How is the new cat working out?

So how is our new cat working out?

I mean, I'm crazy about him, the new cat (this is Kitty, bona fide dog person, talking. I know. It's confusing.) Tom is ambivalent. Buoyantly neutral? I see hope. Soon Bentley will count a pile of fallen toothpicks and the skies will open up with fatherly love. It's imminent. We find that if we don't overfeed him fresh Alaskan crab legs (we do), he's more playful. Mommy is the same way with Reese's, so we understand what is happening.

It's easy to catch him adoring the Supreme Grand Champion Sir Keysborough Bentley Preshapotomous Kittyflake (aka "Bentley" aka "Fatty fat-n-fat" aka "Kitty Pot Pie") making a paw bouquet as he sleeps in a desk chair...but then Tom also goes and wants to, I donno, wear him like a straight man's chinchilla scarf ... and Mr. Puss Puss wants nothing of whatsoever, period.

Frankly, I don't mind washing a stack of fur-clad t-shirts for this much cuteness.

This was Tom's father's end table that we had shipped over from America. Bentley loves to hang out under, over and around it while Tom works on his computer.

He'll even shower there.

If you hold up a tasty morsel, Bentley will make like a prairie dog and beg for it. It's pretty adorable. We'll have to get a real picture of the whole thing. You'll die in love. Geez, it's hard to get good pictures of animals doing cute things.

Anyway, I've just made a blog post of random pictures of my cat.

Shoot me now. :) - Meow Meow

Skiing / Biking Weekend

This weekend, I went skiing at Mt. Buller with a mob of other girls.

We love the movie The Castle. It's an Australian legend. Just thinking about it, it's hard not to sing the lyrics "We're going to Bonnie Doon" or ask "How's the serenity?". You have to watch the movie to appreciate it. My favorite line is when the dad talks about how much they all love going to their cabin at Bonnie Doon. He insists they all love it, "the dogs love it", etc. Then the camera pans to his dogs looking at the ground nonchalantly...really no indication that the dogs love the cabin at Bonnie Doon at all. Anyway, just see it, really...it's our national treasure.

We stopped for photos at every Bonnie Doon sign we could find. It drove Aimee, who took the picture, bonkers, because she likes to ride in the car with her shoes off....and it was raining.

The view from the cabin was amazing.

I tried to get everyone to wear pink cowboy hats so we could find each other easily on the slopes, to no avail. Face tattoos from our candy stash didn't catch on either, which was unfortunate...I had to scrub mine off with a nail file.

Lots of cooking and eating! Here's Huibee, who got mowed down by a snowboarder and sent home in a soft cast on her leg. She said the ski patrol guy wasn't even cute. They strapped her into a giant sled and attached her to the chair lift to cart her down the mountain. I don't think the weekend turned out quite so great for Huibee.

More eating. I'm standing in the back, on the right.

Played a lot of board games. Scattagories was fun. There were a lot of American references, like states and cities starting with a particular letter. The girls kept saying we needed to switch it to Australian terms...I would have lost hopelessly.

Peta and I faking spontaneity....the friend that took the photo didn't think we looked natural enough so she posed us.

Meanwhile, Tom when mountain biking with our friends Tony and Emma. He usually only gets to ride his bike down the shopping center road, past TGIFridays, and into his office, so it was fun for him to be out in actual nature and feel the serenity.