Hasn’t this been quite the week? The eastern half of the country was stuck in their snowed in cars, offices, and schools while out here in the desert we had to deal with record high temperatures of 81 degrees. Oh, wait, maybe we shouldn’t mention that? Kinda sounds like we’re bragging right? Possibly - but it was only 81 degrees for five hours. Does that make it better? No? Still too soon? For all of you folks in Georgia who wanted to know what happened to global warming it’s out here in Arizona – you can stop looking for it. While the Sisters tormented their third sister in NJ over the weather, here’s some stuff we found funny/fun and if you’re not frozen solid – you might too.

1. A festival we should know about. Amy and Ava are always on the lookout for a new dessert delight. Somehow there is a Donut Fest in Chicago every year that we don’t know about, but the big hit this year was the “doughscuit” sister to the glorious Cronut - which we’ve mentioned before. One Donut Fester called it “life changing”. We’re all about life changing pastry. If you’ve ever wanted to be friends with the Sisters now is the time to buy our “love” by bringing us some doughscuits. Just let us know what time you’ll be by and we’ll have the coffee ready.

2. Kitty Extravaganza. No shock that the Sisters love cats based on all of the cat videos and pictures we post here. We love them. LOVE. They’re very entertaining just like us. At first, this story made us a little sad but we tried to see the bright side of the “Meatball” the cat tail. Meatball is a 36 pound cat. One animal control worker said, “Biggest cat I’ve ever seen.” We wanted to go pick him up and bring him home. When we called the shelter we were asked to send a picture of ourselves. Normally, we’d refuse but we really wanted Meatball. The call back was bad news. Them - “Ladies, we appreciate your volunteering and all but we’re looking for a home that will put Meatball on a diet.” Us – “We know everything about dieting!” Them – “No, a diet to lose weight.” Well damn – that will teach us to blog about donuts.

3. Perhaps a nice retirement IRA? We’re always entertained by “too crazy to be true” stories that are true. A lady in Omaha (that’s middle America, folks) had 1 million dollars seized from her car during a traffic stop. 1 million cash. CASH. It seems that the cops had no right to seize it and now need to pay her legal bills. Here’s where she got it – it was her entire life savings earned over about a dozen years as an exotic dancer. We were curious about how that would shake out hourly. Exotic dancers work about 6 hours a day 5 days a week (don’t ask where we found that – it will all be in the news when the FBI finally picks us up). Assuming two weeks of unpaid vacation, but no legal holidays, she made about $55.56/per hour. That’s not too bad for a job you don’t need to go to college for right? Maybe she should think about a bank account or, at least, a nice mattress to keep it in.

4. Not next to the Pretzel guy either. Quite often we’re perplexed by what makes other people think something is a good idea. There is a mannequin manufacturer now making mannequins with “thicker waists, saggier breasts and back fat”. WTF??? We’re all for realistic size mannequins because we’re realistic size women but REALLY? Back fat? That’s just gross. We don’t want to see that at the local mall next to the Cinnabon shop. If we can squeeze into control wear so can those mannequins.

5. And she’s not even naked! Under the heading of “more jobs the Sisters didn’t know were jobs” comes this gem: A woman who makes 9K a month eating front of her computer camera. It’s exactly what it sounds like. She start eating at around 8PM and goes for hours and people send her tips. “People enjoy the vicarious pleasure of my online show when they can’t eat that much, don’t want to eat food at night, or are on a diet,” Seo-yeon told Reuters. That’s $51.92/per hour. Not as lucrative as exotic dancing, mind you, but more along the lines of our actual skill set. The Sisters have been eating daily all their lives for free!!!

We need new ball gowns.

Sounds like we have a lot of white girl problems, huh?

It’s true, though. We couldn’t possibly be expected to show up at our book signings in March in the same old ball gowns we wore to the last signings. What would people say? You know who we’re talking about, all those people who pay so much attention to what we’re doing all the time.

So we’ve been shopping for dress patterns and we know exactly what we want which makes it so easy to make decisions. NOT. What it means is that someone (Amylynn) is very frustrated because someone (Ava) can’t make a damn decision (I’d complain here but that might be true - Ava). That’s what usually happens anyway. Not this time. We found a pattern we both liked right off and ordered them from Amazon. The drone delivered it the very next day.

