Picture it
I was talking to one of my co-workers the other day and we were talking dogs and she said jokingly “Not a cat lover, huh?” she didn’t know I had a cat! I was horrified. She assumed that Dogger was my only pet! She had this idea because, well, if you didn’t know better,what with the life sized portrait of the dog, you might not even notice one 4x6 picture of my cat, the main message you take from my cell is that I have a dog. I mean, there aren’t a lot of Dogger pictures around, just the life sized portrait, the one of her smiling on the beach, the one of her grinning at the camera and one of The Kitty, looking glum. I think the misunderstanding can be traced to the life sized portrait, it sends message and that message says : Kitty? What kitty?
How did this happen? The Kitty is the most photographed animal on the planet, Wegmans dogs don’t spend as much time posing as The Kitty does. There are super models who have less time in front of camera than The Kitty. I Friday Cat Blog! I mean, I probably have hundreds of pictures of The Kitty - on my hard drive. In real life, no so much. I am falling behind though, I have updated Doggers Dogster page twice in the last month or so and I haven’t touched Kitty’s Catster page in a year. I suck. The Kitty needs to win a contest, tenth runner up at the very least. I need to enter The Kitty in something. Do you think Molly Shannon could be persuaded to make Year of the Dog II - Year of The Cat?
How did I end up in a Dogger shrine? I mean, you hang one life sized portrait and all of a sudden you "hate" cats? I don’t have the desk space to display enough 4x6's of The Kitty to compensate. It would be easier if our walls weren’t made of concrete and it also would have been nice if I had been in town when the guys came with their drills. I managed to get a few things hung before I left, but not what I would have done had I been in town . What I have is hung on 3M hooks. They work really well, but they look like pygmy coat hooks. On the up side my walls don’t have any tacky holes in them, on the down side, I can only hang things that can hang from a coat hook. It's limiting.
That leaves my desk and the window sill.
The sill is a good bet, it’s wide and right now it is home to a collection of Happy Meal penguins, that if pressed, I could argue, are Kitty stand ins, but if you don’t know I even have an over weight black and white house cat, you wouldn’t get it. They just look like penguins and you would assume I really liked Happy Feet - where you would be wrong, the penguins are from the surfing penguin movie not the dancing penguin movie and I saw neither.
The desk is cluttered with the computer and the little shelf thing is kind of all ready kind of taken by other pictures, I would like people dropping by my cell to see that I do have a life outside my pets. I am related to human beings as well. I need to represent the bipeds in my life.
The good news is that magnets can be my friends. I have metal bits here and there and my window sill for some reason is magnetic, so I have options. I’ve seen the future and it is magnetic photo sleeves.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Rove to step down
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Karl Rove, President Bush's senior political adviser, will voluntarily step down from his White House post at the end of the month, senior administration officials said Monday.
Of course, I would have prefered he left in chains, on his way to a federal prison - but I'll take what I can get. It would also be a really nice b-day gift if he could make his exit around the 29th.
Full story here
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Karl Rove, President Bush's senior political adviser, will voluntarily step down from his White House post at the end of the month, senior administration officials said Monday.
Of course, I would have prefered he left in chains, on his way to a federal prison - but I'll take what I can get. It would also be a really nice b-day gift if he could make his exit around the 29th.
Full story here
Foods for thought
This is my week to feed Smokey. Despite valiant efforts to convince him otherwise, which included two of his Friends giving up a Saturday morning to “walk” him from the old building to the new building and then repeated trips to campus to make sure he had stayed there - Smokey did not want to move with us.
His reasons for avoiding the new building are many. He’s very old, he's all ready fought for and won the territory he has now and he isn’t going to abandon it, and the large fox that hangs out around the new building. I think if the reporters are seeing a “large” fox that they may actually be seeing a coyote. But I’m not sure, I remember reports of foxes at the other building as well as coyote sightings and those didn't scare him away. I think that as a 10 year old feral cat, Smokey just isn’t going to be pried away from his home. There is another group that is supposed to be moving into our building at some point (Lord have mercy on their souls) and contact has all ready been made with them - They will take over the Smokey feeding responsibilities at that time. But for now, the three of us are taking it one week at a time. It’s funny. I did the feeding of him every day for years and the food was provided for free, and no one ever volunteered to help me out with it. Now that we have to travel to do it and supply our own food, there is whole group dedicated to feeding him.
