Category Archives: Dogs

February 7, 2014 · 21:55

A Canine’s Lament

Jessie here. Hello! I’m a dog!

The Male Food Provider is busy ravaging and pillaging the work that I’ve slaved over all week. Again. He has become the Destroyer of Worlds. Again. Since he feels obligated to steal what’s precious to me, I’ll do the same to him. Today his blog is mine!

Let’s talk about this horror, this abomination, this callous injustice.

It happens a couple of times a week. Once again I have it rubbed into my face that my efforts to create art and try to find a meaning to my canine existence are considered to be futile and worthless. You all think that it’s just sleep, eat, sleep, eat, lick my but, sleep, and eat. You couldn’t be more wrong.

I spend all week carefully putting poop all over the yard in just the right places. I judge the ever changing feng shui of the yard, then carefully find just the right location, making allowances for volume, odor, texture, and color. Let’s see you try to deal with the pressures associated with that kind of responsibility. It’s exhausting! That’s why I need so much sleep, obviously.

Moreover, I have to perform under incredible time pressures, with an audience. “Come on, find a spot!” he says. “It’s not getting any warmer out here!” he shouts. “Leave that skunk alone!” Okay, that last one probably is good advice, but as for the rest of it? How can I be expected to do my best work without a thorough examination of the yard first? Squirrel??!! Oh, and what’s up with the staring and chaperoning? Has he got some kind of sick fetish that we need to talk about? Do I watch you when you poop? Of course not. So why can’t I get the same courtesy?

Then the ultimate insult. Just when I’m starting to make some progress and the yard isn’t the laughingstock of the neighborhood, out comes the shovel and the little plastic bag. In just minutes, days of work can be wiped out.

I don’t know what to do about this. I’ve tried and tried to communicate, but apparently the Male Food Provider is deaf as a post, and not too bright to boot. How can I get it across to him that the poop needs to stay right where I put it? How can he be made to understand that his efforts at “cleaning” are nothing more than sadly misguided vandalism, the equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria?

Good thing that he has that whole closet full of food. Otherwise he would have no known purpose at all. I don’t see how the Wonderful Woman Food Provider puts up with him.

The cat poops in his shoes. Maybe I should try that.

Any suggestions?

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Filed under Dogs, Farce

January 27, 2014 · 21:28

Mephitidae

They dig up the yard looking for grubs. I can live with that.

They apparently live in the bushes in back of our neighbor’s yard, although we see them now and then. Not a huge problem in and of itself.

Carnivora Caniformia. It’s all Greek to me. (Well, okay, Latin…)

In colder climes they get dormant in the winter. Here they don’t recognize our January weather as actually fitting the standard definition of “winter”, so they stay active year ’round.

Sometimes they’ll get into someone’s trash. We keep our trash can lids closed tight.

You can call the city or county until the cows come home, they won’t or can’t do anything about them. Some exterminators will trap them if they’re living under your house, but they’re required by law to let them go within a short distance of where they were trapped.

Some folks domesticate them. Some folks need to have their freakin’ heads examined.

The dog is completely freaked by them, and vice versa. We share in paying the price for that.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Their odor can be detected by humans well over a mile away. I don’t know how many there are living within a mile of here, but I think it’s a sucker bet that you can’t count them on one hand, and you might need your toes.

They’re a little bit blind so they get run over and everything stinks for a week. We hate it when that happens. (Sing along with me!)

Now, someone or someone’s dog (not ours, this time) has spooked one of them three times in the past five nights. It’s to to be happening someplace close because the odor’s so strong it’s eye-watering.

We would like to adopt a “live and let live” attitude, but living with skunks in the neighborhood is a pain!

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Filed under Critters, Dogs

January 22, 2014 · 21:45

What’s Gotten Into Jessie?

Besides a lot of cat food, that is.

