Punderings

Lucas, our beloved 17 year old Siamese, and the nicest cat you’ll probably ever meet, had a seizure last night, and now needs both more medications and a even more special diet – and now, no dry food anymore.

Since we have two other lady cats who do need to eat dry food, we need to switch them from self-feeding dry food to having scheduled feedings. We’ve always had good luck with self-feeding dry food (with scheduled wet food on occasion) in the past, so it’s been a while since we’ve taken all the food away and only brought it out on a schedule.

Any tips on switching the ladies to only scheduled dry food feedings? I think they’ll both adapt eventually, since they are very social cats and are used to following us around, but I’m concerned about how best to make the switch without upsetting everyone anymore than our recent vet trips have done.

/ Can’t sleep, midnight treat /
/ Counter, carton, guilty spoon: /
/ Neapolitan /

.. until you check if it’s been recalled by the FDA. Actually only King Nut and Parnell’s Pride peanut butter are recalled; but a wide variety of other peanut-paste containing packaged goods are affected.
Bleah.

Struck out at a variety of stores I’d expect to see them; no pfeffernusse! What’s happened to this holiday tradition this year?

The perfect french toast recipe, of course. While I’ll happily yield the high ground to anyone preferring a Julia Child one, and I’ll agree to respect anyone who stays classic with Joy Of Cooking, I’m basing mine this Saturday morning on Cook’s Illustrated version below.

Astute readers will note this great french toast recipe also features some cool time-warp technology, since the print date is January 1st, 2009.

My shopping list last night, somewhat chaotic since I brought “the kidlet” with me.

• Dozen large eggs (brown, of course, and organic)
• Gallon 2% milk (organic)
• Loaf of italian (to get just stale enough by Saturday morning)
• Vanilla lowfat yogurt (for when you’ve had enough VT or NH maple syrup)
• Half & half
• More Peet’s Holiday Blend whole bean coffee
• Applesauce (that was the treat my daughter wanted)
• Apples (in case we need sauteed apples atop)
• Lime (in case I need a ginnantonix after shovelling)
• Melty sliced cheese (gotta think about lunch too)

Many thanks to the UH readers for sharing their winter storm grocery lists. BostonZest also has a great Boston resident winter storm prep list too.

I’ll note for UH readers that I already have my Maker’s Mark (highly recommended) along with a bottle of Knob Creek for variety; I salute the polite blogger who left some Orange Sherbet for everyone else; and while we do have beer in the fridge, I must question the Mass Liberal’s cavalier attitude towards the French Toast Alert system. I predict you’ll be hungry when you’re done with that six-pack.

Update: Wow,

Comment on Tyson’s blog post and they’ll donate 100lbs of food to the Greater Boston Food Bank. Sweet!

I’ll be posting (probably a little late) the story of what I did at ApacheCon US 2008 this year. To save the regular readers of my blog some column inches, I’ll post updates over here, instead of in my mainline blog feed.

One question I do have: it seems like the blogosphere was awfully quiet about ApacheCon in the past couple of months. There are certainly dozens+ of ASF committers and PlanetApache’ers who are daily blogging about interesting stuff now that the conference has started, and that’s great for the existing community to keep up on the conference.

But why weren’t more people blogging in advance – at a time that would help draw new attendees, or would allow people to make plans ahead of time? Just wonderin’.

They seem to be in trouble, and I’m not sure what to do. Poor Starbuck!

On one hand, they are closing stores left and right – and even though MA was to be spared, they later announced we are not, losing 7 or more stores locally. On the other hand, I see even more “Help Wanted” signs in their front doors that ever before. Plus they’re pushing more and more benefits to cardholders: free refills, free shots, other giveaways that you never would have seen before.

They come up with a huge marketing thing for their new drink, hoping it can revivify their business. What is this vivivying magic they’ve come up with? A banana smoothie. Not what I expect from such an experienced vendor. You think a smoothie’s going to turn your business around? Think again.

Their desperation is showing in many other ways: when using my card to get my free in-store drip coffee refills, I got not one but three receipts, even though I never normally take them. One for the first cuppa, of course; then two for the refill. Not only did the staff patiently explain about their $2 for any cold grande after 2pm offer, but they also eagerly pressed their customer survey – CustomerVoice! – into my hand. This is about the third time I’ve gotten a survey in the past month, and it’s not like I’m in there daily to account for their sudden interest in my opinion.

Plus, they’re canceling their muffin contract, and ditching their breakfast sandwiches. I know there are a lot of mixed opinions about them – myself included: have you ever gotten a breakfast sandwich at the old ‘Buck that was actually assembled straight? I haven’t. But I still like them, and they’re actually reasonably priced for the ingredients, considering their corporate price levels. That’ll be a sad goodbye to the toasties in the morning some days.

What can we do to help them out? Poor little Starbuck, she’s tough but vulnerable these days.

Hmmm.

Oh, wait.

They are an evil corporate giant. Never mind. Let loose the dogs of capitalism, and if you enjoy it, update your schedule to use your card to take your break there: free wifi, free syrup, and the free refills mean it’s a great way to spend an hour in the morning, for those of you who like the coffee there. I mean, it’s good, although Starbucks is not as good as Peet’s.