I still have things to say — hell, I still have quite a few opinions and heck, a whole new election year is coming. However, I’m not feeling the anger I’ve felt in the past in regards to politics and I don’t want to feel that helpless anger again. I’m ready to really start exploring my new State, I think. I feel that I’m on the cusp of something though I don’t know what it is yet and maybe I want to just blither on about useless things for a while and I don’t know that The Naked Truth is where I want to do that.

I really want to thank those people who’ve stuck by me and who’ve given me such wonderful advice over the years and those who’ve given me such great debate. I’ve loved ever minute of it.

(I’ll be turning off comments, but for those of you who I’ve know for a long time who really really think you want to know what Pugly and I are up to in a few weeks, please feel free to use the contact form to ask.)

This morning I finally accepted the truth.

Aloof is a lot to blame for my lack of sleep and something has to be done about it whether I like it or not and whether he likes it or not.

Non-stop for months now he has been on a tirade about his food. I guess it’s just been getting worse and worse since I cut off the cat food ever-dispenser and went to feeding them twice a day on a vet-recommended restricted diet that the vet insisted that he’d get used to. He hasn’t lost any weight though Needy has but Aloof’s attitude has just gotten worse and worse.

How does he tirade? He goes around knocking things off of the furniture, whatever will make noise or spill — he’s figured out that cans sometimes have fluid in them.

So he starts anywhere between 3:30am and 5am and he starts sliding things off of my bed stands and dresser and he’s found other ways to make noise that annoys me too. He’s discovered the right amount of time from when I wake up and yell at him and he runs away to just before I’m about to fall asleep again so I never quite get back to sleep. Clearly he’s learned some sort of sleep deprivation torture from Dick Chenney’s people.

This is why I never want to get up in the morning, why after the animals have been fed in the morning at 6am, I can drift back to sleep, sleep through my alarm and be late to work, and sleep through half the weekend. It’s why I never feel rested through the work day. It’s why my eyes feel so tired that when I blink I feel on the edge of dreaming almost constantly and it’s getting worse.

So tonight, I’m going to start putting Aloof in Pugly’s kennel when I go to bed. Pugly and Needy always sleep quietly through the night or if they don’t, they rest or play quietly near me while I sleep and don’t wake me up until the alarm goes off — or until I start chasing Aloof. Aloof is the one that has to learn that bed time is bed time.

Of course, catching him is going to be the hard part. Catching him more than once, will be near impossible. But I think it’s this or part ways and I’m not ready to think about that.

2 Comments

• At May 31, 2007, Jessica wrote:

  Love the site! Your cat is so adorable! My sister has a cat named luther who is adorable but overweight, she adopted him that way, and he's lost a few pounds but that's it, I don't know that he will lose any more. But he has a good life with her and I hope that his weight doesn't cause him any serious problems. One of our two adopted strays does something funny. DH and me get up at 5 am every weekday morning but on the weekends we sleep in till about 6 or 630 am. Well on weekends, Peepers will come into the bedroom and sit at the foot of the bed and MEOW her head off trying to wake us up around 6 am as if to say "mom, dad you'll be late for work!!"

• At June 7, 2007, Cindy wrote:

  Hi, I found your blog by searching for "Maine bloggers" and I'll be back!

My neighbor’s bird feeder appeared to be MIA as well so I’m betting it was those rather large crows I saw flying about that morning.

I added it to my Lowes shopping list since I was going that afternoon anyway.

That was a dizzyingly frustrating experience in itself. All I really wanted was to buy a plain wooden door to put between my garage and my breeze-way/dining room. Growing up in New Orleans, we had a hollow brown door there that opened into the house. I really just wanted the same thing, but white. Really, I need it to open into the house, because the garage is a few steps down and it would be awkwardly dangerous to have it open into the garage.

However, what I was told at Lowes is that in my town, the building/fire code is that you have to have a steel fire door there. Currently, there’s just a storm door that was put there by the original owner when the breeze-way was added on — several owners ago. But I have to put a steel fire door there.

And it has to open into the garage because if there’s a fire in the garage, that will make it less likely to explode into the house if the door gets opened.

Oh, and though Lowes installs doors, they don’t install fire doors, which have to be specially ordered. You have to hire a contractor to do that.

