A farewell to charms: The pissquiggler’s exodus
You can tell it’s warm in our office, for the dogs are stretched out unbecomingly in their crate. When it’s cool, they morph into furry doggie-balls, snuggled closely. They share one big crate, our three, and love it. Whether in the crate or on the furniture, they tend to sleep in great piles of legs and paws. It always makes us smile.
There’s good news to report, dog-wise. Angie’s brotherDennis is going to give Buddy a home! Yep, da brudder’s family has a female beagle, anyway, and wanted to get a companion for her. She’s an outside dog…And he’s buiding a kennel for them! It is a very specific answer to prayer, let me tell ya.
Ironically, Buddy’s new home will be a couple of states away, in Illinois. Buddy will be quite the seasoned traveler by the time he gets there, bless his heart. Fortunately, our vet’s prescribed tranquilizers for him since he gets nervous and carsick riding in vehicles. He’ll pretty much zonk out and wake up in a new home. I hope he does really, really well there - he’s such a sweet little guy, just stubbornly refuses to be housebroken.
It’s a weird feeling, planning to find a dog a new home. But, just when we again felt ambivalent about it, Buddy graced us with another piece of abstract pissquiggle art all over the office floor. Howie’s no longer waffling on the issue, and neither am I. Emma’s sure going to miss him, though, and that makes us sad. They’re such good friends, those two. I hope and pray Buddy gets along with his new little girlie beagle. Good thing Emma has Sarah (and us) to snuggle up to in Buddy’s absence!
This is the dawning of the age of aquarium
We’re shopping for an aquarium, probably a 55gal, though we’d really prefer a 75gal since we’d like to have goldfish again. The bigger the tank, the easier it is to maintain, and since goldfish produce a lot of waste we want to have a big tank. (Plus bigger tank means bigger fish, or more smaller ones). We thought about doing tropicals again, but goldfish - especially the fancy varieties like these guys - have so much personality and they’re relaxing to watch. Tropicals dart all over the place, but goldfish just mosey around.
They’re more our speed.
I have a wrought-iron stand I bought with an old aquarium at a yard sale last year. The tank was a real oldie by Metaframe (how’s that for irony - before we used the term for internet stuff!). It was a weird size and impossible to find a hood for…Just more trouble than it was worth to make our own hood. We donated the tank to Goodwill during our Great Basement Cleanout of 2003; someone will be thrilled to get it for reptiles or other non-aquatic uses.
Anyway, the stand and filters I got with it were worth the $20 I paid. Thing is, the stand is an odd size: 48″ long x 13″ deep. We may be limited in what larger tanks would safely fit on it. We saw a 75gal setup advertised in the Jack’s Aquarium and Petsonline sales flyer. It’s an All-Glass Aquariums brand and is $139, including the hood and light. It measures 48″long, 18″deep x 20″ high.
My big concern is that, even with a board bringing the top of our stand out to the tank’s width, it would be topheavy. Those 75 gallons of water, at 8 pounds a gallon, would weigh in at 600 pounds! For that matter, I wonder if our floor will be okay under all that weight. It would be along our living room wall.
Am I just paranoid? Would any aquarists and/or physicists (even rocket scientists if you’re so inclined) care to comment?
Annoying Celebs
I have to pipe up - Jim Carrey is incredibly annoying on talk shows. He’s good at the type of slapstick, over-the-top humor he does, but he is a scene-stealing pest of a guest on talk shows.
Howie and I saw him on Jay Leno last night and just cringed at his behavior, especially when he kept drawing attention to himself when it was Amanda Bynes’ turn to be interviewed. I’d never seen this actress before, but I felt badly for her time with Jay being sabotaged by that ham. She seemed annoyed, despite saying she was a fan of his (we noticed she said “was” and snickered that it might indeed be past tense after this guest appearance by his side).
We half expected Carrey to walk out on the stage while Tim McGraw was singing. It’s hard to say whether Jay was amused or embarassed by Carrey. We’re both just so turned off by Carrey; he strikes us as an immature, attention-starved brat when we see him in interviews. When he did a couple of more toned-down bits on the show, he was pretty funny. It’s just that big humor that really turns us off.
Second-hand smoke produces a prodigy?
Howie and I saw one of the recent anti-smoking ads on TV last night. It’s an ad depicting a dad sitting in a chair watching TV while his son plays on the floor nearby. Dad’s puffing away on a ciggy and the room is hazy with smoke. On the floor next to him, his baby is playing with alphabet blocks.
As the voiceover recites the many dangers of second-hand smoke to children, the babe spells out these words with his blocks: bronchitis, asthma, sudden infant death syndrome.
I said to Howie, “So…..Is this saying second hand smoke makes your children really intelligent?”
Howie said, “If I were the kid, I’d just crawl out of the room.”
“Yeah,” I said, “if that baby has the manual dexterity to find those letters and spell out those words, surely he can crawl out there!”
Sometimes those ads are only moderately effective, you know? Guess you can’t win ‘em all.
To be fair, the other anti-smoking ad airing around here is good: The droplet-spattered windshield and the intermittent swipes of the windshield wipers tell us it’s raining; mommy’s got the minivan windows shut due to the weather. She’s smoking as she drives, and the van is filled with smoke. Baby baby sits strapped in a carseat behind her, crying. She continues crying as the voiceover ensues. Toward the end, the screen goes dark and some text comes up. We hear the baby cry some more, then cough.
We always comment on that ad’s effectiveness when we see it.
That reminds me…I see parents who conscientiously only smoke outside so they don’t expose their kids to smoke. I even know mothers who quit smoking, cold-turkey mind you, while pregnant. That’s no easy feat! Once they’d given birth and finished breastfeeding, though, they picked those cigarettes right back up.
They did so because they wanted to, because they like smoking, not because they couldn’t help themselves. They admit it.
I think it admirable that these folks want to protect their kids from the harmful effects of nicotine. But, second-hand smoke arguments aside, I have to ask: Do you think they’ll be any better off with you dying young from lung cancer?
You’d do anything to feed your kids if they were hungry or needed medical care, right? Well, this is every bit as important, folks.
You’re next…
I’ve heard this before, in a much longer and ineffective version. When I received it today in my e-mail, I knew I had to share:
When I was younger, I hated going to weddings. After the
wedding and during the reception, my aunts and the
grandmotherly types would come up to me and poke me in the
ribs, cackling, “You’re next.”Finally they stopped, when I started doing the same to
them at funerals!
Where there’s smoke
…There’s an underground coal fire. This is one of the strangest things I’ve heard, and it’s happening right here in Ohio. I quote from today’s WCLT radio’s news briefs:
Underground Coal Fire In Perry County
Threatening Wayne National ForestAn underground coal fire that was started almost 120 years ago in New Straitsville is slowly working its way under Wayne National Forest.U-S Forest Service archaeologist Ann Cramer says smoke started coming up through cracks in the floor of the 233,000 acre forest last summer. She says it smelled like burning tar.
An estimated 200-square miles of underground mineral deposits have burned since the fire began in 1884. The coal seam is up to 14 feet thick and there’s about 600,000 acres of coal and abandoned mine shafts surrounding New Straitsville, which is about 49 miles southeast of Columbus.
The town’s official history says the fire was set in October 1884 by anti-union workers. They soaked railroad cars that were loaded with timber with oil, ignited them, and rolled them into mine openings.
I didn’t know a fire could burn that long, and no doubt the protesters didn’t either. I guess I never thought about it, but the fire has its two needed sources: fuel and oxygen. But for something to burn like that for over 100 years….Wow. I know the earth spews lava from volcanoes, but this just sounds so weird. I hope some of those idiots got their hands burned.
If you’d like to read more about the fire’s history, pick up a copy of Ohio Oddities: A Guide to the Curious Attractions of the Buckeye State. Lucky for you, though, the story is excerpted at the publisher’s site.
The Wayne National Forest is beautiful, one of our favorite places to visit. We love going to the clean little lake down in that area - Lake Hope. No gasoline-powered boats are allowed on that lake, and it’s so clear you can see your toes when standing shoulder-deep in the swim area. It would be a real shame if this underground fire ignites the forest.
I want one of these!
Remember my glowing review of the Anti-Pull Harness? Well, Joe Sporn, president and founder of the company (and recent visitor to gw.com!), has a website with other great pet products. I would *love* to get one of these Sporn Pet Lockers to hang by our back door. What a neat product, complete with a spindle for “Bags of Duty” (what a euphemism).
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