Exactly what it says on the tin. Say “awww!”
Just Cats Cuddling
Author: Cassandra
Some Silly Floofs
Just our cats making me laugh! Especially the three paw pillow.
Metazooa & Metaflora
I’ve mentioned the game Globle before – a sort of Wordle offshoot centered around geography. I recently discovered that the same group behind Globle, Trainwreck Labs, also had an animal game! That game is Metazooa.
My favorite part of Metazooa is that each wrong answer gives you the common order, class, etc. that your answer and the correct one share, so each guess fills out a sort of family tree. From a game perspective, it’s useful to extrapolate what this isn’t more closely related to; from an aesthetic perspective, it looks cool; and from a life perspective, I’m garnering a much more detailed understanding of the animal kingdom than I knew before.
And the same is true for plants! Metazooa has a sibling game, called Metaflora, which is similarly fascinating. As it’s harder (for people who don’t study plants), Metaflora gives you 25 guesses, while Metazooa gives you 20. In both games, you can trade three guesses for a hint: the next taxonomic rank down. They also have practice games if the one plant/animal daily isn’t enough for you!
I’m clearly fond of both of these; if you love these branches of science, or just want to understand them better, then this is probably the fun, educational game for you.
No Words
No words this week. My godmother’s internment was this Saturday, and all my words right now belong to her. To everyone else: be safe, do good, live a life that makes you happy, tell the people in it how much they mean to you. Be connected. She’d want that for us.
Unexpected Animals
We went to Kuipers Family Farm yesterday to pick apples, and what should we find but a wading bird, wandering its way between the trees!
It was such a strange happenstance that I went scrolling through my camera roll and realized it was not, in fact, an isolated one. Here, on an island in the road, is one of several deer having a leisurely snack at rush hour:
And finally, a raccoon at our bird feeder. This is, in and of itself, not that unusual; we frequently get after-hours visits from the raccoon, the skunk, and the possum, and on our most exciting nights we get them all at once. It is a little strange, however, to get one during daylight hours.
The moral of the story, I suppose, is that nature will always find a way to be as baffling as it is beautiful.
…and to have your camera ready.
Solo Shots
Yep, more cat pictures! What can I say? They’re photogenic. These photos were taken in the spring, featuring:
Arwen’s contempt for photography when I could instead be petting her;
whatever this nap position of Zuko’s is called;
Diane, by far the most awake and cooperative;
and June’s best impression of the Wicked Witch of the East!
Personal Space Is For Humans
I am delighted to inform you that I’ve spent the week thoroughly distracted by my fiction writing, so your weekly dose of nonfiction will be cat photos, featuring June and her perennial lack of personal space (or interest in it). Enjoy!
Sweet Potatoes with Cranberry Sauce
Thus far, this has not been a recipe blog. However, this week I rediscovered a recipe I came up with in elementary school, made it for… probably the first time since writing it down, and found to my great delight that little Cassandra had excellent taste, so it seems only right to share! Behold, Random Geek Child’s first recipe, right in time for the autumn weather finally hitting the Midwest.
Ingredients:
2 sweet potatoes
2 tbsp butter
2 cups cranberries
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/8 cup orange juice
1/4 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
Walnuts, optional (Little Cassandra didn’t specify a quantity of these, so measure with your heart)
Method:
1) Halve the sweet potatoes and microwave on HIGH for 3 minutes.
2) Add butter to a glass baking dish (of appropriate surface area for your potato halves), put the dish in the oven and preheat to 350°F.
3) Add the cranberries, brown sugar, allspice, and orange juice to a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to medium and simmer for 15 minutes.
4) When the oven reaches temperature, add the cinnamon followed by the potato halves – cut side down – to the baking dish and bake for 20 minutes.
5) Serve the sweet potatoes with the cranberry sauce and, if you’re using them, walnuts.
Recipe serves 4. As a bonus, I’ve found the cinnamon butter left in the pan goes well with a sliced apple for dessert! Happy autumn, Northern Hemisphere.
Heartcatchers
Heartcatchers is a quick to play, two-player bluffing game, in which hearts catch other hearts and collect Secrets. It’s also extremely quick to learn!
The game starts with six face-up heart cards in two rows of three, three cards in each player’s hand, and the rest set aside as a draw pile. On a player’s turn, they may “catch” a stack in front on them – red hearts catch green, green hearts catch blue, and blue hearts catch red – by playing the correct color of heart face-up on top of it, catch an opponent’s stack and swap it for any one of their own, or play a card as a Secret, face-down at the bottom of a stack and perpendicular to those that are face-up. There are also two Uncatchable cards, which can catch any color but cannot be caught! Players draw after playing.
The game continues until all cards have been played, which doesn’t take long, seeing as there are only twenty. Then, scoring! Any face-up cards in a player’s stack are worth one point. Some cards, when played as Secrets, may add or subtract points, or swap the stack with the one directly across from it. We’ve played this game twice so far, and both times we hit a “reverse, reverse!” situation where a stack had two Change-of-Heart cards under it.
And… that’s it! Whoever has the most points wins, and if there’s a tie then the game’s so short you just play it again. Alongside being quick, pretty (look at those sparkles), and simple yet tricky, it’s also a compact game, so it’s easy to find room on your shelves for! Ours are pretty packed, so “this game is small” is a major bonus.
MALINDA – In Concert!
In 2020 I sung MALINDA’s praises, and now she’s on tour! I saw her at the Chicago show at City Winery Chicago, which also happens to have a great dinner menu.
This tour is specifically featuring MALINDA’s album It’s All True, as well as some other originals (like “Don’t Make Me“!), folk covers, and sean-nós, or “old style” Irish music. What I learned at City Winery is that MALINDA concerts are so, so special, not just because I love her music, not just because she has an extremely talented team joining her on tour, but because there is such an infectious energy to her concerts! It’s epic and personal and More (With You) and the audience participation for songs like “Figured Out” was really just the icing on the cake.
If there was ever a concert worth seeing over and over and over again, it’s definitely MALINDA’s, and if you’re near any of the cities that still have tickets left, I highly recommend going! It’s absolutely worth it. As for the rest of us… here’s to the next tour!
