The $1500.00 Dog Biscuit

This is the type of dog treat that made Wookie so sick. IAMS tartar treats are allegedly 100% edible and digestible. And… supposedly, they are also hard enough that they won’t break into chunks large enough to disrupt digestion.

The treats puff up when they get wet, so Wookie had two 1″ x 1.5″ pieces, floating around (chewed - but undigested) in his stomach for nine days. The pieces resembled wet particle board. The “treat” caused him diarrhea, vomiting and severe abdominal pain. He lost over 10% of his body weight in a week and is still an inpatient at Virginia Tech’s teaching hospital.

So far, we’ve spent $1500.00 and made seven vet visits. (and even now… we’re not 100% sure he’s OK)

If you have dogs… please think twice about giving them these treats. It just isn’t worth the risk.

Uploaded by letskyce on 2 May ‘07, 8.01am EDT.

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Tags: IAMS Tartar treat, Pug, puppy, dog, diarrhea, vomiting, severe abdominal pain, Virginia Tech, Wookie

Discombobulated Thoughts — January 16, 2007

• Wow, halfway through January already?
• I’m feeling slightly better, just some residual pain in my back and right side but not feeling like I’m splitting in half anymore.
• Pugly is acting very odd lately. I’ve been having to carry him to the car every morning to go to doggy daycare and sometimes I have to catch him to put the leash on him to go outside. Then there’s the weird matter of him not wanting to jump down from the car when we get home. Very strange little dog.
• I’ve been watching HBO’s Rome and I just love love love it. I love the two guys who always seem to be in the right or wrong place and inadvertently cause history to happen.
• I’m reluctantly switching from bottled water to Brita filtered water to save money at home. As long as it’s not tap water, right?
  

  It’s a jungle out there
  Poison in the very air we breathe
  Do you know what’s in the water that you drink?
  Well I do, and it’s amazing
  – “It’s a Jungle Out There”, Monk Theme Song lyrics

• I bought Seventh Generation dish soap, which I think is supposed to be biodegradable. At the very least it’s better for the environment that Joy, which is what I was using. I also bought an organic green tea hair conditioner. I couldn’t find the reusable grocery bags, but I’m thinking about making my own.
• I’ve been trying to find a sample Square Foot Veggie garden online for one adult that I could modify to my own liking. I just like seeing examples of what other people have done.
• I guess I’m going to have to create a gardening category.
• I knitted all day on Saturday on a dishcloth but I have nothing to show for it because I pulled it all out. No matter how careful I counted or what I did, by the time I got to the 12th row, I had an extra stitch and couldn’t figure out where it happened. So I pulled it all out. It’s one of those complicated patterns that is different on every row — you know, K5 P2 (K6 P2) repeat 4 times K5 P1 K2 and then the next row is something else and then like on row 12 you repeat rows 6 through 10. Oy. The scarf was all knit stitches and it took me how many months to do?
• I’m feeling uninspired to take a photo today.

Tags: discombobulated, Seventh Generation, Joy, project365, knitting, gardening, wellness, the puppy, bottled water, Brita, HBO\\\\\\\'s Rome

One Scarf Finished

I finally finished that scarf I started knitting back in October. Yay!

Tags: knitting, scarf

Thursday Thirteen Vanity Plates I Took Pictures Of This Week (#20)

Today’s Thursday Thirteen is brought to you by the letters W, I, and G, and the numbers 5 and 23.

I found these all in less than seven days. I swear, New Englanders have the most Vanity Plates per square mile.

Thirteen Things about N. Mallory

1. This guy is just “CREWZN.”
   
2. I can only imagine this person is a self-styled “gangsta”. Though, in a Mazda? Probably not very credible.
   
3. This must be a mother.
   
4. I’ve been debating on if this person meant to spell “no duh” or they have no dad. Either way, it’s very sad.
   
5. Obviously this person is clinging onto Boston’s glory. (You know they say that Maine is like Massachusetts’ retarded step-cousin, right? We have no teams of our own but we always seem to glob onto Mass’ victories.
   
6. Blue Heaven or Haven?
   
7. This was sitting next to the above car.
   
8. Awwwwwww…as if college didn’t cost enough… (By the way, the MSU Mom really drives this SUV.)
   
9. Here’s a two-fer. This car has been sitting in the parking garage for six months. People have written in the dust, as you can see. Obviously someone cared about it at one time…enough to get a vanity plate. I’m even betting the guy is tall, kind of pale, maybe a little bald.
   