So, I came home with a new bird feeder and a pot of Nemesia from Lowes and no door and no order for a door.

I like the two tiers on the new bird feeder. Even more birds can come and visit at one time now. Hopefully this one will last longer than six months, which is how long the last one lasted.

The Nemesia are really pretty sitting on my front porch too.

1 Comments

• At June 3, 2007, Jessica wrote:

  Are you sure it wasn't those pesky squirrels? We have them here in the woods and we finally stopped putting up traditional feeders!

I have a lot of buttons to figure out. There’s a lot of features to learn. However, I can already tell just from toying with it even in the dreary, rainy, overcast light we have today that the new camera is 100 times better. It’s going to be so much more fun to use.

Tuesday night my mother pointed out that I was really hard on the SD110. I’m going to have to be much nicer and kinder and carefuller with the S3. I guess that means it might be a few weeks before I start being really daring with it.

Here are a few of the 100 photos I took in the first day. I can already tell an amazing difference in the quality of the photographs the new camera produces. These were all taken from my living room through my picture window. I used to have to stand about a foot away from my bird feeder very still and wait without breathing for a very long time to get a close up of a bird…and still the photo wouldn’t be sharp enough to really identify the bird.

2 Comments

• At May 19, 2007, Maggie wrote:

  May I ask what you feed your birds...something to do with apples? I am an avid bird watcher and always looking for new things to feed them...my Baltimore Orioles have just returned!! This year I also have a Scarlet Tanager..my yard is just full of color. Love your pic of the cardinal...I hear them singing by my house but they never seem to be in sight.

• At May 21, 2007, n. mallory wrote:

  I just buy the regular bird seed for wild birds that the grocery store carries. That bird feeder had a retro country stamp on it about apples on it.

However, he doesn’t seem to have lost his energy. He’s been chasing his tail and looking for birds and neighbors to bark at. Nor has he lost his appetite. He’s been on carpet patrol looking for morsels or even things he’s not supposed to eat like plastic or shoes.

In fact, Tuesday morning as I was pulling out of the driveway, I looked into the living room window, I saw Pugly standing on the coffee table. So, there I was stopped in the street, sitting in my Jeep, fussing at Pugly, telling him to get off the coffee table and there he was, staring at me from the living room coffee table through the window.

That probably went on for about 3 or 4 minutes.

And you know he could see me, pointing at him and gesturing for him to get down. And he was just standing there, mocking me, letting me know that when I wasn’t home, Pugs apparently are allowed on the coffee table.

He did get down and run to perch on his ottoman in front of the window before I drove away, but the message had been passed along.

And later that night…he was eating a paper towel…so he can’t be that sick, right?

Yesterday, I was driving down Forest in the right lane and right as I came to The Bike Shop there were about 20 or 30 folks on bikes out front on the lawn. They chose to enter traffic right in front of me at that particular moment and they didn’t seem to be paying attention to oncoming traffic. I generally have no problem with bicyclists as long as they seem to be competent and following the law themselves.

I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting those guys you see up ahead (in this picture I took later) making the turn onto the side street from the right lane there. My camera which had been sitting on the seat next to me at the time ended up under the gas pedal. There’s now a dent that affects how fast I can change the zoom, which now requires a lot of fiddling as it seems to get stuck quite often, usually in the setting I don’t want it in.

I was planning on buying a new high end P&S camera in July, but this morning I broke down and ordered a Canon Powershot S3 IS. It’ll be here tomorrow. I’m both excited and annoyed.

2 Comments

• At May 15, 2007, Thud wrote:

  Roar! Bikers annoy me. Our town went to a great deal of expense to make bike lanes and bike paths, and what do I have to do today? Pass bicyclists in the actual street instead of the bike lane bike lane ten feet away.

• At May 31, 2007, Jessica wrote:

  We've got a huge problem here with bicyclists, namely that they don't know the rules of the road. The experienced long distance bikers do but the thousands of college kids on bikes? No way. We're constantly slamming on brakes here on and off campus because they bike out in front of us. And you know of course it would be OUR Fault because in this town the cops say the bikers have the right of way. Go figure!

  I'm enjoying your blog!

  Jess

O.K. This is Maine. Definitely not the same as New Orleans.

