MORE WORDS

PANNIKINThis is mainly a British word, and it means a small metal cup or pan.  The word has been around since at least 1823.  It's not used much these days because now people have cups made of all sorts of other things such as china and plastic.  But if you are reading 19th-century English novels, like Mom keeps doing, you might run into the word pannikin.RANGLEIf you rangle, it means you are running around in a weird and irregular...

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THE WEATHER IN 2012

A couple of weeks ago the nice meteorologists at NOAA wrote down everything there was to know about Kansas City weather in 2012, and they put all that information on their website.  Maybe you will remember that I kept telling you all summer about how hot and dry it was, and about how we were having a terrible drought.  Well, I wasn't just making that stuff up -- NOAA has all the numbers to prove that I was right!When I first heard of NOAA,...

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DRAGON TATTOOS

My mom has a dragon tattoo, and she is not the only person who has one.  It turns out that a dragon is a very popular thing to get tattooed on yourself.  The reason for this might be because of the power and magic and energy of dragons.  They represent all kinds of cool things, as I have been telling you during this whole Year of the Dragon.  Mom got her dragon tattoo because she was born in a Dragon year, and she thought the...

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CHINOOK DOGS

This month the AKC added two new dog breeds to the list of breeds they recognize for registration.  One of these breeds is the Portuguese Podengo Pequeno, which I already told you about in another blog entry.  And the second breed is the Chinook, which I am going to tell you about today.The Chinook is a sled dog, but it doesn't look like a normal sled dog, at least in my opinion.  A man named Arthur Treadwell Walden, who lived in Wonalancet,...

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OH! THE EXCITEMENT!

Our lives are always totally exciting, as I might have mentioned before.  And now it's time to tell you about all the very latest excitement that has been going on.One of my most graceful sleeping posesFirst of all, two of our foster kittens, Cooper and Michelin, got adopted.  So now we only have Dunlop.  We don't know why Dunlop hasn't been adopted.  Mom thinks he was cuter than his other two brothers, but in my opinion, one...

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IGLOOS

NOAA photo of nearly complete, medium-sized iglooAt this time of year, which is winter, you just might find yourself thinking about igloos.  And maybe you are even thinking about building one in your back yard, if there is actually some snow there.  But if you are having a Severe Drought, like we have in Missouri, you will probably need to make your igloo out of straw bales or adobe bricks!Inuit village of Oopungnewing, near Frobisher Bay...

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