It being my week, I took Dogger and we went to the building Sunday afternoon to pick up the food container, which on Friday I kind of thought might have had food in it, it didn’t. Dogger and I went to the grocery.
The store was advertising it’s back to school products as well as two for one Sugar Smacks . So much for a healthy start. I thought that while I was there that I would make myself meat loaf for dinner, but first I had to worry about what Smokey was going to eat. I had been told that he seemed to like Ally Cat brand cat food. I was familiar with Ally Cat because this is what I fed my cats at school. It is the cheapest cat food on the market. It is made of equal parts ash, bone meal and I imagine, melamine. If you are a cat eating Ally Cat You all ready have problems apart from your diet. The melamine content is just lagniappe.
I couldn’t find Ally Cat, so clearly a product of China the cat pictured on the bag bears a striking resemblance to Mao Tse-tung and inside every bag is a copy of The Little Red Book. The store didn’t carry it. Sugar Smacks yes, Ally Cat, no. I have some cheap cat food at home for my strays, but past experience has taught me that Smokey won’t eat that brand, he like Bill O’Reilly hates products of Mexico. He’s poor, he’s homeless, he’s beset by fleas but even he won’t eat .99 cents per three pound bag of dry cat food. He has standards.. I ended up with Store Brand cat food, more expensive than Ally Cat but with a higher ash-to-bone-meal content. Nummy.
Cat food accomplished, I wanted to start thinking about me. I had wanted to make a meat loaf, but when I walked into the store, there were no baskets handy. I couldn’t carry a bag of cat food and meat loaf fixings. I changed my mind on dinner. I ended up getting a frozen pizza, thin crust, because I was feeling like something healthy.
This is my week to feed Smokey. Despite valiant efforts to convince him otherwise, which included two of his Friends giving up a Saturday morning to “walk” him from the old building to the new building and then repeated trips to campus to make sure he had stayed there - Smokey did not want to move with us.
His reasons for avoiding the new building are many. He’s very old, he's all ready fought for and won the territory he has now and he isn’t going to abandon it, and the large fox that hangs out around the new building. I think if the reporters are seeing a “large” fox that they may actually be seeing a coyote. But I’m not sure, I remember reports of foxes at the other building as well as coyote sightings and those didn't scare him away. I think that as a 10 year old feral cat, Smokey just isn’t going to be pried away from his home. There is another group that is supposed to be moving into our building at some point (Lord have mercy on their souls) and contact has all ready been made with them - They will take over the Smokey feeding responsibilities at that time. But for now, the three of us are taking it one week at a time. It’s funny. I did the feeding of him every day for years and the food was provided for free, and no one ever volunteered to help me out with it. Now that we have to travel to do it and supply our own food, there is whole group dedicated to feeding him.
It being my week, I took Dogger and we went to the building Sunday afternoon to pick up the food container, which on Friday I kind of thought might have had food in it, it didn’t. Dogger and I went to the grocery.
The store was advertising it’s back to school products as well as two for one Sugar Smacks . So much for a healthy start. I thought that while I was there that I would make myself meat loaf for dinner, but first I had to worry about what Smokey was going to eat. I had been told that he seemed to like Ally Cat brand cat food. I was familiar with Ally Cat because this is what I fed my cats at school. It is the cheapest cat food on the market. It is made of equal parts ash, bone meal and I imagine, melamine. If you are a cat eating Ally Cat You all ready have problems apart from your diet. The melamine content is just lagniappe.
I couldn’t find Ally Cat, so clearly a product of China the cat pictured on the bag bears a striking resemblance to Mao Tse-tung and inside every bag is a copy of The Little Red Book. The store didn’t carry it. Sugar Smacks yes, Ally Cat, no. I have some cheap cat food at home for my strays, but past experience has taught me that Smokey won’t eat that brand, he like Bill O’Reilly hates products of Mexico. He’s poor, he’s homeless, he’s beset by fleas but even he won’t eat .99 cents per three pound bag of dry cat food. He has standards.. I ended up with Store Brand cat food, more expensive than Ally Cat but with a higher ash-to-bone-meal content. Nummy.
