Art fair at the KC Power & Light District

WALL-E

We went to see WALL-E, the new animated movie from Pixar. They showed a little short film before the main movie, "Presto", a squabble between a magician and his hungry, ornery rabbit, brilliant, hilarious!

And then WALL-E, that one was easily my favorite Pixar movies ever, if not THE favorite. Beautifully made, funny, sad, funny again, just awesome! Yeah, maybe the teensiest weensiest bit hypocritical (a Disney movie condemning consumerism, ha!) but really, who cares!

Iowa floodings

Water, water everywhere, driving along I29...

Explodingdog

Explodingdog is one of my favorite websites - people can submit phrases, and the artist chooses a few a day to illustrate. The computer drawn style is simplistic, but the interpretation is often very funny and smart. There's a recurrent theme of red robots, ducks (love the ducks!), and monsters. This is one is called

"I could tell you were beautiful by the look on your face":

and this one "I'd slay a dragon for you":

Fur Fightin'

Yep, I'm writing today about a pet hair remover tool. What with tornado season being pretty much over, my life has become so bland and meaningless that I actually ventured to try the new Scotch Fur Fighter on the cat's favorite lounging spots (his cat tree, his cat bed, and his (?) white, white, oh, so white Ikea sofa). With coupons here and here, I actually only paid about a dollar for the starter pack at Target.

The Fur Fighter (gotta love that name!) is basically a glorified rubber glove (which, in my experience, has always been the best method to remove cat hair from the couch), sporting a reusable handle and a disposable, thin little rubber mat, the "gripper". Works beautifully, and much better than the ole lint roll or vacuum cleaner. Love it! The price is crazy high, though - 10 bucks for the starter pack, 5 bucks for the refills.

Yum

Bulgur burgers with black olives:

Roast 1/2 chopped onion in some oil until golden, add 1 cup bulgur and roast for a couple minutes. Add 1.5 cups stock, cook for 15 minutes and fluff. Let cool slightly. Add about 2 Tblsp chopped black olives, some chopped mint or parsley (or some dry herbs), maybe a bit of grated carrot, and 2-3 eggs (and possibly some flour or breadcrumbs) until you can shape the dough into small bite-size burgers. They'll be crumbly as hell, so make sure you shape them with wet hands. Fry in oil until crispy.

Serve with cucumber yogurt: Pressed garlic and ginger, cumin, fresh chopped mint or parsley, whole milk yogurt, and grated cucumber! Heaven!

Oofta.

That was one hell of a weather we had yesterday evening. One thunderstorm after the other, dark, ominous cloud layers, incredibly loud thunder, lightning hitting a huge fuel tank in north KC - it's still burning now, one day later - well, the local news had a field day. I took that photo off our balcony, right when they said on the news that there were "suspicious" i.e. tornado-like clouds over our suburb. Yay! Nothing happened here, though. Although at the old apartment complex where we used to live 7 years ago, the roof collapsed and they had to evacuate everyone. Serves them right for screwing us over with the deposit!