|
|
||
|
Watch my life unravel...
|
 Found Cat Are you missing a cat? If this is your missing cat, she’s had some adventures, and she’s got the scars to prove it. She’s also had the good fortune to find herself a Crazy Cat Lady, behind whose toilet she is currently hiding. Both the cat and the Crazy Cat Lady hope this arrangement is only temporary. (Hat tip to Rachael.) Did anybody else go to the Baskin Robbins 31-cent Scoop event on Wednesday? GC and I went with a comprehensive plan. We mapped out all the Baskin Robbins stores in Ottawa, and planned our route. Our intention was to hit all of them except the one in Orleans. We started on Richmond Road, where we each got a double-header. Mine was Gold Medal Ribbon and Chocolate Mousse Royal. GC went with a minty theme.  Lineup GC made a recognizance mission to the front of the line to see why it wasn’t moving. “They’re only letting four people in the store at a time,” he said. “And there’s a firefighter working the till.” We decided to head on over to the Bank Street store, and come back to Meadowlands later. It was a good move. There was no lineup on Bank Street. I had a double Gold Medal Ribbon, and GC had a double Peanut Butter Chocolate. We ate them while wandering around Farm Boy. I tried to ask the produce man where the artichokes were, but my mouth was frozen from all the ice cream. “Whe ah d ahchoz?” I said. “Excuse me?” he asked, and stared intently at my mouth as I repeated myself. After we finished those ice cream cones, it occurred to us that maybe we didn’t really need to go to the other Baskin Robbins stores. After all, we were expecting single scoops at each store, not doubles, so we reached capacity sooner than expected. Next year we’ll pace ourselves. By the way, remember when I complained to Baskin Robbins about the tub of Gold Medal Ribbon? I ended up taking Tom Sawyer’s advice and phoning the 1-800 number listed on their website, since they were ignoring my emails. A nice lady told me that the reason nobody had responded to my emails was because I was Canadian. Eh?? Anyway, she said she would send me some coupons in the mail. They never arrived. In other news, if you’re looking for something interesting to do in Ottawa this weekend, you might want to check out Jane’s Walk. We plan to go on a few of the walks, but we’re having a hard time choosing among them. The other day I heard that Stephen Hawking thinks there’s probably life elsewhere in the universe, and it’s going to come to Earth with a bad attitude. Chances are, he said, that it will have used up its own planet and will want to conquer us and colonize Earth with its own kind. Given this likelihood, he says, we should stop trying to make contact with alien life. (Apparently we’ve been beaming friendly messages out into the universe for years, in the hopes of attracting aliens. For example, US probes Pioneer 10 and 11, launched in 1972 and 1973, bore plaques of a naked man and woman and symbols conveying the positions of the Earth and the Sun. More recently, we beamed out the Beatles’ “Across the Universe” to the deep space region of the North Star.) Leaving aside the question of the appropriateness of trying to attract aliens with naked pictures of ourselves, Hawking fears it is naive of us to try to attract them at all, given the likelihood that they will be predatory. We should just keep our heads low and hope they don’t find us. I think one positive outcome of having hostile alien life attempt to conquer us and take over our planet, would be an instant sense of solidarity and unity among us. All our petty wars would end immediately. We’d stop fighting with each other, country against country and religion against religion. We’d all be on the same side: Humans against the Aliens. Go Humans Go. Hawking also questions whether intelligence is compatible with survival. The human race has put its own future in jeopardy through the misuse of intelligence and the creation of things like nuclear weapons. “If the same holds for intelligent aliens, then they might not last long,” he said. “Perhaps they all blow themselves up soon after they discover that E=mc2. If civilizations take billions of years to evolve, only to vanish virtually overnight, then sadly we’ve next to no chance of hearing from them.” Anyway. Let’s do a poll. Do you hope the aliens come during your lifetime, or after you’re gone? (If you’re reading this in a feedreader or email, you’ll need to pop over to knitnut.net to vote in the poll.)
I don’t fly very often. Infrequently enough that I still pay attention to the safety demonstration given by the flight attendant. Infrequently enough that I still press my nose to the little window and marvel at the birds-eye perspective on the world. Infrequently enough that I still look forward to the arrival of the refreshment cart, yet feel vaguely disappointed by its meager offerings. Here are some of the things I’ve noticed while flying.
