The Material Girl

First Snake of 08

No, this isn't about Barack.

We killed the first snake in our yard this evening. Well, the Russian sort of maimed it on the patio, and I drug it out into the yard and chopped it into bits. I sort of don't rest well until I know there's No Way Possible that they could come back to life. I searched the blog for last year's first snake, and apparently I'm two days later this year. I guess mid-late May is snake killing season around here. My shovel is now sitting and waiting by the patio door just in case. I Really Don't Like Snakes.

We got our first call to be foster parents this week. It ended up not working out because there were more kids than we are licensed for, but it got the adrenaline pumping, anyway. Now I'm realizing how much we have left to do around the house before I could really call it "done". I'm thinking about hiring an ex-coworker to do some handyman sort of things since the Russian doesn't have the time.

I got a cuckoo clock a couple of weeks back. It has little guys that chop and saw wood, and the little dancers in the top. I'm dorky enough to sit and wait for the hour and half hour just to watch it do its thing. It came from the Frankenmuth Clock Company in Michigan. Someday I'd like to actually go there, they have a nativity cuckoo that I'd like to have for Christmas.

No big plans for Memorial Day, I might go camping in the woods, but that's probably it. It's time to start planting the container garden, too. I'm going to try my hand at green onions this time, although I'm sure I've waited too late to plant them. Last year at the Farmer's Market someone was selling red spring onions, which were pretty and tasty in salads.

I'm hoping to get the little Jeep out soon and take the top down. It's been way too long since I drove it anywhere. There's a safe sitting behind it, so until we can put the safe away (which is waiting on a freezer to get moved out of the way in the basement, and the freezer is waiting to be emptied, which can only be done on nights before the trashman comes since we have raccoons) I can't go anywhere. :(

Oh! We have a family of robins that built a nest on the downspout that's right outside our front door. The little ones hatched this week, so we're having a great time watching mom feed them worms. She doesn't seem to be afraid of us, and I'm trying to keep her well-stocked with food. I also put out a hummingbird feeder today, so maybe they'll start showing up soon.

I took down the mirror from the spare bathroom and it's been sitting in the hallway for a couple of days. Vic spends a lot of time lounging about in front of it, admiring himself. I don't know if he realizes it's himself or not, but he seems to be pretty vain.

Plungers, Potato Guns and the Continuing Saga of the Vowel-ess alphabet

Snippets of convos from the trip to visit my Mom last night:

(after discussing the that's on my desk at work, a la Michael Scott) What is it with the fascination that people have with putting things on their heads? It seems to be guaranteed that if a human being sees a hole somewhere that their head might fit in, we just can't resist putting it there. And, as evidenced by funny video shows, our judgment just isn't up to snuff sometimes.

Also, we thought we'd discovered a great way to increase gas mileage. Picture it: drafting an 18-wheeler, you have in your hands a potato gun that's going to shoot a toilet plunger at the back of said rig. The plunger is tied to a heavy-duty rope that is also hooked to the front of your car (preferably via winch, but there were several options here and we didn't want to get bogged down in technicals). You shoot the potato gun, the plunger sticks to said semi, and then you're coasting, free! The Russian wants to use a cross-bow, but really, I think that's just a Man Thing. Regardless, it was brilliant until we discovered that a lot of semis have some kind of textured doors on the back, probably to prevent people from sticking plungers to them for a free ride. AND, we never did come up with a good way to unstick the plunger when the semi exitted on an off ramp, and you didn't want to. Carl surmised that there would be big trucks all over the US with plungers sticking off the back of them. No word from the plumbing industry on how this would affect the supply of plungers.

We also discussed how best to spell the name of the town, Ina, with no vowels. This is sort of an ongoing hobby...how to rid the world of pesky vowels. My hv 2 pnt ths 1.

And it's way too early for me to be up, but Alice was whining and wouldn't settle down. Ralf is staying here for 2 weeks while he makes a visit to the vet to get some kind of small tumor removed from his eyelid. This will be the longest they've been separated from each other since we've had them both. I'm curious to see how Alice handles it, she's never been the "only dog". Cats are Home Alone. Hopefully Pop doesn't let them out accidentally.