A long week with not a whole lot of happy news and a brush with a flu bug combined with a melted client server last weekend. My wife has spent the week dog-sitting for her mother.

But at least my horse, who had managed to injure her mouth badly enough to require five stitches returned from grass almost healed. Horses make me smile.

I seriously think we need some good spirit this week. No the levees appear to break again.

It looks like New Orleans is being flooded again. Rita waters flood New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The outer edge of Hurricane Rita pushed fast-rising water over a freshly patched levee in New Orleans on Friday and flooded a section of the already devastated city.

Waters from the industrial canal, where the levee breached during Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago and flooded the city, was submerging houses in the particularly hard-hit Ninth Ward section.

The area had been nearly dried out in recent days.

Residents have not been permitted to return since Katrina to the Ninth Ward, where nearly all the small, one-story houses appeared damaged beyond repair.

o.k nicer stuff

go
here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/movies/

and click on the Wallace and Gromit clip.

French cats are never fat--they are trim, slim, slender. In a word, they are svelte.

What is their secret?

The secret, mes amis, lies within your grasp, in the pages of this délicieux little book.

The sensationnel French diet that will turn even the pudgiest patate de divan (couch potato) into a chic, café kitty.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0307337804/qid=1127506410/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-950093 5-0911913?v=glance&s=books

This masterpiece, subtitled "The Secrets of La Cuisine Feline," surpasses "Anna Karenina" in majesty and depth.

Of course the French narrator can't resist being supercilious about fat American cats.

Don't miss the recipe for Vole au Vent.

A good antidote to gloomy news.

My whole family is lobbying me with increasing regularity to have an animal at home ("just a rabbit" "you won't have to take care of it" "it will be so good for the kids")...

AAAAAAAAArgh.

No animals within several meters of me, please. (Especially as they inevitably sense my hostility and come close to me with their big eyes "please love me, I'm nice. Urgh). Pictures are fine, so post all the animal blogging you care to!

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes