Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein is always critical of my weather-management skills on that first really cold, damp day of fall.
Denied access to the great outdoors, he stalks around the house making pointed observations and issuing orders. There is no food in this dish! I will have a drink in the sink! Scratch my ears at once! (And don’t be surprised if I scratch something of yours in return.)
Finally, he naps fitfully on my drawing board, trying to catch whatever feeble rays of sunshine filter through the clouds. Truly, a winter of discontent.
Herself and I dined out this evening with a neighbor and some of her out-of-town family, with whom we have become friendly over the years.
There was wine afterward on our back deck, and as it was getting dark nobody noticed (I hope) the half-assed mowing job I did yesterday. Miss Mia Sopaipilla and Buddy the Wonder Dog made brief appearances to rave reviews, but Turkish refused to leave his dressing room, citing obscure union regs about dogs and cats and never the twain shall meet outside the Thunderdome, and certainly not while the party of the first part is wearing a ridiculous purple harness and leash, which is the only way the big galoot gets outside since collecting a nasty and expensive abscess while at large and unfettered.
All in all, it was a pleasant way to end a day of making bricks without straw at PharaohNews. A casual glance at the interwebs at midshift unearthed a few small-helmet types aghast at our lack of investigative journalism. This is not unlike complaining that the free blowjob you just got from the unemployed barmaid didn’t include a free shot of top-shelf tequila with an artisan-beer back.
Just think, if we could find the pot of gold at the end of that rascal, we could solve our national debt "crisis" ... by imprisoning the House GOP caucus for treason.
Just a rainbow, courtesy of the afternoon monsoons, which have returned for a while. They sure do cool things down at night.
Meanwhile, in DeeCee, Weepy John Boehner is still leading from the rear, frantically trying to figure out which brand of tinfoil his Tea Bagger buddies want for their beanies. The gang at Talking Points Memo is on top of things as they happen, and for high-quality analysis and snark you can check with Steve Benen at Political Animal and Kevin Drum at Mother Jones.
Suffice it to say that the news is all bad. At least Kevin supplies cat-blogging on Fridays to lighten the mood.
Here in Dog Country we’ll engage in a bit of dog-blogging as a counterpoint. We’ve been crate-training Buddy and so far, so good. He’s (mostly) sleeping through the night and has had no more accidents in the crate since we pulled the bedding out of it. He’s getting at least one longish walk daily and plenty of backyard time. And today he even romped a bit with Herself, gamboling about the DogHaus like a happy pup and even barking a couple of times, just for the hell of it.
The Feline Caucus, of course, finds this incomprehensible. But so far they haven’t tried any nihilistic shenanigans, which goes to show you that pretty much any old four-legged furball is smarter than the average House Repuglicant.
Chapeau to Cadel Evans for finally making it onto the top step of the podium in Paris. He was not spectacular, but he was as strong as an onion-and-horseradish sandwich in a very tough Tour, and when it got down to the leg-breaking he was serving up pain by the plateful.
Things got a bit hectic around here the past few days. I made a quick trip to Boulder on Friday to say adieu to Ben Delaney, who stepped down as editor in chief of VeloNews. Then yesterday it was back to the VeloBarrel for the time trial that saw Cuddles clock the Schleck sisters.
And finally Herself decided that Chez Dog required an actual dog, so we paid a visit to the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region, where she volunteers a couple days a week, and bailed out a 6-year-old Japanese Chin she’d had her eye on.
The shelter people were calling him Sweetpea, and I was calling him Motherfucker when he woke us up at 4 a.m. today, but at the moment he remains nameless, though I’m leaning casually toward Buddy — an anglicization of Budai, the laughing Buddha — because the Japanese Chin appears to be smiling all the time.
When they’re awake, anyway. I think I’ll sneak back into the kitchen and wake the sonofabitch up, see if he’s grinning when I give him a taste of the old cowbell.
Mad Blog Media 