“Ma’am, please step away from the dog, or the little red ball gets it.”
Author: Shelly
The Red Ball
Harriet is not a keen ball dog. She will reluctantly fetch if told to, but her heart is not in the game. She does, however, harbor a deep affection for her red rubber ball. I got it for her about five years ago, and it was love at first sight. It’s hollow and soft and fun for both chewing and bouncing. Inevitably, she will lose it behind or under a piece of furniture, forgetting about it until it comes to light months later. When it does, the reunion is celebrated with wiggles and kidney beans and all manner of Boxer happiness.
Today was a reunion day. I found her ball under some shelves in the kitchen while I was sweeping. I picked it up and bounced it down the hallway. Harriet, hearing the unmistakeable sound of her ball, woke up from her nap and raced after it. She batted it with her feet and nudged it with her nose. She carried it from room to room, chewing on it, then flung her head from side to side so that it flew away, and chased it. She took breaks, resting on the floor or the couch, with her ball between her feet, waiting and watching intently, lest it sneak away while her attention was elsewhere. She rolled around on her back, ball in her mouth and feet flailing, like a trout on dry land. She shoved it under her blanket, hiding it, then, not being able to stand having it out of her sight a minute longer, dug furiously until it was uncovered.
When the game was over, the ball retired to yet another safe spot under the furniture. In another month or so, it will re-emerge, rested and ready to play.
Friday Photoblogging
I love this section of Patricksburg Road. It’s extra twisty and flanked by limestone outcroppings, with a small stream running along one side. There’s a house at the top of the hill on the stream side, with two German Shepherd Dogs who were Not Amused by my tromping around on their territory.
I took these on the way home from work. Because of the hills, most of the sky views in this area are blocked by ridge lines. This location is a rare exception. There are three rolling fields, but the inevitable valley walls are far off enough that the sky is relatively large.
There’s a field across the road from my driveway. It’s not in a very good location, because Fish Creek runs along the back edge of the field. It floods in the spring, making the field difficult to plant. The owner has done some illegal dredging of the creek, to try to keep it from flooding his field, but he was caught. I assume the pipes were bought with the intent to use them to drain the flood water, and that they were left sitting when the project was shut down.
There are several mounds of earth in the same field. They remind me of tumuli.
I’m not usually a fan of contrail photos, but I liked the patterns these ones made.
Sunrise
Sunset
Malaprop o’ the Day
While discussing weekend plans in e-mail, a friend–bless her heart–wrote that she was going to see Brokedown Mountain tonight. For, I think, obvious reasons, I find her endlessly entertaining.
Harriet Brown Fears No Storm
I think it’s generally true that pets pick up emotional cues from their owners. When we’re anxious, our pets can sense it, and will often become anxious, as well. I know a lot of people whose pets are afraid of storms, and the common advice is that they must be afraid of storms, too, and that they should try to calm down in order to calm their pet down. To that, I say: “Ha!”
We had another nasty storm last night, complete with thunder, lightning, hail, and tornado warnings. The wind was ridiculous, howling and whistling and generally doing its damnedest to scare the living hell out of me. If Harriet was negatively influenced by my agitated state, she surely hid it well. Unless, of course, she exhibits her anxiety by lolling around on the couch like a drunken sailor. I’m not sure it would have been possible for her to care less.
One Last Word About Templates
I’ve done pretty much all I intend to do to fix the wacky way Internet Explorer displays things. For some incomprehensible reason, it insisted on putting my sidebar at the bottom of the page. This, even though there was a style sheet included specifically to address IE’s, um, grosser idiosyncracies. I’ve managed to bring it up to the top, though it’s on the left-hand side instead of the right. I can’t say that I care enough to fix it, as it’s at least displaying it in the proper vicinity. It also isn’t putting a nifty mouse-over border around images, but again, I just don’t care. Most images are clickable if you want to view larger versions. If you use IE, you’ll just have to take it on faith, as you won’t get any border indicating their click-worthiness.
All I can say is, please, please, please take a minute to try out Firefox. It’s a thing of beauty, it’s free, it’s not made by ‘droids in Redmond, and most importantly, it follows directions without sassing back, damnit!
