Quick recap from last week. I was house/dog/cat sitting for my aunt and her husband while they were on a cruise. The house part was easy, the cat part resulted in a few minor wounds, and it was all because one of the two dogs is afraid of me.
Regular readers may recall the fun I had trying to get a dog who is afraid of me to come back in the house when one has to hold the door open. Well, I have good news, by the end of the week Simon was coming back in the house while I stood there. Granted, he ran as fast as he could from the edge of the deck, in the door, and through the kitchen to the other end of the house before I could even turn around, but considering the rain and snow we had at the end of the week I was just glad not to have to run outside and chase him in through a propped open door.
It is April 26, and I woke up to snow this morning. As of 5PM it is 41 degrees, which is the average LOW temp for the day, (reports say it will be below freezing tonight) - the average high is in the low-mid 60’s. We only had a dusting on the lawns around here, and it had almost all melted by early afternoon, but parts of northern Minnesota were dumped on with another 12 to 18 inches of snow overnight.
Faced with the fact over the last few years that temperatures seem to actually be declining, global-warming folks have tried to get away from that term, and instead try to foist “global climate change” on us as a way to try and control our lives. And the front man for this charge, the poster-child if you will, Al Gore continues to reap the rewards of his movie An Inconvenient Truth.
So as a way of “doing my part”, I thought I would point out some … we’ll be kind for a moment and call them ‘factual errors’ … presented in the movie and give you some information you can follow up with on your own.
So last night I get back to my aunt’s house, and get the dogs outside without much of a hassle. I haven’t had dinner yet so I let them frolic a bit and then try to get them in so I can go get something to eat… It is starting to sprinkle, so I figure it will be pretty easy to get Simon to come in.
I prop the screen door open and move to ‘hide’ behind the inside door as I call Sandy to come in, hoping that Simon will follow him in. Then just as Sandy is heading up on to the deck… zip, there goes Smokey, out the door to the deck.
I manage to get her without too much effort, she had ducked under the bbq grill, hiding from the rain under the cover that is over the grill itself. She tried to duck around it once, then again, hoping to evade me, but I was able to scoop her up and get her back in the house. As I returned to the back door, hoping to lure Simon back in yet, Smokey decided she really wanted to be outside and dashed out the door again. She moves pretty quick for a seventeen year old cat.
My aunt and her husband are on a cruise this week… lucky them. They have two dogs (Sandy and Simon) and four cats (Smokey, Fred, Barney and… I forget the fourth). They asked if I could house/animal sit while they were gone… and me being the wonderful nephew that I am (and that I owe my wonderful aunt so much) said I would.
There’s one problem problem in all this. It isn’t that I don’t like animals or anything, it’s just that Simon is afraid of me.
I am far from musically inclined - though I can play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the tin whistle. The 10-year old in this video puts me, and most other adults I know to shame. In this age of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, this kid blows them all away.
I found this over on onmansblog.com - where he also has a clip of Kansas playing the same tune, and if she wasn’t bad enough, he’s got a post with videos of Top 10 Kids Who Prove We’re All Pathetic. He needs to update that list after finding this one.
I’m sure you have had this happen to you. You sit down to a nice bowl of Corn Pops or Fruity Pebbles, you set your spoon down to take a drink of OJ, and *SPLOOSH!* There goes your spoon into the sugary depths of milk in the bottom of your bowl.
Or worse yet, now that I am “grown up” and have real cutlery, not the stuff you get 2 for a buck at Wal-Mart, the heavy duty stuff where if you drop it on your fork on the floor and accidentally step on it, it bites back instead of getting flattened. The kind of cutlery that is heavy enough to capsize your cereal bowl when you get to bottom, sloshing that aforementioned sugary pink (from the Fruity Pebbles) liquid all over the table… or more likely your clean shirt, causing you to have to change and end up late for work? (And no, I will not confirm or deny that any of the above has ever actually happened to me.)
It is April 26, and I woke up to snow this morning. As of 5PM it is 41 degrees, which is the average LOW temp for the day, (reports say it will be below freezing tonight) - the average high is in the low-mid 60’s. We only had a dusting on the lawns around here, and it had almost all melted by early afternoon, but parts of northern Minnesota were dumped on with another 12 to 18 inches of snow overnight.