Jessie the puppy and Joey the kitten came into the household at about the same time about thirteen years ago. We already had an older dog (Lucky) and an older cat (Oreo), and while Oreo and Joey simply tolerated each other, Lucky and Jessie were tight. Lucky became Jessie’s surrogate mom.

The Lucky Puppy was a hoot, a great dog. We got her as a rescue soon after the kids and I started doing the one-parent household thing. She was red-tagged at the pound, meaning that it was her last day if she didn’t get picked by someone. She was a big, lovable galoot of a black lab. She immediately figured out what was going on in the house and decided that she would be the kids’ protector. No one was ever going to give “her kids” any grief, even if it was me just goofing off or playing around.

The Lucky Puppy was a fool for getting into the trash and swiping food wherever she could get it. We would find her with her head in the trash, again, and she knew that she was in trouble, she knew that she shouldn’t be doing it, she just didn’t know how to stop herself.

That was never a habit Jessie picked up from Lucky. Jessie’s always been very good about staying out of the trash and not taking food off of a plate or table if it got left behind.

Mind you, Jessie will sit there and look at you while you eat with an expression that tells you that she’s at death’s door from starvation, but she just wants you to be happy eating all of that food while she watches and hopes and prays for the smallest morsel that might keep her from fainting dead away. It’s safe to say that this has worked for her only on days that end in “Y” – she might be the most spoiled dog on the planet when it comes to food, a fact that The Long-Suffering Wife is quite proud of.

In the last year or so we’ve caught Jessie eating Joey’s dry cat food a few times. We keep two types of dry food out for Joey. Jessie won’t touch one of them, but the other one she loves and will wolf it down and clean the bowl if given the chance. We try to remember to put Joey’s dish up on the table or counter if we’re leaving Jessie in the house for a while, since the cat food is much too rich for her and does nasty things to her GI tract.

Now a new behavior from Jessie has been discovered.

Joey gets her “wet” food in the evening, and she’ll normally eat a third of it or so, then eat more a couple of hours later, then nibble on it as she wants, so that by the next morning it’s about 90% gone and by noon or so the next day it’s about 99% gone. All of a sudden in the last couple of weeks, almost every morning her dish is spotless, not even a trace of fumes left in it. I (foolishly) figured that she was really liking the current kind of cat food she was getting. I should have recognized the signs, but I didn’t.

Until last night, when I heard a slurping sound that I thought was Jessie “grooming herself” ,i.e., licking her ass. That’s not unusual, but what was unusual was Joey (who was on my lap) getting very upset by the sound. I looked around to see where Jessie was, and found her at Joey’s bowl, frantically licking the bowl clean and eating the remaining 2/3 or so of Joey’s dinner. Of course, as soon as she saw me she took off with her tail between her legs to go sit at The Long-Suffering Wife’s feet. She thinks I won’t scold her there.

I kept telling her to come with me back into the other room, but she knew that she was in trouble and she wasn’t moving. When I brought the cat food bowl in to put down in front of her, she did the classic ears-back-tail-between-the-legs-belly-on-the-floor shuffle off into the corner, where she sat with her back to me because if she couldn’t see me than I couldn’t see her.

Tonight, now aware of the issue, I kept an eye on her as we watched “Jeopardy”. Sure enough, as soon as we were distracted, she quietly and discreetly started moseying toward the other room where Joey’s dish was. When I hollered at her, she came back into the living room, but only just barely, and as soon as she thought I wasn’t looking, she was headed that way again.

Again I yelled for her to stop, so this time she went off to somewhere I couldn’t see her, waiting for her chance to move again.

Do dogs get senile? She’s not being starved to death by any means and she’s never displayed this behavior before. Is this the equivalent of the 80-year-old who starts robbing banks just because he’s bored and needs attention?

What’s gotten into her?

More importantly, how do we stop it? I don’t want to be the household pet food police for the next few years.

Wacky dog!

