When will this madness end?

This has been an ongoing drama for the past two weeks...

We feed stray and feral cats in our neighbourhood. We have a small food bowl set up on the back porch where it is accessible to cats passing through. As of last count, we have 6 cats consistently eating from it, only one of which do we have any "relationship" with, the others are simply to skittish to approach. This one cat allows us to pet her, she comes and sits in our laps when we're in the gazebo, she drinks from our water ponds, she suns on our driveway... she can hang around for hours at a time. Sometimes in the middle of a rain storm I'll glance out the window and see her hunkered down on our back porch, other days (rain or shine) she'll be passed out in one of the lawn chairs we have set up in the gazebo. In short, she has become a fixture of sorts, and we are very attached to her! : )
But other critters are eating from the bowl as well, which was not a problem at first. Squirrels, birds, slugs, snails, reptiles etc. The birds have progressively (slowly, but progressively nonetheless) started causing trouble. The mourning doves and Everett birds (not sure what they're real name is, we always call them Everett birds... but that's another story for another time...) weren't so bad at first, they nibbled a little, usually taking only one piece at a time. But the finches were a huge pain in the neck... bitty birds equals bitty food, right? Their solution? To take all of the food out of the bowl, piece by piece, and fling it across the porch until they find a piece small enough. My every morning began with picking all the food off the porch and putting it back in the bowl for the cats.
And then the grackles showed up. They are absolute pigs, they come swaggering up onto the porch, cramming 5-7 pieces of food in their beaks, and fly off. Sometimes the same grackle will come back repeatedly. As you can imagine, we began going through food much quicker. Our solution was to move the food bowl into the gazebo for a few days until the grackles gave up... in the gazebo, all of the cats would be able to find it, but the birds would be less likely to go to the trouble of finding the passage through the mosquito netting (we leave a small section of the netting unzipped). Sooooo, the next morning I come out and there's a bird stuck in there. I unzipped the netting, let it out, and refilled the bowl. Less than an hour later, I pass by the window, glance out, and there is another bird in there!
After the third bird, I tried liberally sprinkling bird seed in a large mound near the gate, away from the gazebo. After the fourth bird, I put a small pile of bird seed in front of the gazebo. After the fifth bird, I placed a large boulder in front of the gazebo. After the sixth bird, I pushed the boulder closer to the gazebo, and pulled the zipper further down.
The next day, we were out of ideas, and just kept letting birds out. On the third day, we simply could not take it any longer, and one of the feral cats was unable to locate the food bowl, so we put it back on the porch. A few days ago, we began leaving an oversized plastic lid upside-down on top of the bowl, where the cats could easily push it off, but the birds were not smart enough. Unfortunately, this confused the cats too much, but fortunately this seemed to have discouraged the birds, and after we'd taken it off they'd been leaving the bowl alone... until today.
This Morning , I step outside to visit with the cat, and there are a bunch of Everett birds dive-bombing her!!! >: [ Apparently they have reverted to territorialism (yes, I know this is not a real word). I spent the greater part of the morning spraying them with a squirt-bottle. They finally quit caring, and so I put out a saucer full of birdseed. But now, apparently they don't want any stinking bird seed, they want catfood! I repeat: When will this madness end?

Always Check Your Receipts!

So, we went to _____ on Friday, and found some nice boxes and a tube of wrapping paper (vintage beer and ale label print). Two of the boxes were of similar design, but one was slightly larger than the other. The smaller one was marked down from $8 to $3, and the larger from $9 to $3. When I get up to the counter, everything rings up at the marked price except the larger box which comes up at $4, so the cashier calls the manager up. The manager goes over it a couple of times, then loudly comments on the fact that it is larger than the other box. Um, what does the one box have to do with the other? Are they not two separate objects? She then proceeds to inform me that the box should have been marked down to $4, and the $3 label was incorrect. I considered it, was it really worth saving just the $1? After a brief pause, I decided that the money had nothing to do with it. It was strictly a matter of principle. The label said $3, I think I should have gotten it for $3. I stated as much, and with many dark looks, they acquiesced. I'm afraid I tend to be a bit of a push-over in areas like this, so I was quite pleased with myself as I marched out of the store with my finds. I should have looked at the receipt.
That afternoon, I'm going over receipts and I pull out the one for this store. I purchased four items all total, and I notice that the receipt lists five. Much to my annoyance, I found that the cashier had not removed the item from the first time she rang it up. So in addition to paying the $3 for the box, I had also payed the $4 it originally range up at! I was so furious... as paranoid as it sounds, I know she did it on purpose.
So, next day we had to go back down to the store. Fortunately, I did manage to get my money back with little dispute.

Moral of the story, don't forget to check your receipts. : /

Just thought you should know...

Fruit-flavoured marshmallows are nasty.

Masterpiece: The Complete Jane Austen

Everyone is entitled to my opinion:

I missed Persuasion, but thought Northanger Abbey was rather poorly done. Mansfield Park was pretty good, but had some issues as well. Firstly, they don't follow the books very well, and several violations of the etiquette of that period arise. Under no circumstances would Mr. Tilney and Catherine Morland have kissed, neither would Edmund and Fanny... this would have been a great impropriety, very inappropriate. Also, Fanny would not have permitted Edmund to enter her bed-chamber, nor would Edmund have presumed to enter... much less when Fanny was washing her hair. Speaking of hair, did anyone else notice that her 'do' was not correct to the period? But everyone else was fine.

As for the drama, "Miss Austen Regrets", that was absolutely ridiculous. She was portrayed in a very undesirable light, in my personal opinion. I would also like to point out the extreme inaccuracy of the piece. Firstly, Mr. Brydges did not propose to Jane Austen, and never had any such relationship with her. This proposal-acceptance-refusal scenario took place instead with one Harris Bigg-Wither. Where Mr. Brydges comes into the story is Jane Austen's relationship with his wife's cousin's son (or something of the sort) Tom Lefroy. This relationship came to nothing. And, in respect to Mr. Hayden (the 'apothecary'), Jane Austen had no such interest in him, but instead had been encouraging a relationship between him and her niece, Fanny. And nowhere is there any evidence to indicate that her sister, Cassandra, discouraged her from accepting any proposal...

Please, no one think I'm being critical or a wet-blanket... this just really smoked my shorts! It just isn't right to portray someone so inaccurately, especially when evidence, history, records etc. point in an entirely different direction.

All that aside, Pride And Prejudice has been pretty good so far. : )

Why Tea Should be Decaf.

I think tea should not be caffeinated. I'm about to go to bed, and I thought I'd make myself a nice hot cup of tea. But all of my favourite flavours I have on hand are caffeinated. : /

Why would someone need caffeinated tea? Coffee is caffeinated and you can have that in the morning. You can also purchase decaf coffee, which I can understand if you are going to have a biscotti late in the evening. Then you can drink water, iced tea, and coke during the rest of the day. But tea is for the afternoon (when you don't need caffeine) or for the evening (when you also don't need caffeine).

The letter "U" is ruined!

It has now reached the point where I can no longer stand the mere site of a stand-alone "U". Whenever I see it, I think of all the people who use it in the place of 'you', and I want to scream. I can understand minimal abbreviation, such as TX, FL, NC etc. for the states, I can even undertake (on very rare occasions) to use "lol" when it is fitting, as an expression. But when people begin using '2' in the place of 'to' or 'too', 'R' in the place of 'are', 'Y' in the place of 'Why', and (most specifically) 'U' in the place of 'You' , that is just plain unbearable to me. It is denigrating to the English language and derogatory to the gifts of speech and communication. : (