70 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-4-17”

  6. Wow! It is 7:07 on the Atlantic side and so many beat me to the low single digits. I guess all I have left to brag about is the Falcons. A lot of cars have been seen lately flying flags with birds on them. Of course in the tax office, Uncle Sam is a killjoy.

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  12. I had this elaborate plan to sleep in this morning, so I posted late last night before I went to bed around 2:30. A certain small, calico cat had other ideas, so I’ve been up since 7 anyway. Don’t feel bad for me. Liz is at snow camp, so there’s definitely a nap in my immediate future this afternoon. 🙂

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  13. I had a long day yesterday. I got my award. Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all…
    I got home around 10 but could not sleep and was wide awake at 6:30.
    As always there is that one person in a group who has to be “in the know” and let you know they are and suck whatever is making you feel good away, but whatever. Someone asked me what I did for Guy. I told them I was his keeper every day until it was time to send him home to his wife. He agreed.
    I have a baby shower at 11 so I am going to have to get moving.

    Oh, and one of our agents, apparently but his story is old enough to be my dad, told me he had been meaning to tell me but didn’t want to be creepy, that my photos on FB didn’t do me justice. In person I was beautiful. I never think I am, but I thanked him anyway. I am learning to just accept the compliment.

    Liked by 4 people

  14. Speaking of falcons, I find it interesting that one was staring at me when the site loaded. Does that mean AJ is rooting for the Atlanta team tomorrow?

    Liked by 1 person

  18. Wow, it is so cold in Phoenix sometimes, that the dog water bowls get ice on them. They need to put some insulation in those houses!

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  19. On to more serious Questions.
    Last night I was in a conversation with Guy’s Wife. Let’s just call her a Special Woman.
    We were having a discussion about abortion, Muslims, Trump, White Privilege, and every other hot button issue you can think of that makes Liberal Heads explode.

    1. She said that in our state abortion clinics don’t even have to be up to the standards of veterinary clinic standards and if she decided that for her pregnant female dog to have puppies and took her to the vet to abort the puppies, she and the doctor would be charged with animal cruelty.
    2. She told me the real reason for the Crusades was that the Muslims had destroyed all of the churches mentioned in Revelations and killed the Christians, so the liberal argument of “well look how many Muslims the Christians killed during the Crusades was a false argument.
    3. Her brother lives in a very liberal college town in California and has accused his mother of not knowing what is going on in the world because she suffers from White Privilege. To which the mother replied my white privilege has supported you all of your life so that you can live in California and be a part time musician.

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  20. Kim,

    1. Actually, vets do abortions on animals. My sister once had a cat that was constantly pregnant. Several times she took it in to have it spayed, but each time it was already pregnant. The vet was willing to do an abortion and do the surgery anyway, but my sister didn’t for the sake of the children.

    2. Yes, the Crusades were basically self-defense.

    3. Yep, pretty much!

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  21. Oh, and on the “vets doing abortions” question: One time when I was at the dog park, someone had a prissy little white female, I forget what breed except she was white and tiny and cute (and not a chihuahua). Someone complimented the owner on the dog, and she said she was a rescue dog, and when she got her she had been living on the streets and was pregnant. The vet said that without knowing the size of the father, that it was possible the puppies might be too big for her to safely carry them and they should abort the litter, and so they did,

    That didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Puppies are actually surprisingly close in size when you think of the enormous range in adult size. (Here’s what one vet website says: “Normal birth weights for the smaller breeds can range from 75g to 350g,[the 350 might be a typo] medium breeds 200g to 300g and the larger breeds from 400g up to 800g.” Well, when you consider that a chihuahua might weigh five pounds or less and a St. Bernard might be over 200 pounds, that isn’t much variation at all. The biggest variation is in the size of the litter–smaller dogs have fewer puppies at a time.) Furthermore, I would assume that if the male is too much bigger than the female, breeding wouldn’t be possible, and thus that risk would be a non-issue unless you were doing artificial insemination (and you wouldn’t pair a make Great Dane with a female terrier!). The vet might know more about those things than I do, but that was what I thought about it.

    I have long been curious, though, about what would happen if you inseminated a Great Dane or some other big dog with the sperm of a tiny dog. A chihuahua would probably be too dangerous an experiment (the males are about as aggressive a dog as they come, and you really probably wouldn’t want to put that with a huge dog!), but try breeding a 10-pound dog with a 200-pound dog and see what happens, as long as the bitch is the larger of the pairing.

