This winter, I purchased a heated cat throw for my cats which I use as a heating pad for them. Around here, we call it the "toastypad". It sits on a couch and is big enough for both of my large cats to curl up on it together, which they do with great frequency. Sometimes one will sprawl across the whole thing, but then they're like that.

It plugs in to a standard outlet, but it also came with a plug in for a cigarette lighter in a car so one could use it in a vehicle. (I've thought about using it as a cheap seat warmer during the winter time for myself.) The cover zips off and can be washed in a machine. The heating element seems to extend for most of the pad/throw.

It doesn't seem terribly warm at all if you touch it, but supposedly when a cat is on it, it heats to 102 degrees and given how much my cats like to sleep on it, it must work. To get them to try it the first time, I had to use a little catnip, but after they tried it, they were hooked. Doesn't use much electricity. I've never used it for them to curl up in like in the pictures promoting it, I just lay it down flat and they sleep on it.

Anyway. I'm telling you all of this because right now Amazon has the very same throw I purchased at Drs. Foster & Smith for $50 or more for just $22: K&H Thermo-Kitty Heated Throw for Indoors and Car, 24 By 36 Inches, Rust & Cream (that's a referral link so I get a cut if you shop at Amazon from it). Were I not so broke, at this price I'd be tempted to buy another as a spare or to deploy in the car or on another couch or something.

If you look around, it appears that lots of the heated beds, throws, pads, and such for pets are on sale at pretty steep discounts right now, especially the ones from K & H. So if you're in the market for such a thing for a cat, dog, or other critter, it's a good time to shop for 'em.

OMG! Of course I'd heard that Bachman's is the official florist of the Minnesota Twins-- they give away floral arrangements (or gifts cards for them) at the Dome these days.

I hadn't yet seen these awesome Twins baseball floral arrangements and gifts that Bachman's now carries. Wow! If anyone ever wants to send me (or us) flowers or a plant or something for our wedding anniversary (or other occasions for that matter), these are swell.

And they actually look decent, don't have stupid carnations dyed blue or anything dumb like that. Assuming the real deal would look as nice or nearly as nice as the ones do in the pictures.

(I hate it when flowers are dyed. Or rocks, for the most part. Or fish-- seriously, there are these neon colored tropical fish at pet stores right now which were dyed somehow to look like that. Gah!)

I think Kate Harding is awesome because she's smart and loves Al Iverson, who is one of my favorite people and oldest friends. If Al thinks she's awesome, she must be and if she thinks Al is awesome, she's got excellent taste and is likely awesome herself. It's a festival of awesome.

Kate also just happens to a pretty fabulous writer. She created the blog Shapely Prose and writes smart and funny stuff there; she also contributes great stuff to Salon's Broadsheet.

And she has a book out which she co-authored with Marianne Kirby called Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body which sounds pretty darn good.

She's on a self-funded book tour right now which will take her to Brooklyn NY on Friday night and Chicago on June 11th and Minneapolis on June 28th. You can find out more about the book and her book tour at KateHarding.info.

"I'm pretty boring, I guess."
    --Joe Mauer, after tonight's game

Current stats:

G	AB	BA	HR	RBI	OBP	SLG	OPS
29	102	.431	12	35	.516	.873	1.388

I like to think that y'all read my TV picks, but just in case you don't and you care: a new episode of Pushing Daisies debuts on ABC this Saturday at 9pm central time. ABC will air the remaining episodes on Saturdays at 9pm.

Once they're done airing Daisies, they'll air the remaining episodes of Eli Stone (starting on June 20th) and then the remaining episodes of Dirty Sexy Money (starting on July 18th). I hope all three shows get good ratings as I liked them all and am bummed that they've been canceled. I know I'll be tuning in to ABC on Saturdays at 9pm this summer.

(I've seen the final episodes of Pushing Daisies and they are excellent.)

It appears lots of folks didn't know the cherry had gone walkabout.

Here ya go:

• The Cherry is Going on Vacation


• Removing the Cherry


• Refinishing the Cherry (this post has the most detail on where the cherry went and what was done to it)


• Putting the Cherry Back on the Spoon

And here's the page about the sculpture in question: "Spoonbridge and Cherry".

Yay! Shiny!

Today:

• They're putting the cherry back on the spoon bridge.



• Joe Mauer returns to the Twins lineup.

It's a great day for Minneapolis, eh? After a nightmarish month or two or whatever without things being as they should be.


Or as I said on twitter:

Joe Mauer goes with the Twins like the cherry goes with the spoon bridge. Both return to their rightful places today! Yay!