Cat food accomplished, I wanted to start thinking about me. I had wanted to make a meat loaf, but when I walked into the store, there were no baskets handy. I couldn’t carry a bag of cat food and meat loaf fixings. I changed my mind on dinner. I ended up getting a frozen pizza, thin crust, because I was feeling like something healthy.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Beasts
It’s 104 degrees. It is very warm. It is too warm to walk the dog it is by extension, too warm to go to the park. I didn’t even have to say anything to Dogger, sh was like “You know, I understand. I think I’ll just stay splayed out on the floor here and you do whatever you need to do”. As to the splaying, I would have thought that linoleum would be cooler for doggy splaying than wood but apparently, the wood is the cooler of the two surfaces. Also, The Kitty owns the kitchen and I’m pretty sure that Dogger has just learned that the wood is the safer alternative. It’s cool because she keeps hers.
Before work this morning I wanted to get something out of my car, I didn’t get it out because I had pulled the car too far forward and so I couldn’t open the passenger door all the way. Sucks being my green tea. I was going to get my keys and reposition the car but as I was going back in the house I saw something in my recycling bin.
I screamed.
Okay, I shrieked, it was early, there was no reason to alarm the neighborhood over a rogue possum. I was horrified, and I really believe my hysterical reaction was totally valid because Oh-My-Gawd-There-Is-A-Possum-In-My-Recycling but I doubt the cops would understand. I had this meltdown because a possum the size of the three week old kitten was hissing at me. It surprised me! It could have been a rat! Or a huge spider! Or a freaky human/turtle hybrid! Did I tell you I saw a very big snapping turtle on the beach on day? It wasn’t supposed to be there. There is snapping turtle world and there is people world and I’m pretty sure that we are supposed to use the beach separately. I bet there is even a schedule sheet somewhere with snapping turtle beach times clearly marked on the schedule and this was clearly a people time - and it hissed at me too.
It was a hissing flashback! I wasn’t over reacting to the possum, it was a flashback! Even very small possums have teeth and nasty claws. And the hissing.
I had to go to work!
So, time was passing and the creature was hissing at me and I didn’t want mama possum to get me with my back turned, so I went to work. I figured if baby possum got himself in there, baby possum could get himself out. Son had claws. Far be it from me to mess with the natural order of things. And the hissing was scary.
Went to work. Worked. Worked. Worked.
Came Home. Hot, hot, hot. Whine.
The baby possum was still there . “Shit”. I said. And then I read it the riot act about sticking around. And then when it still didn’t get the message, I pulled the bin out and tipped it over. I thought “Ah Ha!” and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And called my Dad.
...Who told me to call animal control. I was afraid they would give me a ticket for knowingly leaving the baby beasty in the bin all day. I thought about lying to them and telling them that it was in fact, a three-week-old kitten. It was easier to tip the bin over and hope for the beast, best. They really do play possum. I felt totally like a not very bright predator. I also shrieked again, because it looked like I killed it. And then when it was not dead, I lectured it, it of course, pretended to die of boredom. Asshole.
It’s 104 degrees. It is very warm. It is too warm to walk the dog it is by extension, too warm to go to the park. I didn’t even have to say anything to Dogger, sh was like “You know, I understand. I think I’ll just stay splayed out on the floor here and you do whatever you need to do”. As to the splaying, I would have thought that linoleum would be cooler for doggy splaying than wood but apparently, the wood is the cooler of the two surfaces. Also, The Kitty owns the kitchen and I’m pretty sure that Dogger has just learned that the wood is the safer alternative. It’s cool because she keeps hers.
Before work this morning I wanted to get something out of my car, I didn’t get it out because I had pulled the car too far forward and so I couldn’t open the passenger door all the way. Sucks being my green tea. I was going to get my keys and reposition the car but as I was going back in the house I saw something in my recycling bin.
I screamed.