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Filed under Cats, Dogs, Family

January 19, 2014 · 21:18

Nothing Remarkable Happened Today

It was just a normal Sunday at Castle Willett. We slept in, went out to breakfast, did our grocery shopping. A friend from high school had a birthday. (Hi, Diane!) I took down the rest of the Christmas lights, I didn’t fall off of any ladders or drop any hammers on my head, we watched some football. My son called from Germany, my daughter called from Sacramento, I wrote a little bit. The cat broke something, the dog was a good girl when other dogs came by our yard. No one died, no one went to the hospital, it was not in any way a red-letter day for any of us.

That was my initial perspective, and it is 100% valid and accurate.

Then I started thinking about what my grandfather, when he was the same age as I am now, might think of everything I did today. (We’re talking mid 1940’s on a farm in South Dakota.) About the only thing he would recognize would be the bacon and eggs, the cat, and the dog.

The digital alarm clock? His probably got wound up by hand.

The HD flatscreen television? I’ll bet that he didn’t have a television in the 1940’s, and the big thing in the 1960’s when he died was color TV.

The iPhone and iPad on my bed stand? I doubt that he had a phone in the 1940’s. I’m not 100% sure they had electricity by that point. Even if he did, then you’ve got that whole comparison of a 1940’s  rotary dial phone with a world-class computer that just also happens to convey phone calls.

Our car, the convertible with the big engine? OK, so the 1940’s Indy cars might or might not have had more horsepower (pole position was won with a speed of 126mph and I’m pretty sure our car could do that on a track), but any car my grandfather ever drove in his life most certainly didn’t. His tractor didn’t have a roof other than his hat, does that count as a convertible?

The 737’s going over our house into Burbank and the 747’s and 777’s going over our house out of LAX toward Asia? Sixteen hours non-stop is a long haul from LAX to Tokyo (been there, done that), but compare that to sixteen hours (with three refueling stops) to get from Los Angeles to New York on a DC-3. As for how commonplace air travel is today, I’m not sure my grandfather ever flew in a plane, ever.

The computers that I’ve used all day to write, do accounting, surf the Internet, read online newspapers? They weren’t even a theoretical dream to anyone on the planet in the mid 1940’s.

If we went to see a movie today, it would be wall-to-wall digital effects to make anything utterly believable, as well as on a huge screen, with flawless projection and eight-channel high quality sound. In the 1940’s, the big, new technological breakthroughs in film were color and stereo.

The ISS went overhead today with six men on board, a vessel that has allowed us to have a continuous human presence off-planet for over thirteen years. The moon’s just rising now, and there are six manned landing sites and twelve sets of boot prints in the dust. We’re driving two separate vehicles on Mars (one of them over ten years old), we have spacecraft currently orbiting Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, we’ve done long duration missions to Jupiter, we’ve swung by Neptune and Uranus, we’re currently on the way to Pluto, and we have spacecraft that have left the freaking solar system and are now in interplanetary space. In the mid 1940’s, only Wernher von Braun and a few of his friends that that his would ever happen.

I’m listening to music from satellite radio and watching live tennis from the Australian Open. Our car radio has dozens of AM stations (all talk and news), several dozen FM stations, or we could plug in our iPods or iPhones. He had a radio the size of my desk with maybe three or four stations he could get during the day, maybe a couple dozen at night. It would have been a big deal to hear something live such as a presidential speech from Washington or war news from Europe.

That was my more introspective perspective, and it also is 100% valid and accurate.

It’s all a matter of perspective, which we forget all too often. “Nothing remarkable happened today” — when you compare today to yesterday. “Mind blown, gobsmacked, and miracles everywhere” — when you compare today to just fifty or sixty years ago, well within a normal lifespan.

Maybe something remarkable did happen today.

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Filed under Castle Willett, Cats, Computers, Dogs, Entertainment, Space, Travel

January 15, 2014 · 22:11

Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Wednesday, January 15th

‘Cause I’ve been laughing so hard I might have broken an internal organ or two, that’s why.

