Tag: Thanksgiving

That was absurd, let’s eat dead bird

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Mia and Turkish
Mia and Turkish watch as Buddy (not pictured) gets a grooming from Herself.

The mighty river of VeloNews finally slowed to a trickle today. I fired off an invoice to Corporate and slipped out for a short ride.

Several impatient motorists seemed in dire need of a brisk hosing down with a fire extinguisher full of tryptophan on this day before Thanksgiving. I tallied exactly 349,392 moving violations intended to kill me before abandoning the count.

Plenty of static violations, too, my favorite being the bulbous land yacht parked smack dab in the middle of the bike lane, right under the “No Parking In Bike Lane” sign. This appalling lack of reading comprehension is not encouraging to those of us who earn our meager livings from wielding the English language.

Oh, well. At least I got my big ass out in the late-November sunshine (this is not strictly accurate, of course; it was wearing bib shorts). Herself and I took the critters out for an airing, too. Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein, Miss Mia Sopaipilla and Banzai Buddy the Japanese Wonder Chin all scored themselves a little free vitamin D, which can be hard to come by this time of year.

That’s a little something to be thankful for in trying times when we 99 percenters hear the distant ring of carving knives clashing rhythmically against sharpening steels and wonder if we’re what’s for dinner.

And if that doesn’t get your drumstick throbbing, raise a glass to longtime Friend of the DogS(h)ite Boz, who notes in comments that he’s back to working for The Man.

From our family to yours, happy Thanksgiving.

Black Friday blues

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
Equal time for dogs
My sister's dogs, Maggie and Riley. Hey, we can't have cats on the site all the time, y'know. The joint's called Mad Dog Media, after all.

I camped out all night in my bed and when I arose this morning there was free coffee in the kitchen. Talk about your Black Friday bargains!

There was toast, too, but I had to make that myself. Ditto the eggs. And come to think of it, I had to pay for the eggs, bread and the coffee. Full retail, too, as I recall.

Damn. I think I’ve been screwed by The Man yet again. And without so much as a good-morning kiss.

Herself and I drove to Fort Fun and back for Turkey Day, served up by my sis’ and bro’-in-law, and a delicious meal it was, too. Turkey with all the usual suspects, including Brussels sprouts with bacon and a glass of one of my favorite rosés, Mas de la Dames Rosé du Mas 2009.

En route we missed “Alice’s Restaurant” on KRCC, but caught up with Arlo on KUNC out of Greeley, then followed that up with some “Sam Kinison: Live From Hell” (yeah, we have some odd holiday traditions).

As is traditional, the trip also served up a few contenders for the annual Darwin Awards, including an eight-car smashup near Larkspur, in broad daylight and on dry roads; a pickup driver with his lights off after sunset; and my personal fave, some dipshit fool in dark clothing astride a motorcycle sans taillight speeding in the left lane through Bibleburg as we approached Chez Dog at dark-thirty.

Ride on, brother. Hell ain’t half full, and I hear Sammy throws a swell party.

The dump is closed for Thanksgiving

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments
Click for the lyrics and a whole passel of interesting links
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice).

“And friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is ’cause you may know somebody in a similar situation — or you may be in a similar situation — and if you’re in a situation like that there’s only one thing you can do.

“Walk into the shrink, wherever you are, just walk in and say, “Shrink, you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.” And walk out.

“You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it — in harmony — they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three — can you imagine, three people walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine 50 people a day, I said 50 people a day walking in singing a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out? And friends, they may think it’s a movement.

“And that’s just what it is — the Alice’s Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement — and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar! With feeling.”

So sing it, y’all. I’ll be singing right along with you. See you after dinner.

Felines and framesets

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments
The door into summer?
You can't spell "turkey" without "Turk."

With the holidays bearing down upon us like a doped-up masters racer, a cat’s life is simply overflowing with anticipation.

“When will Jesus bring the pork chops?” wonders Turkish, a.k.a. Turkenstein, The Turkinator, Mighty Whitey the Blue-Eyed Bully of Bibleburg, Big Pussy, et al. He suspects that something wondrous is taking place on the other side of that door and has asked Santa to bring him a pair of opposable thumbs so he can work the knob.

He’s actually pretty damn’ close to getting the door open without thumbs — he certainly doesn’t have any trouble grasping the knob, which sits 36 inches off the ground. Wrap it with something he could sink his claws into and he’d come and go as he pleased.

Miss Mia Sopaipilla, on the other hand, wants nothing more than to see an unwary Turk’ ambling past her grocery-sack spider hole en route to the feed zone so she can whip an ambush on his big white ass. A half hour ago she was merrily flogging him around the house — through the living room and into the bedroom, then through the kitchen and down to the basement. Repeat until naptime, which has just arrived.

Herself is making banking noises out there in the living room, moving money around from one account to another to balance my extravagance as I await delivery of my new Voodoo Nakisi frameset. I’ve found most of what I need to build it up gathering dust in the garage, so naturally the purchase is justified by the crisp sense of order its assembly will bring to a presently cluttered space.

It will use Salsa bars (either flared Bell Laps, Pro Road or Moto Ace); some unlabeled off-brand stem; nine-speed Shimano drivetrain (bar-end shifters, Ultegra derailleurs, XT triple crankset, 11-28 cassette); a pair of moderately scarred Shimano 600 aero brake levers, plus cantis and top-mounted brake levers from Cane Creek; a Thomson seatpost and maybe the old Avenir saddle that came stock on my Nineties road bike.

A sack full of trouble
Miss Mia knows that sooner or later someone will be passing by ... and she's gonna get ’em.

I don’t have an actual 29er wheelset, however, so I’m gonna make do by pulling a pair of wheels off one of the ’cross bikes and slapping some 700×45 Panaracer Fire Cross tires on ’em. That should be burly enough for my mild purposes until I can get Jerry down at Old Town to build me up a set of righteous hoops using a leftover pair of Hügi hubs and maybe some Alex Adventurer rims, which come recommended by tech editor Matt Wiebe of Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. Matt is the generous gent who is ferrying the frameset from BTI in Santa Fe to Your Humble Narrator in Bibleburg en route to Turkey Day festivities in Denver.

So, yeah. Christmas beats Thanksgiving to the DogHaus this year. But then we were never traditionalists. And if you’re hanging around here, you probably aren’t either. So I’ll leave you with the words of Robert Downey Jr., from “Home for the Holidays”: “That was absurd, let’s eat dead bird.”