3 Kitties Find New Homes!

I was thrilled to hear that 3 of our 5 foster kitties were adopted at this past weekend’s Animal Humane Adopt-a-thon!

Chubby, Gumdrop and Twinkle Toes have found their forever homes, yay! Thanks so much to the generous people who’ve given them a loving home & secure future.

That means only Buck (male, Animal Humane ID #7198) and Frieda (female, Animal Humane ID #7203) are still waiting for adoption.

Oddly, if I’d been able to pick any of our foster kitties to keep, it would have been these two: Buck for best personality & most playful, and Frieda for her sweet temper & extraordinary good looks.

I think I can understand why Buck might not have been someone’s first choice. He’s a wonderful kitty, but he hates being confined in those display cages.

When we visited him during the Adopt-a-thon, he was yowling and reaching through the bars to snag passers-by. I can see how might have scared off potential new families!

Seriously, once he’s out of the cage he calms down immediately, and returns to his normal fun self. I swear!

But I can’t imagine how Frieda got overlooked! She is the real beauty queen of the bunch, with those wonderful tufted ears & cheeks that make her look like a miniature bobcat.

How could anyone resist this face??

So if you want to make Buck and/or Frieda part of your furry family, please hurry down to rescue them. (We can provide all the baby pictures & video you’d ever want!)

Animal Humane of Albuquerque is located at 615 Virginia Street SE, and their main phone number is 255-5523.

Their Adoptions Department is open 7 days a week from 10:00am-6:00pm (but closed for the lunch hour from 12:00pm-1:00pm). Their website is http://animalhumanenm.org .

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Sandia Park, NM

All 5 Kitties Ready for Adoption!

Well, the big day is finally here. All five of the kitties have reached their 2-pound weight goal, and this afternoon I am taking them back to Animal Humane.

Tomorrow they’ll be spayed or neutered. Then they’ll be ready to go to their new homes by Saturday! They’ll make their first public appearance at this weekend’s Adopt-a-thon, 10:00am Saturday, June 13th thru 4:00pm Sunday, June 14th, at Central and Carlisle in the Nob Hill area of Albuquerque.

Here are their mugshots & ID numbers:

 

 Chubby, female, Animal Humane ID # 7200

Shown here with Gumdrop -->.

 

 

 

 

 

  Buck, male, Animal Humane ID # 7198

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Gumdrop, male, Animal Humane ID #7201
What a prankster!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Frieda, female, Animal Humane ID #7203
The beauty queen, with tufted ears.

 

Twinkle Toes, male, Animal Humane ID #7204
The ultimate lap cat!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Animal Humane of Albuquerque is located at 615 Virginia Street SE, and their main phone number is 255-5523. Their Adoptions Department is open 7 days a week from 10:00am-6:00pm (but closed for the lunch hour from 12:00pm-1:00pm). Their website is http://animalhumanenm.org .

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Sandia Park, NM

P.S. You can find out more about animal fostering, and see the kittens’ baby pictures, in my previous blog post. Links in my blog sidebar will take you to video of us bottle-feeding them when they were tiny. It’s amazing how much they’ve grown since then!

2 Foster Kittens Ready for Adoption!

I’m so happy to say that the five kittens we’ve been fostering for Animal Humane of Albuquerque are thriving. All five are healthy, happy, and fully litter-box trained. They’ve been with us 6 weeks, so we assume they’re around 8 weeks old now.

They’ve spent their time socializing with our friends and neighbors, our 4 adult cats, and our 4 really big dogs, so they’re completely comfortable with humans and animals, both.

And two of them have reached their 2-pound weight goal, which means they are ready now to find their “forever homes”!

The two ready to go are “Chubby” and “Buck”. Please note, we didn’t name these kittens – they were given their names on intake at Animal Humane back in April. (Do Chubby a favor, please, and pick a better name for her!)

This is Chubby, a gray and white female with pretty blue-green eyes.

From the beginning, Chubby was the largest and healthiest kitten of our mixed litter of fosters. She has a friendly, outgoing personality, a nice mix of playful and cuddly.

 

And here’s Buck, a.k.a. Buckaroo: a marmalade tom whose eyes have stayed blue! Oops, you can’t tell that from this photo.