  • This is what damn near killed me tonight. I’ll entertain the idea that I’ve been dealing with some stress and pressure to the point where I was ready to pop like a balloon — this was the pointy thing that burst the bubble. Whatever. I still haven’t been able to read more than the first five or six comments without getting to the point where I can’t breathe and the dog’s whining because she thinks I’m dying.
  • There’s a very fine line between a cat trying to cuddle with you and a cat trying to see how much they can piss you off.
  • To Donald Trump and all of the other troglodytes who think that climate change is a hoax because they’re having winter, I would note that California’s in its worst drought on record and it was 95° F this afternoon in Orange County at 13:15.
  • At what point does being creative and purposefully “thinking outside the box” cross over into desperation and panic?
  • I actually had to use a trig function in a calculation for yesterday’s blog article. I’m still amazed that I remembered how to do it. (Shut up, Bob!)
  • It sucks when the dog gets old enough so she can’t jump up on the bed and instead just looks over the edge of it with those sad, brown eyes. “Anthropomorphism” my ass, you know that she remembers being able to jump up there, wants up there now, and knows that she can’t make it.
  • Whoa! Wide dynamic range of emotions there tonight, from laughing myself nearly into unconsciousness to sad, old dog eyes. As a pilot, you want to avoid those kinds of oscillations, they can lead to a loss of control. Which suddenly has a whole new meaning…
  • Tomorrow morning the nominations are announced for the Academy Awards and for us the scramble starts. How many of the nominated films for the “Big Five” categories (actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, best film) can we see before awards night? That way we can have informed and knowledgeable completely useless opinions instead of our usual ignorance-based useless opinions.
  • How do they determine who the weakest link is in a “prayer chain”? Is it based on the honor system, does God rat you out, or do we just check with the NSA?
  • And to think, I get paid for writing this nonsense!
  • Wait, what?

Remember to floss. At a bare minimum, do it when you’re changing the batteries on the smoke detectors on the day when we “spring forward” or “fall back” into or out of Daylight Saving Time.

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Filed under Cats, Death Of Common Sense, Dogs, Flying, Juicy Chunks, Movies

January 9, 2014 · 20:55

What Does The Dog Want?

We all love our pets, but face it, all of our assumptions about what’s going on in those noggins is as anthropomorphic as hell. And “assumptions” is the correct word, because even on the “easy ones”, we could be wrong.

For example, when the cat crawls into your lap, starts purring, and starts nudging and nuzzling your hand, our assumption is that the can wants to be scratched, stroked, and petted. But how do we know that the real goal isn’t really to get between us and our keyboards?

When it’s 6:00 and the dog is running around your feet and whining, we assume that she wants to remind us that it’s dinner time. Sure, when we feed them (because they’ve trained us to do that when they act like that) that’s great, they’ll take it (dogs never, ever turn down food), but what if they really are trying to get us to open that cupboard where the food’s kept just to check and see what’s in there?

When the dog’s scratching at the door, dancing, whining, and crossing his legs, we assume that they want to go out and pee. But what if they’ve really got a “Dancing With The Dogs” practice scheduled and they don’t want to be late?

And those are the “easy ones”!

What does it mean when the dog has had dinner, has had “dessert”, has had treats, has been out in the front yard (twice), has been out in the back yard (three times), has fresh water (two bowls at different ends of the house, heaven forbid she should have to walk that far if she’s parched), has dry food, and still is up in your face every five minutes whining? We have no clue.

We’ve tried to get her to “use her words”, but that’s not going all that well. I’m sure it’s our fault, not hers.

In “Up” they had that great device by a mad scientist (see, someone’s working on these things!) which allowed the dogs to communicate with humans. (“Squirrel!”) Why can’t we have one of those in real life? (“Only available in this TV offer, but wait, there’s more! Order now and we’ll send you a second Petalk Helmet for your other dog, you just pay additional shipping and handling.”)

What would happen if such devices existed? Would you need different models for dogs and cats? It seems obvious to me that you would, but I’m not the mad scientist here. (I’m just a little angry.)