I'm hoping this is my last post re Dreamwidth for a good long while and apologize to those who are sick o' hearing about it.

Kate Nepveu posted a useful overview of what Dreamwidth is. (She also goes into the way she'll use it, I guess I should explain myself here.)

I've created an account over there; I'm laurel there as I am here as I figured that'd be easiest. I notice my husband is also kaustin over there.

I like Livejournal and have a permanent account and have no intention of leaving here; I also like having a backup plan/account over on Dreamwidth in case LJ ever does something truly awful or crashes in a big way. Will I be crossposting from Dreamwidth? Not sure yet. Honestly, I don't know how much I'll play with it. But I don't foresee leaving LJ, even though I do like some of the different things Dreamwidth is doing.

Looks like even if I decide Dreamwidth is the bee's knees and my preferred online journal site/software, it's still dead easy for me to crosspost from there to LJ and I'd still be reading my f-list here (and there) so if you don't investigate Dreamwidth or don't care but are on LJ, well . . . things won't change from your perspective as I'll still be here.

I was minding my own business at Target yesterday, trolling the endcaps looking at the clearance stuff, when I stumbled on a Peek on clearance for just $12 and change. They're normally $50 and up. Whoa! Could a geek like me pass that up? Especially when they're cute and colorful? I think not.

I purchased one in "black cherry" for myself (the only one they had in that color) and a light blue one for Kevin. Unsure whether we'd use them or try to hack them or if they'd wind up given away or sold or . . . who knows what.

'Course once I got mine out of the box, I was smitten with it. And when I'm smitten with something, I tend to obsess. So I read everything I could about them. And got mine up and running.

And then I may have visited a few Targets to acquire more at the ridiculously cheap price of $12. The new ones with the latest software (but same hardware as these old ones) will cost you $80 on Amazon (Peek Pronto Mobile Messaging Device (Grey)). The thing is, the new "Peek Pronto" uses the same hardware as the original models, just has a software upgrade.

They can't currently upgrade the software remotely or automatically or anything. You mail them your device and they upgrade it and send it back to you. Or if you're geeky you acquire or borrow the special cable and download the software and upgrade yours and those of people you know.

So. Anyway. What's a Peek? It's a gizmo that looks a lot like a Blackberry, but cuter and slimmer and smaller. And it's only for email and texting. You don't need a credit check to have one, but you do pay $20 a month for unlimited email and texting with it. Can stop at any time, there's no commitment. (They use T-Mobile's network behind the scenes, but there are no contracts or anything and you don't have to deal with T-Mobile yourself.) Setting them up is dead easy, you just enter your name, email address, and password and soon the emails show up on the gizmo and it's nifty. I think it's nifty and my device is using the oldest version of the software-- the new version is much faster and can do a lot more.

I've ordered an upgrade cable. I have some extra devices (all blue thus far) that I acquired super cheap. I figure I'll upgrade those and then offer 'em up for sale or giveaway to folks. Maybe keep a spare or two for tinkering as the Peek people encourage hacking. I can't wait to upgrade my own.

I didn't really need another gadget to carry around, but we've been looking into texting plans with cell phone carriers and it's awfully expensive to have a cell phone with any sort of plan like that. Right now our cell phones are on a family plan with my folks, but we've been thinking of switching to pay as you go phones given how little we really do use them. One option for us that might make sense financially would be to go with the Peeks and then pay-as-you-go cell. (And the thing is, I have an iPod Touch and a Skype account and Mpls WiFi so another option for me would be to call folks via Skype using it when I have access to wifi.)

If you wanna get a Peek your own dang self, I can hook you up with a blue one sometime. Or many Targets have them in black near the cell phones or cell phone accessories in their electronics department, currently on sale for $30. Some Targets have the cherry and blue ones on sale for $30 as well, others have the blue and pink ones on clearance for as little as $12. Amazon has the blue & cherry ones for $50 and the gray one for $30: Peek Mobile E-mail Device (Cherry) (that link will get you to all three). 'Course those have the old software so you'd need to mail them to NYC or bring 'em in to HQ there for upgrades or get an upgrade by some other method.

If you do give Peek a try, let me know what email address you use as your primary account and you can get a month of service for free (and I get a month or two of service, which would be sweet for me of course). I'm kinda keen on the device, if I turn lots of people on to 'em maybe I'll get many months of service for myself for free.

I'll probably post more about Peek stuff at the LJ community I created: peekfans

I even grabbed some brochures from Target so I have some to give people if they ask me about my Peek. Will usually have mine with me if you want to see one in action.