Nor can you tell from this picture what a swashbuckling adventurer Buck is! Fearless and bold, Buck was the first to swat a dog’s nose, and the first to bravely venture into the Land of Upstairs. If you’re looking for a mouser, I think Buck’s your boy!

Buck’s favorite toy is this wicker basket. That’s Twinkletoes in the back.

The week we were asked to foster these kittens, Animal Humane took in more than 100 homeless kittens, all abandoned at approximately the same age. That means that many of them are now ready for adoption, too.

You can see more kitties at Animal Humane’s next Adopt-a-Thon, 10:00am Saturday, June 13th thru 4:00pm Sunday, June 14th, at Central and Carlisle in the Nob Hill area of Albuquerque.

Meanwhile, last week Animal Humane asked if we could keep these sweet kittehs here at our house a while longer while they find homes for the dozen or more in their care right now … which of course we were (secretly) happy to do.

So if you’d like to adopt Chubby or Buck, just drop me a line and I’ll take them in to Animal Humane for you to meet!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Sandia Park, NM

P.S. You can find out more about animal fostering, and see the kittens’ baby pictures, in my previous blog post. Links in my blog sidebar will take you to video of us bottle-feeding them when they were tiny. It’s amazing how much they’ve grown since then!

Knittin’ n Kittens

I love weekends. I mean, does it get any better than this?

So here I am, spending some quality time with my knitting (the sleeve of my Sonora Cardigan, RavLink), an audiobook (Twilight series Book 3, Eclipse) and all five foster kittens (from bottom, Buck, Chubby, Gumdrop, Freida and Twinkletoes).

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Sandia Park, NM

Update on the Belize Earthquake

I was concerned to hear that Belize & coastal Honduras were rocked by a 7.1 earthquake in the wee hours of May 28.

While this quake was most destructive in Honduras (just south of Belize), it was felt as far away as Guatemala City. Honduras’ Bay Islands of Roatan and Utila were the closest land to the epicenter; evacuations were reported as far inland as San Pedro Sula.

However, thanks to reports from friends in Belize, including the US Embassy rep for the Northern District, I’m happy to say that although damage in the southern district was wide-spread, no one was killed, and damage in northern Belize was minimal.

Several stilt houses in the southern district collapsed; the water tower in Independence toppled; and electrical power went out from Punta Gorda to Corozal.

Yes, Belize occasionally gets earthquakes, though they’re typically felt more strongly in the southern parts of the country – Placencia, Punta Gorda, Seine Bight, Dangriga – than they are in the northern part where I lived.

I do remember being told of an earthquake years ago, when I was living in San Estevan for the Belize Postclassic archaeology project. Everyone else felt it in the village of San Estevan, in Orange Walk and even out at Lamanai – but I totally slept through the tremor, darn it.

For those of you looking for news of this most recent quake, which was followed on May 30 by a smaller 4.6 trembler, epicentered in roughly the same offshore spot, here are some links:

1. The USGS map of the May 28 quake, measured at 7.3, centered about 80 miles off the coast of Belize & Honduras.
2. The USGS map of the May 30 quake, measured at 4.6.
3. A tsunami watch for coastal Belize and Honduras was posted on May 28, but cancelled without incident on May 29.
4. Funny first-hand account from “As the Coconuts Drop” blog, written by a resident of Maya Beach, in southernmost Belize. Titled GRAB SUMPTIN AND HOLD ON,,,,! or, DID THE EARTH MOVE FOR YOU TOO? Updated with photos.
5. Another first-hand report from Sue Harris in Monkey River, Belize, where several homes were damaged or destroyed.
6. A Facebook group has been formed by the staff of the Toledo Institute for Development and Environment (TIDE) on behalf of the people and Town Council of Monkey River.
7. Fiona’s photos of post-quake damage in Placencia, on Flickr.
8. News article from the Huffington Post, and the AP report, which go into more detail about the damage in Honduras.
9. Mission 2005/the Atlantis Projects (MIT) assesses “the seismic background of Belize”, noting that

“Every 8 years approximately, Belize experiences a 6.0 magnitude on the Richter scale subterranean earthquake in the ocean at the fault between Hunting Caye and Puerto Cortez. According to the Belize Development Trust, Belize has a 100% chance of seeing 5 earthquakes and 75% of seeing 10 in the next century. Furthermore, the Northern Lagoon where the Blue Hole is located is cut up into three reef sections separated by three wrench faults.”

