Scenes from a morning

Once in a while Casey choose to reassert her Alpha Dog status. It normally takes the form of toy comandeering.

I don't really like toys, she says, but I think I shall take yours. Because I can.



Sorry for the poor quality - you know how she is about the camera.

Jack eventually gave up hope that she'd let him have Good Cuz, and wandered off with Sparky to look for birds that needed barking at.



Sparky does not walk in grass anymore - he uses the blocks around the pool as his Yorkie Highway. Wouldn't want his little feet to get wet, I suppose.

See the broken blocks under Jack? If I can get Mr. Abby usefully doing something major and vertical and manly and power-tool intensive this weekend, I have plan for fixing the blocks. We shall see.

warding off total household destruction

Jack will, we've found, destory the entire house if he gets bored and has energy to spare.

Since I'm the one who has the leisurely mornings around here, I try to find ways to prevent that. Best solution - take him on a morning run. I go 2.5-3.5, which seems to wear him out pretty well.

The only problems with that are:
A) I don't run every day.
B) He sucks as a running partner.

My idea of a quality morning run does not involve taking off, sprinting like a bat out of Hell for three quarters of a mile, dashing off the path to bark at other dogs in their backyards, then walking slowly home. So running with Jack is...a lot of work.

This morning was a no-run day (lazy and creaky - a wonderful combo). So it was a pool-retrieves and football-chase morning.

After several throws it finally dawned on me - I really wish I could throw a football. I'm fully capable with baseballs and softballs and all that, but there was never any reason for me to learn to throw a football. So I can't. And I look stupid trying.

More about these foul canines

In the comments below (for the "I hate my dogs" post), Angus Lincoln brought up that beautiful music that is middle-of-the-night-I'm-feelin'-sick sounds.

Yeah - that's a fun one. And he's further right when he points out they can never vomit on anything but carpet.

We bought this house because it has exactly zero square feet of carpet. Nada. None. Zilch. Tile throughout, and hardwood laminate in the entry. But you can't exist totally without carpet; if nothing else, you've got to have entry rugs.

And where do the Bad Dogs puke?

Oh yes, on the freakin' doorway mats. Let me tell you, nothing says "welcome!" like putting your bare foot in yakked-up grass and bile as you wander out of the bedroom in the morning. And that stuff does not wash out of carpet easily.

But cleaning up dog puke isn't always a big deal. Particularly when it's yakked-up dog food.

You hard-core dog people know where I'm going with this, right?

I was hanging out at the Florida house last summer with Girl Child. Casey started making that fabulous sound in the kitchen (over the tile, having somehow missed the rug). She proceeded to launch most of her Dog Supper, which she'd just consumed in about 35 seconds.

Girl child looked at me, horrified. We'd just finished cleaning the floors. I looked back at her.

"Let's go out the front door and I'll have a smoke," I said.

She looked at me - weren't we going to clean up that big, nasty pile of dog yak?

We walked outside, I smoked. About five minutes later, when we went back in, Casey was wandering out of the kitchen licking her chops. As for the puke - a quick spritz of the licked-clean tile with some bleach-based cleaner and a quick swipe of a paper towel rendered it sterile.

Alas, only Casey helps out in this department. The other two just puke and stand there staring at me until I clean it up. That, I tell them, is the real reason I love her best.

Some folks

have all the luck. You read about them once in a while - bought a house, found some cool antique firearm in the attic. Bought property, there was some cherry old muscle car in the barn. Bought a car, found a couple kilos of really good cocaine in the trunk...okay, maybe not that last one so much.

I never find anything. And I always thought that was a bummer.

Until I had cause to remember that not all surprises are happy ones. Today we have: Man Discovers Severed Leg in Smoker Bought at North Carolina Auction

[mother of the leg's original owner] Peg Steele, explained her son had his leg amputated after a plane crash and kept the leg following the surgery "for religious reasons" she doesn't know much about.

I'm really not aware of the set of religious beliefs that require keeping severed limbs and storing them in slightly-useful cooking appliances. Then again, there are a lot of thing I don't know.

"The rest of the family was very much against it," Steele said.

