And all these things...

So, we can now add to the joys of having a canine pet the following:

1. taking the dog out for business in the rain
2. rupturing blood vessels when the dog attemps business on the carpet
3. discovering that the entire bag of tennis balls has been liberated all over the living room (instead of the one tennis ball she was given)
4. taking the dog out for business in the rain, again
5. rupturing blood vessels when the dog climbs on the kitchen counter to watch you leave

But other than these, she's a pretty good dog. She sits, she shakes. She waits patiently while being towelled off after a rainy business run. She sleeps through the night (but has doggy dreams, if you're awake to hear it). She does not chew on clothing or furniture. She does not dig through the trash can. So far, so good.

Title Of Post

So strange...my buddy Sarah is off to Navy boot camp now. She's gone! They would have shipped to Great Lakes yesterday, brining my new total of "friends I have who are in the military" to, oh, a lot. And I don't count the ones I meet through Joe.

Happy Ash Wednesday.

In the news...

NEW YORK — Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, a defender of Roman Catholic orthodoxy who led an elite seminary for U.S. priests and became known for his energy, wit and warmth, was named archbishop of New York on Monday.

The Vatican said Dolan would succeed Cardinal Edward Egan, 76, who is retiring as archbishop after nearly nine years. The post is the most prominent in the American Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II called the job "archbishop of the capital of the world."

The New York archdiocese is the second-largest in the U.S., behind the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, serving 2.5 million parishioners in nearly 400 churches.

It covers a region from Manhattan to the Catskill mountains, and includes a vast network of 10 colleges and universities, hundreds of schools and social service agencies, and nine hospitals that treat about a million people annually.

Dolan's selection continues a chain of Irish-American bishops that was broken only once in the history of the archdiocese, when French-born prelate John Dubois was appointed in 1826.

Economic Stimulus

Well, the newest additions of my family—by far the most interesting so far—arrived today. Fanny and Freddie are now happily installed in the better part of my kitchen, gleaming in the stovelight. Each greets me with a happy little tune when turned on, and each has a multiplicity of settings (no plush toy setting—I have not reached such a stage of housewifery as yet) to choose from. My favorite is the washer. I can put it on spin setting slow, medium, high, or NASA. The dryer came equipped with a rack that fits inside the barrel, upon which I may lay delicate items which enjoy the tanning light and gentle warmth without all that tumbling about.

I also added yet another furniture item to the household, this time what I cannot quite describe. I think it’s a dresser. With two shelves, and two drawers at the bottom where a third shelf would be, and a top as if to serve as a nightstand. It’s being used as an all-of-the-above, so my guesses cannot go wrong.

Nothing else interesting going on…this computer (poor little 4-year-old brains) has been having a series of cerebral hernias throughout the evening. I can only run one program at a time, and even that is pushing it. Snug does not like the new washer at all. It doesn’t make a consistent set of noises like a regular washer—it fills, then buzzes, then fills some more, then turns, the turns the other way. And the high speed spin must make a noise that only he can hear, because he goes bonkers on me. He got away this afternoon and I couldn’t find him anywhere. Eventually, I thought to look upstairs, and he had gotten into the attic and was sleeping at the far edge of the insulation, right above the bedroom heating register. There was some yelling and screaming and wiping off of cat with damp cloth. Grrr.

Little family...

Well, the house is filling up. Cat is here, Lola has been visiting, and Lt. Chicago has been here for dinner three different nights now--the poor fellow is quite lonely down here. Funny, how the boring married people (you know, the ones who don't go out to clubs or bars) are the ones that all the wild, single, stallions visit with all the time. :)

Had a nice weekend on the beach with visiting family, and then yesterday I joined the ranks of the really boring and really married and bought a washing machine and dryer. Hopefully my stories won't be as nuts at T's. But, we did go out and buy the things, for better or for worse, and they're being delivered on Thursday. This means, of course, that I must clean my kitchen before then.

The felicity of unbounded domesticity

I have not the pirates' enthusiasm on this one...I'm worn out. Day seven in the house, day three with all the stuff moved into it, and if I see one more box, bag, lid, crate, bin, newspaper sheet, hamper, tape roll, or sock, I'm going to go nutty.

Speaking of nutty (or seedy?), take a look at my friend:

He's got no fear of me whatsoever. I stand right inside the kitchen door and talk to him all day long, bang dishes, breathe threats and murder, and as long as that screen stays shut, he munches with impugnity. I realize, of course, that by putting birdseed out for him to eat, I am enabling him, but so be it. He's fun to watch...he eats the seeds in a very organized fashion, until the last few seeds are practially a single-file semicircle left on the patio. This way, I suppose, he doesn't accidentally miss one.

In other news, I have finished (for the time being) working on "my" room. The computer is set up, the printer is in place, the bookshelves are stocked, the craft boxes are in their best array...it's nice. This way, I can get stamps and scissors out all over the place without incapacitating our ability to eat at the kitchen table. (I can still hear the squirrel out there munching.) One's ability to entertain guests is severely hampered, after all, by the presence of crafting material upon the one and only table top in the house.

Who is Fidelio, anyway?