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  22. Too much to deal with before we get to serious questions.
    1.Peter @ 9:24 It’s an omen.

    2. Kim, @ 9:21 said, “In person I was beautiful. I never think I am, but I thanked him anyway. I am learning to just accept the compliment.” We all knew that because you let it slip about ten years ago that this guy wanted to take you for a ride in his boat..
    We all know what that meant.

    3. I don’t want the hear “Ode to Billy Joe”. A desperate song about something that didn’t have to be. “Hate it” is not the right description, but it’ll do.

    4. I’m almost certain that Kris Kristofferson wrote, “Me and Bobby McGee” I think he was the first one to sing it. On a tour when we were in Nashville, the guide said that Kristofferson landed his helicopter in Johnny Cash’s yard and made him listen to “Sunday Morning Coming Down”. That started it all.

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  23. I guess it is possible for a small dog to be bred by a larger one. Here’s what someone said about it: “My recently adopted 5 lb 10 year old Chihuahua was confiscated by animal control from prior owners after having a lifesaving cesarean section birth of two puppies, fathered by a male 5 times her weight.

    “The puppies lived.

    “My tiny chihuahua lived. When she first came home her ribs still looked “sprung”, her coat was like wire from inadequate nutrition, and her feet seemed to flap when she ran. Were her tendons and ligaments strained and stretched from the extra weight of the pregnancy causing the flapping feet? Her eyes only barely looked out – she kept them squeezed almost shut. Due to fear or vitamin deficiency I don’t really know.

    “We are three months down the road and the little girl has blossomed. She struts up to get her share of attention, her fur has grown in soft, her ribs have settled, feet are still flappy but less so – and she opens wide those big black-brown eyes!” (in the comment section to https://www.quora.com/Can-small-dogs-breed-with-large-dogs ) By the way, I wouldn’t actually do that cross-breed pairing . . . but I am curious.

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  24. Re: Arizona and cold weather- Phoenix is about 1,500 feet lower in elevation than Tucson, so it is warmer. I remember ice on the dog’s dish a lot because Tucson gets into the 20s at least once every winter.

    And in Tucson, when the summer heat gets to 100° they say the ice melted on the Santa Cruz River. It’s a joke. That river is dry most of the year and only flows when it rains. (It’s also one of the few rivers in North America that flows towards the North.)

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  25. @ 9:59.
    2. That is true. That started the Crusades. But the Popes (and others) turned it into a political thing and they lost sight of the issue. Many atrocities were committed against Muslims and other Christians in this. It started with a good purpose but ended with a black mark in history. Crusaders were not the only ones to commit atrocities, either.
    3. When I was a college student, I didn’t have time nor money to demonstrate if I had wanted to. The demonstrators are living on someone else’s dime.
    And we had other things to do for excitement.

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  28. Part of the Fox River in Wisconsin also flows north. (I lived in Little Chute, Wisconsin, in the Fox River Valley, for three years in my teens.)

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  30. There is always some drama and romance in the idea of knights and castles, great quests and courageous deeds, so that things like the Crusades make for great ballads and historical novels. However, what the Crusades were was a useless waste of time, money, and, most importantly, lives. The Byzantine Empire was dying its slow death (it lasted almost a thousand year, longer than any other Western Empire, but it dwindled away to a few provinces by the time Constantinople fell) and, just as the Goths took advantage of Rome’s weakened condition, so the Turkish Seljuks took advantage of Constantinople’s impotence. Western Europe, whose church had officially broken with the Byzantine (Orthodox) church 50 years previously, and had long condemned the Coptic and Assyrian churches as heretics, decided to be heroes. Their excuse was the death of pilgrims making the journey to Jerusalem. It was a dangerous journey, but so was much travel in those days – bandits have a habit of hiding out in lonely spaces along routes where travelers carry treasure. As was later worked out with Saladin, protection could have been negotiated with the Seljuks – the Turks always knew how to trade (as witness how the Ottomans later carried out a roaring trade with the great Italian merchant cities). But no, the Western Europeans decided to go on a heroic campaign. Byzantium was always lukewarm to the idea. Culturally, the Byzantines were more cosmopolitan and, shall we say, civilized, in their style of living and manners, than those from France, Germany, & England. Western Europe was still climbing out of the dark ages and the last of the Viking surges in the last half of the 1000s – England had been conquered by the Normans (Northmen) in 1066. The Byzantines were right to be cautious. In two hundred years, the Fourth Crusade would end by sacking Constantinople, after which Byzantium lost territories to the West, further weakening the empire. Instead of helping the Christians of the East, the Westerners hastened the demise of the empire that had protected them.