Okay, I shrieked, it was early, there was no reason to alarm the neighborhood over a rogue possum. I was horrified, and I really believe my hysterical reaction was totally valid because Oh-My-Gawd-There-Is-A-Possum-In-My-Recycling but I doubt the cops would understand. I had this meltdown because a possum the size of the three week old kitten was hissing at me. It surprised me! It could have been a rat! Or a huge spider! Or a freaky human/turtle hybrid! Did I tell you I saw a very big snapping turtle on the beach on day? It wasn’t supposed to be there. There is snapping turtle world and there is people world and I’m pretty sure that we are supposed to use the beach separately. I bet there is even a schedule sheet somewhere with snapping turtle beach times clearly marked on the schedule and this was clearly a people time - and it hissed at me too.
It was a hissing flashback! I wasn’t over reacting to the possum, it was a flashback! Even very small possums have teeth and nasty claws. And the hissing.
I had to go to work!
So, time was passing and the creature was hissing at me and I didn’t want mama possum to get me with my back turned, so I went to work. I figured if baby possum got himself in there, baby possum could get himself out. Son had claws. Far be it from me to mess with the natural order of things. And the hissing was scary.
Went to work. Worked. Worked. Worked.
Came Home. Hot, hot, hot. Whine.
The baby possum was still there . “Shit”. I said. And then I read it the riot act about sticking around. And then when it still didn’t get the message, I pulled the bin out and tipped it over. I thought “Ah Ha!” and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And called my Dad.
...Who told me to call animal control. I was afraid they would give me a ticket for knowingly leaving the baby beasty in the bin all day. I thought about lying to them and telling them that it was in fact, a three-week-old kitten. It was easier to tip the bin over and hope for the beast, best. They really do play possum. I felt totally like a not very bright predator. I also shrieked again, because it looked like I killed it. And then when it was not dead, I lectured it, it of course, pretended to die of boredom. Asshole.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
When small is not cute
There was a baby possum in my recycling bin this morning. I didn't take it out because possums are sharp and pointy and they hiss. Should I have helped him/her out of the bin, despite his/her sharpness, pointiness and hissiness? Is there going to be a posse of pissed of possums waiting for me in the pm?
There was a baby possum in my recycling bin this morning. I didn't take it out because possums are sharp and pointy and they hiss. Should I have helped him/her out of the bin, despite his/her sharpness, pointiness and hissiness? Is there going to be a posse of pissed of possums waiting for me in the pm?
Whine
It’s hot.
I’m hot.
Dogger is hot.
The Kitty is hot.
The dogs at the dog park were hot.
And so I decided to do some work outside. My Mom got me one of those tree face kit things, you know, the ones you see in catalogs? The ones that cost too much? Well, they also sell them in stores and in stores they don’t cost too much. If you buy yours at Shopko they hardly cost at all.
Before
After 
It’s hot.
I’m hot.
Dogger is hot.
The Kitty is hot.
The dogs at the dog park were hot.
And so I decided to do some work outside. My Mom got me one of those tree face kit things, you know, the ones you see in catalogs? The ones that cost too much? Well, they also sell them in stores and in stores they don’t cost too much. If you buy yours at Shopko they hardly cost at all.
Anyway
I found out that I didn’t have any nails in the house. I have a hammer the size of a three year old - I so need a super-sized hammer, I do so much home improvement. I think I bought it when I was still in an apartment. I must have had big ideas, or I watched too much Trading Places. Memories...
Anyway. Nails. I needed nails. I was on my way to Lowe's when I went by Family Dollar. I really, really, really didn’t want to drive all the way to Lowe's for a box of nails. It would be wrong. Family Dollar came through for me and they gave me a selection of different kinds of nails. Who knew? I mean, once a upon a time, I took a class called Stage Craft and I would bet I was tested on different kinds of nails but, that was years ago. I wasn’t going to need to know about nails for any reason, ever. Idiot.
I came back home. My tree is outside, inconsiderate bastard tree! Before I left I looked at my tree and decided where on my tree it needed a face. It needed a face fairly high up. I was going to need my ladder .
I got the ladder. It is hot inside too and that is with the air conditioning.
I get myself, the face, the nails, the hammer and the ladder outside and under the tree - which is still outside! The bastard! It is at this point that I notice that one of my neighbors is outside with a puppy the size of one of Doggers ears. It is tiny and I must meet it. The puppy, Furgy weighs only a little over a pound and her little legs are shorter than my fingers. I chirp at the puppy for a few minutes and then I go back to work.
