Sunday, Puppy Sunday: I will you to obey me!

Dear Mommeh:

we's likes naps on teh bed wif yew.

we's wants to stay here always, unless there's treats somewhere else.

yew must obey me.

see how proper I am with my ankles demurely crossed?

I'm never naughty, ever.
You will do as I say.

I hyp-mo-tized yew.

That is all.

sined: Praline

not to worry...

If I don't post for a day or two, know that I'm fine and cozied up with the best dogs ever. It's just that my internet service has been spotty-- i suspect the hub of my internet company lost power, as has much of the community surrounding me now.

I'm stocked up on provisions, and I have plenty of candles and good stuff to read, should it come to that.

Friday I stayed home from work as the roadway was a bit of an iceskating rink. I watched the last few episodes of the BBC production of Little Dorrit I'd rented last Sunday. I was so glad to have that, and this production is superb. In the usual drip-fest vein of Charles Dickens, this story is the usual sort of social commentary and in light of recent economic times, seems a particularly poignant one.

Watch it. I'm preloading a Sunday Puppy post, and I'll be back in the swing here again when weather and utilities permit. Cheers!

LOLL Puppehs

Home from work for the day due to impassable roads, we watched BBC series on the bed and the puppehs wanted this day to never end. They was napping. They was napping mighty hard.

It was pretty sweet!

c-c-c-c-cold

My boss came up to me Thursday afternoon and told me to finish the call I was on and to go home, that she'd heard the roads out where I live were getting treacherous. I stopped by the store and got the makings of a bomb-shelter supply of Frito pies, bottled water and biccies for tea and hightailed it for the barn. Got home, hauled the loot into the house and came right back out to snap a photo of the trees out front. Honestly, everything seems encased in crystal, especially the trees. A block from my house is a pine tree where every needle looks meticulously dipped in glass. It's all kind of enchanted. When the wind blows, the bending boughs crackle and groan. I don't know how long all this will last, but it sure is purty. No doubt I'll be staying home from work today. Since I can't work, I'm taking time to round up dust buffaloes and attacking a close encounters pile of laundry. Good thinking of me to leave myself something to do whilst snowed in, eh?

Brrrr!

Have you ever been picked up by the fuzz? *in which Restraint rules the day*

No, but you've been dragged around by the tits?

Wednesday night, I hooked up with Hols and Christina for chicken fried ribeyes at Sweetie Pie's Ribeyes in Decatur. We had a grand time, and cut up mightily. I'm thrilled to see Christina going native and seeming like she's belonged to Texas all along. Soon I expect to see her in a proper pair of ropers. Holly gave me the most delightful Christmas ornament, EVAR, and it's going to hang year-round in my house. Pictures to follow. Was grand to have a hen party with two of my favorite people. We must have looked like trouble, because they stuck us in the naughty corner of the restaurant, away from the proper folks. *snicker*

So, I drank several glasses of iced tea, like you do-- I am, after all, from the South. So, anyhoo, I was tooling home and was about 100 miles from Decatur, when I come over a hill and see a car flip on its lights and come across the median from the other direction.

Oh, crap. Is that a light bar on that car? Hmm. I wonder who they're going to pull over?

I look around and there wasn't nobody there but us chickens. Just me and the crickets on a lonesome Texas highway.

Merdey-poo. On go the lights in teh rearview. He's coming right for me. Holy flaming poopsticks. This is going to be expensive.

I pull over when he's still about 200 yards behind me. No faking this one out.

He came up to the passenger side and I flicked on teh dome light and handed my license, insurance proof and CHL license through the passenger side window. He shone a light into the back of my SUV and looked at the rolled up rug and said "what are you hauling?"

In a supreme act of self-control, I resisted the urge to say "apparently, ass." I explained the rug was a gift from my dad when I visited Dallas last week.

He asked where I came from, where I was heading. I said I'd just come from Decatur and was on my way home.

"Why'd you go to Decatur?"
"I met my girlfriends for dinner at Sweetie Pie's"
"why such a hurry?"
" I have to go to the bathroom." Here I resisted the urge to invoke the half gallon of iced tea that wanted out.

He handed back the CHL and took the driver license and insurance paper back to his car. I sat there waiting, thinking how a moment's inattention had messed me up royally. I think I haven't gotten a speeding ticket in at least 17 years, and 14 years since I got a warning... This was going to be more painful than last time, I think.