The rest of the family knew? What did they do, sit around at Thanksgiving and, as this mother griped about the fact that her daughter was a few pounds overweight and didn't dress in a manner that would lend itself to landing her a doctor husband, dread the segue to Aunt Peg's Lecture On Why Keeping Your Severed Limbs Is Tacky?

Big weird world out there, folks.

Killin' time

here tonight by dying my hair red(dish). Oddly, we seem to currently be without a hair dryer, so there's no clue yet exactly what this is going to look like.

The Mister currently walks by and peers at my head.

"Still to wet to tell," I say.

"Huh," says he. "Wonder if it'll be bright red or what."

"I have no idea."

Oh, the excitement. There are just only so many times you can clean your guns before you have to do something else.

I hate my dogs

Around 0415, something didn't sound right, and my eyes opened. I listened - Jack was up to something, pawing around under the bed.

The pawing stopped, and the ripping began. Yes - ripping. I lay there, semi-asleep, listening and trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

Aha, I realized. He was shredding a book - probably P.J. O' Rourke's All the Trouble in the World, which I'd left on the window ledge.

This book eating has become a bit of a hobby for him lately. There are a lot of books around here, and I can't put them all out of reach. So it's now classified as a smackin' offense.

I lay still, and thought. Riiiiiip....riiiiip....riiiiiiiip....

A smackin' only works if one catches the culprit in the act, so I coiled (as much as one can when in bed and sleepy). I gathered myself, and launched over the edge of the bed, with a loud "no! bad!" and a wild right hook, flailing to make contact.

Did I point out that Mr. Abby's side of the bed is between my side and Jack's bed?

In my glee at finally catching Jack in the book-eating act, I'd forgotten there was someone sleeping in my planned assault route.

Poor man woke up to me landing on him, shouting, "No! Bad!," and punching wildly over the side of the bed. He seemed just a wee bit startled.

"What are you doing?" he groaned.

"Jack was eating a book."

He sighed. Reached over the side of the bed and grabbed the book, whomped Jack on the head with it. Jack, of course, being mostly Lab, doesn't seem to mind be being whomped in the middle of the night, and mostly thought we were all going to be awake and play.

At the bottom of the bed, Sparky was awake enough to want to move, and I heard Casey get up from her bed (on my side), and wander into the bathroom for some toilet water.

"Please," the Mister begged. "Would you all just be quiet and go back to sleep?"

So we did, until 0510, when they realized we hadn't latched the bedroom door, and began racing in and out through the dog door to enjoy the early morning sprinkler cycle in the back yard.

If you have to let an SOB in your house...

you may as well call him what he is.

Point to Columbia University president Lee Bollinger, who did a very respectable job of calling an evil bastard an evil bastard when, for some reason, said evil bastard was speaking at Bollinger's university.

"I am only a professor who is also a university president, and today I feel the weight of all the civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad. "I only wish I could do better."

The video is pretty good. I did especially like the CNN intro, where they soundbited (soundbit?)one of anti-Ahmadinejad protestors who pointed out, in true protestor fashion, that Ahmadinejad's positions constituted "hate speech."

Well, there you go. We can put up with an awful lot, Mr. Evil Iranian President, but hate speech is simply not tolerated at Columbia.

Reason #396...

we should terminate the lease on the U.N. building and offer them equivalent square footage on Johnston Atoll or something: Ahmadinejad eager to teach Americans about world

Apparently, since the U.N is in New York, we have to allow this jackal into our country. Instead of shooting him at the border, which strikes me as a much better idea, and possibly an approach that would save both Iranian and American lives in the long run.

His request to lay a wreath at ground zero, site of the World Trade Center 2001 terror attacks, was denied by city officials and condemned by politicians.

Ya think? Good lord.

But, lest we think that our country can cling to enough of shreds of sanity to deny this...wannabe architect of death and destruction...a publicity opportunity...

It's not Ground Zero, but it seems that Columbia University, doubtlessly striving for the Gold Medal For Openmindedness (or Emptyheadedness), will offer Ahmadinejad a platform.

He is also set to speak at a Columbia University question-and-answer forum Monday in New York.

Sometimes you can look at a situation, and tell that it will not look good in hindsight. I have afeeling that five or ten years from now, we will not be able to believe we let this creature set foot on our shore.

Hope I'm wrong.