night at Cafe Deluxe in Bethesda. We ordered what we usually do, but for some reason, it just tasted better last night.

Here's an updated picture of me:

I figure no one will ever see this

So why don't I go ahead and post a picture of one of my cats. This is a really old shot that was taken from my actual web site, because I'm feeling too cheap now to get hosting for pictures until I see if I will actually do this on a regular basis.



I have lots more pictures, so let me know if anybody out there wants to see them.