Herding Cats

I hear a lot of complaints about herding cats in my house. Usually it is not directed at the cats.

This video has been around for awhile. But it makes me smile. I like the river crossing the best.

A Bakery Worth Visiting

Some of my people were on a road trip this July and found this most excellent bakery. Stop by and check it out, if you are in Ankeny, Iowa. It looks to be a fine establishment.

The Dog Ate My Evidence

Redefining a food fight: Woman allegedly slaps man with ham sandwich

By TAYLOR DUNGJEN tdungjen@MorningJournal.com

COLUMBIA TOWNSHIP — A Columbia Township couple redefined food fight Wednesday when a man was allegedly assaulted with a ham sandwich.

The 47-year-old man told Lorain County sheriff’s deputies his live-in-girlfriend hit him with a ham sandwich inside their home in the 2600 block of Royalton Road around 7:10 p.m.

Police scanner traffic indicated the man was unable to provide deputies with a full description of the sandwich, such as whether it was toasted or untoasted.

The man, who, according to a sheriff’s report, was highly intoxicated and had no signs of injuries. The man’s 54-year-old girlfriend told deputies she was going to end the relationship because of the man’s drinking problem. She also told deputies her boyfriend “smacked her in the back of the head,” the report states.

The woman told police she was not hurt and did not wish to press charges, according to the report. The man told deputies he did not hit his girlfriend physically, but rather mentally, according to the report.

The woman called a family member to pick her up.

Deputies located a slice of bread on the floor, but suspect the family dog ate the ham, according to the report.

credit

My only questions is...why didn't the dog eat the bread too?

It makes me think it was the cat.

Brrr and Grrr

I heard the other day that there have only been two days so far this January without a snowfall. Admittedly, the flakes of late have been gentle, sparky fluffs that freshen everything up. But I think folks 'round here are getting a more than a little crabby.

Double digits below zero are rough. I just thank my lucky stars that my family did not settle in International Falls, Minnesota where recent lows have been getting uncomfortably close to their record of -40 degrees F.

Minnesota winter can be a grind. Sniffly, snuffly viruses are ripping through like wildfires. On our walk Wednesday, Susan slipped on glare ice and konked her noggin on the concrete pretty hard.

Mild head trauma made her wonder if she was hallucinating when she heard Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann just might think she would make a good president. That this numbskull is even in Washington makes me want to eat icicles.

Maybe I can stay warm by getting all fired up. Here is one of my favorite Bachmann quotes (Earth Day speech, 2009):

"Carbon dioxide is natural, it is not harmful, it is a part of Earth's lifecycle. And yet we're being told that we have to reduce this natural substance, reduce the American standard of living, to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occuring in Earth."

I think everyone around here could use some spring green to roll in, some strong sunshine and a healthy dousing of common sense.

Excellence

We often drive by this sign. 

It gives a chuckle every time.

Pump Down the Volume

Some of the best news of the week: there's a new law limiting the volume of TV commercials. According to an Associated Press article, the Senate unanimously passed a bill requiring television stations and cable companies to keep commercials at the same volume as the programs they interrupt.

That is good news for all the family dogs trying to catch some zzz's while their couch potato families stare at the TV. Not to say I don't love watching "Bones." But keep in mind that dogs hear far better than you primates.

"The frequency range of dog hearing is approximately 40 Hz to 60,000 Hz, which means that dogs can detect sounds far beyond the upper limit of the human auditory spectrum. Additionally, dogs have ear mobility which allows them to rapidly pinpoint the exact location of a sound. Eighteen or more muscles can tilt, rotate, raise, or lower a dog's ear. A dog can identify a sound's location much faster than a human can, as well as hear sounds at four times the distance." Wikipedia

Dogs and humans hear low frequencies about the same. But dogs are more sensitive to loud sounds - so loud noises that humans can tolerate just fine may be painful to dogs. All those TV gunshots, explosions and screaming are downright irritating to the pooch on the ottoman. 

Mind you, pain is not why dogs howl at sirens. My neighbor Johann loves to howl when he hears a siren. He sounds like a wolf. It is very impressive.

