Well, everything I need is packed (hopefully. I always have the nagging fear I'm forgetting something vital & essential). As is typical, a couple nagging problems have come up - people needing things from me I don't have time to deal with now. (So I've emailed them back and emphasized my need to leave town no later than 2.30 this afternoon, and they will just have to jolly well do themselves what they are asking me to do. Well, in more polite language than that.)

I added a few more inches to the Hiawatha border last night. I'm now more than halfway on the first "long side." It helps not to measure until you've done quite a bit.

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One of the comic strips my local paper runs (one of the few worthwhile ones in this paper) is Arlo and Janis. Yesterday's strip had Arlo talking to Ludwig (his cat), as he often does. He was describing one of the "Marc Antony and Pussyfoot" cartoons (a couple of little-known Looney Toons characters). He was describing "Feed the Kitty" (details found here, where the bulldog believes the cat has been baked into cookies. And he takes one of the cookies, and tearfully puts it on his back, and rides it around like he had the real cat. (Of course Pussyfoot is unharmed; it would be a rather gruesome cartoon had she actually wound up baked into a cookie).

The funny thing is, reading the description of that in a comic strip, I had an almost visceral memory of the cartoon. It is, surprisingly, a very touching scene - it has been known to make me well up a bit, or, at the very least, sit on the edge of the couch feeling knots in my stomach.

at the end of the comic strip, Arlo - holding a sad-looking Ludwig tight - makes some comment like, "Not all cartoons are funny" or something like that.

(I will admit that, a few years ago, when the WB stores came out with a small beanbag toy of Pussyfoot (interestingly, also known as Cleo in some cartoons - I did not know that), I bought one. Out of memories of me as a child, being sad every time I saw Marc Antony believing his tiny kitten friend had been baked into a cookie.)

But it's funny how certain cartoons, or scenes out of cartoons, are so memorable to me - this scene, and also most of "What's Opera, Doc," and the "Duck Season/Rabbit Season" bit from that Daffy Duck cartoon. While others - most of the roadrunner cartoons for example - are so interchangeable as to be utterly forgettable.