WickedHamster

21 March 2026

20 March 2026

Commercial Humo(u)r

It's good to know someone in American corporate culture still has a sense of humor. This is the back of my current container of body wash / shower gel:

19 March 2026

Single Fatherhood (extinct edition)

Being a single father can often be taxing, especially if one is extinct. So Edmund asked if he could get a little break from daddy-time with little Edwin. The little darling was sent over to herd day-care to hang out with the other kids

while Edmund went out for a promenade and some socializing

Arnold cheerfully agreed to nest-sit while Edmund and Edwin were away.

18 March 2026

Un bouquet varié (QC: bouquet mixte)

17 March 2026

Happy St. Patrick's Day

The Weather

I was out shopping yesterday and noticed all the trees coming into flower. An abundance of flowering trees is characteristic of the mid-Atlantic region. Below please find the current forecast from the National Weather Service; keep in mind we were hitting 80º (27ºC) last week:

---for those of the metric persuasion 40F=4C, 30F=-1C---

Today

Partly sunny, with a high near 43. West wind around 11 mph, with gusts as high as 23 mph.

Tonight

Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming clear, with a low around 27. Northwest wind 6 to 11 mph becoming light after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 18 mph.

Wednesday

Mostly sunny, with a high near 43. Calm wind becoming south around 6 mph in the afternoon.

Wednesday Night

Partly cloudy, with a low around 32. South wind 3 to 5 mph.

Thursday

Partly sunny, with a high near 54. South wind 3 to 6 mph.

Thursday Night

Partly cloudy, with a low around 38.

15 March 2026

De Jamibus (i.e. "About Jams")

As some of you know, I have a very favorite brand of jam that I almost always use: Rigoni di Asiago Fior di Frutta. It's an Italian brand (as you might have guessed) with less sugar and very intense fruit flavor, with wonderful flavors like pear and black currant. Prior to Rigoni, my brand was the French St. Dalfour, which is considerably sweeter. I still check the St. Dalfour shelf from time to time to check for new and exotic flavors. I recently tried their strawberry/rhubarb--too strawberry, insufficient rhubarb, and way too sweet.

Then a week or so ago I came across St. Dalfour grape. Now, in this country, we have tons (tonnes) of grape jelly, which I loathe with a religious intensity. (For those who speak foreign English [😁] "jelly" in American is a hideous form of jam in which the fruit has been macerated to the point of oblivion leaving a fruit-flavored mass of soft rubber. It is popular in that most hideous of American culinary innovations, the peanut-butter & jelly--almost always grape--sandwich). So what, I asked myself, could grape jam of respectable French manufacture be? The answer is absolutely delicious! Nice bits of real grape in a not too-sweet jam and lovely fruit flavor. Merci Cinquième République! 🇫🇷 🇫🇷 🇫🇷

Whilst on the subject, let me also mention my (re)discovery of a flavor of my long-ago childhood in a family of western Slav extraction: plum butter. Happily, we live a stone's throw away from a Balkan grocery, which by their definition happily includes Slovenia and Croatia. I ran into it there and thought I'd give it a try for old time's sake if nothing else. Yummy! I DO recommend it, especially if you've never had it before. I've been getting it regularly now along with sour cherry jam--sweetened, of course, and thicker than molasses in January. Fabulous! Both these flavors can be hard to find in this country.

14 March 2026

Galactic Annoyance

Those pesky Klingons decided to pull a surprise attack on the Imperial Rodentine Space Armada last night. I'm tellin' ya, it's always one darn thing or another around here sometimes. Happily the shields were up on the base and any damage done to the fleet should buff out.