A Tree Falling in the Forest

Five ways to tell if your dog has emotional problems.

1. Barks more when sleeping then when awake.
2. Has stepped over a cat on the front steps to get back inside the house.
3. Eats by taking a mouthful of dry dog food carries it to her bed and then eats it and then repeats.
4. Only shows signs of life if both “parents” are home.
5. Only allows 3 people to pet her, one of which is a baby.

I have been watching the Sopranos on A&E. They started a few months ago with the first episode and are showing two episodes a week in order. They are well into Season 2 (episode 22 & 23 this week). At 2 and a half hours, keeping up with the show requires a significant amount of TV watching each week. But, since I never watched the show on HBO, each episode is new to me and I don’t have to suffer through any repeats or waiting 3 months for the next new episode. Since it is on A&E, they also clean up the language and other stuff to make it at least appropriate for basic cable.

The characters on the show are very compelling; some I like, some I dislike, some I feel sorry for. So I am hooked, and though she probably doesn’t feel as strongly about it, MLW watches each week too.

So please excuse me if I start mixing North Jersey Mafia slang into my otherwise dull vocabulary. Maybe I should work on coming up with some good nicknames for our “crew.” Come to think if it, we already have Big A, Big E, Guido, and Grubby.

I should have tried something like this when I was running against a Kennedy for Junior and Senior Class President.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdAjGXFJw3s

I won, but it would have been more fun to win with style.

I pushed a couple Hondas this weekend.

MLW found a good deal on a Honda powered lawn mower, so we took the plunge. I had been looking for a used one without much luck, but she found a Troy-Built at Lowes for a reasonable price. 160cc overhead cam Honda four-stroke engine. I have nothing against Briggs and Stratton engines, but mmmmmmm that Honda motor is sweet. Smooth, quiet, clean... it even had that wonderful new Honda smell.

I also had to push my Honda 400ex a little. When I know it is going to sit for a while I usually close the fuel valve and let it run out of gas before putting it away. But, the last time I rode it, I neglected to perform this little ritual. Today, I paid the price. It started hard, stalled often and wouldn't run without the choke on for the first 10 minutes. Since the battery was low on power from sitting, it eventually died in the backyard and wouldn't restart. So I had to push it to the driveway to jump start it off my truck. Thankfully it fired up and started to run better after the stale gas in the carb was all used up.

But, as they say... "I would rather push a Honda than ride a Polaris."

I haven't been posting as much lately. A week has slipped by without a single post. Which causes me to wonder, "how long does it take for a blog to die?"

Is it 3 months?... http://nurseatnight.blogspot.com/

4 months?... http://rburnsy.blogspot.com/

Or longer? Say 6 months... http://friendscafe.blogspot.com/

I tried to help revive the Friend's Cafe blog once before, but after a flurry of activity it slipped back into obscurity. Like modern day television, it is hard to keep the public's attention for very long without the help of violence, cursing, or some really attractive people. The Friend's Cafe doesn't have any of those things.

My lovely wife (MLW), our brilliant baby (OBB), and I have recently been battling seasonal colds as we patiently wait for spring to arrive in full force to bring us some relief. MLW has had it the worse, but the only one that has been free from the misery is our Emotionally Disturbed Dog (EDD). (This leads me to wonder where the saying as sick as a dog comes from. The only time EDD gets sick is when she gorges herself with meatloaf or chicken.) OBB seems to be through the worst of it and hopefully MLW will be able to turn the corner soon.

The last week or so, I have been trying to avoid the worst of the sickness by using Cold-Eeze. Cold-Eeze is a lozenge with Zinc Gluconate. I think this stuff may actually work. I have not been symptom free, but I certainly didn’t get as sick as MLW or OBB, at least not yet.

Using Cold-Eeze does have some negative side effects. It messes with your sense of taste. As a man who likes food of all kinds and has a sizable sweet tooth this is not a good thing. Rather than eat less because I have a dulled sense of taste, I eat more in the hope that I will be able to taste the next bite. MLW doesn’t use Cold-Eeze because she didn’t like the taste of the lozenge, but after the first couple lozenges you can’t really taste them anymore. Thankfully, the loss of taste is temporary and goes away a couple days after I stop using the product.

It has also been a little rough on my stomach. Nothing terrible, just some general “un-Eeze-ness,” especially in the morning. Cold-Eeze might also be helpful to anyone looking for relief from… how shall we say?... plumbing back-up problems.

Unfortunately, cold medicines often give me hives. Robitusson makes my skin look and itch like a bad case of poison ivy for a few hours. Sucrets causes two round dotes on my cheeks and makes me want to scratch off my skin like the maggots scene in Poltergeist. So, compared to that, the side effect of Cold-Eeze are actually quite mild.

And finally the price is nothing to sn-Eeze at. A bag of 24 lozenges is north of $5 at the local chain drug store, a bit more expensive than your average bag of Hall’s. But if it works, I say it is money well spent. The money saved on tissues, cold medicines, and cough drops can Eeze-ily exceed Cold-Eeze.

Last week I got a good taste of humble pie courtesy of my lovely wife (MLW).

After our brilliant baby (OBB) went to sleep, we made chocolate fondue with sliced apples, sat down to watch the Sopranos on A&E and play a game of Scrabble. Quietly, I wondered if my multi-year Scrabble winning streak was about to come to an end. When you combine the fact that MLW is extremely smart and a gifted speller with the fact that my current job is slowly but surely making me dumber, I should have seen the tile pieces arranged on the wall. D-E-F-E-A-T.

From the opening word, I knew I was in trouble. I soldiered on in the hope of scoring a couple triple word scores to keep the streak alive. I even pulled ahead as we neared the middle part of the game, but "pride cometh before a fall." As the tiles became few and places to build dwindled, I got the dreaded "Q" tile. Even with the tiles to spell words like "quiet" and "quad", I couldn't close the deal. Like Benedict Arnold as he prepared to invade Canada during the Revolutionary War, I had waited too long. The game was lost.

The bitter taste of defeat and the smell of failure still plagues me. I can tell OBB knows, he doesn't look at me the same anymore. The streak is over and with it dies the last vestiges of a once proud Scrabble player.

This article appeared today on ATV Source.

I couldn't bring myself to read it. The first picture is clearly a picture of the Rockhouse, the namesake of the Rockhouse Trail System. The author must have bumped his head on Dingess Run.

The other two trail pictures are probably from Dingess Run. The coal spoil hill is clearly the one that my fellow riders and me rode up on Dingess Run. The mud hole is reminiscent of one that Big A, Big E, and Grubby played around in.