I surprised Boy#1 and myself the other day by howling for the first time. We were out walking when I heard a siren off in the distance. It sounded to me like another dog howling - something about its frequency just resonated with me - and I just couldn't help but answer. OK, I was a little embarrassed when Boy#1 told me it was a siren. But instincts are powerful things.

This isn't me - just another handsome hound.
I don't howl often enough for anyone to grab a camera.

Decorating Gone to the Dogs

Yesterday my Susan and I were basking on the deck flipping through catalogs. Well, she flips and I pretend I am not interested. She thinks I am staring at her cheese and crackers. I had to suppress a bark of delight when I spied the knick-knacks offered in the Pier One catalog. This is home decorating I can understand!

Be sure to click to enlarge the image to see what had my tail wagging.

While it is a bit disappointing that prairie dogs are not available in all stores, it is refreshing to find a retailer with a sense of humor.

Airlines Charge for Everything Now

Last week, Susan was sorting through the junk mail mail and yelled, "You have GOT to be kidding me! Delta is going to start charging for barf bags?!!"

It must have been the size of the mailing, the abstraction of the luggage bag graphic or maybe her stomach just felt queasy at that moment. But she really did seem to expect to find her one free barf bag inside the Delta Skymiles mailing. She tends to expect the worst.

Morning Face

My Susan overslept this morning and missed her shower/caffeine ritual before running Boy#1 to the orthodontist. She glanced in the car mirror and bemoaned the stubborn pillow creases in her aging face and neck.

"You look like the Emperor in Star Wars," her delightful child informed her.

Bat Attack

Yikes! Remind me not to go to Duluth. I have nightmares about flying things like bats. And a bat-wielding, Ozzy Osbourne-inspired youth sounds absolutely terrifying!

Missing Woman also Copy Editor

Storage Solution

Susan was shopping at Target the other day and came across the Juvenile Storage section.


- Myspace Layouts,Graphics, and Comments!

Wouldn't it be great to be able to put juveniles and their antics in off-season storage with snap on lids -- like holiday decorations or snow pants. But, if you live in a house like mine, you have to wonder if those bins are anywhere near big enough.

Halfalogues and the Search for Intelligent Life

You may have caught a recent article about the annoyances of halfalogues (the half-conversation of some idiot yakking on his cell phone). Cornell researchers found that when you need to concentrate, having a halfalogue intruding into your happy place was more annoying than any other kind of talking -- including monologues.

Although, I ask you: How well would you concentrate if some wacko was carrying on a monologue while you were trying to... say... multiply out a recipe... or diffuse a bomb? But apparently, a halfalogue would be much, much worse.

My Susan would also say that two-way conversations as background noise are often just as irritating when you need to concentrate. Like when she was trying to birth Boy#2 and the doctors kept talking about their cabin improvements. Or when she had to get a shot stuck into her spinal cord (while AWAKE) and the medical personnel kept up a constant blather about cars. As she tells it, their chatter made it very hard for her to get the job done.

Then again, her annoyance probably had more to do with her general loathing of medical procedures and the general feeling of powerlessness that goes along with them. I know I hate it when the groomers chat about weekend plans when they are trimming my nails!

My blogging mentor Daughter Number Three posted her reaction to the halfalogue research: Halfalogue -- More than a Annoying Neologism. I first read this as "Halfalogue -- More Annoying than Neologism" -- which is a little more global and I thought, Wow! That IS annoying! (Although I secretly rather like neologism -- once Dave explained to me what it is).

But why, you ask, are halfalogues so annoying to people? Why are they so hard to tune out? The researchers think that when people can't predict speech patterns it prevents them from ignoring halfalogues. They can tune out two-way conversations and monologues just fine because they follow familiar cadences.

Speech patterns are important to me too. In fact, I mostly listen to voice patterns and tone -- even though I know plenty of words. To conserve my energy, I have trained my people to switch to higher, ultra-excited tones if they have something really worth listening to. "MELLY! Want to go for a WALKIE?"

I admit I spend a lot of time tuning people out. Blah blah blah blah blah... People talk a LOT. (And to think I get snapped at if I need to vocalize!) But since I need to monitor human communications for key words such as CARMELLA, TREAT, WALK, GO, I can't tune them out completely. I am sort of like SETI -- ears always scanning the airwaves for sounds of intelligent life. For example, "LET'S GO TO THE DOG PARK!"

