Devil Dog

BOO!

Happy Halloween. Never cared much for the day, and this is purely coincidence but as usual Rocket came home from Uncle Butch's house around 9 pm. Luna comes too, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, sometimes together. Tonight she didn't appear at the door. It took a while but then I thought, maybe she's done it again.

Yes, there she was, inside the chicken coop run. She's done this several times in the past month and she sits there and doesn't say a thing. She's crawling nnder the back fence and can't get back out the same way. One night she must have been in there for 3 hours.

Little idiot! But she got back at me tonight. It's been raining for days and she was sitting in wet chicken poop. I didn't realize it until she came in the house and sat on the beige carpet. Now there are chicken poop butt prints everywhere!

Hal's Going Hunting Tomorrow

He's off to the wilds of New Hampshire with my younger sister's boyfriend. He's got his SUV packed except for his lunch and over night bag. They were originally heading to Maine but the guy with the cabin had to cancel so the backup plan was the BF's place in NH. They had a good time there last year so I suspect they'll have a good time this year.

While they're gone I plan to read a lot of books, (reading Mailman by J. Robert Lennon at the moment), watching old movies, having some chips and dip, hot dogs, garlic bologna sandwiches, and just lazing about. I still plan on walking my dogs every day, of course, it's not as though I'm going to lay about and eat bonbons all day long.

Perhaps I should get into the spirit of the season and hunt some squirrels while he's gone? Brunswick Stew, yum!

Woodsy Stuff

I dragged DH off to the woods yesterday morning for a forced march. Okay, it was a walk, but it was before 11 am and it got him off of his butt, out from under his laptop computer and out into nature. The day turned out to be beautiful. Although the foliage was past peak there were still plenty of yellow maples hanging onto their leaves, the sky was blue with fluffy clouds and the temperature did finally reach 60f which it hasn't done for days.

What I thought would be a 20 minute walk, if I was lucky, turned into almost 2 hours of traipsing through the thickest brush looking for and tagging dead or dying trees to cut down for firewood and the north east property line which we re-marked with lime green tape. With the leaves falling off the trees they sure are easy to see.

A week ago we slogged through a very swampy part of the property thatrequired boots while looking for the property line. We found it eventually, most of our old keep out signs were missing or severely deteriorated. That walk was a lot more tiring. Luna was with us on both of those and I do believe we finally bored her or tired her out, too.

I'm not sure when we'll do it again, it's supposed to rain tomorrow plus we have a bunch of chickens and guineas to bring to the Amish. I'll have lots of birds to freeze on Thursday!

Blogger Admin Problems!

I decided to change some things in my blog today, admin things; layout, gadgets, etc and discovered I couldn't. I tried both accounts but I have no layout tab, no template tab and the settings tab is missing 7 of its 8 sub tabs. I use Firefox normally so I thought maybe something odd happened to my copy of maybe my pc so I tried it in Opera. No luck. Finally I tried it in Internet Explorer and lo and behold there are all my missing administrator tabs.

I searched Google's Blogger help section and forums and wasn't getting any useful info. Finally I straight googled "firefox blogger incompatibility" and discovered that the problem must be in Firefox 3.x. Yes I updated FF 2.x to 3.x and apparently there are many things that don't work any more, Blogger being one of them. Now I have to figure out if I can make FF work or just do the administrative stuff over in IE.

*sigh*

For now I'll stick with IE and hope FF and Blogger get it straightened out without me having to think about it any more.

Miscellany - Or, I can't Think of a Better Title

Ended up on Alpena today to pick up my new eye glasses at Wal-Mart. Nice bronze colored frames, only 9 bucks. First frames I looked at were $94. I think $9 is a much better deal. I picked up a few other miscellaneous items too including a box of canning jar lids for the potential applesauce sitting on our living room floor disguised as apples inside of plastic bags.

We picked the apples yesterday. They probably would have been better if we'd picked them before 2 nights of freezing temperatures but we may have been able to salvage enough for some tasty applesauce. Hal made some great sauce a couple years ago. I agreed to can it if he made some more. We need to get to these apples tomorrow.