   
10. Apparently, the cost of college is worth a “W”.
    
11. I don’t think this person is sticking around.
    
12. And this one ain’t from around here.
    
13. At least this one has the right idea about living life every day.
    

Tags: vanity plates, photo blogging, thursday thirteen, meme, bloghopping, license plates, automobiles, cars, parking lot, parking garage, Maine, New England

Project 365 (Day 9): Security Violation

Where I work, if you don’t have a security badge, you can’t get back from the dimly lit hall where the bathrooms are to the office without wedging the door open with a trashcan. We’ve been told this is a serious security violation as that could lead to just anyone wandering in.

There used to be a “guest” badge for visitors of the building to borrow — you know, those folks who have meetings in the conference room, consultants, schmucks who’ve left their real security badges on their bathroom sinks next to their watches…but a visiting contractor who was installing the new video part of the improved security system borrowed it and never returned it.

So…a big part of my day today was committing security violations and here’s the photo to prove it.

Edited using pxn8.com - The online image editor.

Tags: security, trashcan, pxn8, project365, photoaday, oneaday, photo blogging

Unwanted House Critters

Well, it appears that I’ve got signs of at least one unwanted house critter — though you know if there’s one, there’s more.

The clues:

• Some thing’s definitely been imbibing in the bird seed I’ve got stored in the basement and it’s not the birdies I bought it for, which makes me very grumpy.
• Needy and Pugly have both been interested in some thing beneath the stove.
• Pugly has been barking at the wall between the kitchen and the living room for no apparent reason. (There goes my theory that he’s gone insane.)
• Two nights ago, Needy was very interested in the skittering of some little feet along the sloped part of my bedroom ceiling over my bed, which is just too chilling to think about.

Needy and Aloof really aren’t mousers. They really are the kind of cats that prefer to be given their kibble at regular intervals and aren’t really happy that they’ve been put on a diet. They don’t like wet food. So I don’t see them actually knowing what to do if they see an actual unwanted house critter.

Pugly is probably more likely to to be a good mouser, but that’s kind of icky to think about.

So, I guess I’ll be researching what to do about unwanted house critters.

I don’t know that I’m all that excited about the whole catch them and set them free thing because couldn’t they just come back? And wouldn’t I have to, you know touch them?

I’m not excited about the whole idea of poison or slow death either. I’d rather put up an eviction notice.

Tags: mice, rodents, rats, little red house, the cats, the puppy

Monday’s A Bitch: 01/08/2007

Random Joy

1. After a long day, I like to kick back with…? HGtv, my afghan, and my animals.
2. Do you know anyone “famous”/who is the “most famous” person you’ve ever met? I’ve met lots of famous people at sci-fi conventions — actors, writers, and artists. Most seem to be more down to earth at them. Laurell K. Hamilton, Jewell Staite, Ruth Thompson and Timothy Zahn come to mind. Didn’t care for Anne McCaffrey or Claudia Christian at all.
3. What is your favourite piece of classical music? - Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

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Tags: Monday\'s a Bitch, meme, bloghopping

comments See also in My Life, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, Monday's A Bitch

Changes To Sidebar & Other Updates

I’ve been toying with the sidebar for a few days. Let me know if it’s easier or harder to find things.

• Put all the pages into a drop-down menu so they take up less space.
• Moved the blog description to the top.
• Moved all the drop-down menus (category, archive, and page selections) to just below the search box at the top so they are all in one place.
• Added a button to add this blog to your technorati favorites as well as a button linking this website to project 365!.
• I moved around some of the “flair” so that it actually fit under the “Flair” section.
• I added my “To Be Read” list as well as the books I’ve currently started reading so y’all can help keep me honest.
• I also added a flickr badge over there. I kind of feel like that might be too much, like maybe it’ll cause people problems opening the page — if it does, please let me know.

Other things I did were

• I added a link in the header to my photo albums. There’s more there than just the Project 365 photos. I’ve got pictures of my house, my pets, and all of the photos from my UK excursion from last year, not just the ones I posted here. Plus other pictures.
• I’ve updated the about page a bit, added stuff, took stuff off. If you’re a regular, I challenge you to figure it out. I do try to regularly update the “my status” section there. My reading list can be found there as well.
• I updated my 100 Discombobulated Things About Me too because I realized that since I wrote it, some people have gotten divorced, some people have gotten married, I’ve moved, things have changed, there was Hurricane Katrina, I’ve been diagnosed with stuff, etc.
• I added comment viewing through the RSS feeds. Now you should be able to see if there’s been replies to your comments by checking back through your feedreader. I say “should”. Wordpress plugins are sometimes kind of funny. Let me know if it’s being quirky.
• I upgraded Bad Behavior and Wordpress.

