Our oldest cat, something like 17-18 years old (a very young cat when he showed up and demanded to be let in to become a part of our household) has become more and more finicky about what he eats, lately. I’ve finally found an expensive dry cat food (he’s even been known to turn his nose up at canned cat food he previously ate with relish) that is clamed to have no grains, etc, etc., that he finds irresistible. Each time I dish some out for him, I am tempted to try some. Yes. It does smell delicious.
Autocorrect
Was out and about earlier this AM, and at one point needed to navigate on foot past a guy using a leaf blower, so pulled out my ear plugs, inserted them, and walked on by. I noticed as I passed that the 30-something leaf blower dude was wearing absolutely no hearing protection whatsoever. Damaging his own hearing much? “Well, that problem won’t last long,” I thought to myself.
All Night Long. . .
All night long, it seemed my Wonder Woman’s phone just would not stop with that annoying weather alert. *heh* Constant warnings to “seek shelter,” etc. “Stop it! We’re sheltered already!” 😉
HEAVY rainfall over almost all of America’s Third World County™ yesterday resulted in many of the back roads being flooded out overnight, fords washed out, and even some state roads rendered impassable as roadways collapsed (largely because of poor initial construction, poorly-maintained, IMO). Rural schools with more than half their students coming in from areas closed off from safe travel resulted in countywide school closings. Rescues of contenders for Darwin Awards weren’t many, but a few Darwin Award aspirants did decide to drive into raging waters. Silly puppies.
Some folks around TWC Central measured 5” in their rain guages. I can believe it. Our street was flooded and the recently-covered public works excavation replacing their leaking water line needs to be repacked. We didn’t even try to measure, because at least half of our precipitation seemed to be in the form of hail. 100% coverage of our lawn to the extent that it looked more like snowfall. Really beat up our impatiens. *shrugs* They’ll live or they won’t. Short power outages, no biggie, throughout the county. Touchdown of two funnels juuuust over the county line to the east.
Fun times.
Florida Man: Gator Toss
I can see that. I did something similar (though, sadly, harsher), a couple of decades ago, with an American Pit Bull Terrier (whose owner rightly should have been shot) when it had been “sicced” onto my son’s dog. Turns out, choking out a PBT can cause them to release (glad it had a very stout collar on, though). PBT survived. Son’s dog–a large Lab/Shepherd mix–was all, “So, what was that all about, anyway?”–injuries minor. Really calm, almost phlegmatic dog.
(Even sadder, the owner continued to be irresponsible and someone else ended up shooting the dog. . . though not the owner.)
“Type 1” Bureaucrats Only Want to Do Their Jobs
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
For the last three years, contacts with the public works department here at Third World County™ Central have been rather. . . pleasant, ever since the new director of public works has come on board. It’s exceedingly pleasant to deal with a member of ANY government bureaucracy who just wants to do what his job description asks of him and actually behave as a public servant. Heck, I’ve seen the guy actually get down and use a shovel himself to help get things done faster. Shocking, I know!
Kicker: he’s available, and pleasant to deal with even on a Sunday, and even via his personal cell phone. (And a good thing, too, because the one remaining sore point–poor funding for public works–means that public works has had to keep patching a water line that should be replaced. False economy, of course, because multiple calls for water leaks on public works’ own supply line have ended up costing more than replacing the line once would have been. That’s not on the public works director. It’s on cirty government and its other, non-infrastructure priorities.)
Note: None of the above addresses the issue of whether any given bureaucracy has a legitimate reason for existence. That’s a whole different critter.
Sly Cheats
I have recently bought meat at two different grocery stores. Weighing the packages at hom on two different electronic kitchen scales, the scales agreed: EVEN WHEN WEIGHED IN THE PACKAGING, all but one of eight packages of prepackaged packages of meat were short of the stated NET weight (weight WITHOUT packaging, supposedly), anywhere from 0.15 pounds to just over .26 pounds.
And that was INCLUDING the packaging in the weighing, so NOT even “net weight.”
(Functioning) Dishwashers Are Evidence that God Loves Us and Want’s Us to Be Happy
Thankfully, our eight year old Bosch (Bosch? Gosh!) dishwasher does still work, though “work” means “as long as it is started with an arcane button sequence not noted ANYWHERE in the documentation or on the Bosch support site, AND I hold my mouth juuuuuust right.”
