Ripley

 (Almost missed April entirely - promise to try to do better.)

Living with our dog Ripley is a continuing - and often expensive - adventure. This last week, Honey dropped a pill on the floor, and Ripley had it before she could pick it up.  She pried his jaws open, but the pill had already gone down his gullet.

The pill was a prescription for restless leg syndrome and a check online offered no suggestions about what it might do to a 10-pound puppy.  I called the Vet and they had me call Animal Poison Control.  

SPCA animal poison control will have you on hold for half an hour or more - my phone has an elapsed time clock and it was over 22 minutes before I talked to a human, then got put back on hold.  Eventually, I was able to talk to someone who talked to someone else and told me to take Ripley to the vet and have the vet contact them at a special number.  

That wouldn't have been so bad except they charge $75 -payable by credit card - to talk to you.

One we got to the vet and she made the call, we learned that as long as his heart wasn't racing and he wasn't having muscle spasms, he was probably just fine.

Poison Control for humans is free.  75 bucks for poison control for animals strikes me as highway robbery.  Still, if it is your pet, you're probably going to pay it.

Rotorod

 This has been a banner year for allergies, with pollen counts that are literally through the roof.  A count of over 90 grains per cubic meter is considered significant - yesterday, just the Oak pollen in the Houston area was at 9489.

If you've ever wondered how they count pollen, they use a Rotorod device like the one in the video above.

The Razor's Edge

 When I was first learning to shave, razors had one blade - just one.  There were straight razors, safety razors which might or might not use double-edged blades, but only one blade was applied to your face at a time.

Today, you can still buy straight razors - I won't, my hands shake too much - but it is almost impossible to buy a razor with a single blade.  The old Bics with two blades are getting hard to find.

Somebody decided that if one blade could give a close shave, that a second blade coming right after the first would do the job much better.  Now it has become a marketing ploy, a contest to see which manufacturer can stack the most blades in a row.  

A platoon of blades might look like a wonderful idea, but it ain't.  Once you get past one or two blades, you can't make more than one swipe down your cheek without having to spend the next couple of minutes cleaning gunk out of the razor.  It can make shaving a real pain.