It’s July 10, and in only a bit more than two weeks I’ll head to Poland to visit my adopted parents, my surrogate cat, and will experience once again the cherry harvest with its attendant daily PIES. As the weekend winds up here in Chicago, we’ll continue our lovely and bearable weather with a high temperature today of only 26°C (79°F). But then the heat and rain will set in relentlessly tomorrow.
July 10 is Nikola Tesla Day, so get out your coils! On this day in 1913, the temperature in Death Valley, California reached 134°F (57 °C)—the highest air temperature ever recorded on Earth. I’ve been there when it was 120°F (49°C), looking for fruit flies (there were none); when you dropped down into the Valley from the Panamint Mountains, it was like entering an oven. The only tourists at the Park were many beet-red Germans baking themselves around the pool, delighted to experience such high temperatures. On this day in 1925, the Indian God-Man Meher Baba (“Don’t worry–be happy. I will help you”) began 44 years of silence, not uttering a word until his death. On the very same day, the Scopes “monkey trial” began in Dayton, Tennessee in stifling heat. If you’re ever in Dayton, do visit the courthouse, for the original venue of that trial is still there, and it’s a lovely building. And on July 10, 1985, the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was sunk in Auckland Harbor by the evil French intelligence agency DGSE, killing one person.
Notables born on this day include Nikola Tesla (1856; bring out your coils!), Marcel Proust (1871), and Alice Munro (1931), Those who died on this day include Jelly Roll Morton (1941), Mel Blanc (1989), and, just last year, Omar Sharif. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is delighted to hear that she can go to the forest instead of Rome, as Italian mice are reputed to be unpalatable:
Hili: Is it true that all roads lead to Rome?A: This one leads to the forest.Hili: Thank god.
Hili: Czy naprawdę wszystkie drogi prowadzą do Rzymu?
Ja: Ta prowadzi do lasku.
Hili: Dzięki bogu.
Another trigger warning! Discussing felid feces.
Is kitteh getting enough water and leafy greens? 🙂 🙂
I read somewhere healthy stool should be snakelike and tapered.
Showed the video to Winter.
He was appalled.
He’s accepted that the big monkeys are going to crap in the drinking fountain, despite his baleful glare, but a fellow cat is just too much. He has returned to the bedroom to take another 12 hour siesta, and, I fear, probably to chunder a wad of leafy green grass on the pillow.
The toilet paper bit is hilarious! I wondered if the kitteh would still feel the need to “bury” his business, and sure enough he did. Good kitteh!
I don’t have to point out the root cause of the toilet paper fiasco because I’ve supplied ample enough inputs to affect everyone else’s brain to the point that they automatically think it now and know that I am correct.
Where did you get the idea that we think you’re correct?
I hate extreme temperatures. +30C might as well be -20C to me. I took a ½ day vacation Friday because our team had a “retreat” day and the second half was playing golf. I can’t stand the heat and it often triggers migraines and increases swelling from treatments I’ve had. Also, I hate having to put on so much sun protection as that stuff is either greasy or if not greasy, full of questionable chemicals; I prefer to cover up/avoid the sun and consider copious amounts of sunblock the last resort.
So, I skipped the whole thing, but not before I said that golf was invented by pale people like me who would have played it under cloud cover in temperatures no higher than 20 C so it was ludicrous to play it on sunny days of 30 C with a humidex of way higher.
Looking back, it would have been funny if I had refused to play on the grounds that golf was cultural appropriation from Scottish people. 😀
Good one, MacPherson! 😀
Funny to see him scratch around the toilet seat. I’m not sure what that instinct (?) represents.
I might be mistaken, but I thought flushing cat waste was harmful to (at least some) sea life.
Roll orientation issues aside, perhaps we should teach people not to toilet-train their cats so as to protect the environment.
Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure. Parfois, à peine ma bougie éteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n’avais pas le temps de me dire :”Je m’endors.”
Are there any more beguiling words in literature? And what an outrageous way to start a 3000 page novel