And rural Maine? You cannot go out of your front door wearing a blue page wig, a Indian-made blouse, and blue jeans and carrying a tripod, a camera and a Pug and not have every single one of your neighbors come to the edge of your yard and stare like you’re about to climb up a water tower with a rifle or something.

I did actually try to explain that I was doing a Mother’s Day photo project at my mom’s request but they just kind of looked at me odd.

Now, the people who live next door with the Pug won’t even look at me when they’re walking their dog at the same time I’m walking Pugly.

And the sad part is that the pictures didn’t come out because of the position of the sun and some horrendous squinting I did. So Gramma ended up with a lovely photograph of just Pugly, which is probably better anyway.

2 Comments

• At May 14, 2007, HippieChyck wrote:

  i think u should climb the water tower in your wigs and heels. then crown it with a tiara.

• At June 16, 2007, Poetry wrote:

  4 June 2007

  After the storm, my mind cleared.

  And a high wind arose and blew the tropics north.

  running quartz crystals through a blender.

  sand through your engines.

  bubbles in your bays.

  estuaries reaching out toward forbidden seas...

  sand through your eyes.

  5 June 2007

  Calm as baby's breath

  as peaceful as the storm's eye

  Clouds spread and drawn with rough strokes of stratospheric winds

  a warm and windy tropical day.

  7 June 2007

  Black water at dusk.

  Lighting on the horizon.

  Warm winds coming in across the darkening waters.

  A flash of white wings as an egret takes flight.

  And Thunder like God clearing his throat.

  8 June 2007

  Morning star in the still of the clear, dark waters.

  a sky as clear eyed as a young girl.

  bruised and tattered storm remnants limp off in the gathering light.

  9 June 2007

  Tickled her fancy.

  giggling all the day long.

  pretty good for a Saturday.

  Clouds on the lake floating aimlessly by.

  She smiled big--grinned really.

  12 JUne 2007

  A silver sky

  ripe for the mirror.

  you can not see yourself in this mirror

  you can only see others

  moreover, you can only see what others choose to expose.

  Their houses, their boats, their sea-doos.

  Birds skimming low over the water could

  like as not

  see them selves if they were to look down

  as they skim low over the water

  but they never do.

  Rather they allow their reflections to chase them

  quick and sharp over the still, glistening waters

  while the bird's mind remains ever fixed on

  food, or other birds, or escaping those damn noisy humans.

  A dense forest impenetrable as a gaze.

  13 JUne 2007

  Like angry bee's eyes

  the metal screen seen through the bamboo blinds.

  A million insects dot the lake spreading micro ripples

  14 June 2007

  Of Fly Catchers and hidden lakes.

  Of sleeping lizards and morning dew.

  It is of birdsong and misty dawns

  and fleeced clouds floating in a still pool.

  The waters ripple awake in the gathering morn.

  The first water birds head out for the far shore.

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
– Isaac Asimov

1 Comments

• At May 14, 2007, HippieChyck wrote:

  hey - CJ just quoted that line in a rerun of the West Wing I watched last week.

  get's you thinking...

I’m still unclear why they were walking away from the store with the empty basket.

1 Comments

• At September 8, 2007, home-sainsburys-shopping.buypaintingonline wrote:

  [...] approve this shocking headline at http://nmallory.exit-23.net/20070511/photo-of-the-day-how-shopping-carts-get-to-those-weird-places about [...]

At first I thought I was desperate for a DSLR camera. You know, with all of the different, really expensive lenses and equipment? For months, I’ve been drooling over those professional-type cameras and their complexities and the brilliant photography I could do with them.

After the suffering I’ve done with my Canon Powershot SD110 and it’s measly 3MP and 2X optical zoom, just imagine how brilliant I could be!

Now, let’s assume that I have $800 to $1,000 to just through at the initial investment of a Canon Rebel XTi and one lens (probably a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6), the zoom isn’t any better than what I have now, though I’d get 8 or 10MP. I’d still have to acquire another lens for better zoom and extra lenses cost about the same as the camera if not way more.

Talk about an expensive investment!

I’m just not ready to commit that completely to photography as a hobby yet. As it is, the house is a pretty costly reoccurring investment outside of the mortgage what with all the things I want to buy for it.

