09 September 2012
Dogs, Canadians, and other MAMILs
09/09/12 12:38
This has been a beautiful week. Sunny, not too hot, just wonderful actually. Where I work, in order to go from the offices upstairs to the production floor downstairs I have to go outside. Some afternoons I would just stop on the sidewalk and soak up the sun for a minute before going back in. The birds were singing. The blackberries were full of buzzing bees. It’s been wonderful. It’s times like this that I rather wish that my office had a window. But the days are getting shorter. In just the last few weeks I've started to need a light when I get up. There is a coolness to the mornings that was unknown in August. Fall is here and winter isn’t far behind. In just three months it’ll be getting dark at 3:30 in the afternoon and the sound outside will be hard rain on the windows. Then I’ll be glad to have an inside office.
One of the signs of fall is the spiders. When it starts getting cool they seek shelter and a small percentage end up inside the house. Friday morning when I went downstairs I turned on the light and there on the wall was a spider the size of a dinner plate. Well, OK, by the time I got back with a glass to capture it, the spider was much smaller, maybe an inch or so. But when the light came on it sure SEEMED bigger. I think they get bigger in the dark. Isn’t that a pleasant thought for all of you arachnophobes out there? It's not impossible though. Rumours have it that the next iPhone from Apple will include "rubber electronics" that do the same thing. See near the end of this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuosLfc0zU8
One of the other things you seen as fall comes on are MAMILs. If you don’t know, MAMILs are Middle Aged Men In Lycra. A decade ago they would have gotten a motorcycle. Today, out here at least a lot of them are getting bicycles and pretending to be Lance Armstrong. Nothing says fitness like a pudgy balding guy in skin tight fluorescent Lycra/Spandex puffing his way down the highway. Here's a free idea for a business for all you entrepreneurs out there. Start making a portable defibrillator with a bike mount. I think there's a market out there with many of the MAMILs I’ve seen. Who knows, maybe they do. There’s also nothing like setting downwind of a bunch of these guys cooling off at the pub. Makes me long for that early sunset and rain that’s coming
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10965608
I do want to send a shout-out to our friends in Minnesota and the Minnesota DFL Party. In case you didn’t hear they were doing an attack ad. It had the normal list of things the other guy had or were perceived to have done and a bad picture of them. Trouble is that instead of the target they used a picture of someone with the same name that is the Minister of Human Services in Alberta, Canada. Up here we have had a lot of fun at the MN-DFLs expense. However the best answer came from the Minister who wrote “My influence knows no boundaries ; ) ”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2012/09/06/edmonton-us-attack-ad-hancock.html
And speaking of Minnesota, while Marsha was back there a couple of weeks ago she started talking about a dog. She told me that she had decided to adopt one of the puppies that Lance’s pure-bred Boxer had just produced. She was so excited. She said that she wouldn’t bring the dog back with her now. No, the plan was that we’d pick it up when we drive out there next summer, and bring it back with us in the car.
To say I wasn’t thrilled with the idea is putting it mildly. Now I had told Marsha that if she wanted a dog this would be a good place for one. An outside dog that is, as I don’t think the cats would take well to the addition. I figured a nice small local long haired mutt from the SPCA would do well. But now Marsha was going on about a purebred, nervous, twitchy, boxer. She was even suggesting names for it. Worse yet she wanted to ride across the country with a young dog, that may or may not have been housebroken, in the car with us. She wanted to bring it across the Canadian border, which would be tricky. It had very short hair so it would need to come inside in the winter. Boxers are known as fence jumpers so we’d need to replace our, somewhat shaky, fence with a new kennel grade fence. And how do I keep it out of my garden patch? I was just going bananas over this. For three days I was sweating bullets, trying to figure out how to tell Marsha that this was a Really Bad Idea in every possible way imaginable.
Then on the last Sunday Marsha was in Minnesota,she confessed that she, and various co-conspirators, had made the whole thing up just to freak me out, and they succeeded spectacularly.
I was never so glad to be on the receiving end of a practical joke.
Speaking of dogs though. Last week, one of the engineers at work was commenting how sore she was. Her shoulder and arm were aching, she walked with a bit of a limp, and her one ankle was wrapped up tight. It seems that last weekend she was out in the yard with her dog. He was on a leash that she had wrapped around her left hand and the dog was sniffing around at the far end. Just then something caught the dog's attention and it took off running. It crossed behind her and then to her right. Within a couple of strides the dog was at full speed and it hit the end of the leash. I probably should mention at this point that her dog is a Great Dane-English Mastiff cross? Yes, she owns Marmaduke. This thing is a horse with a short nose. I think the Hannibal used these when he ran out of war elephants. This is a bloody huge dog. She mentioned that when the dog took off she just had time to think to herself “You know, I probably should let go of the leash”, but not enough time to actually do it. She’s not a large person, the dog weighs about as much as she does, so it yanked her completely off of her feet, spun her around, and she landed on the grass a yard or two downrange. The dog stopped but only to come back and see why she was lying on the grass.
You know, I’m liking our cats more and more. When Geiger is on the leash I win those battles.
And finally, I know the Minnesota Twins haven’t done too well this year. However there is a team that is doing well. The Vancouver Canadians are in the NorthWest League Championship series. They’re playing Boise and trying to repeat as Champions. Now admittedly the NorthWest League is Minor League. They play teams from places like Eugene, and Spokane, and Yakima, but heck, a championship is a championship. Marsha, however is refusing to follow them. She’s convinced that as soon as she starts rooting for a team they lose. But I’ll say it:
Go Canadians!
