{"id":166,"date":"2006-09-30T13:59:59","date_gmt":"2006-09-30T20:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=166"},"modified":"2007-07-08T14:13:50","modified_gmt":"2007-07-08T21:13:50","slug":"saturday-catch-up-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=166","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Catch-Up Blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pathetic.\u00a0 Half a month since my last post.\u00a0 I really have to get in more.<\/p>\n

My leg<\/a> quit hurting three or four days ago.\u00a0 The doc said to stay active, and I have – scouting trail for an upcoming run, taking long bike rides, walking the dog.\u00a0 Later today we’ll go on a three- to four-mile trek.\u00a0 So far, so good.\u00a0 I’m still looking into the possibility of a connection between pulling Gs and vascular degeneration.\u00a0 Nothing to report yet.<\/p>\n

When I went out to walk the dog this morning I saw several large rocks in the street, all piled together.\u00a0 It took me a minute to figure out they came from our own yard and that someone must have picked them up and moved them into the street.\u00a0 I couldn’t imagine why, so I abandoned that line of\u00a0thought and moved the rocks back to our yard.\u00a0 When I told Donna about it, half an hour later, she immediately realized someone had stolen our rabbit.<\/p>\n

Our son Gregory gave us a piece of yard art when we moved into this house,\u00a0a metal rabbit in silhouette, about two feet tall.\u00a0 We put it by our mailbox at the end of the driveway,\u00a0weighing\u00a0down its base with rocks.\u00a0 Over the years it’s picked up a nice patina.\u00a0 Now it’s picked up a new owner.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first thing that’s been stolen from us, but it’s the first since we’ve moved into this neighborhood.\u00a0 I hope this isn’t the start of a trend.\u00a0 Later this morning we noticed that some political signs and posters neighbors had placed on their lots were missing too.\u00a0 Hmm . . . I just installed a bicycle mounting bar\u00a0in the bed of our pickup truck.\u00a0 The truck doesn’t fit in the garage, so we leave it in the driveway overnight.\u00a0 Maybe we’d better keep the mounting bar inside and only put it in the truck when we want to move the bikes.<\/p>\n

Speaking of vehicles in\u00a0driveways, vermin have been hard at work on Polly’s old Thunderbird.\u00a0 When I last wrote about our pack rat<\/a>, it had made a mess of Polly’s engine but hadn’t done permanent damage.\u00a0 Since then it’s gnawed through several wires – at least two cylinders no longer fire, and the air conditioner doesn’t work.\u00a0\u00a0We finally sucked it up and took the T-bird\u00a0to a local auto electrical mechanic, a fellow who more or less specializes in pack rat damage.\u00a0 He says ours is “about a six” on\u00a0his one-to-ten scale of gnawed wiring.\u00a0 When we get the car back we’ll have to drive it at least every other day lest the pack rat move back in.<\/p>\n

Arizonans trade pack rat remedies as if they were secret family recipes.\u00a0 Take it from me, they’re all useless.\u00a0 Pack rats aren’t the least discouraged by moth balls or sheets of fabric softener placed\u00a0under the hood.\u00a0 Rat poison?\u00a0 They grow fat and glossy on the stuff.\u00a0 Forget those heavy duty mouse traps (the kind that scare the hell out of you because you know they’ll take your fingers off if you’re careless).\u00a0 Pack rats scoff at traps.\u00a0 The Beast of Revelations got nothin’ on\u00a0pack rats.<\/p>\n

You know how we finally discouraged it?\u00a0 We started leaving the hood up, day and night.\u00a0 The reason they move into engine compartments in the first place is they’re looking for a dark, safe place.\u00a0 Of course, we’re not so naive we think the pack rat’s gone for good.\u00a0 That’s why we’ll have to drive the T-bird every other day until Polly comes to take it back to Phoenix.<\/p>\n

Bad veins, thieves in the night,\u00a0plagues of vermin.\u00a0 Truly the end times are upon us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pathetic.\u00a0 Half a month since my last post.\u00a0 I really have to get in more. My leg quit hurting three or four days ago.\u00a0 The doc said to stay active, and I have – scouting trail for an upcoming run, taking long bike rides, walking the dog.\u00a0 Later today we’ll go on a three- to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}