The ladder isn’t going to work. The ground under the tree is uneven. I am going to have to do this myself. Did I mention that somewhere along the line I pissed off my left arm and now it hates me?
I suck at putting the face on. I use the template and I still end up with an uneven face and the template doesn’t have any instructions and the first nails I use, while long enough but not the right kind, or something, I don’t know what’s wrong but they aren’t right. I yank those out, not fun by the way - and start again. The facial features aren’t really secure. I think they are supposed to be more secure. I think I did it wrong. Are the eyes supposed to spin?
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Old, Elderly, Ancient
Do you know what is totally addictive? Pop Up Videos . Watch it through a couple of videos and try to look away. You can’t! You have to know more about the Angel is a Centerfold video! I mean, when was the last time you even thought about the J. Giles Band, much less what celebrities went to the school they used as the set for the video shoot? (e.e. cummings and the guy who played Doogie Howser's buddy on Doogie Howser, M.D). When was the last time you even heard Angel is a Centerfold? how about watched the video? years ago? and you have never thought about the video. Until you watch Pop Up Videos and then you are trapped, trapped by the trivia. If y'all have any questions about the Angel is a Centerfold video, ask away. I now hold a Angel is a Centerfold video PhD.
I also finally sat down, as I was in front of the TV anyway, and started to watch what I taped while I was away. It wasn’t much, three weeks of Rescue Me and three weeks of Monk. I didn’t take in to account at the time though, just how many hours that would be. It turns out that it is a lot a lot more than say your standard six hour video tape can handle. I really needed to go on vacation. I would also like to point out that one show is on FX and one show is on USA. There aren’t any other networks involved. And I cleared out all the shows I had set to tape. So, why is most of my tape taken up with some insipid dance show on FOX? Rupert Murdoch. violated my VCR..
Dogger and I went back to the dog park last night and nobody was there. Of course we were there at 5:00pm instead of the more popular and cooler later hours. I hate Drama Dog. I can’t wait for The Season to start up again and for Drama Dogs people too busy hefting and toting and crewing shows to spend much or any time at the park. I wish them a very profitable theatre season, because pretty soon the only time to be at the park is going to be from five to five-fifteen and I don’t want to have to stress about whether or not Drama and Dogger are going to tear each others throats out in the few minutes of leash-less freedom they have.
I’m still thinking about Pop Up Videos. Did y'all know that VH1 is still on? I had no idea. In fact I was watching VH1- Classics, but isn’t “classics” kind of what VH1 did anyway? I watched a Men at Work video I hadn’t thought about since it came out, in 1983!. I was shocked to realize that I actually remembered what the album cover looked like because I remembered that freshmen year of High School, Merrill Ashley won a copy of it for being rilly spirited or showing up every day or whatever and the teacher made him hold it up for the class to see. I think we were in English together, or history. I am old, very, very old.
Do you know what is totally addictive? Pop Up Videos . Watch it through a couple of videos and try to look away. You can’t! You have to know more about the Angel is a Centerfold video! I mean, when was the last time you even thought about the J. Giles Band, much less what celebrities went to the school they used as the set for the video shoot? (e.e. cummings and the guy who played Doogie Howser's buddy on Doogie Howser, M.D). When was the last time you even heard Angel is a Centerfold? how about watched the video? years ago? and you have never thought about the video. Until you watch Pop Up Videos and then you are trapped, trapped by the trivia. If y'all have any questions about the Angel is a Centerfold video, ask away. I now hold a Angel is a Centerfold video PhD.
I also finally sat down, as I was in front of the TV anyway, and started to watch what I taped while I was away. It wasn’t much, three weeks of Rescue Me and three weeks of Monk. I didn’t take in to account at the time though, just how many hours that would be. It turns out that it is a lot a lot more than say your standard six hour video tape can handle. I really needed to go on vacation. I would also like to point out that one show is on FX and one show is on USA. There aren’t any other networks involved. And I cleared out all the shows I had set to tape. So, why is most of my tape taken up with some insipid dance show on FOX? Rupert Murdoch. violated my VCR..