SETI telescope array

To be perfectly honest, halfalogues of people on cell phones don't interest me in the least. I can tune them out just fine. I'm not stupid. If there is a phone, computer, TV, iPod, iPad or any other electronic device in contact with my people, there is nothing in it for me. It is my cue to power down and take a nap.

Got Up In My Grill

The other day, I heard someone say, "She really got up in my grill!"
I wondered what she meant.

My first thought: You got in my way and got up in my grill.

Or, same idea... more traumatic for both of us.

Then it occurred to me it could be a sports reference...

Boy #1 assured me that "grill" refers to teeth. 

Teeth?  

Like braces? 

Well... sort of. 

Grills are, in fact, fancy teeth. Jewelry. Bling.

Simply put: 

Got in my grill = Got in my face.

So, next time you see me at the dog park:

Don't get up in Carmella's grill!

It's Glowing Cats and Dogs

I am sure Korean scientists had some worthwhile goal in mind when they cloned a litter of beagles and made them glow red by inserting fluorescent genes into them.

But don't even get me started about using dogs in experiments. That is a dark place not made any brighter by glow-in-the-dark puppies. That the scientists chose red - a color not even seen by dogs - just makes it worse. 

But I admit I felt a little grim satisfaction that they tried it on cats first. Heh.

Want the real story (and see a green monkey)? Glowing Animals: Beasts Shining for Science

Dumber Than a Box of Hair

My friend, also named Mel, uses the expression "dumber than a box of hair" to describe various people whom...well... at the very least, make choices that are annoying to her.

"Dumber than a box of hair" makes me laugh every time. It is right up there with "lost contact with the mothership" or "couldn't find their way out of a paper bag." (And everyone knows how much cats like paper bags. Don't try to tell me cats hang out so long in bags because they think they make cool forts.)


But back to the box of hair thing.

When I saw this article about people sending boxes of hair to clean up the Gulf oil spill, I though of my friend Mel and I chuckled.

According to an article in the Star Tribune:

"Nearly 200 hair salons and pet groomers are collecting their customers' hair -- or fur -- and shipping it to warehouses along the Gulf Coast. There, it's being stuffed into mesh booms that are slated to be dropped along beaches to absorb the ever-spreading oil slick from an offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico."

At first, I thought, "Sure, sign me up. Shave me silly." If I could help some fellow creatures not die a horrible toxic death, I would willingly go hairless. Not that I have much to offer in locks.

There is something appealing about thousands, maybe millions, of people and pets banding together to come up with a homegrown solution that has, so far, eluded scientists, government and corporations alike. We'll show them!

Then, I closed my eyes and pictured all those boxes of hair being shipped.

That is: thousands of individual boxes of hair driven to the post office or picked up by the UPS guys, flown to the Gulf, delivered to the warehouse to be assembled into thirsty hair booms. I followed them in my mind's eye as they are loaded up again, driven to the Gulf, loaded onto boats with motors and finally dumped into the nasty oily mess.

The mess which was caused by our collective, insatiable appetite for petroleum to run our cars, trucks, planes and boats.

Suddenly, the whole well-meaning idea seemed dumber than a box of hair.











6/1/10 Follow-up and see how the whole hair boom thing worked out at Daughter Number Three's post: Make it a Hair Boomerang.

Pocket Envy

Police Report
Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

"And in Cairns, Australia, a 51-year-old man was caught shoplifting in March, witnessed by security staff putting three limes and a package of beef tongue in his pants. When cornered, the man (like clowns exiting a clown car) pulled out an additional two onions, three trays of rump steaks and a packet of lamb forequarter chops." [Cairns Post, 3-16-10]

How Civilized!

Big Fish (Price) Story

I like sushi.  What's not to like? (Other than the wasabi-- what the heck is that?!) But this caught in my throat:

"The average price of a single bluefin tuna is anywhere between $2,000 and $20,000. It all depends on the size, the season, and their fat content - the fattier, the better."  

The whole tale: The King of Sushi

Smart Chicken

My Susan's niece says:  

"If those chickens were so smart, how'd they end up in a shrink-wrapped package?" 

(I like the little graduation cap. Who says a degree doesn't get you anywhere?)