3/30/2017: Fish fascination

I know it's been a long time since I've written.  Sorry about that.  Clinchfield has been as cute (and as frustrating!) as ever.  Here are some things he's done lately for his followers who are not on Facebook:

He's "jailed" himself about five more times since I've last posted.  Here's one of the newest times:

 
We were playing Ticket to Ride, and all of a sudden I noticed that Clinch had gone from a chair that was pulled in too close to the table and down into the table base.

He's really big now, so getting him out of there is a challenge.  We went away last weekend for a bead show I was vending at, so we pulled all of the chairs out and well away from the table.  We didn't want our neighbor to have to try to wrench him out of there in case he decided to jump in (or for him to be stuck in there for hours before someone found him!).  I bought some felt to weave around the bars, but we haven't gotten around to doing it yet.  I had two events in March that needed tons of prep before and recovery time after.

Speaking of the bead show, Clinchy also helped me promote it:

A few months ago Clinch decided that the TV stand was a swell place to be.  I guess he thought we were ignoring him too much.  He seemed to like Speechless quite a bit:

About a month ago I walked into the bedroom and found Clinch napping oh-so-cozily in my spot:

I guess I'd left a Clinchy-sized hollow in the covers when I'd gotten up.  I took the opportunity to give him some loving and snapped this selfie which I absolutely love:

Now that you're pretty much caught up, on to the topic of the day.  At the end of last year, I started exercising again with our Wii.  Steve moved it downstairs for me, and I have the balance board and exercise/yoga mats set up in the basement.  The mats are so my feet don't get too cold or have too much impact during the step and boxing games.  The floor gets REALLY cold in the winter!  I go down there every weekday and do a half hour of exercises that are not too strenuous for my messed-up body.  Since we don't use the basement much, I can just leave everything down there, making it easier for me to force myself to exercise:

It's really messy down there.  Eventually we'll clean it up and make it fit for entertaining, but for now it works for me.

Clinch likes coming down to hang out with me.  Sometimes I have to chase him off of the model railroad layout in the other room:

You should see him running down the track trying to get away from me!  He's like a bullet train!

Most of the time, though, he just perches on something and watches me.  He rarely takes an interest in the television, but today he caught sight of my Mii in a penguin suit, leaning left and right to try to catch fish in one of my exercise games.  So, I grabbed my phone, started another round of the game, and videoed it.  Unfortunately, the TV is really washed out, so you can barely see what's going on.  You can see the video tilt left and right as I play - hope that doesn't make you dizzy.

I hope you enjoyed watching him as much as I did.  I don't know how, but I got the high score with this game!

I'll try to not let it be so long before I post again.  Feel free to comment on a post to poke me if it's been too long.

12/24/2015: Merry Chr... Oh, no - not again!

I was all set to do a quick "Merry Christmas" post from all three cats, but Clinchfield, as usual, had other plans.  He does like to make work for me.

I wish I had posted the archive reports of Clinch getting trapped inside our dining room table.  We can take care of that now.  If you're friends of mine on Facebook, you've probably seen my posts about Clinch being "in jail."  To refresh your memory, or if you missed my posts, here are a few pictures:

Picture taken 8/29/2015 by Steve

Picture taken 8/31/2015 - yes, he did it again two days later

(I got to get him out this time)

Here is what Clinch would have written in his diary if he could hold a pencil:

Dear Diary, I have found a perfect hiding place, one where I can see and hear everything but where no one can get at me, especially that pesky female the authorities call "Fe". I cannot get to my favorite toy, the large male called "Pixel", but that is a small price to pay for this perfect location. However, the authorities don't think I can get out of this "TAY-ble" just because I jumped down in here from up above, where the bars are farther apart. I'm sure I could jump back up there. Maybe. Possibly not. Either way, I never get the chance to try. The authorities have cathandled me out on my two attempts then pushed the chairs back so I cannot get back to the hideout's entrances. Why do I never get to have any fun?

We kept the chairs pushed back until my Mom and stepfather came for lunch late in September, then, figuring he wouldn't do it again, we pushed them back in.  How wrong we were:

Picture taken in the wee hours of 9/27/2015

(he was lucky I was up so I could extract him)

Again, we kept the chairs away from the table until we had company, which was this past Sunday when Dad, Barb (my stepmother), Uncle Howard, and Aunt Pat came for dinner.  Clinch showed no signs of jailing himself again until today.

Steve gave me this adorable solar-powered elf that dances:

The best sunlight was on the dining room table.  The elf danced away, and his "click click click" drew Clinch over to investigate:

I swear this table was clean just a few days ago

When he walked away, I could tell he still wanted to play with the elf, so I thought, "Oh!  I should shoot horizontal like everyone says you should," and turned the camera.  I started shooting, moved to turn the dining room light on so the video would hopefully be clearer, and realized that Clinch batting at the elf from underneath the table again was all he could do.

I did cut out most of the window's glare, but right before that, if you look carefully on the left side of the screen, you can see Clinch climbing in the table.  There is sound later in the video, but you'll have to turn your volume up a fair amount.  I should figure out how to fix that.

Sorry it's not all that clear and is a bit jumpy.

Now we have the chairs pushed back away from the table again and are likely to keep them pushed back indefinitely.

So, now I'm to where I thought I was going to be at the start of this post.

Merry Christmas from

Pixel, who didn't want to pose by the tree

Fe, who is making her first appearance on this blog

and, of course,

 Clinchfield, who has thankfully not tried to climb the Christmas tree (yet)