Tags: website update

Quote of the Day: On The Luck Of Rulers

“What luck for rulers that men do not think.”
– Adolf Hitler

Tags: Quote of the Day, Adolf Hitler

Project 365

Everyone’s doing it.

Yup, I’m a joiner.

Actually, now that I’ve read up on it and realized that you don’t have to take a picture of yourself every day for a year like Mac is doing over at peskyapostrophe, I’m not so scared of it.

Basically, I just need to take a photo every day for 365 days. The challenge is to take some sort of interesting photo every day and at least one picture of myself every month. I can handle 12 photos of myself. Heck, I’ve got one down now, right? Here I am looking a little unsure about the whole thing.

Seems like an interesting challenge.

Tags: self-portrait, photo blogging, project365, photoaday

Getting Ready For 2007

So, thinking about my “Things I’d like to do in 2007,” I decided to get a head start.

• I took the To Do lists — daily, 2x a week, weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, 2x a year, annually, etc. — and assigned the items dates or days of the weeks. I put them all into my Palm Z22; the to do program has a repeating functionality which allowed me to do all sorts of neat things. I am giving myself permission to go ahead and check things off even if I don’t complete things, accepting they’re there for reminders, not punishment.

  However, after a few days of doing the daily things on my list, I had an “Ah-ha!” moment. It suddenly occurred to me that even if you start with a big mess, if you do a little every day and maintain the clean part every day, eventually it’ll all be done and the clean section will be easy to maintain. Right now, my kitchen is so easy to keep clean. I just have to keep following the daily maintenance and not let it slide back into chaos. It’s easy if you break things up into manageable pieces.

• Using the Now Reading Wordpress Plugin I already had installed, I created two pages and linked to them in my sidebar on the right — N’s To Be Read Book List and N’s Finished Books List.  I haven’t figured out how to only do a 2007 Finished Books List using the plugin yet, but this is a good start, I think.  It’ll be a good way to keep track.  The TBR list lists the books I’ve currently started and the books I’ve bought and are in the wings waiting to be read.   I expect that list to get longer when I sort through my books to put them in some sort of actual order in a few weeks.

  Here’s an interesting question: Where do you keep your TBR books?  Do you keep them where they will end up or in a pile somewhere separate?  Is there a special place for books that haven’t been read yet in your house or do they mingle with the books you’ve already finished?

• I actually knitted 5½ rows on my scarf!  It’s hard to decide whether to read or knit.  Has anyone figured out how to do both? –  and no, I don’t want to “listen” to books.

Tags: Thursday Thirteen, knitting, reading, books, housecleaning

Thursday Thirteen Things I’d Like To Do In 2007 (#18)

So this is the time of year when everyone is doing New Year’s Resolutions. I prefer not to do “Resolutions” because they’re generally broken and joked about by the middle of January and forgotten by President’s Day. Then, next January, they’ll be resolved again.

So, instead, I usually try to use the time to reflect and think about the things I’d like to work on in my life, changes, improvements, and so on. I don’t make myself any impossible promises though. I know my limits and I know physics. There’s no way I can lose 60 lbs in 2 months, for example; nor is it likely that I’ll be getting up at 5am any time soon to exercise 3 times a week.

Anyway, here is my list of things I would like to do in 2007, no promises, but I’m working on it. More

Tags: Thursday Thirteen, bloghopping, meme, New Years Resolutions, gardening, knitting, debt, weight, health, writing, Green Living, housekeeping, dysfunctional family

The Great Tofurky Experiment

So, the nutritionists say the poultry is a bad thing for me because it’s pro-inflammatory. They told me to eat more soy and seafood. Seafood didn’t seem right for Christmas dinner, but there’s something in the health food stores called “Tofurky.” It’s kind of fun to say but I was a little wary of trying it. Feaux vegetarian meats have been a kind of scary thing, though they’ve been getting better the last 15 years as “vegetarianism” has hit the modern grocery store instead of just in hidden health food stores.

