We had to spend an unnervingly large amount of my wife’s paycheck on a vet visit for Xena the other day. She hasn’t been the same since the weather got nice again and we let her go back outside – well, it’s more like we had to push her outside.
And therein lies the problem. … Read more
My pasture, let me show you it. These pictures were taken in 2007, a few weeks before Evan was born.
It’s Puck Day! A year ago today, my new kitty literally came and found me at work.
I wasn’t completely satisfied with the still shots I got from the Oklahoma Aquarium video earlier today, so I re-ripped the DVD that I dumped the raw video onto. I think there’s a slight improvement.
Last year for little E’s birthday, I took him to the Tulsa Zoo. They had monkeys and elephants there, so he was happy, but I found the place kind of underwhelming. Funny story: this time a year ago, the Crapquest, erm, sorry, Mapquest directions to the Tulsa Zoo were so horribly and amazingly and utterly wrong that we got seriously lost and accidentally found our way to the Oklahoma Aquarium. If I had only known how hard the OK Aquarium rocks compared to the Tulsa Zoo, we would’ve stayed lost and gone there instead. So this year, the whole family went to hang out with the fishies.
Dinner is cooking in the dashboard oven. Seriously.
Why build up excess heat in the house and run up the electric bill? It’ll take a bit more time than the oven would, but it’ll get the job done by the time I need to go get the little guy from daycare.
Or maybe you’d like a hot dog instead?
(Don’t worry, Xena’s doing just fine. Also note nice new window on the front of the house, replacing the one I accidentally blasted a hole through with a projectile thrown by the lawn mower…)… Read more
Meet the latest addition to the pantheon of critters hanging around my house. This one is a first though – we have a new semi-regular who has no paws, but does have wings. We haven’t had one of those before. But this one’s kinda pretty – and potentially very useful on the earning-one’s-keep scale. … Read more
So, Xena has given up on her career of chasing bunnies out of our yard. She used to keep us awake all hours with her quest of vengeance to keep dastardly bunnies away from the house, but evidently our guard-dog has moved into semi-retirement. Or she’s got union-guaranteed bark breaks or something. Whatever. The point is: we suddenly have a healthy population of big brown bunnies roaming our yard.
It started with one particular big (and I mean big) brown bunny, who I named Stu after I noticed he wasn’t going anywhere. That way, he was Rabbit Stu, or at least he would be when Xena got back to the business of chasing and, occasionally, catching and dismantling big-eared yard intruders.
Obviously, it didn’t happen. Soon Rabbit Stu was joined by his friend, Flufferella and Little Johnny (sort of a miniature version of Rabbit Stu – I’m sure you can work out what’s going on here). I wouldn’t be surprised if Flufferella is expecting little Buffy sometime soon. The point is: there are now as many bunnies, and I mean regular recurring cast members, as there are cats. And mom and dad are as big or bigger than any of the cats. There are many copies. And they have a plan.
Xena, what gives? Do we need to find you a trainee dog? Did these little cotton-tailed bastards chase off Todd the Possum and Mystery Cat? Do we need to make like Aussies and build a rabbit-proof fence? Please let us know. Soon. Before Buffy is followed by little Ignacio.… Read more
Last night, the super-nasty thunderstorm that had been dropping tornadoes all through Oklahoma went right over my house, complete with a very big, very obvious rotating wall cloud. Which, of course, my wife took my son out on the back deck to see, since it wasn’t even raining at our house. I’m all for giving him an intellectual understanding of bad weather so he’s not afraid of it, but… wait a minute. Who’s this knocking on my door at 3:30 in the morning? “Dad, I’m scared.” Um… yeah. Couldn’t get him back to his own bed without a major meltdown until 5 in the morning. Good show!
But other interesting phenomena happened at our house last night as well. I don’t think he was deposited by the storm either. He was lured by the smell of dog food on the back deck. (The reason dog food hits the back deck is simple: Xena hauls off her dog food bowls to points unknown for fun. It’s gotten expensive and a bit silly trying to replace all the bowls. So… dog food on deck!)
Of course, it wasn’t our dog chowing down on dog food. It was someone all three cats were very eager to eat, erm, sorry, meet.
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