Better yet, what kind of output would you get if you put a cat-to-human communication helmet on a dog, or vice versa? That’s a show I would pay to see! Extra points to whoever invents the dog-to-cat communication helmet. Or dog-to-squirrel. Wait, that’s probably why they had “Universal Translators” in Star Trek.

But in the bigger picture, if we have so many problems with the details in communicating with creatures that share 90% of our DNA and have evolved along side us for hundreds of millions of years, how will we ever communicate with an alien species if they land their UFO’s on the White House lawn?

Maybe they’ll already have invented human-to-alien communication helmets for them to use with us. Will they wear the helmet, in order to utilize their far superior intellectual (or telepathic) abilities? Or will they make us wear the helmet so that they can avoid undue strain on their necks? (I’m assuming, of course, that alien UFO’s don’t come with chiropractors in their crews.)

Will they naturally gravitate to football players to communicate with because they’re already wearing helmets? If they’re looking at old television footage due to the limitations imposed by the speed of light, will they think that Terry Bradshaw or Joe Montana is our leader? (Are we doomed?)

Or will they show up and have communication helmets for only the dogs or the cats? If they have aliens-to-dogs helmets, the cats will be even more pissed off than humans will be. (If you have a cat, you’ll understand.) Humans will probably get nice chewy treats for taking care of the dogs. If they have aliens-to-cats helmets, well, it’s obvious that we’re all pretty much screwed.

Unless we take the alien-to-cat communication helmets and put them on a dog! That should mess up those alien brains, sort of like what Jeff Goldblum did in “Independence Day”.

Y’all think that over and let me know your thoughts (via comments, not author-to-reader communication helmet).

I’ve got to go take the dog outside. For the tenth freakin’ time tonight.

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Filed under Cats, Dogs, Farce, Science Fiction

December 23, 2013 · 21:59

Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Monday, December 23rd

‘Cause I’ve been putting up more lights all day and I’m sore, that’s why.

  • Nope, still can’t remember that really, really wise and juicy chunk o’ wisdom that I forgot in the middle of writing the post on December 9th. IT’S HAUNTING ME!
  • Um, yeah. Yesterday was Sunday the 22nd, not Sunday the 21st. It’s so tough getting good help.
  • Does anybody like the “Cherrios dust” that fills the bottom of the bag when all of the Cheerios are gone? That stuff is nasty!
  • It’s one of those times of the year when the International Space Station is making lots of very bright evening passes. Here in Los Angeles we have excellent passes on Friday, the 27th, at 18:34 and on Saturday, the 28th, at 17:45. (At least I believe those are the correct days of the week and dates of the month – you might want to double check that.)
  • I have started using Google Calendar a lot and for the most part I like it. But… Is there a way to “copy” or “clone” an appointment? By that I mean, can I pick an existing appointment, “copy” it, then go to another day and “paste” it with just the date changing? I know that there’s a way to set up repeating events (for example, a meeting every Monday at 9:00), but what I want to do is take a meeting or event that happens at irregular times (Tuesday at 16:00 one week, Thursday at 10:00 the next, and so on) and cut and paste, then just update the details that are different. Can this really be that hard?
  • If you’re off work tomorrow morning and your Christmas shopping is all done, tune into NASA-TV to watch the ISS spacewalk. I could watch that all day!
  • That tiny nihilist in me finds it so amusing to see staid news organizations like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal with headlines about the Russian punk band, “Pussy Riot”. I listen to punk, I’m about 99.9999999% sure that they’re not referring to cats.
  • I get that there’s this whole meme about cats and how they dance across your computer keyboard and keep you from working and they’re supposed to be more “cute” than annoying. Sorry, I’m going to stick with annoying, as in, EXTREMELY. Cute will only take you so far, especially when I’m on a deadline.
  • If anyone just won the lottery and is looking for the perfect last-minute present for me, I would refer you to this article from a few days ago. Thanks in advance! (Hey, if you don’t ask, you can’t be told to take a hike!)
  • Tough to decide which is cuter, snoring cats or dogs twitching and “woofing in their sleep” while having a doggie dream.