We went shopping for fabric right away because that’s usually where the trouble begins. We also went to a store our mother had expressly forbidden us to go to. We’re rebels. You can’t tell US what to do.

WE FOUND EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT. It’s a miracle. Go buy a lottery ticket.

We took our four bolts of fabric (two of which were on CLEARANCE!) up front to be cut. How excited were we when this cute little boy came over to help us, smiling and useful?

“Hi!” Ava said, all delighted and stuff.

“I’m just going to warn you now,” I said, launching into the warning judges make us say to all store clerks, waiters, and hotel staff. “We’re going to be a pain in the ass.”

His smile faltered.

I continued, “I’m just saying because we want you to have full disclosure.”

“It’ll be fine,” Ava told him with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Actually, things moved along swimmingly. The three of us bantered. He inquired as to what we were making. It turns out that he makes costumes - Elizabethan era. He wanted us to make our own buttons and proceeded to give us instructions that would take no less than six months and five friends to complete. Ava mentioned that perhaps he didn’t have a 40 hour a week job, books to write, a husband and children, and dogs.

Uh huh. We’re getting zippers.

He did mention that he had a girl friend and a cat. We think he brought up the girl friend because he was afraid we were trying to pick him up. Which is adorable. When you hit 45 and 50, any pretty 25-year-old boy actually looks about twelve.

I asked him to take a picture. At first he looked a bit alarmed, but he warmed to the idea. He even fluffed his hair and smiled. See, cute, huh?

We thought we could use this as one of our Five Favorite Things this week, but this is just too good. It needs its own blog.

Unless you’ve been living in a vacuum then you’re aware that MOST of the country is being buried under an avalanche of snow. Snowmageddon, if you will.

Either the following fellow is having a harder time dealing with it than most, or North Dakota just needs to be excused from this winter for the rest of the year.

Fargo, ND – Local resident Todd Fox has been detained for “reckless endangerment” and “illegal use of high-powered fire-breathing weaponry” for attacking snow with his flamethrower. Fox reportedly became so fed up with the week-long blowing snow epidemic in his area that he decided to KILL IT WITH FIRE.

The neighborhood was treated with quite a show last night as Fox unleashed an inferno upon the mountainous snow palace that was his front yard. Neighbors to his immediate right and left noticed a bright orange cloud and could hear what they thought was “puff the magic dragon spewing mayhem all over hell,” which prompted one of them to notify police.

Fox stated that he was simply “fed up with battling the elements” and that he did not possess the willpower necessary to move “four billion tons of white bull shit.”

Police say that Fox surrendered his efforts immediately upon their arrival and that his front yard “looked like a hydrogen bomb had gone off.” They think he was just happy to be done with snow removal, even if it did mean a trip to jail.

Often, the Sisters welcome the thought of jail and we’re betting this fellow is no different. In jail he gets his three hots and a cot and probably no shoveling. Although, wouldn’t that be the worst sentence for that guy ever? Talk about Sisyphusian justice.

Still, as far as we’re concerned this was a reasonable solution and we applaud his ingenuity.

Did you people see the pictures of Chicago today? That, our friends, is insane. We’re not kidding when we say we pull out the coats when it gets to 65 degrees.

Maybe someone can explain this to us.

Is this the penguin version of friends laughing at you when you fall down? Make sure your volume is on.

It’s 68 degrees in the desert today. That Polar Velociraptor is out of control. Velociraptor. Vortex. Whatever. It’s awful. Something must be done right away. How can we be expected to live when it’s under 70 degrees? It’s inhuman with the clouds and breezes and such. What are we expected to do? Wear layers? And socks? Outrageous. There should be a committee about this or something. Who do we write to? While we crank that heater up to 72 you can read what other shenanigans have been going on.

1. National Jigsaw Puzzle Month. That’s right. We at Bank of No Forks have been single-handedly keeping the second-hand jigsaw puzzle industry afloat for the last several years. We were delighted when we found out that an entire month has been dedicated to our efforts. We are damn fine puzzlers. We’re very proud and humbled to accept this honor. We’d like to thank the Goodwill for keeping us stocked up on puzzles costing less than $3 and for having MOST of the pieces in the box. We never could have done this without you.