Anyway, so this Christmas, I decided to go for the whole Tofurky affair. I found a whole dinner at Wild Oats. According to the box:

A Delicious Vegetarian Feast

Feast Includes a Tender, Juicy Stuffed Tofu Roast, 8 Delicious Cranberry-Apple, Potato Dumplings, Rich Tofurky “Giblet” & Mushroom Gravy, and Our Signature Tofurky Jurky Wishstix

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Tags: Tofurky, vegetarian, Christmas, dinner, nutrition, fibromyalgia, cooking

What You Should Be Reading — 12/20/06

• Detained In Iraq by Brendan Skwire @ All Spin Zone; another American abused for doing “the right thing” by a system that has become dangerous for Americans and nonAmericans alike. I bet he thinks twice before he acts so heroically in the future.
  

  Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

  “Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”

• Detainee Abuse by Tim F. @ Balloon Juice; more on Donald Vance
  

  American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

  The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

• Our path to ‘victory’ ends in defeat by Mark Morford @ SFGate.com
  

  It’s not like we were overpowered. We weren’t outmanned or outgunned or outstrategized, hence we weren’t defeated in any “traditional,” kick-ass, take-names, sign-the-peace-accord way.

  It wasn’t because our can’t-lose military didn’t have the latest and greatest killing tools of all time, the biggest budget, the most heroic of baffled and misled young soldiers sort of but not really willing to go off and fight and die for a cause no one could adequately explain or justify to them.

  We still have the coolest, fastest planes. We still have the meanest billion-dollar technology. We still have the most imposing tanks and the most incredible weaponry and the badass night-vision goggles with the laser sights and the thermal heat-seeking readouts and the ability to track targets from 2 miles away in a dust storm. It doesn’t matter.

  What we don’t have is any idea what we’re doing, not anymore, not on the global stage. We lost this “war” and we lost it before we even began because we went in for all the wrong reasons and with all the wrong planning and with all the wrong leadership who had all the wrong motives based on all the wrong greedy self-serving insular faux cowboy BS that your kids and your grandkids will be paying for until about the year 2056.

  Maybe you don’t agree. Maybe you say, “Wait, wait, wait, it’s not over at all, and we haven’t lost yet. Isn’t the fighting still raging? Can’t we still ‘win’ even though we’re still losing soldiers by the truckload and thousands of innocent Iraqis are being brutally slaughtered every month and isn’t Dubya still standing there, brow scrunched and confounded as a monkey clinging onto a shiny razor blade, refusing to let go and free us from the deadly trap, ignoring the Iraq Study Group and trying to figure out a way to stay the course and never give in and “mission accomplished” even as every single human around him, from the top generals to crusty old James Baker to the new and shockingly honest secretary of defense, says we are royally screwed and Iraq is now a vicious and chaotic civil war and it’s officially one of the worst disasters in American history?” Oh wait, you just answered your own question.

  Yes, technically, the war is still on. The fighting is not over. And, yes, you can even say we (brutally, tactlessly) installed ourselves with sufficient ego to give us a modicum of violent, volatile control over the gulf region’s remaining petroleum reserves — which was, of course, much of the point in the first place.

  But the nasty us-versus-them, good-versus-evil ideology is over. Ditto the numb sense of Bush’s brutally simpleminded American “justice.” Any lingering hint of anything resembling a truly valid and lucid and deeply patriotic reason for wasting a trillion dollars and thousands of lives and roughly an entire generation’s worth of international respect? Gone.

  What’s left is one lingering, looming question: How do we accept defeat? How do we deal with the awkward, identity-mauling, ego-stomping idea that, once again, America didn’t “win” a war it really had no right to launch in the first place? After all, isn’t this the American slogan: “We may not always be right, but we are never wrong”?

  It’s still our most favorite idea, the thing our own childlike president loves to talk most about, burned into our national consciousness like a bad tattoo: We always win. We’re the good guys. We’re the chosen ones. We’re the goddamn cavalry, flying the flag of truth, wrapped in strip malls and Ford pickups and McDonald’s franchises. Right?

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  Tags: detainees, Donald Vance, Iraq, terrorism, violence, soldiers of fortune, private military, torture

  comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, The World, Featured, 9-11 & Terrorism, Iraq & Afghanistan, The Middle East

Moving Right Along

O.K. Now that I’ve gotten someone (my mother) to admit that I’m probably right (the movers probably did take things from my house during the move for whatever reason — to sell on ebay), I’m ready to move on. I just wanted someone to admit that I wasn’t crazy and that there was just too many coincidences for me to somehow to just be overlooking these items in the house.

I finally got my mother to stop saying, “Well, you know, there’s still stuff I haven’t found from our move 5 years ago…” by cutting her off with “But I don’t have a big friggin’ barn out back with unpacked boxes! 99% of my boxes are unpacked. This house isn’t that big! There’s no where else to hide!”

