Puppy cam

Small animals are today's theme. 24/7 stream of cuteness via the Puppy Cam:

Live TV by Ustream

Swimming cats

This woman makes me ashamed to call myself a cat person, but it is entertaining: 

Shoes!

The perfect cabin-fever prevention activity: online shoe shopping! (Not that you need MORE shoes, but a little fantasy never hurt a girl...) ;) This iVillage article has resources for the smaller-soled among us (aka, you, Mlle Jacqueline). Enjoy!

Here are some of my favorites at the moment: 

Nine West on Zappos.com

Cole Haan on Zappos.com

Cabin Fever in Literature: Atwood's Surfacing

(Image: Pix Elate)

Jax-

I happened to be in the middle of Margaret Atwood's Surfacing when we started this blog, and it is oddly apt. It's about a 20-something girl in the 1960s who returns to the family home to find her disappeared father--and home happens to be a minimal, naturalist cabin accessible by lake. Thought the photo above was what the cabin might look like if it were near Miami. 

Anyway, this passage struck me. The girl suspects her father might have gone mad living in isolation at the cabin: 

Total derangement. I wondered when it had started; it must have been the snow and the loneliness, he'd pushed himself too far, it gets in through your eyes, the thin black cold of midwinter night, the white days dense with sunlight, outer space melting and freezing again into different shapes, your mind starts doing the same thing. The drawing was something he saw, a hallucination; or it might have been himself, what he thought he was turning into. 

A good reminder of why we're doing this .... so that fate doesn't befall the members of the Society! 

Talking animals

Thought you might get a kick out of talking cats and dogs:

http://www.talkingpets.ca

It's an old Purina Canada campaign. Enjoy! 

The beginning

Recently, Jax was posted to a year in Kabul. She'd been there just over a week when, during an impromptu IM chat, she mentioned that cabin fever was a serious concern for those in her position. While she didn't feel it yet, close quarters and limited social outlets meant she was quickly burning through her usual online stress-relief outlets. (Cats on treadmills? Squirrels stopping baseball games? Check and check.) Could the expected symptoms (restlessness, irritability, forgetfulness, and excessive sleeping) be far behind?

Inspiration struck. This blog was created. And, hopefully, cabin fever will be averted this year!