Harriet Brown Loves a Good Salad
It cracks me up when Harriet sits like this. She reminds me of an old man slouched in a Lazy Boy, watching tv and drinking a beer. She–formerly known as The Dog Who Does Not Drool–had another slinger fest last night while I was eating a salad. I cannot imagine that mere romaine, radicchio, cucumbers, scallions, or tomatoes were responsible for the waterworks. And, I cannot imagine that the lemon juice and kosher salt I dressed it with were, either. It’s official: my dog is a freak. But, she’s a Boxer, so we already knew that.
Is this week over yet? The wind last night was unbelievable. It made the electricity flicker off and on all night, which meant I overslept because my alarm clock lost it’s mind. Yuck. Traffic is bad enough at 5:30am. By 7am, it’s bumper-to-bumper all the way to Bloomington. I ended up going the back way, to avoid the Hwy 46 wind tunnel, but traffic was still heavy.
But! Guess what I heard this morning, as I was getting into my car? Geese. Lots and lots of geese. The wee geesies are returning, so that’s something to be cheerful about. I think.
Oh, and before I forget, if you’re looking for that perfect gift for the man in your life, why not an heirloom quality mink penis cosy? I hear it’s what all the best dressed men will be wearing this Spring. Surely, my sources cannot be wrong.
In the far less bizarre world of template news (because, you know there had to be some) I have tarted up (or should that be dressed down?) the gallery. The lurking shadow man is gone, as is the ass-ugly grid pattern on the top left. The stripey bits are gone, too, and I’ve changed the fonts to mirror the blog font family. About the only things left that bug me are the upper navigation buttons (I’m just not enjoying the rounded, shadowed look) and the lack of a banner image. I may play around with adding an image to the header, but will probably not get too motivated to de-fancify the buttons. That sounds too much like work to me.
Instant Review: Pomegranate Juice
I mentioned that this was food co-op delivery day, right? I forgot that I’d ordered pomegranate juice. Oh my! It’s just about the yummiest thing I’ve ever tasted. It’s not sweetened, so it’s tart, like really, really good lemonade. Mmmm.
I haven’t had pomegranates in years. Every once in awhile I see them at the grocery store and am tempted, but they’re so much work to eat, that I decide against it. I remember, though, when I was five years old, eating a pomegranate while playing outside. My memory is that it was cold out. We lived in a little bungalow a few blocks from Lake Michigan. There were concrete lions flanking the front steps and concrete statues in the yard, which was entirely enclosed by hedges. It was a wonderful, private place to play make believe games. That day I wandered around outside, by myself, eating my pomegranate and making up stories in my head about the secret lives of the statues.
Pomegranates remind me of that day.
When Good Pets Go Bad
I have no idea who the guilty party is. The inclusion of one of my socks implicates Pandora (she has a bizarre sock fetish, and will carry them around the house in her mouth), but Harriet was the one I found at the scene of the crime. All I can say is that I can think of about a million things I’d rather do than rewind a ball of hemp twine. That’s one job that’s definitely going at the bottom of my To Do list.
So, today was food co-op delivery day, the time of which coincided beautifully with sunrise. I managed to get quite a few good shots, three of which I stitched together into a panorama. I’m kicking myself for not pulling over when I got to Spencer, though, because as I crested the hill leading down into town, the far eastern ridge line was glowing an astonishing shade of fluorescent orange. (More of this morning’s sunrise photos can be seen here.)
Tha Limpix
I haven’t paid too much attention to the Olympics coverage so far, partly because I’ve been busy with other things and partly because there hasn’t been much of interest to me so far. Men’s figure skating is on right now, though, and oh wow. Japan was allowed one men’s skater and good lord was he ever amazing. He fell and screwed up his score, but even so, he was absolutely breathtaking to watch. Just beautiful.
I think I’m done fiddling with the blog template. Finally! It’s very nearly exactly what I had in mind, which is Good Enough. Coppermine is not being so accommodating, though, so I’ve got some more tweaking to do there. I need to delve into the help fora to find info on customizing headers. That dude lurking at the top right has got to go, and the grid pattern and stripes are ugly, too. So, no more unscheduled blog ugliness (ya-hoo!), but if you go to the gallery and are struck blind by the hideousness, I apologize in advance (boo-hoo!). I suppose I could take it off-line while I tweak, but with my luck, I’d forget to re-set it. Yes, I suck, that way. I suck in other ways, too, but we won’t speak of that right now.
