Bogieblog

Fighting Children

Thanks to Ravenwood, I found out that I'm tougher than 22 5 year olds:

22

That's because I fight dirty and don't have any compunctions about the fact that they are children!

Gardening Site

For those of you into gardening, there is a new (to me anyway) place to find garden blogs - at Blotanical. I haven't had time to explore it, but it looks to have a whole bunch of information and links to gardening blogs.

Found thru Takoma Gardener, who has changed her blog name to Sustainablegardeningblog.

The Deed is Done

Sunday morning Fuzzy was in the cathouse, so I grabbed him and locked him in the workout room. "Why?" you ask - because he was to go to the vet for a little procedure on Monday. Last time I had this procedure scheduled, Fuzzy disappeared until about the time I would have had to leave for the vet's. All well and good, but I had to make sure he didn't eat for 8 hours before hand.

So, he was barricaded in the workout room (Prince and Tory both hate Fuzzy, so letting him roam free was not an option). That room already has a child's gate set up (from when I was babysitting GT). I bought another gate to go on top of that one (Fuzzy could easily get out with only one gate), so we could leave the door open to let warm air in when the wood stove is running.

Sunday night Fuzzy got out (the barrier system wasn't perfected yet) and scared Prince. I could tell by the startled yelp at 1 AM and Prince running down the stairs (he sleeps on he couch - not supposed to, but he does). Right on Prince's heels, was Tory. He jumped up on the bed, faced the door to the stairs and commenced to growling. I got up and met Fuzzy on the landing, as he was headed down the stairs. I don't know whether he was looking for me, or enjoying his power to scare the others, but it was pretty funny. I gathered him up and got him back in his room (and did a better job with the barrier).

I got Fuzzy to the vet Monday morning, and he came home late Monday night. He has been locked in the room since then (vet says he'll be coyote bait for a couple of days because of his changing scent). For the most part, he has taken the imprisonment well. Every once in a while he gets a bit noisy, but that only last a couple of minutes so it hasn't been bad.

I had to place a barrier on the outside of the gate, so Missy doesn't get too nosy. She is just curious, but she could easily break the lower gate by pushing too hard against it. Prince pretty much ignores the fact that the cat is there - and is happy that he stays there. Shadow and Tory also ignore that part of the house, but like to go outside and check to see if Fuzzy has been ensconced back in the cathouse.

This weekend will signal the end to all this. Fuzzy will go back outside and follow me as I fill the woodrack, Tory and Shadow will be paranoid whenever they go by the cathouse (Fuzzy doesn't ever attack them, he just makes them nervous), Missy will be ultra-curious as she passes the cathouse on the way to and from the dog pen, and Prince will growl at him.

In other words, life will be back to normal.

Almost Ready

Just a little more than 1 month to go.

White Knight and SpaceShipTwo

It has been a while since I have posted anything about White Knight and SpaceShipTwo. I'm still not posting anything but a link to a short article - but it is better than nothing.

HT to AMCGLTD for the link.

Possibilities

Had layoffs this week. For the last 3 months our productivity has dropped, and orders along with them (if it was the economy that put us in this situation it would be the other way around). They put off reviews for 90 days back in Novemeber becasue once again, we've forgotten how to get good parts out the door so we can make money.

So, 11 peopel are gone - I'm good for now. Told the Quality Engineer that if we have another layoff, I'll be going. She doesn't think so - figures it will be her because she is pregnant. I figure she is the best type of employee right now; they just have to pay her for a couple more months, she'll take off for 3 months, then when she comes back they can decide if they can keep her or not.

Why are the QE and I even talking another round of layoffs? Because, although we will get reviews at the end of the month, raises will not take affect for another 90 days. If they truly thought that the recent action was going to help out, they would put off the reviews for another 90 days and make any raises retroactive.

I guess I'll be dusting off the old resume and looking to see what is out there. Geeze, maybe I'll go back to production. At least then I was always confident that I was such a good performer that I would be at the very tail end of the list for a layoff (and I never got laid off when I was in production). Now, I'm always targeted for the second round (or 1st round for deeper cuts).

Practice With the Snow Shovel

Winter is back - we got 10.5" of snow yesterday, and more on the way for Thursday.

Mother Nature is going to help me lose those holiday pounds!

Thinks That Go Bang in the Night

Wednesday night it got really windy. We were in watching an episode of Earth 2 (on DVD) when we heard a sound like the metal shed being ripped apart. WS even commented that it was a scary sound. Thursday, while looking for Fuzzy, I found out what the noise was; wood that WS had stacked in the lean-to had gone thru the tarp wall and colided with the metal shed. Hold on, let me go take a pic of that . . .

Of Slides and Film

While we were with WS's family at Christmas, the family went thru all of his mom's pictures and decided which ones to keep and which ones to throw (there were many duplicates). We picked out ours and the local BIL's (they weren't there). One of the things that caught several of our eyes was that there were some slides, some of which depicted people. Oldest BIL was going to take them to see if he could get pictures created from them to see who the people were.

I volunteered to bring them home and create pictures because my printer does things like that. I was the instant hit of the party. Later we found developed film that had no pictures accompanying them, yep, I can take care of those too.

The box of pictures arrived Thursday, so yesterday I read the printer manual (hey, don't laugh, I had to figure out where the film and slide fixtures were - they hide them inside the machine). Although it takes a while, it does a beautiful job with slides. Some of the slides were degraded quite badly but I can clean them up with the software that came with the printer.

Oh, and I didn't even have to use the computer (except I wanted to see if I had the slides in forward or backward), and I saved everything to a memory card.

Up until now I have only done the basics, print, scanning documents and scanning pictures. Actually doing more made me realize what a good choice I made in printers, an HP 3210 (even if installing the software sucked). Actually it is more that I made a good choice in having all kinds of features available: save to memory stick or several different types of memory card; and can scan/copy/print just about anything.

So, when taking a break from stacking wood, I will probably be cleaning up the slide images and getting them on CDs so they can be sent to the rest of the family.

No Show

Yestereday Fuzzy was supposed to have gone in for his second round of shots and neutering. I prepared to keep him in the workout room for Thursday night so that I could contol his eating (no food 8 hours prior to the surgery).

Naturally, I didn't see him at all on Thursday, Wednesday night - sure, he was there in the cat house. Thursday morning, he was gone. Thurday night he was out galavanting too. At 12:53 AM, Thursday morning (when I got up and let the dogs out), I checked to see if he had returned - nope.

Didn't see him again until, you got it, Friday morning at 7:30 - about the time we would have to leave for the vet's. I had picked up the food outside, so he was hungry. However I couldn't rule out that he hadn't been down at the farm getting a snack (cat food or rodent) or at another neighbor's.

I thought about taking a chance and taking him in anyway. But with the ice on the roads (or at least my vehicle and our pathways), and the bad luck that had haunted me all week, I decided that things could not possibly turn out well so I called and cancelled the appointment.

Don't let him know that it has been rescheduled for the 21st.