Dogger and I went back to the dog park last night and nobody was there. Of course we were there at 5:00pm instead of the more popular and cooler later hours. I hate Drama Dog. I can’t wait for The Season to start up again and for Drama Dogs people too busy hefting and toting and crewing shows to spend much or any time at the park. I wish them a very profitable theatre season, because pretty soon the only time to be at the park is going to be from five to five-fifteen and I don’t want to have to stress about whether or not Drama and Dogger are going to tear each others throats out in the few minutes of leash-less freedom they have.
I’m still thinking about Pop Up Videos. Did y'all know that VH1 is still on? I had no idea. In fact I was watching VH1- Classics, but isn’t “classics” kind of what VH1 did anyway? I watched a Men at Work video I hadn’t thought about since it came out, in 1983!. I was shocked to realize that I actually remembered what the album cover looked like because I remembered that freshmen year of High School, Merrill Ashley won a copy of it for being rilly spirited or showing up every day or whatever and the teacher made him hold it up for the class to see. I think we were in English together, or history. I am old, very, very old.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Tap, Tap, Tap
We've been in this building for five weeks and we still do not have our candy machine! Gawd, and now also pissing me off? It is getting really, really, hot in the building. I'm getting bad, old building flashbacks. So, no candy machines and it's hot. And so far? No Popsicles! What kind of place is this?
We've been in this building for five weeks and we still do not have our candy machine! Gawd, and now also pissing me off? It is getting really, really, hot in the building. I'm getting bad, old building flashbacks. So, no candy machines and it's hot. And so far? No Popsicles! What kind of place is this?
BeepBeepBeep Damn.
I haven’t been at the mercy of an alarm in three weeks, well, there was that wake up call at the hotel but it didn’t mean that I had to wake up right then. I haven’t as much as looked at a clock out of anything more then mild curiosity in almost a month. Do you know how nice it is to not care about what time it is? To have it not matter? I mean, the luxury of getting up whenever you wake up and going to sleep whenever you go to sleep? BeepBeepBeep . Damn.
The one upside to being back is the promise of air-conditioning. It was as least as hot up there last week as it is here this week but here we have air-conditioning. I took Dogger on our first walk Monday night. It was hot. Shockingly. Dogger didn’t even want to go for a walk, she lay down in the drive way and started to sing We shall overcome. She even had the sway down. Sadly for her, I overcame her and we walked.
I knew I was on vacation, the people at work knew, the paperboy knew, the neighbors knew, but surprisingly my creditors did not. They insisted on sending me bills! Lots and lots of bills. A few of them due, hahaha, today. So I needed to go to the mail boxes, sooner rather than later. So at 5:30 (I’m all ready all about clocks and time ) Dogger and set out for the post office, the last pick up is 6pm. We speak to a guy sitting on a porch, we talk about the heat. We’re both hot.
We got there and safety mailed everything, we even chatted with the post guy standing outside collecting the last minute drop offs. We agreed it was hot.
We are almost home.
A nice, older man sitting in a truck (with the engine running) asks me about Dogger. Everyone asks me about Dogger. And usually, I am more than happy to talk about her. But it was hot. The man wanted to know if I had heard about the dog mauling out in California. Sadly, I said I had. He said he had a heard about the same thing back in the forties, except it was a woman and she was mauled by her Dobermans. He said they were nice dogs too. I said “Well, they were still dogs”. And then he told me about how his retriever lived for nineteen years! 19 years! A retriever, a big dog. And said that was a wonderful thing. I should also point out that it was very hot and I was now standing still in the very hot. The man had his trucks a/c going, he was in no hurry. He was enjoying himself.
And I was too, I mean, really, a nice conversation is a nice thing. But. He went on and on about his daughters dog and what a nice little dog it was and he had just finished babysitting it for an extended time. He loves that little dog. He said “People without pets don’t understand this, we don’t spoil them, they spoil us. And that is about the sweetest thing I have ever heard.
