KateAndDally

Kit: The Return

Kit, the Winter White Happy-Footed House Hamster of Hyjinks, has returned!  And, intrepid me, I scooped her up and plopped her in her cage before she could boogie back under the couch, or the bookcase, or the treadmill; or any of the other myriad hyding places we have in our rec'd room. 

She disappeared sometime over the weekend -- TLO, her nominal hooman, had cleaned out her cage and/but somehow the girl scout handbook that we use to block the wiggly bits of the cage door was never replaced; and Kit, true to form, wiggled out into the big bad world and vanished.

This has happened before.  All hamster keepers know they are veritable little escape-artists, and Kit, being a Winter White (sometimes confused with a Chinese Dwarf) and therefore tiny, has figured out how to wriggle through the gaps in the bars around her cage door (on the roof of her cage; no mean feat).  I have seen her do the monkey bars thing across the roof of her cage, a thing I can't do; so yes, my kid's hamster is stronger than I am. 

Anyhoo.  I plopped her in her cage, made sure the Girl Scout handbook was firmly in place and put her on TLO's new desk.  A nice surprise when she wakes in the morning.  Or at 3 a.m. when Kit's wheel begins to spin faster than the speed of sound.

Dubious Efforts...

As a government relations professional, I think this is a waste of time and good feeling on the part of the pro-life constituency.  If I were an RC, I'd be pretty annoyed that I was being asked to spend time and treasure on a non-existent piece of legislation.

It's almost like saying pro-lifers are too dumb to know better. 

LIvin' it up at IKEA

Still in pursuit of living room furniture, I zoomed off to IKEA after church.  What I bought bore no relation to my search, but no matter ... I got TLO a long-needed desk "shelf" that goes under her loft bed and I got Offering Boy a necessary 4-drawer bureau.  Plus some other fun stuff I might write about later.  Point is, I DIDN"T opt for the delivery option...and fun ensued.

Um.  Don't think it would be wise to travel 10 miles on the Beltway like this, do you?  (No, tying the hatch down didn't help either.)

So I had the brilliant idea of carrying the "shelf" on the roof....but first I had to get it up there...levers are sure a useful invention, aren't they?

Except that I had no bungee cords.  IKEA does offer plastic twine, thankfully.

I couldn't get any of the knots tight enough, but then I had the bright idea of -- hel-lo -- closing the windows, which would pinch the twine (if it didn't snap it completely); so I closed the windows, put on my flashers and took the long and slow way home.

At the dog park

We took Kate to the dog park this a.m., where there were upwards of a dozen canine beasts and their hoomans.  They swarmed Kate as she entered (dogs, not peeps) and she seems a little overwhelmed.  Then she rushed around, sniffing butts and shaking hands and retrieving tennis balls for quite 45 minutes until it was time for us to go get organic chicken carcasses.  I took a little phone movie which Verizon assures me I can upload (uh huh), so perhaps I can get it to post later.  In the meantime, here's a picture of Kate and Offering Boy on the way back from the park:

(I like the way you ncan see Kate's whiskers...they're so inadequate and funny anyway)

UO also took a picture of me and OB whhich I'll post if his G-D phone ever sends it!

How Much is that Doggie in the Window...

I am amusing myself by looking through the puppy ads in the WaPo.  Kate lays at my feet, UO taps away on his laptop beside me.  There are (blue) wall-eyed Australian Shepherds, Small and Mini, for $800.  That seems a bit excessive.  There are Boxer pups, and Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.  There are Mini Dachshunt pups that turn out to be Shih Tzu Poos (UO suggests this is what happens after the larger dog eats the Shih Tzu). There are fuzzy white German Shepherd pups (I thought those were Alsatians), and of course there are the ubiquitous Golden Retrievers and Yellow Labs.  "Here's your Marley!" declares one of the ads.  Um.  Marley was the untrainable dog.  Perhaps that's taking truth in advertising a little too far...There's a yellow lab bitch pup for $350.  I point this out to UO.  "Yes," he says, but then you're out $350.  And you have a yellow lab."  Well.  I guess he told me.

Go Away, Go Very Far Away...

This guy, and this guy...Enough, already.  An in the case of the mayor, the man's powers of persuasion are supernatural.  He convinced someone (why is it always a woman?) to give him a kidney.

Oh, the humanity...

UO, poor man, is sick.  He coughs, he wheezes, he invites sympathy (literally) and outright bathos.  He (plaintively) requests that someone set up a foundation for research into his disease; to which I add my request that someone start a telethon to raise funds so I might escape!

So much for the dog show...

Alert readers will note that I did NOT live-blog the final night of Westminster last night...The Littlest Offering HAD to watch  'Flight 29 Down," a "Lost" for kids but without the Others and/or the polar bear; and by 8:30 I was crawling the web looking for Wegner Papa Bear chairs and otherwise distracted.

How sad then, that I missed Stump, the sussex spaniel who won best in show. 

I mean, how could one not root for a dog named Stump? 

Stump is apprently the oldest dog to win at Westminster; he spends most of his time asleep between the sheets of his handler's home in Houston (just like Kate, i would like to point out) and he "doesn't travel much," according to his handler.  I mean, he sounds like a normal 10 year old much loved lazy hound and just as worthy to root for as was Uno,the beagle who won last year.

Ah well.  On to Eukanuba!

More Unqualified Offerings

Unqualified Offerings is back online!

Highclearing.com: Public Service Announcement

For reasons unknown to us at this time, UnQualifed Offerings, UO's blog (www.highclearing.com) has been seized by Evil Websters and turned into a parking lot, whatever that is.  UO is perplexed because he renewed the domain subscription just recently.  It is all very strange but he is aware and is looking into to it. 

(Yes, I freaked out also when the smiling blonde coed popped up -- who is she and what has she done with my UO?)