The yellow lines on the USGS map shown above illustrate the regional plate boundaries (90% of all earthquakes occur on these shifting edges). It appears that both of these quakes centered on the plate boundary that runs roughly east-west under the Bay of Honduras.

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Former Resident of Corozal, Belize

Can You Freeze Guacamole?

There was some discussion on the Albuquerque City-Data forum recently as to whether one can successfully freeze guacamole.

After repeated experiments, my opinion is no, you can’t freeze guacamole – but you can freeze mashed avocado pulp, then gussy it up into guacamole at serving time.

Is frozen pulp as good as fresh? No, of course not. Is it better than nothing? Yes!

I used to do this all the time in Belize, where avocados ripen all at once in August & September. For two delirious months we’d be up to our elbows in buttery, ripe avocados … then we’d have to do without for the rest of the year. Wah!

So I would gather up all the ripe avocados I couldn’t eat then and there without exploding, and in a single marathon session I’d peel, pit and mash them with lashings of freshly squeezed lime juice, about a teaspoonful per avocado (count the pits). Here in the States, lemon juice works too.

(Despite what Diana Kennedy, the maven of Mexican cooking, says about this, I like the flavor of lime juice in my guacamole.)

Without adding anything more to the pulp, not even salt, I’d measure it into vacuum seal freezer bags, one to two cups per bag, and freeze it.

I strongly recommend the “suck ‘n seal” packaging method for this project. But whatever freezer bag you use, you want to remove as much air as possible. Oxidation is avocado’s enemy, turning exposed pulp an unattractive brown. The citric acid in the lime or lemon juice also helps preserve the color.

Depending on your freezer temperature and the bags you use, avocado pulp will keep nicely anywhere from two to six months in the freezer.

When it’s time to make the guacamole, first thaw the sealed bag of pulp overnight in the fridge. If you’re in a hurry, you can submerge your freezer bag in a bowl of warm water; but I don’t recommend defrosting it in the microwave. (I tried that once, and it got ugly.)

Once thawed, you’ll notice your avocado pulp may be a bit watery. Just punch a little hole in the freezer bag and drain off any excess liquid.

Then de-bag the pulp and mix in whatever fresh fixings you like – chopped tomatoes and Serrano chiles, minced onion, cilantro, etc. Salt to taste, maybe add a pinch of sugar, and serve.

Voila! Guacamole on demand.

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Have you seen my “Second Story”?
Vintage Knitting & Fiber Arts Patterns

Better Internet in the Country? Cellular Broadband!

I’ve just gotten off the phone with Dish Network, cancelling their Wild Blue satellite Internet service to my mountain home. Woohoo! I’m finally & officially freed from satellite Internet and now reconnected via Verizon cellular broadband.

The problem for residents of rural America like me, as I noted in my previous post I'm Offline because Dish Network Hates Kittens, is that until very recently, our Internet service choices were limited to two: dial-up (ugh, shudder) or satellite. No cable, no DSL, nada.

Until now, satellite service has worked out just fine for me, certainly an improvement on dial-up. It’s just Wild Blue’s service policies that drove me to cancel them.

Back story: when I accidentally exceeded Wild Blue’s (unpublished) upload limit with my Kitten Cam streaming video project, violating their vaguely-worded “Fair Access Policy”, their response was to cut my Internet access down to a virtual trickle. No warning, no communication, just ZAP – unusable Internet for an indefinite period of time, for which they would still charge me $80 per month.

In my first 10 days of strangled usage, my overage factor was only reduced from 6% to 5%. At that rate, I calculated it would be 50 more days until Wild Blue restored my service. And Wild Blue refused to budge, or even to let me buy my way out of the penalty.

So there I was, becalmed in the horse latitudes of the Internet disenfranchised, when I received David Pogue’s email feature on the MiFi portable wireless hotspot.

(David Pogue writes the superb Circuits column for the New York Times; out here in the Wild West you can subscribe via email and/or follow him on Twitter.)

And it suddenly dawned on me that there is a third option for rural or remote users like me: cellular broadband Internet service.

All I needed was some new and relatively inexpensive hardware, and I could switch from Wild Blue satellite to Verizon cellular broadband service … which is now cheaper and faster than satellite.