2. The Captain and Tennille. The Captain and Tennille are getting a divorce after 39 years of marriage. While it’s true that we’re not really that upset about it, it’s a shame when any marriage ends, but it’s their life and all. We don’t even know them. What we really need to look at is the big picture here. Who is getting custody of the muskrats? Who? WHO? For God’s sake, think of the tiny mammals, people. We’re just heartbroken over the whole thing.

3. Wee South African Rabbits. So there is a huge sculpture of Nelson Mandela - the biggest one ever. It’s 29.5 feet tall. It seems that the government wouldn’t allow the artists to sign it so they came up with another solution. They tucked a wee, floppy-eared bunny in his ear as their signature. The government is incensed over it. The artists have apologized, having meant no disrespect. PETA has petitioned the Arts and Culture Minister to adopt the statue. If you think this whole thing has gone off the rails, you’d be 100% correct. We can’t even tell you how thrilled the Sisters would be to have bunnies in our ears. As soon as we do something significant with our lives and a statue is commissioned, we’re going to mention this.

4. Thinking things through. Bill Cosby has a skit where he explains why he never has to do anything around the house (chores, taking care of the children, etc). He says he does a really bad job, so bad in fact that his wife won’t let him do it anymore deciding he’s just too stupid. The man is a genius. Sometimes people carry this a bit too far. Take for instance the mother and son in Alabama who were cleaning up the yard after their property was strewn with toilet paper by the neighborhood kids. They had some trouble getting it all out of the tree so they decided the best plan would be to set it on fire. As you can see from the picture, chaos ensued. The best part is the toilet paper is still in the tree.

5. Sometimes the call is deafening. We’ve never had a yearning for Taco Bell. Ever. Still, it must happen to some people because the business is thriving. In Maryland, a man who identified himself as Squirrelsoup put an ad on Craigslist for someone to come fetch him to Taco Bell through the snow storm because he was too drunk and he suspected his wimpy car wouldn’t make it. He said in the ad, “Seriously my desire for tacos right now is totally unmanageable.” He offered to pay the chauffeur “in tacos, or possibly a seven-layer burrito if [they] asked nicely.” Taco, no. But if we were drunk and it was snowing, we might put an ad up for someone to take us to the bakery. When you need cake, you need cake. No fooling.

This is a real thing. Anyone with a cat knows they have lots of questions. We suspect some of them are pretty rude and personal, but we’re game.

We sat our cats down, Rickey, Geddy and Jojo Kitty, and asked them what they wanted to know. Mostly they sat there, watching us with lazy eyes and randomly licking themselves. Typical.

This is what we managed to infer.

What takes you so long to feed us in the morning? We feed you promptly as soon as we get up. Sooner than we feed ourselves. Your demands are outrageous.

Why do you expect us to eat the food at the edges of the bowl? That food is tainted. Do you see how the dogs eat ALL their food - even the food on

the edges? Even the food on the floor. And the garbage. OK - they’re a bad example. Still, you can eat all the food in the bowl and it won’t harm you. Seriously. We don’t need to give you fresh food every single time we pass your bowl.

All right, fine. Then will you leave the sink running when you go to work? We like our water fresh. Then you probably shouldn’t drown all your toys in your water bowl and then it would be very fresh. Or at least less catnip-y.

Why must you always kiss my belly. What’s you’re weird obsession with that? Honestly, we can’t help it. Kitty cat bellies are one of the best things in the entire world. Nothing beats a warm, fuzzy, polka-dotted belly. If you want your food bowl serviced then you’re going to have to put up with it.

Where do the people go when you turn off that box in the living room? I stare and stare at it but they won’t come back until you come home. Um, yeah. That’s the television. Those people aren’t real. We’ve told you before they’re never going to come out and play with you. Please stop batting at the television.

Well, there you go. We guess this is over. One of the cats wandered off, another went to sleep under the bed, and the third is poking around in the food bowl. It really seems like instead of a question and answer session, this was really more of an opportunity for the cats to air their grievances.

Nevertheless, this has been another public service of The Quill Sisters. You’re welcome.

As promised, here’s An Engineer’s Guide to Cats 2.0 - The Sequel.

I love these guys. And their cats.