John’s cat had some interaction with the poker game last night. In the middle of a game this fat animal decided that John’s hole card was not acceptable and started ripping it to shreds. We continued the game without the Jack of Diamonds.

I am sorry about the awful cell phone camera photos. They are blurry and low quality.

E. Jim Shannon lives in the northern hinterlands of Edmonton in Canada. They have some pretty fierce cold weather there. It goes down well below zero Fahrenheit. He had been taking in a stray cat he named Boots. Two weeks ago, in the middle of a deadly cold blast, Boots ran out onto the cold and disappeared. He and his wife called him for days but there was no sign of him.

Today, on his blog, Jim has a picture of Boots who met them at the door yesterday and ran up to the apartment and is now resting from his adventures.

Good News. (follow the link to see Jim’s other cats.)

This fine fellow used to live across the street, but the people moved away. He’s been living under the tarp that covers the wood pile.

Recently he he has decided that we are acceptable people and has moved in with us, rather than just mooching our food outside.

E. Jim has a similar situation with a cat they call Boots. I have too many damn cats as it is, but Hermie is a sweetheart. He follows Erica around and sleeps with us on the bed. The other cats could care less about us, but Hermie needs lovin’ all the time.

I guess we’ll keep him, although I’ve asked the other cats to vote one of their number out of the house.

I am cleaning out the various cameras here. I put some of them on a Picasa album here:

My old buddy Zack passed away today. I went over to Mom’s house and helped Larry dig the hole and we said goodbye to him. Zack had cancer, responded well to chemo for a few years and then had a bad relapse in the last few weeks.

Larry found Zack when he was a stray. He came to the my parent’s house house begging for food and never left. Zack was the smartest and most affectionate cat that I’ve ever met. I will always remember him because he was the only cat that ever made friends with my father. My Dad did not want to make friends with cats because he did not want to outlive any more pets. Zack took every opportunity to sit on my Dad’s lap, something no one could understand. When my Dad was dying of cancer and in pain all the time, Zack never left him and was a great comfort to him. Zack was the only cat that my Dad ever liked. Zack wound up outliving Dad and missed him for a long time.

There is a race of great cats in my old neighborhood of Central Nyack. The females are all Calico cats and the males are usually red orange like Zack. If you ever need a great pet, come to 19 Vine street in Central Nyack and see if you can find a stray – everyone in the neighborhood feeds them, so just ask Larry and he’ll tell you who is homeless and who belongs.

Since I work for the County of Westchester, I get election day off. I took some pictures and there is a google picassa album of the day. We are protected here and the trees change color later here than in the rest of the area.

The young dogwood tree turned shades of pastel pink.

The Japanese Maples turn scarlet.

Looking at my house from back in the woods:

Gracie helped me relax.

My brother Ward, who lives up in Rochester, NY, sent me pictures.

He has a new cat named Dixie. She was abandoned at his father-in-law’s farm. She is extremely affectionate. I love brown tabby cats with golden eyes. She is beautiful.

His garage burned down a year or so ago and he has finally started working on his new garage. At 24 feet by 30 feet, it is bigger than my house.

He is digging the footings and foundation with his toy tractor. I wish I had one of those babies, I would find something to dig.

He told me on the telephone that he recently stacked 6 cords of Black Locust in his cellar for his word burning stove. I am jealous. Black Locust is the best wood for heating a house.

Erica just bought us a cord of wood, which I stacked in the driveway to make it easy to get at when it snows. It is a mixed bag of hardwoods like maple, oak, beech and ash, but with an occasional red pine and a few billets of cedar. I don’t mind the cedar – I’ll save it for Christmas and use it as a yule log. It smells wonderful when it burns. The red pine, though, burns as fast as paper and doesn’t give off much heat.

Gracie uses the bathtub as a storage place for her mice. This handsome fellow met me the other morning.

I captured him in a washcloth and let him go outside. Sometimes Gracie’s catches are a little worse for the wear, but this one seemed unharmed and quite lively.

We went up to Connecticut to the flea market today. Last year we went up at least ten times and in previous years we have gone as far as Pennsylvania to shop flea markets. Because of the price of gas, this trip costs about $50, so we may not make it up again this year.

The Elephant’s Trunk Flea was quite full. Here are some shots from the north side up on the hill.

I did very well. At one table a nice couple sold me some Weird Tales Magazines and a vintage 1948 JT-30 microphone. Since I collect both vintage microphones and vintage pulp SF magazines this was an incredible coincidence. I bought a J.J. Cale album for poker for a quarter – it would have been too weird if I had found it at the same table.

The Weird Tales pulps were from 1951 ad 1952, which is not Weird Tale’s best period. The stories are mostly, if not all, reprints. Weird Tales was digging into their contracts and finding stories that had been purchase with All Serial Rights or First and Second Serial Rights. This means that the authors gave Weird Tales or one of her sister publications the right to print their story again and in some instances as often as they wanted.

The magazines were OK quality, but would not be rated good or fine if I wanted to sell them. I thought that I was getting a bargain, but I probably paid just what they were worth. They are the same age as I am, but they are too fragile to take the bus with me.

The JT-30 is a military version called a model 80.  It came with a long cable (missing) and had a rising response element. The element, of course, has been dead for 25 years. Some day I’ll find a 60 year old microphone that works. I made up for not getting a bargain on the magazines and got the JT-30 for $10, which is a very good deal.

Erica had some good luck and found some vintage quilts, which she was able to get for a very good price. They are all in need of a good cleaning, but there are not that many bad stains. The binding on the pink quilt is shot, but there are only a few small spots on the quilts themselves that need repair.

The first is a Basket Quilt top, made with Cranberry red cloth and muslin. Erica dated it from the patterns of the pieces as 1880 to 1910.

The next is an Indigo Quilt in a "9 patch" pattern (I think that this was called flying geese, but Erica isn’t sure). This was about 1890 from what Erica can tell from her pattern references. It has feed sack, Victorian shirting, and several kinds of Indigo.

Ollie and Gracie were helping us photograph the quilts.

The next quilt is an "Around the World" which Erica dates it possibly the 1920s, although some of the patterns are much earlier. There is cheddar type material and some double pink from 1880s. It also has Indigo and Victorian shirting.

John moved up to Nyack from the city. He’s down on lower Depew ave. Here is his new apartment. $1,000 a month – ouch. That’s Robert on the porch. Robert is growing a Santa Clause beard.

John is often confused with a hung over David Duchovny.

He has two very fat cats named Bogey and Mingus, who were not interested in posing for the camera.

Mingus jumped on the table to see what Poker was all about. I caught John with a weird expression on his face.

After poker Jim rode back to Birchwood Avenue on his Vespa.

I lost money at Poker. I did not have a good hand all night.