"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
What’s going on in my life
. . . do as the Bloglanders do. It’s cat blogging time at Being and Bloginess! When we travel, our friend Angela sometimes stays at our house. She brings her cat, Kittyman. Kittyman is big on turf, and always claims our cat’s bed. And here’s our poor cat, Chewie, the refugee of the world: Well. […]
Donna and I are in Missouri, visiting with Dad and Lois . . . and the rest of my family, which over the years has become an extended one, but not so extended I can’t keep track of names, and, more important, who’s related to who (with lots of help from Donna, naturally). When I’m in […]
Okay, I cede the battle. Our ground squirrels and pack rats are smarter than the traps I set out for them. For now, they have the run of the property. For now, they scoff at me. Vermin take note: I have not ceded the war. Yesterday’s news today: our first 100-degree day; regular gas finally […]
Those Hav-a-Hart animal traps? Not half as clever as the vermin they’re meant to imprison. Our score to date: Animals trapped: 1 Trap set, bait missing, no animal inside: 3 Trap tripped, bait missing, no animal inside: 6 Trap tipped on side, bait still there, no animal inside: 1 Faint sound of rodent laughter in background while […]
Several years ago, when the internet consisted of a single tube, an uncle discovered my Hash House Harrier web site, the Half-Mind Catalog. He bypassed the serious stuff and went straight to the dirtiest, filthiest, nastiest page on the site, something I’d put up for the amusement of my dirty, filthy, nasty friends. He wrote, not to […]
I drive a 1994 Ford pickup. It has two 18-gallon gas tanks, and with gas in Tucson at 2.85 cents per gallon (yes, I know it’s a lot more elsewhere in the States, never mind Europe, so spare me already), it takes more than a C-note to fill it up. There are a lot of […]
I use a portable satellite radio receiver to listen to the blues when I’m grilling on the patio. Last weekend the radio wouldn’t work – the antenna lead had been cut in half. I figured our yard guy must have accidentally severed it with a hoe. Since the lead’s coaxial, splicing and wrapping it with electrical tape wouldn’t work, so, for twenty […]
I was hoping something would happen to shift the media’s attention away from Imus. Another Britney meltdown, a runaway bride, something like that. But nothing like the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech. In the wake of the Columbine High School shootings, it became more difficult for kids to be different, at least in dark ways. […]