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  31. When my blind terrier Muffin made it out of the fence one night and was found trying to hump my neighbor’s pure-bred Rottweiler Fiona who was in heat, Fiona’s owner pitched a fit and told me she was going to have the pups aborted if she got pregnant. She was being saved for a special pure-bred someone, the rendezvous was already booked and on the calendar. I thought it was a pretty rude thing to say as I dragged Muffin away from his one true love.

    And he’d already been grazed by a car on his way over there to find her (he’d been howling every night at her scent in the air), he was so in love.

    (Muffin was one of the 2 terriers I’d recently inherited from my mom after her death — he was probably 12 years old at the time and had epilepsy — which is why my mom had never had him neutered — but he got snipped after that and survived just fine; I also got the fence reinforced.)

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  32. Revelation.

    Our church last night had an eschatology debate — between our pastor and Dr. Thomas Ice who founded the Pre-tribulation Research Center with Tim LaHay and served as basically the theological adviser for the “Left Behind” series.

    Interesting night listening to two guys who knew their positions well and spoke with grace. Our pastor (of the post-mil persuasion) had “Tommy” cracking a smile and chuckling — not in a snarky way but in a way that said he was enjoying the fellowship and intellectual exercise amid the disagreements.

    And as was stressed by our pastor several times, as brothers in Christ they agreed on much more than they disagreed.

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  33. Of course, history is ultimately controlled the Creator, though he gives full responsibility to men for what they do in it, even if he does bring good out of it. As Byzantium collapsed in the early 1500s, its scholars moved West, carrying with them valuable manuscripts and a knowledge of Greek, something which first Erasmus and then the reformers found very helpful.

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  35. My Heidi is the result of a male American Staffordshire Terrier (one of the pit bull breeds, usually weighing between 40 & 60 lbs) mating with a Miniature Schnauzer (usually weighing between 10 & 15 lbs.).

    Heidi is about 42 lbs., has the stocky build of a pit bull, but the shaggy hair of a Schnauzer. I’m assuming the pics we often see of Schnauzers with short hair are because they are often kept trimmed. We have Heidi’s hair trimmed very short in the summer. Comparing photos of her with her shaggy hair & her trimmed hair, she almost looks like two different dogs. 🙂 (There is a photo of her in shaggy mode in the photos to the right, in Wandering Views 4.)

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  37. I mentioned that I’m reading Bob Beckel’s book, I Should Be Dead. I just finished the chapter called “Grace”. He tells about his conversion to Christ. (Thought he mentions “faith” a lot, he has only mentioned Jesus once..) Cal Thomas was the primary actor in that event.

    If you watch Fox News or follow politics you will find this a fascinating book. Beckel knew all the actors in politics. He grew up in a dysfunctional family where both his parents were alcoholics. He calls himself “a survivor”. He and his brother also became seriously involved in alcohol and other drugs. Interesting insight on the inside of politics. Roger Ailes, a former adversary hired him at Fox.
    He describes the setup for The Five. “The archetypical characters you would find in a medieval Renaissance play: a king, a queen, a court jester, a femme fatale, and a Falstaff”. He was the Falstaff.

    Profanity warning: Profuse profanity. Not really curse words, as such but much obscenities. He was a rounder and doesn’t hesitate to describe it. He tells what a drunk does. Not for children.

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  38. I’m having a very efficient day. Packed up a full box of old (but still good) dishes for Salvation Army (and that’s another kitchen cabinet mostly cleared out), did 2 loads of laundry, paid the property tax online and now I’m waiting for my Jeep to pass it’s bi-annual California smog test to finish of my car registration.

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  39. Jeep passed the smog test, certificate transmitted to DMV so that’s all taken care of (I already paid the registration online).

    After that, I picked up some groceries & stopped in to get my bangs trimmed 🙂

    Next up, the dog park.

    And I need to get the bathroom guys back here still for the finishing touches (hanging towel bar, ring, put in some caulking around the sink & toilet).

    I told Carol I’d come see her next Saturday, she’s been asking me every week when I’m coming up — I haven’t been to see her since Christmas. It’s just a juggle for me with all of the house things going on now — and Saturday being basically my only free day every week to devote to any of that.