And sweat is flowing down my face and getting in my eyes and every time I wipe it away it comes right back and I am trying to be polite because he is being so sweet and he’s so obviously happy to be talking dogs with a fellow dog lover and the man goes on to say how he would never have stopped me if it wasn’t for Dogger and do not pet owners have this thing in common... and I say we do, we really do and he’s so nice and... I finally break away, after agreeing pet owners have this bond and while, yes, it was lovely to speak to him and all, but the whole time he had his a/c blowing and I’m standing there dieing.
So, onto the Photobloggingarama!!
I haven’t been at the mercy of an alarm in three weeks, well, there was that wake up call at the hotel but it didn’t mean that I had to wake up right then. I haven’t as much as looked at a clock out of anything more then mild curiosity in almost a month. Do you know how nice it is to not care about what time it is? To have it not matter? I mean, the luxury of getting up whenever you wake up and going to sleep whenever you go to sleep? BeepBeepBeep . Damn.
The one upside to being back is the promise of air-conditioning. It was as least as hot up there last week as it is here this week but here we have air-conditioning. I took Dogger on our first walk Monday night. It was hot. Shockingly. Dogger didn’t even want to go for a walk, she lay down in the drive way and started to sing We shall overcome. She even had the sway down. Sadly for her, I overcame her and we walked.
I knew I was on vacation, the people at work knew, the paperboy knew, the neighbors knew, but surprisingly my creditors did not. They insisted on sending me bills! Lots and lots of bills. A few of them due, hahaha, today. So I needed to go to the mail boxes, sooner rather than later. So at 5:30 (I’m all ready all about clocks and time ) Dogger and set out for the post office, the last pick up is 6pm. We speak to a guy sitting on a porch, we talk about the heat. We’re both hot.
We got there and safety mailed everything, we even chatted with the post guy standing outside collecting the last minute drop offs. We agreed it was hot.
We are almost home.
A nice, older man sitting in a truck (with the engine running) asks me about Dogger. Everyone asks me about Dogger. And usually, I am more than happy to talk about her. But it was hot. The man wanted to know if I had heard about the dog mauling out in California. Sadly, I said I had. He said he had a heard about the same thing back in the forties, except it was a woman and she was mauled by her Dobermans. He said they were nice dogs too. I said “Well, they were still dogs”. And then he told me about how his retriever lived for nineteen years! 19 years! A retriever, a big dog. And said that was a wonderful thing. I should also point out that it was very hot and I was now standing still in the very hot. The man had his trucks a/c going, he was in no hurry. He was enjoying himself.
And I was too, I mean, really, a nice conversation is a nice thing. But. He went on and on about his daughters dog and what a nice little dog it was and he had just finished babysitting it for an extended time. He loves that little dog. He said “People without pets don’t understand this, we don’t spoil them, they spoil us. And that is about the sweetest thing I have ever heard.
And sweat is flowing down my face and getting in my eyes and every time I wipe it away it comes right back and I am trying to be polite because he is being so sweet and he’s so obviously happy to be talking dogs with a fellow dog lover and the man goes on to say how he would never have stopped me if it wasn’t for Dogger and do not pet owners have this thing in common... and I say we do, we really do and he’s so nice and... I finally break away, after agreeing pet owners have this bond and while, yes, it was lovely to speak to him and all, but the whole time he had his a/c blowing and I’m standing there dieing.
So, onto the Photobloggingarama!!
Monday, August 6, 2007
Hey!!
And then it got hot again... I mean, like really, really hot. But, I'm back!! Kind of, in that "Just-back-from-vacation-gawd-I-am-sooo-tired-and-I-sooo-much-to-get-done-and-where-are-my-shoes?" way but Wow, Tuesday, boy howdy! I see photobloggingarama! Let me tell you something about Marquette you may not know, that does not photograph as well as the local flora: You can go buy Vodka at the grocery store, they have beer and wine too, but I was floored to see the hard stuff there too.
And then it got hot again... I mean, like really, really hot. But, I'm back!! Kind of, in that "Just-back-from-vacation-gawd-I-am-sooo-tired-and-I-sooo-much-to-get-done-and-where-are-my-shoes?" way but Wow, Tuesday, boy howdy! I see photobloggingarama! Let me tell you something about Marquette you may not know, that does not photograph as well as the local flora: You can go buy Vodka at the grocery store, they have beer and wine too, but I was floored to see the hard stuff there too.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
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