I also popped into the beauty school in Alpena and had a student cut my hair. I really needed it, and she did a nice job. Feels and looks a lot better and Hal thinks it looks shabby chic.

I stopped in at the farm on the way home and helped Hal finish digging the potatoes he, his dad and I planted earlier this summer. Only got about 2 bushels, we really need to plant more next year. Plus it would be nice to learn how to run the old tater digging machine. The old spade fork method gets old fast when the rows get over 50 feet long.

Hal's dad had his ankle surgery last Friday. (Did I mention he broke it the week before when he was run over by a steer? Five hundred pounds of mad steer (he had become a steer about 5 minutes before the attack) generally is going to win in a showdown between man and ex-bull. Consequently, my father-in-law wasn't in any shape to show us how to run the potato digging machine.

All this activity didn't allow me to get home till almost 6 pm so the planned burritos or enchiladas has been rescheduled for tomorrow and tonight's dinner was a hodge podge of left overs, tomato soup and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. And a beer. A beer is nice to have after a hard day of slogging through stores and potato fields.

But I must log off now because the 4 South Park episodes we were watching have now ended and I feel like getting a good night's sleep. Toodles.

Movie Review: "Megafault" - Mega Stupid

So once in a while Hal and I have nothing better to do and end up watching the Saturday night Scifi (now SyFy) movie on the same named TV channel. This one stars Eriq LaSalle, of ER fame and some female whose lips seem over botoxed. This movie is BAD. It reeks. it is beyond stupid. And we're not even going to get into the poor CGI.

An earthquake starting in West Virginia devastates Washington D.C. where a botoxed seismologist (BS) is giving a speech while her daughter and husband watch. She races in a helicopter to WVA where Eriq's character is a miner blowing up mountains that look suspiciously like the Rockies and is now buried in a sandy crater. She and the burly copter pilot rescue him.

In the meantime the USAF sends her family home in a C-130 because all commercial planes will be grounded since a new fault is racing west from WVA. All the airport control towers in the midwest are broken so all of the planes are "flying blind!" Apparently, GPS and pilots looking out of windows has been conveniently forgotten by the writers.

Eriq and BS then race in the copter to KY to save his mom, but too late, the new quake has hit and blown up the very gas pipeline in her street and destroys his mom's house. Then the shrapnel somehow hits the wing of the C-130 way up there in the sky and takes it out. Only the dad and daughter survive and are picked up by a trucker driving a gasoline tanker that looks suspiciously like a dirt hauler. Of course, the quake chases them and the Alaska pipeline, which seems now to run through the midwest right next to this trucker's road starts exploding, sets the tanker of fire and dad has to crawl outside and release the tanker from the cab.

While this tense tanker truck action is leaving us breathless, Eriq blows up an outhouse to distract the chopper pilot who rushes to put the fire out with his handy dandy fire extinguisher and Eriq and BS steal the chopper to find her family.

But then the air force forces them to land in Kansas where the general tells her of the super secret ice quake satellite weapon (used to destroy the enemy from beneath) but now will be used to stop the quake at the Grand Canyon. SB must tell them where to fire the ice laser.

But wait, it gets more ludicrous.

The military keeps giving BS priority to find her family so they put her in an Osprey "the world's fastest helicopter" but then, of course, first must rescue a family in an RV, the only people apparently driving across the midwest, and risk being in the laser's line of fire, etc. Of course, they survive, narrowly, but then not only do they not stop the quake, they just sent it north toward Yellowstone's buried super volcano caldera! Now Earth is threatened by an "extinction event"! So now Eriq, the great miner he is, must create a new Grand Canyon between the fault and the caldera to stop all hell breaking lose.