After a brief amount of time, the nice officer came back and handed me my things back along with a piece of paper which read "warnings - no penalty assessed for the following offenses 1. Speeding over limit"

*whew!*
mebbe shoulda bought a lottery ticket, but I'll settle for not getting a ticket of the other kind.

more hating on Haiti...

This Reuters article asks "will endemic corruption suck away aid to Haiti?"

Duh.

In the article a Haitian said "The U.S. government needs to come here to help the Haitian people."

Um, I thought we already were. I mean, we've sent gajillions of plastic water bottles over to them. Commenter SwampRabbit astutely observed those very bottles will likely be cobbled together to ferry much of their populace to our shores.

At least they'll be recycling.

Stress can really work a number on a person...

...and no denying it.


Is Obama having an acne outbreak?

MONDAY NIGHT CHAT FROM GUNBLOGGER CONSPIRACY:

<1>: Oh, did you hear Obama apparently said that he'd "rather be a really good one term president than..." \
<2>: hahaha, too late for that
<3>: he's going down faster than a $5 hooker
<4>: hyuk!
<5>: He probably won't be able to do that either 1.
<2>: would he settle for being a dismally bad one term president?

I love my friends!

My First Tumbleweed!!!

I had big plans for rounding up some tumbleweeds, staking them in the lawn and festooning them with fairy lights for Christmas, but then that nasty business came along with pneumonia and I decorated nary a whit for the holidays.

I went out of my door Saturday morning and had my first adopted stray tumbleweed since moving out west in April. *squee!*

It's not very big, but it's a cute litte tumbleweed and it's mine, all mine. Yays!

They say you never forget your first tumbleweed, and I shan't. I shall keep it forever. Er, or until it falls apart. Or until I get bored.

Meh.

But for now: squeeeeee!

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: crazy, but that's how it goes...

Yes, I've posted a year or so ago, but I came across it Saturday and it kicked over my giggle box. They do this when they go snortal, and it's not actually hostile, but the sounds they make when they play-fight are hilarious. I think this photo makes them look a little bit nuts.

...speaking of sock puppet theatre...

I knew sock puppets cropped up in blog comments, generally defending the indefensible and probably generated by the dubious party themselves, but I didn't realize that with the whole of the mainstream meatia in their back pocket, someone-- oh, say, in the White House-- would have need of their own sock puppet campaignery.

Hyuk.

Nice to see a gumshoe bent in a reporter from Cleveland. Hope to see more like that. Cleveland does rock, doesn't it?

Glenn Miller à la Puppini Sisters

Enjoy your Friday. :)

New 'Vogs.

Spats! Spats! Spats! Spats! (sung to the tune of Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam!)

New from John Fluevog comes the Libby Smith.



Named for a gritty pioneer woman, I love love love this boot!

Good morning here's the news, and all of it is good.

It was jolly decent of Ted Kennedy to go ahead and shuffle off this mortal coil so they could hold an election in Massachusetts for a change.

I don't know about you, but today I'm very happy that Jay over at MArooned has something to celebrate. It's nice to know that there may be more kindred spirits in Massachusetts than anyone imagined.

****************

Things have been very roller-coastery of late, but I expect to have good news to tell you soon. Also, with recent maintenance and dad's help, I'm getting about 50 miles more per tank of gas. Yays!

All the same, I'm glad this is a short week.

Dennis Hopper to divorce...

...nothing funny to say about this one, just that it's sad that on what has been described as his deathbead (he is apparently mortally ill with prostate cancer), he's divorcing his wife of 12 years. What's bizarre is that she's 41 years old and sort of has that dried-up husk look so many LA women get in middle age. I'd expect someone at 41 to still look at least half-way ripe. Anyway, she looks stringy and emaciated. But i digress... Anyway, even if his wife couldn't bear the sight of him, she really should suck it up and be gracious to him at what is an extraordinarily painful moment. They have a young child Dennis will not see to adulthood. Sad, all around.

As for Dennis, I don't blame him for filing divorce, if she's treating him badly.

I always think of him in one of my all-time favorite scenes of filmdom, as Christian Slater's dad in True Romance, script by Tarantino. Sometimes when you find yourself at a disadvantage, a gift of gab is all you have to work with. Brilliant scene with Christopher Walken as a mob heavy who's demanding information of Hopper. As Hopper gets his last digs in, the soundtrack starts a light piano version of Delibes' Flower Duet from Lakme, a lovely counterpoint to the verbal dance the two cinema heavyweights are doing in the scene.
[NSFW, Language - very offensive scene, very violent - you have been warned]