Those are some of the things I think about while flying. I also think about who will I eat first if we crash in the Andes, how happy I am that I don’t smoke anymore, and whether my camera batteries are going to explode because of the changing pressure. The problem is, I seem to have lost my blogging mojo. I think it’s a casualty of depression. Normally I go through my days with what I call my “blogger’s eye” wide open. It’s a way of seeing the world, a way of discovering bloggable things in even the most mundane of days. But these days, my blogger’s eye feels blind. I don’t know how to see anymore. I don’t know what to blog about. And even when I do think of something to blog about, the writing itself feels flat and uninspired. Something important is missing. I don’t want to give it up, because blogging’s an important part of my life and I get a lot out of it. I love writing and I love all you good people who read my blog. I love your comments and the sense of community you give me. I’ve thought about taking a break, but I’m afraid I’ll completely lose all my momentum and never come back. So I guess I’ll just keep muddling along, trying to see the world through my blind blogger’s eye, trying to cajole a few posts a week out of myself. I hope you’ll bear with me until I (hopefully) get my mojo back.  Lola Lola Palola. Lola Canola. Lolie Guacamole. Lola’s a charming black pug with an expressive little face and lots of character. She’s going to be seven years old on September 11th or 12th. (They think she was born on the 11th, but the breeder said the 12th to avoid the negative connotations associated with the 11th.) My Dad and Merle were inspired to get a pug by a pug named Chiquita on a reality show. And they’ve been inspired by Morty to add a bulldog to the family in the near future. Merle takes Lola for many long walks each day, so she’s fairly svelte for a Pug. Apparently they tend towards obesity. She’s one foot tall and weighs 25 pounds. (Maybe 26 by now, since she quickly figured out that I was the weakest link where food was concerned, and she took full advantage.) A smart little dog, she taught me a trick. If she stared at me long enough and earnestly enough, with her head tilted at a certain angle, and her brow furrowed, I would go into the kitchen to get her a treat. I taught her a couple of tricks too. I would get her to lie down, and then I’d put treats on each of her front paws. She would wait patiently until I told her she could eat them. (GC’s dog Logan still struggles with this one. He tries so hard not to look at his paws, because if he sees the treats he can’t help eating them immediately. I think Pugs may be better at delayed gratification than Golden Retrievers. Or maybe Lola’s just better at it than Logan.) Sometimes I had her wait in the kitchen while I hid a treat in the living room. When I gave the signal, she’d come out and find it. Logan is better at this one. He uses his eyes and his nose together to find it. Lola will get better with practice, just like Logan did. But one thing that impressed me was if I pointed at the treat, she would go straight to it. My old dog Sam, even though he was a brilliant border collie, never figured out the whole pointing thing. Whenever I pointed, he’d stare dumbly at the tip of my finger. Dog cookies are good, but Lola’s idea of special treat is a peeled baby carrot. She also loves frozen grapes, but she’s not allowed to have them anymore because grapes can cause renal failure in dogs.
Lola’s other favourite thing is bedtime. My dad and Merle don’t sleep much. I think they spend only about four or five hours a night in bed. They supplement that by falling asleep in their chairs while playing computer games or crocheting. Sometimes Lola goes to bed by herself. One night she crawled in with Deb and me, burrowing down under the blankets with the feet. She only stayed a few minutes, but it was fun while it lasted. I introduced Logan and the lovebirds to peeled baby carrots when I got back, and they like them too. Duncan, not so much. Anyway. It was nice having a surrogate pet to love while I was away from home. Especially such a sweet one. Have you been following the American Tea Party movement? What a freak show. And here’s the Tea Party Dictionary – illustrated by their own misspelled signs, some of which are pretty funny, in a creepy sort of way. Sometimes I wonder how America got so screwed up, and what we can do to prevent it from happening to us too. GC picked me up at the airport late last night, and the mannequins surprised me with a Welcome Home party!
Duncan punished me for going away by feigning indifference for about three minutes, but then he snuggled up and purred and stroked my face with his big fat orange paws.
I had a lovely time away, but it’s good to be home again. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. Just so you know, I’m not in Ottawa right now. I’m visiting my dad and his wife Merle and my sister and a sweet little carrot-eating pug named Lola. I’m having a good time, but I miss GC and Duncan. I’ll be back home on Tuesday, and regular blogging will resume shortly thereafter. (I might even blog in the meantime if I can think of something to blog about…suggestions are welcome.) |
 |
|
Copyright © 2025 knitnut.net - All Rights Reserved 175 queries. 0.299 seconds. |
||
Popular Posts