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.

Two or Three

 Last year, and for several years prior to that, we were in Harris County Precinct 2 - about where the 02 appears on the map below.

We haven't moved an inch, but now find ourselves in Precinct Three.

It's all part of a move by politicians to assure their reelection and happens after every census.  I doubt if it will affect us at all.

Speaking of Precincts, several years ago, I got a speeding ticket on FM 2100 a couple of miles from my house.  The ticket was issued by a deputy constable from Precinct Four.  I never understood why, but Precinct Two was farming out road patrol to Precinct Four.  That meant that I had to drive 40 miles to the west end of the county to appear in court  for a ticket that was issued within walking distance of my house.

It was a major inconvenience, but it worked out.  The deputy didn't show up and the ticket was dismissed.

Trailer Update

 

We put our 5th wheel up for sale about a month ago and last week, we thought we had a buyer.  They had seen the listing on EBay and realized they only lived about a dozen miles away.  Their house had burned down and they wanted the trailer to live in while their home was rebuilt.

Couldn't have been better.  

Then the wife called me on Thursday morning very upset- she really wanted it, but their bank wouldn't loan on an RV over ten years old.  I explained that was common, but the people who had listed it would finance.  I gave her a name and a couple phone numbers, but so far, I haven't heard back.

Jackrabbits

I first posted this in 2015, but I like it.  Thought I'd post it again...

In the fall of 1961, I attended Austin College in Sherman, Texas as a sophomore transfer student. 

Attended may be a bit of an exaggeration - I did show up for most of my classes, but formal education was not even near the top of my priority list.  The majority of my time and effort went to learning to play contract bridge, singing in a folk-music quartet called the Converts, and hunting rabbits at night from my pickup truck.

We had a five-man cadre of rabbit hunters, and three of them – all mediocre shots – used shotguns.  John Stuckey and I used 22 rifles. Mine was an old open-sight single-shot Savage that was older than I was.  We usually used my truck, and I usually drove, but one night Johnny was driving.

That was when I made what had to be the shot of a lifetime. 

Johnny had seen a jackrabbit out in a pasture, and stopped the truck at the end of a dirt road.  The rabbit was no longer visible - just past the edge of the high beams – all we could see was the glow of his eye about a hundred yards beyond the barbed wire fence.

Standing in the truck bed, I propped my elbow on the top of the cab and squeezed off a shot.  The glowing dot disappeared.

“You missed” yelled the guys in the back of the truck.  I’ll admit I didn’t know if I hit it or not – I wasn’t even sure that there was a rabbit out there.

Johnny got out, ducked through the fence and walked out into the pasture.  A few minutes later, he returned with a dead rabbit, shot through the eye.  “He got it.” he said, “He never misses.  That’s why he always drives - to give you other guys a chance.”

Maria, Maria

 

We did an interesting experiment this weekend - watched both the original 1961 version and the 2021 version of West Side Story.  

Actually, we didn't watch the entire Stephen Spielberg production, just enough to say with confidence that, while it wasn't any better, he didn't screw it up. 

If there was one plus, it was that the new Maria, Rachel Zigler, sang for herself - Marni Nixon did the vocals for Natalie Wood in the original.