Next, a long, drawn out, bad CGI depiction of 20 million (??) tons of explosive making this new canyon (where the hell is the dirt and rock actually going? I didn't know the Earth was hollow! As Eriq and BS race away in a jeep while yet another helicopter chases them with a rope lowered towards them (that can only save one of them, of course), Eriq sacrifices himself because his rear wheel gets stuck in a rut and is sucked into the "Newer Grand Canyon". BS finally makes it to Denver (by car, apparently, the copter couldn't take her the whole way?) where the quake, has destroyed their home after her husband and daughter get there. After much shouting and crying and gnashing of teeth, they are found unscathed (oh there should have been slow motion when they ran toward each other!) The camera pans away inot orbit showing that the new earthquake fault was just the other side of their yard and crosses 1/3 of the United States.

The End

I forgot to mention the best part! The people near Yellowstone have their feet, hands and heads suddenly erupt into flames from the heat of the caldera. Such stunning visual effects!

Can I stand the wait till next Saturday?!!

23 Years of Wedded Bliss

That's what you're supposed to say, right? Well Hal and I aren't doing too badly. There's been downs and ups, currently we're on an up and maintaining it fairly well. Because money is tight we ate at home tonight instead of heading out to one of our 3 favorite restaurants. (Dang those vet bills, medical bills, car repair bills, etc!!) I tried something different for me, a flat iron steak on the recommendation of a friend. We did not care much for it. Hal thought it tasted "aged", to me it was just "wrong" as though it had set next to some nasty fat for too long a time. I won't be buying another.

But the pinot noir was good.

A pretty low key day. Hal was at the farm helping with the cattle (his dad is in the hospital after being run down by a new steer on Friday, he needs ankle surgery). Then he cut some trails at his hunting camp. I spend the day cleaning the great room and preparing dinner. At least the sun came out. It's been cloudy, cool and rainy the last 2 days.

I'm still picking fleas off of Luna. Doesn't seem to matter what shampoo I use, which flea medication to apply, or what I bomb the house with, I just can't get rid of these pests this time! I'm considering flea collars next but I never did think they worked.

Well, here's hoping for another 23 plus years of wedded bliss to my favorite man.

It's October

How's that for a provocative title? Since this is just a short update post there didn't really need to be anything fancy in the title. The temperature last night dropped below 32f. There was frost. My zucchini and cucumbers didn't amount to much this year. First it was too cold and wet then it was too cool and dry.

The 12 ducklings are doing well. They're slightly bigger and eating everything they can. I'm sure mama would love to take them to the pond but there's another 3 weeks to go before I let that happen. They do fine with their little trashcan-lid pond.

Took Rocket to the vet today to be treated for tapeworm. Luna went last month. Plus he's got an ear infection in both ears. I don't know if the flea problem we have caused it or if it's just coincidence.

I had to bomb the house with 7 flea foggers last week. Plus I used 2 kinds of spray, the first did nothing but I think the stuff that had "nylar" in it which is an IGR (growth regulator, I can't remember what the "I" stands for.) Next day I re-bombed the bedroom and washed the sheets again because I was still getting bitten in my sleep. It's very annoying to be allergic to flea bites. Complaining to Hal who isn't affected so consequently isn't as sympathetic or as concerned as he could be is also annoying. I think setting up several flea traps using nightlights to attract them and dishes of water to drown them when they drop in helped show Hal that there was a BIG problem and I wasn't just bitching to hear myself bitch. The trap in the guest room where Luna sleeps held around 25 bodies the first night. I still have a few traps set up and the quantity is not anywhere near as great.

The prescription flea killing topicals I bought from the vet did not kill the fleas on the dogs. I had to use a comb and spend 3 hours one night to clean about 50 fleas off of poor Luna. I tried the same thing on rocket but he being a brown dog and the fleas being brown made it practically impossible. I gave Luna a bath and tomorrow I will give Rocket one assuming Hal can get my poor arthritic boy into the bathtub. He does weigh 95 pounds.

But at least I am finally getting things under control. I need to vacuum the carpets again tomorrow and next week fog/bomb the house once more to get any newly hatched fleas, then hopefully, I'll be mostly done with this insect insanity.

Maybe it will even snow next week.