I might have been screaming the last part a little.

Anyway, so looking around, I realized that I can’t proceed further with the unpacking the last few boxes and putting away the clutter on the shelves and tables until I have, well, shelves.

• I need to go ahead and design a wall system for above my desk in the craft room/office and buy the pieces and install it so I can finish putting away the office.
• I need to go ahead and put together that lighted display cabinet I bought two weeks ago. Now I need it for my fairies rather than everything else.
• I need some sort of coat hook rack in the kitchen for my coat, purse and Pugly’s leash. I also need to hang the key hook.
• Once those are done, then I need to examine what still needs shelf homes and what wall space is left. I have lots of pictures and lots of windows and little wall space. I wish I could figure out how to hang pictures on those slanted walls/ceilings of the cape in the upstairs.

The good news is that my electric screwdriver and my new 29-bit set came yesterday. I wish my new ladder would get here.

I also want to change all of the locks on the doors and I want to change the door going from the dining room to the garage. Some previous owner put a storm door there rather than a regular door. I think I want to put a lock on that door (there isn’t one now) and remove the lock on the door going from the kitchen to the dining room, which I’ve been using as the house lock.

Anyway, I think I’ll try to get to Lowe’s for the ClosetMaid stuff this week before Christmas. A three day weekend and two building projects…I’ll probably get nothing done this weekend but watch HGtv.

Tags: little red house, ClosetMaid

From Within The House

I’m totally freaked out this morning.

Last night, on one of my gazillion trips downstairs to pee, I was sitting on the toilet (too much info?), when I heard the oddest, distinct sound of a phone off the hook.

O.K. Well, the cats do have night wanderings.  One of them could have possibly knocked one of the phones off the hook, right?

So, when I’m finished with my personal business, I go to the only phone in the house that isn’t connected to the world by a button.  It’s sitting securely in it’s cradle.  The only other phone in the house is one of those cordless phones with talk and end buttons, but I check it too.

Nothing is out of place, but I can still hear the busy signal.  No radios, no t.v.s are on.

Then the busy signal fades away.

WTF?

So, now I only go downstairs to pee at night with my baseball bat in hand.

And things are missing.

Big things.

Just missing.

I think I mentioned that a pair of curtain rods still in their boxes had gone missing.  I know I brought them in and put them in the closet of what’s now the Music Room the first day — before the movers arrived.  Haven’t seen them since.  Bought new curtain rods.

Now, my two rather large wood U-shaped floating shelves (you’ve seen similar if you watch enough HGtv) that displayed my fairy figurine collection in my old apartment are missing.  My mother remembers giving them to the movers to be moved, but no one remembers seeing them at the little red house.  I’ve been completely through the house from top to basement a bunch of times.  There’s no where for them to hide.  There’s no boxes left for them to hide in.  Just poof.

Also, I had two flat floating shelves still in their boxes that were too long to fit into a packing box the day of the move.  I never saw what my mom did with them though she said she’d take care of it.  I kind of thought they’d end up in a box with the pictures, but I’ve been picture box digging and can’t find them.  Just poof.

Call the Without a Trace team!

O.K. so here’s my unreasonable paranoid delusion theory.  I think one of the movers took the items that were still in boxes that could be returned and Wal-mart takes back pretty much anything.  O.K. The U-shelves kind of blow my theory but they were in good condition and they looked like they matched, maybe the guy thought he could return those too?

*shrug*

I know I’m reaching.  I’m trying to make sense out of this.  I have things missing from my move that can’t be anywhere in my house and weren’t left behind.

Of course, none of that explains the missing Gorilla Glue…my mother and I both were using the bottle of Gorilla Glue while my parents were here, but damned if I can find it now.  I’ve been through every drawer, basket and cabinet in my apartment.  I do know that the Mover’s didn’t take it. ;)  My mother and I both saw it last sitting on my desk, but it certainly isn’t there now.

O.K. and every now and then Pugly gets really freaked out and starts barking for no apparent reason and racing around the house.  He won’t go in the basement either.

Makes me want to set up webcams for when I’m not home so people can tell me if ghosts or other people are in my home.

Tags: little red house

There’s Always One Christmas Smart Ass

I used to think those games you play at office Christmas parties were pretty fun. You know the ones, right? Everyone buys a gift under a certain amount of money and then there’s a swapping type game. Some people call it Yankee Swap, White Elephant, Santa Swap, Rob Your Neighbor, Grinch Exchange, etc., etc.