So, I decided that what I really wanted was the next step down from a DSLR. Something almost professional quality but for someone not ready to take that final step. Looking around flickr at photos I liked, I noticed that a lot of them are taken with the Canon Powershot S3 Pro Series, which has 6MP and 12X optical zoom. So, I checked out this camera on Amazon and what I discovered is that it’s being replaced in July by the Canon Powershot S5 Pro Series, which has 8MP and 12 optical zoom and 2 more shooting modes.

So the question becomes, do I buy the S3 at a reduced price or how much better is the S5 with it’s 2 extra shooting modes and 2 extra MP? Who can tell me this?

5 Comments

• At May 11, 2007, woody wrote:

  The S5 would be better if the 12x zomm is your #1 priority.it also has bigger LCD thna the S2 and a hot-shoe.The G7 would be my choice for better photo quality - better lens and sensor, 10MP, 6X zoom. For pure speed, Rebel XT 8MP with 28-135mm IS lens for around $1000, with very good photo quality.

• At May 17, 2007, Ravi wrote:

  I see you opted for the S3. I'm looking at the S3 for the same exact reasons that you did--don't want to commit to a DSLR at this time.

  Did you consider the Sony H7? I am *torn* between the S3 and the H7. I love the H7's larger screen, upgraded zoom and higher reolution, but I keep coming back to the S3 for the gimmicky (but oh so cool) color accent and stereo video ability.

  Maybe you can give me some good advice...?

  (Lovely pics of of the birds, btw. Excellent DoF!)

• At May 17, 2007, n. mallory wrote:

  I have to admit that I didn't consider Sony as a camera option, only Fuji, Nikon, and Canon. I just didn't think of them. I've previously owned cameras from the other three. In the end, I chose Canon because most of the pictures I saw on flickr that I liked were taken with Canon cameras.

  I will say that reading the directions about the color accent didn't impress me, but I'm kind of a realism-kind of person where photos are concerned at the moment. And I didn't even consider the video and sound capabilities of any of the cameras because I'm only interested in photo-taking.

• At May 17, 2007, Ravi wrote:

  I hear ya!

  Enjoy your new S3!

  =)

• At July 8, 2007, Chris wrote:

  SO as far as I can tell the only difference between the S3 and the S5 is the S5 has one higher ISO option.... are there more differences?

2 Comments

• At May 10, 2007, HippieChyck wrote:

  loved the shot through the rainy window - was like christmas as a pre-prescription glasses elementary school kid all over again

• At November 24, 2007, Feed Search Engine - All Fresh Articles And News Are Here wrote:

  [...] Photo of the Day: The Ones I Like Best Slideshow [...]

“Red meat is NOT bad for you. Now blue-green meat, THAT’S bad for you!”
– Tommy Smothers

The Maine Department of Agriculture says a Greene company is voluntarily recalling nearly a ton of beef. Bubier Farms says nearly 2,000 pounds of beef may be contaminated with fecal matter, a common source of E-Coli bacteria.

State officials say 1,936 pounds of beef may be contaminated with fecal material, as well as other contaminants. The problem was discovered by a federal inspector earlier this week. Officials say the inspector found fecal matter and hair on slabs of beef inside a cooler at Bubier Meats.

Bubier meats is a small family run business that only sells product here in Maine. State officials say at this point they do not know if any of the meat in the recall is actually contaminated. But it is being recalled because it was in the cooler on the same day the inspection was done.

“The big concern with fecal contamination would be e-coli. We haven’t confirmed, we haven’t tested any yet, we’re just recalling because with fecal contamination we can’t take any chances whatsoever,” said Hal Prince from the Maine Department of Agriculture.

Most of the meat went to small grocery stores and restaurants around southern Maine. State officials say about 75% of the recalled meat has already been returned.

Here is a list of what has been recalled:

–Two whole sides of beef stamped Est. 4.

–10-lb. bags of beef labeled Bubier Meats Hamburg.

–10-lb. bags of ground beef labeled Caldwell Farms Beef All Natural Beef. The product code on the ground beef is 647.

–Primal cuts of beef also labeled Caldwell Farms Beef All Natural Beef.

Consumers with questions about the recall can call Bubier Farms Manager Tobie Bubier at 207-946-7761. Tobie Bubier says he’s confident that no meat that left his plant was contaminated and says he plans to have an independent laboratory test it to prove his case.