Remember, if someone gives you a holiday greeting, take it in the spirit in which it was given, even if it’s not the holiday greeting YOU use. If you greet people with “Merry Christmas!” and someone says “Happy Holidays!”, it’s not the time or place for a rant about some imaginary “war on Christmas” that Faux News dreamed up. If you’re Jewish and someone says “Merry Christmas!”, it’s not the time to start a holy war. If you burned candles on the solstice but someone says “Happy Chaunakah!”, say “Mazel Tov!” and smile. Let’s be nice to one another out there, folks!

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Filed under Cats, Computers, Dogs, Juicy Chunks, Space

December 1, 2013 · 21:41

Anything For Treats (But I Won’t Do That)

The first single off of Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell album was “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)“. (Of course, you knew that.)

That’s what I was thinking when I saw Jessie’s expression with the reindeer antlers on. She really doesn’t like them, so we had them on just long enough to try to take a couple of pictures.

Rudolph Jessie (cropped)

It’s very odd to not have a (self-imposed) requirement to complete and post a thousand words or three. Not that I’m bored – there’s a month’s worth of other tasks to get caught up on, things that got pushed onto the back burners but can’t stay that way indefinitely.

What’s the post-NaNoWriMo equivalent of postpartum depression? I kept making those analogies between running a marathon and NaNoWriMo – should I be wrapping myself in mylar now, eating bananas and pretzels, and drinking lots of Gatorade?

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Filed under Dogs, Writing

October 25, 2013 · 19:38

Juicy Chunks O’ Wisdom For Friday, October 25th

‘Cause Fridays used to be better, that’s why.

  • What is it about this time of month? (Just realized a possible answer as I used that turn of phrase…) I noticed that the “Juicy Chunks” posts for August and September were on the 27th and 25th respectively.
  • It sounds like they’re having a good time at the football game at the high school two blocks away. I wonder who they’re playing?
  • Last night there was a really loud owl somewhere in the trees either in our back yard or the neighbors’ back yard. It was beautiful listening to it hoot once a minute or so for over an hour.
  • We can always tell when there’s a big rivalry game at the high school because our street fills up with overflow parking.
  • This whole passive-aggressive thing with Joey Chan (the cat) is really getting old. She sits under my chair and whines and begs to be on my lap, refused to jump up on her own, but if I reach down to pick her up and put her there, she takes a swipe at my hand.
  • I’ll bet the noise from the football game scares the owl away tonight.
  • It occurs to me that Joey Chan and I might be playing different games. She might be totally uninterested in sitting on my lap. Instead, she might really wants to claw me up for whatever feline reasons her almond-sized brain has.
  • The passive-aggressive thing is just what she’s figured out to get me to put my hand down there where she can get at it. I mess with her head using the laser pointer, she messes with mine by pretending that she wants on my lap. Ahh, perspective…
  • I wonder how big that owl was and if it was big enough to take out one of our full-sized raccoons. Maybe not. But squirrels or rats, for sure. Probably could take out a cat as well.
  • When I was seventeen I really wanted to take the summer between my junior and senior years of high school and go to Europe.
  • I was going to stay at hostels, get a Eurail Pass, and backpack through a dozen countries.
  • I did not go to Europe when I was seventeen. I did not backpack through a dozen countries.
  • My mother informs me that she has gotten another dog, a Yorkshire terrier of some sort. I’m glad it makes her happy and it’s great that she rescued an abandoned critter. But I still look at it as just a pair of “little rat dogs”.
  • Our high school football team was not very good. From memory, I think we were 1-7 and 0-8 in my junior and senior years.
  • That wasn’t the reason I wanted to go to Europe.
  • Imagine our surprise at the 35th anniversary high school reunion when the current football team rolled by in the parade carrying the state championship trophy.