    Carol’s become very dissatisfied with her residence again and says she’s serious about getting out of there asap. I’m hoping her unhappiness with management passes and she can get to a more contented emotional state again. She’s carrying on to me about how they all lie and the place is based on a lie and they lie to all the residents … she’s kind of going on and on like that right now. Frankly, from what I’ve observed, I don’t think this place is any worse or really much different than the others she’s been in, but now that I think about it she does tend to get the urge to move every couple years, this is her 4th assisted living place.

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  40. DJ – Would you consider pointing that out to her (that she gets the urge to move every couple years)? She may not realize her current feelings may be part of a pattern. Then again, she may not see it that way.

    When Hubby was with Hostess, he realized that he got restless for a different route, or some other kind of change, every couple years. (I accidentally typed “days” instead of “years”. 🙂 ) I knew a family who tended to switch churches every couple years or so.

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  41. I may try to do that, Kizzie. It’s almost like she’s getting some of her paranoia back.

    She was evicted (non-payment of rent) from one of the nicer places (where the boyfriend, now deceased, also lived), unfortunately, and the last time she checked they wouldn’t take her back. She owes this place some back rent as well and I did point out to her she’d have to pay that back so she was current before she made plans to leave. She agreed.

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  43. Hope everyone has a nice, restful Sunday. We have church this morning, then babysitting Little Guy this afternoon & evening. He wants to watch the Super Bowl tonight, even though he doesn’t really understand much about football. 🙂 We’ll have him snuggled up on the couch, & hopefully he will fall asleep before too long.

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  51. The commercials and watch parties are the big deal when it comes to Super Bowl. Dog park gang from a few years ago used to go to a party hosted by one of our regulars, the die-hard fans gathered around the bar while the rest of us watched on the living room tv and typically left by half time 🙂

    Since it starts at 3:30 out west, parties go through the later afternoon and (for serious types) into dinner time

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  55. Jo wakes up on Monday morning and finds herself all alone.
    Most of us are watching football, Jo.
    I’m not. I don’t think the Superbowl is being carried in Greensboro. I can’t find it scrolling through the channels. I understand tickets cost $4000.00
    I’ll hear about it later.

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  57. I’m reading a novel about the book of Ruth by Jill Eileen Smith (which happens to be where I am in my Bible reading having escaped Judges. Well, I’ll not be here long!).

    My husband is not feeling well, so is watching his “I’m too sick to do anything else but lay here,” movie: A&E’s Pride and Prejudice.

    It’s raining, I think.

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  58. Fifty-sev… Oh, Hi Michelle.

    Not watching the Stupor Bowl , just checking in on it once in a while. PBS Masterpiece is “Mercy Street” tonight. If you are interested in the Civil War, this one is for you, although there are some gruesome scenes. It’s about a hotel in Alexandria taken over by the Union for a hospital. Interesting relationships between Southerners, Northerners and freed slaves. Unfortunately, they have to throw in romance with 21st Century immorality.

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  59. Mumsee, do you have a way to send us photos of some of your babies? Whether you or one of the kids children takes them, I’m sure a lot of us would like to see some of your lambs and kids.

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  60. After enjoying some snacks, & talking through the commercials, Little Guy fell asleep around 8:00. He’s now snoozing next to me on the couch. 🙂

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  61. Cheryl, I could try sending some to your email that you have shared with me. I have tried sending some to the real, but with my antiquated technology and my less than stellar skills, the photos have not been in the right format or were otherwise unuseable.

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  63. Wow! I’m not even interested in football, but I am now interested in this game. Patriots were trailing badly, 3 – 28, I think even at the end of the 3rd quarter. Now the teams are tied 28 – 28, & going into overtime.

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  68. I read Beckel’s book. It is amazing he is alive. Such a waste of so much time in that story. He has time to do some good now, though.

    I am reading Chiaverini’s Fates and Traitors. It is about John Wilkes Booth. I would not have read a biography of him, but happen to like this author. It is historical fiction and does a good job, in my opinion, to show his motive to assassinate the president.

    I like the Ode to Billy Joe. It is not a happy song and I have long wondered what could have been thrown off the bridge. So many possibilities.

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  69. We have not watched the Super Bowl for years. (I never have watched the whole thing.) I was reading during the first half and most of the second. I had to watch at the very end, however. What a comeback is right! Quite impressive.

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  70. My husband won’t be happy. He watched most of the second half, and he only watched to see them lose. When it finished tied, he went to bed. (I’m finishing my Valentine cards, so I only popped in here and there. I don’t like football and am happy it isn’t a game my husband likes.)

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