Source: Maine Farm Recalls Beef That May Be Tainted

Keep in mind that a small percentage of red meat is actually inspected. How scary is that? How much scary does that make the fact that they just happened to inspect on the same day this happened?

1 Comments

• At May 8, 2007, neca wrote:

  Yes, but it was "all natural" fecal matter! (I don't eat beef either.)

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
–Samuel Johnson

At first I thought Pugly was just being his playful self and was going to make me chase him when he wouldn’t get in the car, but soon it was quite evident that Pugly wasn’t being playful at all. There was no wag of the tail, no silly, bounciness in his movements, no mischievous light in his eyes.

Pugly looked at me as if he didn’t know who I was. He looked around the garage as if he had never seen it before. He peered into the house as if he had never been there. He wouldn’t come near me. Occasionally he would look at the open car door as if for a brief moment he would recall that there was something about it that he was supposed to remember but for the most part, he just hid under the Jeep or a few arms’ lengths away.

I tried luring him to me with sweet talk and a meaty treat, but he would only take a treat that had been put on the floor and abandoned. He would not come near me. It was making me tear up.

Finally I lured him back into the house using a trail of treats and trapped him in a smaller room where I was able to pick him up. He was terrified and trembling. His tail was uncurled, his eyes wide with fear and teary. I hugged him and whispered over and over that everything was o.k. I gave him more treats.

This whole event took 30 minutes. Eventually I did take him to daycare. I pet him with one hand the whole way and kept reassuring him, but I was never quite sure if he was o.k., if my Pugly was back, if he knew who I was or how much I love him. The whole thing is very upsetting.

It really wasn’t until we got to doggy daycare that he started to recognize his surroundings and started acting like himself. He even gave me a kiss good-bye before running off to play with his friends. The manager there tried to assure me that probably he just got spooked in the garage and that’s why he was acting weird. I hope so. It was so strange. Like to broke my heart.

“Sometimes I get the feeling the whole world is against me, but deep down I know that’s not true. Some smaller countries are neutral.”
– Robert Orben

Looking back over a quarter of a year in photos, I was sort of surprised at the memories they triggered. Granted, I’ve added little mini-blogs with a lot of them. For instance, I knew we had a late Winter here, but now I know we had our first real storm of 2007 starting January 14th. And the day I came down with the Norovirus, I took a photo of a license plate — PEPRONI. I have a photo of the first flower to bloom in my garden even though it’s already disappeared. I have photos of 122 moments that might have otherwise slipped away.

And I’ve had fun doing it.

And not all of the pictures have come out the way I wanted. And some have come out way better than I ever imagined. It’s definitely a journey worth the challenge.

If you’d like to check out a slideshow of my Project 365 journey so far, click here.

He also has a riding lawnmower and for $25 a mow, he’ll mow your lawn and every other mow, he’ll weedwhack — by the way, spellcheck doesn’t like the word “weedwhack. His little girl rides up on top of the lawnmower with him, which is probably one of the cutest selling points. I think if he could have fit Bruno up there too, he could have charged me more.

I talked to him about frequency since he’s familiar with my lawn and the neighborhood and the weather and climate. He said that my across the street neighbor gets more sun and she needs to have it mowed more often than I do — she also has a prettier lawn than I do. Still, for me that’s less mowing and less paying.

I did tell him that I need to do some work in the back yard this weekend; I still have some fallen branches from the last Nor’Easter that need to be hauled off. I also want to square off the garden in the front. I don’t know which previous home owner thought it would be neat to do the swirly non-edge edge garden in the front, but I imagine that it can’t be easy to keep weeds out of or mow next to. So, I want to straighten that out and put some edging down and mulch.

Of course, I still don’t know what’s in the current garden. I’m considering taking photos of each section and posting them here and asking people to tell me what’s what.

Unfortunately, were I’d like to plant sunflowers, there are some mysterious flowers and I don’t want to uproot them until I know what they are.

And I’m wondering if it’s too late to try to start a vegetable garden in the backyard and if not, what I should try to grow. I’d like some tomatoes and zucchini and cucumber, but what else?

“Dare You To Try To Take This Chair”

(Click on image to see a larger view.)

“It’s no longer a question of staying healthy. It’s a question of finding a sickness you like.”
–Jackie Mason