Remember to keep some “emergency” rockin’, upbeat music at hand for when it’s time to feel better.

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Filed under Cats, Critters, Dogs, Juicy Chunks, Travel

October 14, 2013 · 11:47

Odds & Sods For Monday, October 14th

Item The First: The raccoons have (I hope) been evicted! Last week’s windstorm caused some minor damage on the roof. While making those repairs, I checked out the “hidey-hole” that the raccoons have been using for an occasional home for the last year or so. I hadn’t heard them in a couple of days so maybe they were off causing problems at someone else’s house. On close inspection, the hidey-hole was found to be vacant, so I nailed up some screening over the opening again. (Don’t worry, I checked, double checked, and triple checked. There aren’t any raccoons or raccoon babies in there to be trapped and starving to death.)

photo 2 smallThey can still eat our oranges and dates and run around on the roof and in our trees, but they can’t live under our roof.

Assuming they’re not clever and/or strong enough to simply pry the screen off…

Item The Second: On my mother’s side, I come from a family of practical jokers. Nothing malicious mind you, just enough to keep you on your toes every now and then. (Other stories, other days.) On the other hand, The Long-Suffering Wife doesn’t much cotton to that sort of nonsense.

We recently had need to buy a new washer and dryer set and it got delivered and set up while The Long-Suffering Wife was out of town. It occurred to me that this was an ideal setup for a most wonderful prank! Since we had gotten machines with lots of new bells and whistles, I needed to sneak into the laundry room before she could after every load was finished in the dryer. If I fold everything and then put it stacked neatly back into the machine, maybe I could convince her that this was a new automatic setting on the fancy, schmancy dryer!

photo 1 smallDiscretion (and a desire to not sleep on the proverbial couch) was the better part of valor, so I did not pull this trick on my lovely wife. I did tell her about it, but while I was giggling and enjoying the story, she was not amused, so I guess I had made the correct choice. This weekend, having let her in on the joke, I did go in and do it for one load, but got only a, “Cute, dear!”

Proof that I’m easily amused. But we knew that.

Item The Third: Following up on my posts from Saturday and Sunday, Biology-Online.org has responded to Dr. Lee with an apology. It appears to be earnest and sincere. Good for them!

In addition, as a subscriber to Scientific American I receive a slew of their email newsletters, such as “Scientific American Daily Digest”, “Scientific American Basic Science”, “Scientific American Space & Physics”, and “Scientific American Weekly Review”. I find these extremely useful and valuable for keeping me up to date on what’s going on in the sciences, as wells as providing easy links to the full length stories. Since many of the Scientific American blogs are included in the stories featured in these newsletters, I was wondering if anything regarding this weekend’s events would be mentioned there.

I wa pleased to see that his morning’s newsletter includes a link to yesterday’s blog post from Mariette DiChristina. Transparency, openness, and communication are all really good things.

Item The Fourth: With yesterday’s win over the Hated Raiders of Oakland, my beloved KC Chiefs are now one of just two undefeated NFL teams at 6-0. This is a source of considerable joy and happiness in our household, so for that I would like to thank the entire KC Chiefs organization. In these trying times, it may be simple escapism, but it’s not meaningless. As for the future, our next three games are against teams that are at or below .500, then we have our bye week. Dare we hope that we can go into that ninth game against Denver (the other team currently 6-0) at 9-0, quite possibly facing another 9-0 team?

One game at a time. But it’s great being a Chiefs fan this year.

Item The Fifth: Since the last couple of weeks seem to have had a lot of stress, let’s start the new week with some role models for breathing, relaxing, prioritizing, and keeping things in the proper perspective.

photo 4 smallJesse, asleep under my desk.

photo 3 smallJoey, asleep in her sunny bay window next to my desk.

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Filed under Cats, Critters, Dogs, KC Chiefs, Moral Outrage, Odds & Sods, Photography, Sports