I’ve never played it the same way twice either. The rules are constantly changing as far as how you can steal a present, whether it’s before or after you’ve picked a gift from the pile, how many times a present can be stolen in a round or in a game, how many gifts can be stolen in a round, and so on. Some rules are made because of time constraints — people have meetings to get to, you know.

At my last job, alcohol was the most stolen gift. Well, good alcohol was, anyway. After a few years, I stopped playing the game because all anyone brought was alcohol and for some reason I always ended up with the cheapest bottle of rotgut — I mean, even a winno wouldn’t have drunk that stuff — and I don’t and can’t drink because of my illnesses and medications. The game got to be no fun and no point for me. Plus, I would find myself frustrated that I couldn’t regift.

Let me explain. When a limit is set on the gift buying for a game like that and they say “a gift under $20″, they don’t really mean that a $2 gift is appropriate. Yes, it’s “under” $20, but that’s not fair to the people who went out and bought $20 gifts. But there’s always going to be at least one Christmas smart ass who’s going to justify it.

I really hadn’t thought about the whole thing in years, but I was watching my current co-workers play their version of “Yankee Swap” on Friday. I didn’t know you could play without exchanging alcohol so my interest was peaked. (Mostly, I was just trapped on the wrong side of the office from my desk.) Their limit was $5.

Wouldn’t you know it? Some Christmas Smart Ass had gone to Dunkin Donuts and gotten a $2 gift card. Friggin’ Asshole. (And one of the managers ended up with it too.)

Seriously, it’s $5 and it’s Christmas people! What the hell is wrong with you?! Are you really just that cheap? If you couldn’t afford the whole $5, you didn’t need to play the game. It wasn’t mandatory for Christmas’ sake! You probably also steal people’s lunches out of the fridge and take pennies from that cup by the cash register when you don’t need it.

Tags: Yankee Swap, White Elephant, Grinch

Snow Day @ The Little Red House

As promised here are some pictures of today’s snow fall around my new house.

Here’s the Little Red House.  I wonder if someone can Photoshop those powerlines out so that can be made into a Christmas card or is the shot too blurry, do you think?

The view from my front window:

The view from my kitchen window:

The view from my Dining Room:

Tags: snow, Maine, little red house, photo blogging

Yellow Snow

Those of us in the Little Red House woke up this morning to discover that a blanket of snow had covered our yard overnight.  (Pictures to follow tonight when I get home.)  How we discovered it is that I woke up to take little Pugly out for his morning pee-pee, put my Crocs and coat on and led him on the leash to the backdoor, which when opened revealed a great white cold from the back steps to the pine trees.

I blinked.

Pugly blinked and took a few tentative steps onto the snow covered stoop.

You must recall that little Pugly was only born last March.

He just stood there looking at this bizarre transformation of the backyard.  He seemed reluctant to proceed.

I led him down the steps and he just stood at the bottom staring at this vast whiteness like “What the hell?”

Eventually I convinced him that he had to pee-pee after much prodding.  However, this experience apparently was distasteful and no amount of convincing would lead to a poo-poo in the snow moment as well, which unfortunately led to a spanking immediately after we went inside and he poo-poo’d on my music room rug.
Poor little Pugly.  It’s going to be a long, cold, wet Winter.

Tags: Pug, the puppy, snow, little red house

First Oil Bill — Jinkies!

I got my oil tank filled for the first time in my new house yesterday. It was about 1/4th full already and they added about 188 gallons. The cost of oil according to the bill was the same as filling my gas tank yesterday — $2.29/gallon.

Go ahead, do the math.

I spent $40 filling my gas tank yesterday. I owe my oil company $430! Jinkies! Holy Global Warming, Batman!

So, I’m wondering how long that’s going to last.

My house is heated using baseboard heat with water, though the water is heated using the oil-run furnace. The hot water for my shower, my washing machine, and my dishwasher all get their “hot” from the furnace.
Three people over the course of 10 - 12 days used about 1/8th of the tank. That’s extra showers and the dishwasher being run at least once every day and the washing machine getting run extra. My thermostat was set at the ungodly temp of 70°F for 10-12 days for the “Southern” people.

However, it’s just me know and I’ve programmed my thermostat to be 68°F from 6am - 8am and 5:15pm to 11pm and 62°F the rest of the time during the week and 68°F from 6:30am to 11pm on Saturday and Sunday. My dishwasher is likely to be run once every 2 to 3 days except on weekends. Just one person showering per day now.

So, I’m wondering how much oil I’ll use by my lonesome in a month.

Tags: heating oil prices, little red house