Doug & Marsha
PIX:
1) The debris from the garage. I'm going to flatten this out, cover it with gravel, and widen our parking space.
2) Three shots of the project. Front and back walls are in. Rough plumbing is in. This week we pour the floor and second retaining wall in front.
3) An ominous September sunrise.
One of the signs of fall is the spiders. When it starts getting cool they seek shelter and a small percentage end up inside the house. Friday morning when I went downstairs I turned on the light and there on the wall was a spider the size of a dinner plate. Well, OK, by the time I got back with a glass to capture it, the spider was much smaller, maybe an inch or so. But when the light came on it sure SEEMED bigger. I think they get bigger in the dark. Isn’t that a pleasant thought for all of you arachnophobes out there? It's not impossible though. Rumours have it that the next iPhone from Apple will include "rubber electronics" that do the same thing. See near the end of this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuosLfc0zU8
One of the other things you seen as fall comes on are MAMILs. If you don’t know, MAMILs are Middle Aged Men In Lycra. A decade ago they would have gotten a motorcycle. Today, out here at least a lot of them are getting bicycles and pretending to be Lance Armstrong. Nothing says fitness like a pudgy balding guy in skin tight fluorescent Lycra/Spandex puffing his way down the highway. Here's a free idea for a business for all you entrepreneurs out there. Start making a portable defibrillator with a bike mount. I think there's a market out there with many of the MAMILs I’ve seen. Who knows, maybe they do. There’s also nothing like setting downwind of a bunch of these guys cooling off at the pub. Makes me long for that early sunset and rain that’s coming
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10965608
I do want to send a shout-out to our friends in Minnesota and the Minnesota DFL Party. In case you didn’t hear they were doing an attack ad. It had the normal list of things the other guy had or were perceived to have done and a bad picture of them. Trouble is that instead of the target they used a picture of someone with the same name that is the Minister of Human Services in Alberta, Canada. Up here we have had a lot of fun at the MN-DFLs expense. However the best answer came from the Minister who wrote “My influence knows no boundaries ; ) ”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2012/09/06/edmonton-us-attack-ad-hancock.html
And speaking of Minnesota, while Marsha was back there a couple of weeks ago she started talking about a dog. She told me that she had decided to adopt one of the puppies that Lance’s pure-bred Boxer had just produced. She was so excited. She said that she wouldn’t bring the dog back with her now. No, the plan was that we’d pick it up when we drive out there next summer, and bring it back with us in the car.
To say I wasn’t thrilled with the idea is putting it mildly. Now I had told Marsha that if she wanted a dog this would be a good place for one. An outside dog that is, as I don’t think the cats would take well to the addition. I figured a nice small local long haired mutt from the SPCA would do well. But now Marsha was going on about a purebred, nervous, twitchy, boxer. She was even suggesting names for it. Worse yet she wanted to ride across the country with a young dog, that may or may not have been housebroken, in the car with us. She wanted to bring it across the Canadian border, which would be tricky. It had very short hair so it would need to come inside in the winter. Boxers are known as fence jumpers so we’d need to replace our, somewhat shaky, fence with a new kennel grade fence. And how do I keep it out of my garden patch? I was just going bananas over this. For three days I was sweating bullets, trying to figure out how to tell Marsha that this was a Really Bad Idea in every possible way imaginable.
Then on the last Sunday Marsha was in Minnesota,she confessed that she, and various co-conspirators, had made the whole thing up just to freak me out, and they succeeded spectacularly.
I was never so glad to be on the receiving end of a practical joke.
Speaking of dogs though. Last week, one of the engineers at work was commenting how sore she was. Her shoulder and arm were aching, she walked with a bit of a limp, and her one ankle was wrapped up tight. It seems that last weekend she was out in the yard with her dog. He was on a leash that she had wrapped around her left hand and the dog was sniffing around at the far end. Just then something caught the dog's attention and it took off running. It crossed behind her and then to her right. Within a couple of strides the dog was at full speed and it hit the end of the leash. I probably should mention at this point that her dog is a Great Dane-English Mastiff cross? Yes, she owns Marmaduke. This thing is a horse with a short nose. I think the Hannibal used these when he ran out of war elephants. This is a bloody huge dog. She mentioned that when the dog took off she just had time to think to herself “You know, I probably should let go of the leash”, but not enough time to actually do it. She’s not a large person, the dog weighs about as much as she does, so it yanked her completely off of her feet, spun her around, and she landed on the grass a yard or two downrange. The dog stopped but only to come back and see why she was lying on the grass.
You know, I’m liking our cats more and more. When Geiger is on the leash I win those battles.
And finally, I know the Minnesota Twins haven’t done too well this year. However there is a team that is doing well. The Vancouver Canadians are in the NorthWest League Championship series. They’re playing Boise and trying to repeat as Champions. Now admittedly the NorthWest League is Minor League. They play teams from places like Eugene, and Spokane, and Yakima, but heck, a championship is a championship. Marsha, however is refusing to follow them. She’s convinced that as soon as she starts rooting for a team they lose. But I’ll say it:
Go Canadians!
Doug & Marsha
PIX:
1) The debris from the garage. I'm going to flatten this out, cover it with gravel, and widen our parking space.
2) Three shots of the project. Front and back walls are in. Rough plumbing is in. This week we pour the floor and second retaining wall in front.
3) An ominous September sunrise.