I hadn’t seriously considered cellular broadband Internet before, because last I’d looked it was expensive, with unattractive service terms, and all I could find on the market to receive cellular signal were the one-user-at-a-time cellular modems.

In other words, I could plug the cellular modem into my computer, work for a while, then unplug it and hand it over to my husband when it was his turn to get online.

Clearly, that would never work.

But if you combine that cellular modem with a wireless router to serve two or more users … and find a better-priced service … aha, a real solution!

So, Verizon introduced the MiFi 2200 last week, as you may already have heard, along with a truly improved service contract.

The MiFi is no bigger than a stack of three credit cards and combines a cellular modem, router and antenna in one device. Power it on, and within seconds you connect to your Verizon cellular broadband signal, and create a cozy, completely portable wireless hotspot big enough for you and four friends/devices to use.

But while the MiFi certainly is crazy-sexy-cool, and I wanted it badly, it wasn’t the right device for me.

I got a lot of help in this process from an online vendor, 3GStore.com. I can’t say enough good things about their (free) pre-sales tech support, and their product choices and pricing.

“You’re exactly the kind of customer who shouldn’t buy a MiFi,” 3G’s guru Alex told me. “Think of the MiFi as a city device. You live in the country.”

Even though Verizon’s 3G network is the best & largest in the world, I still live in a “less than optimal” service area. Up here in the mountains, I need a cell signal booster antenna, and you can’t attach a booster antenna to a MiFi.

Worse, in addition to my wireless laptop and iPod Touch, I have two older desktop computers that aren’t wireless … and finally, portability wasn’t really my primary concern; a permanently functional home office was.

So instead of the MiFi, I purchased:

A Cradlepoint MBR-1000 mobile broadband router which gives me an 802.11 ‘N’ wireless home network plus 4 Ethernet ports to direct-connect my older PCs;

 

A thumb-sized Verizon USB 760 cellular broadband modem and a booster antenna …

and then I signed up for Verizon cellular Internet service, just as you’d do for the MiFi.

One perk of this arrangement is that I’m not tied to Verizon once my two-year service contract is up. The CradlePoint allows me switch out the modem and the service if Verizon should ever irritate me as badly as Wild Blue has. The MiFi, by contrast, only works with Verizon service, period.

I’d also asked Alex if I could buy the MiFi to connect to the CradlePoint router instead of the 760 modem … then, when I traveled, I could just unhook the MiFi and slip it in my pocket … but, he says, no, not yet. (If you’re intrigued by this idea, the 3GStore is talking with CradlePoint technicians about offering exactly this solution, possibly in the next few weeks.)

And if you are able to wait that long, Sprint will introduce its own similarly-priced version of the MiFi – which will include GPS capability – next month.

Meanwhile, although I think calling the CradlePoint router “mobile” is a bit of a stretch, I can still travel with just the little 760 modem. I could unclip it from the CradlePoint router and jack it into my laptop while on the road.

Of course, without the router it’s back to the one-at-a-time-user situation, rather than a hotspot for multiple users/devices. And I can’t connect the modem to my iPod Touch.

But, what the heck, you can’t always have it all out here in the sticks.

Yet.

The bottom line:

• The MiFi currently costs either $60 (from the 3GStore) or $100 (from Verizon). All the hardware I bought instead of the MiFi cost me about $225, from which I can deduct $75 in mail-in rebates, for a total of $150.
• The Verizon cellular service is $60 per month, which is 25% less than I was paying Wild Blue every month. And it is noticeably faster than my former satellite service.
• And what about overages? My Verizon contract caps at 5 GB per month – roughly the equivalent of 35,000 web pages – but yes, I am concerned that I might run over. If I do, it’s 5 cents per 1 Mb, which translates to $6 per extra GB.  Can I live with 5 GB per month? I don’t know yet, but at least it’s clearly spelled out; and, instead of being hopelessly hog-tied by an overage, I can buy my way out of it.

I never thought I’d say this, but, thank you, Verizon … and nuts to you, Wild Blue!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Have you seen my “Second Story”?
Vintage Knitting & Fiber Arts Patterns

--MaggieBelize Local Gringo & Postmodern Pioneer Designer, kNotes for kNitters www.LocalGringos.etsy.com