We had chicken cacciatore last night, and I cooked six chicken thighs, thinking that two thighs would the the serving for one person. That was wrong, and so we'll be having that again tonight. I put lots of vegetables in it (celery, onion, red bell pepper, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc.), and so it doesn't need side dishes, although I did serve it with rice. So tonight we have either rice or pasta with the leftover chicken. The last two thighs will be someone's lunch. I do plan to add stuffed green olives to it before I heat it up. Lars

Raven, that is so kind of you to make sure he has food and water and don't mind him staying in the cats' condo. If he can stay there and rest, he just might get well. Possums are amazing in their ability to heal. I have one right now that came in with one baby and on her back was a huge wound. She had been caught in a trap with the babies and with no food, they had started chewing on her. The back is a common place that they will chew. They will also chew on the faces of their mothers. Mother possums chew food and let the babies take it from their mouths, which is probably why they get their faces chewed on. She only had one baby when brought to me, but the others probably had escaped out of the trap. I took the remaining baby from her, so it wouldn't chew on her any further. People will trap them...usually in the process of trapping feral cats, and since it is "just an old possum" they don't get in any hurry to remove them from the trap. Plus, most people are intimidated by them and can't get them out of the trap very easily anyway. My mama possum is almost well now. Her injury was the size of a silver dollar, or bigger when she came here and is about like a nickel now. I was just thinking last night how much she enjoys the food here. I fed her yogurt and kibble and a dish of bananas, grapes and avocado. Possums do drink a lot of water. If the possum is hanging around, you might give it a little bit of left overs, if you are so inclined. They will eat anything. On the other hand....while I have seen many possums heal from horrific injuries, I have also seen those that look to be perfectly healthy, go down and die within a couple of days. And, their life span is very short anyway. A two year old wild possum is an old one. Thank you for caring about one of the most misunderstood of all creatures.

Oh, I *wish* I could visit Scotland again. When I was 14 and touring Edinburgh I didn't know an ancestor built what is now called the John Knox house. (He supported 'the wrong side'; was hung; his house awarded to Knox. Guess you had to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em even in the days of Mary, Queen of Scots!) Have a great trip; come back and tell us all about it; have another great cruise; come back and tell us all about that!

I got one to test it out thinking of my parents (I did get them one, but they pooh poohed it and won't bother learning how convenient it is). I is just a gadget, but it's constantly improving. You can turn off the microphone (though I'm sure a hacker could turn it back on), but I keep mine in the kitchen and I don't care who listens in there. :) There's a lot that it can do that are kind of scary. You can purchase things with a sentence, for instance. I don't know the details, because that doesn't interest me. There must be some kind of security check, maybe a voice print. I also don't want an integrated smart house system, because I don't want to deal with it when it fails, so I don't have lights or heat or anything hooked up to it. Besides, without having to walk over to the light switch or thermostat, considering we don't have to strike a flame with a flint and steel or lay a fire, how much more couch potato can we get? It might be useful to have the Echo control lights in a bedroom, or entryway, and all of it for someone with limited mobility. I love it in the kitchen for asking it the time or date, and especially for putting things on shopping lists. I've asked it a bunch of general knowledge search questions which it's very bad at, but it's getting better. The shopping list is my big use. Elbows deep in messing cooking, I can tell it to put something on the list. Or even just in the middle of something, it's much nicer than dropping it and running to a pad and pen. The list then shows up on the Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet. Instead of remembering my shopping list, I work at remembering to charge my phone, which is a good safety consideration anyway. You can also see your lists on the Amazon website. There's also a to-do list. The voice recognition is very good. Sometimes, it'll think it hears a command on the TV, like when there's a character named Alexis, or if it hears its name in a commercial, but that's rare. Even with the TV on, it usually understands my shopping list items. Recently, it couldn't figure out "mints", though. I don't know how well it does with accents. A feature I wanted for my mother was the reading. It will read your Kindle books to you, as well as playing Audible.com books. It'll mark the place so you can go back and forth between devices. I have to get her in a good mood to learn how to use it, though. The speaker is about what you'd expect for that kind of device. It's better than a phone, or backpack speaker, but that's not saying much. I also think it's probably playing MP3s rather than full file music, which makes it sound even flatter. I was baking the other day, however, and wanted some music, but my hands were messy and I didn't have much longer until cleanup anyway, making washing up to go turn on the stereo unappealing, so I told the Echo to play something and it was fine for the couple of songs until I was done. I won't play MP3's even in the car, however. I did a test with all the compression formats, and they lose too much color. I'm not so picky I have to have vinyl or something, but I'm still pretty picky about audio. If you're used to MP3's and earbuds, however, I don't think you'll have any problem with the Echo speaker. Most of the popular music you've bought from Amazon, at least for the last few years, should be in your music library, and there's a lot that you can add for free if you have Prime. There's a lot of other stuff you can do/get with Echo, and more being added daily, but that's mostly in the just a gadget category. Games and whatnot. It's the voice command/playback/home automation that make it special. Not revolutionary, but it comes in a nice little easy to use package.