It has had the electronics replaced once, already–a few months after the manufacturer’s warranty ran out (thanks Squaretrade!), and that seems to be the failure point, now. *sigh*
Since I’m the only one who seems to be able to “dance the dishwasher startup jig,” if when I die, my Wonder Woman will just have to buy a new one. . . unless we replace it before then. Probably a Whirlpool (since, currently, Whirlpool has a MUCH better repair record than Bosch.).
Another Trip to Serendip
(As noted on this blog before, and sung to “Mohammed Ali (floats like a butterfly, etc.)”)
“Katrina, Katrina the cat,
Floats like a butterball, ‘cos she is fat. . . ”
She also had a couple of other issues that have improved in recent months, but not completely disappeared: many, many skin bumps (no detected insect infestation, though frequent flea/lice comb uses) and pretty common vomiting. Still ate like a horse–her food and the other cats’–and kept the pounds packed on, though. Tried lots of things, including diet variations and topical skin treatments (which resulted in angry red rashes abating, but not in eliminating the irritations or the skin blemishes entirely). In fact, thanks to the abatement of the angry rashes, which had seemed to quite literally drive her insane–seriously!–she seemed quite happy, apart from the skin bumps and the irritation they caused her, along with the vomiting.
Other problem: finding a food our 18-year-old male cat would eat more than one bowl of. Sure, new bag of food or new can (of new kind), and he’d eat some while it was “new” to him, but then turn his nose up on further offerings. And we had tried all kinds of the expensive stuff.
So, my Wonder Woman saw a bag of dry food that proclaimed it was for sensitive skin and stomachs. Not even expensive. “Why not?” we thought.
He has liked it for three weeks now. And Katrina’s skin and stomach issues? No vomiting from the first serving on, and within a week of starting on the new food, the skin blemishes almost completely disappeared. Now? Gone.
Hadn’t even hoped that the food would appeal to the old guy, and had little hope it would impact katrina’s issues, but there you are: both positively affected.
Oh, and Pixel (lil rescue kitty)? Makes no difference to her. She already ate anything we put down for her (although she more eagerly eats dry food. *shrugs* go figure) and had no apparent stomach or skin problems. She likes the new food anyway.
Happy trip to Serendip.
Staff Meeting!
Ever have one of “those” meetings? You know, one that explores such stupid topics as, “In a perfect world, in light of what your job description is, what would you do?” Answer: I would be doing my job without meaningless meetings like these wasting my time.
Minor Victories — I’ll Take ’em Whenever I Can
So, three lil rough spots in the living room, dining room, kitchen, and hallway re-flooring project. Just conquered one of ’em–a transition from the living room to the dining room. I had attempted to match up a couple of partial pieces to link up well with the flooring coming down the hallway, and though they seemed to fit nicely, glued to the laminate planks coming out of the living room, once the hallway pieces moved into the dining room, a wee crack opened up due to a less than 1/32-inch difference in floor height. I tried ameliorating that and ended up exacerbating the problem to slightly over 1/32-inch, so backed off that.
Filled it and stained the fill. Hoped for the best, but was never satisfied. When my Wonder Woman asked if there were a transition piece I could put in that was similar to what I used transitioning between the laminate and some tiling in the kitchen, but with a lower profile, I was stumped. . . until I began digging around in a storage area under the laundry room where I had various pieces of scrap molding and found a 3/4-inch wide, very low profile piece of oak molding. “Hmmm,, I bethought meself, “if I stained this juuust right. . .”
And yeh, some nice, dark walnut stain, nicely wiped to yield a lighter walnut appearance then “varnished” with a satin polyurethane, applied to the eensy-weensy crack with a (transparent and stainable when dried) “30-year” caulk/sealer, and my, that looks nice!
On to the other minor “Oopsies,” now, then baseboards and other trim (particularly doors) changed out, new paint all around (yes, I do have drop cloths and painter’s tape, TYVM ? ), and a few other detail touches (NOW can I install the crown molding? Hmmm? *heh*), and this part of our live-in renos will be finished. Mostly. . . ‘cos the bedrooms haven’t been “re-floored” yet (though that will entail mostly just cleanup after removing the carpeting, since the oak flooring underneath it–as much as I have been able to see so far, at least–seems to be in excellent condition).
Having some real fun, now. ?