Well, I could just send you to the Wiki article, but that wouldn't be classy. Instead, I'll tell you that Fidelio is the name of a character from Beethoven's one and only opera - her girl name is Leonore, and she pretends to be a man named Fidelio when she sneaks into a prison to try and save her husband.


When I picked the name as a blogger ID, it was actually part of an inside joke. People had a hard time figuring out who I was online (i.e. they never suspected that such brilliant discourse could come forth from such as I) and so I added to the mix by using a masculine name as my online name. Hee hee.

I'm talkin' with my mouth!

Okay, so maybe the rennovated blog is a little moto...I thought the picture in the sidebar would be smaller.

I've got what Big Daddy called the Big Eye - can't sleep. I know, it's almost 0700 and I probably shouldn't be sleeping anyway. But still, I'm the only one awake, there's not much to do in the house until I have someone bigger and stronger to help me, and if I wake him up too soon he'll be cranky. Must wait.

My Little Yellow House

There it is! That's mah mayun walking up the sidewalk toward the front door (which is invisible in this picture). It's a stealth door.

Back in the Saddle

And again, dear reader, you see me making an effort at sticking around. Don’t expect a lot of anything interesting to happen in the next several weeks, but after that I forsee myself in a place where time to blog will be more aplenty. We graduate from our current school (“we” meaning Joseph) this Friday, and begin the gradual and laborious process of packing and moving in the following two weeks. February will see us upon the beach at our new duty station, lapping up the driving winds and wet sprays that only winter on the Atlantic has to offer. After eight weeks of bliss, we’ll pack it up and head west for another school’s worth of “vacation,” this time for five months on the Midwest plains.

After that, we return to paradise (i.e. the beach) and shall live out a goodly portion of our life in one piece, in one place. Sort of. How does this all relate to blogging, you ask? I will tell you. Only 16 hours remain in my current working woman career, that's how. Once work has ended and I slide in to the oozy existence of an unemployed married person, suddely oozy things like blogs will become higher priority than making myself a lunch and getting to work on time. Oh, and I won't be spending hours and hours and hours listening to persons around me sharing opinions from their brains and stories from their life and information about their healthcare choices that I never, in a million years never, wanted to know about. I can't wait.

Book review, of sorts.

" The Heart is a Lonely Hunter"

Not sure how to take this book...I liked it, yes, and I enjoyed it. The characters, though, were almost more than I could take. This is a feature I find consistently in novels about the South, that somehow the people portrayed are a little beyond even what I can imagine finding in a book. I suppose if I had ever lived in the North, I would be able to say the same. But I haven't, so it's the 'darkies' and the 'preacher man' and the 'aspiring actress' that I just don't recognize from my own world. Other than that, an awesome story. Very visual, yet sparse?

Fruit flies like a banana.

With four glorious days in a row here, I've had the windows open and the a/c off in great comfort. I'm loving it! I was ready for the season to change this year, instead of dreading the end of warm days and sunshine. Maybe this fall (I know, it doesn't really start until tomorrow) is easier because it has shifted in gradually, instead of staying in the 80s until one fateful October night when a hard freeze kills all the kids in the swimming pool.

Response to Stine

My patriotism, sir, is not confined to a single date. I will admit, though, that my heart swells with love for the Federal Government on Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (observed), President's Day, Memorial Day, and the Fourth of July. I've got to get on here and post, though, about my last couple days. A fun debate, a beautiful funeral, an 83mph trip out I-66...oh yeah.

Desist radio silence.

Yeah, yeah. I've been bragging to everyone about how I was going to keep up with blogging this year, and I haven't done it. Well, it isn't my fault this time. Everything was going great and I was all geared up to finish the yearbook--more of a priority than blogging right now--and I was within sight of the end, when Joe got a garrison billet that took the computer away from me for nearly three weeks!!! My own poor lappie is dying the slow, agonized death that Dells die, so I was bereft of life, liberty, and internet access for that whole time. This prevented my doing anything of particular use, except for cleaning the house some more, making Christmas presents, and writing many letters to friends and family at OCS, at BASIC, in jail, on Cowboy Ranches, or wherever else my friends and family happen to be.

Now, I've got the computer back, I've got my groove on, and it's time to work on the yearbook. I'll be back when it's done, I promise! I hope to have a solid readership again before I start going really interesting places...

Two months!

Cool. In the meantime, I'm mastering this beast that is internet surveys--500 Delta miles and 3,000 Hilton points later, I'm feeling good about myself. Now, if we ever had time to travel....

National Review

The rest of Joe's birthday present came today, and I proceeded to spend a solid hour and a half reading it nearly cover to cover (I haven't quite reached the back page). This cartoon came from a back issue, and I'm using it (hopefully not illegally) without the proper permissions. Maybe they'll forgive me because the post as a whole is a rousing endorsement for the publication.

I love the National Review. It's nice and round in it's conservatism, generally unapologetic about things like being Catholic and calling homosexuality wrong, and it devoted almost five complete pages to an article on the crumbling Anglican Church, and how its renaissance is taking place in Africa. Down there (shock! gasp!) people are really going strong for orthodox, no-holds-barred, go-back-to-confession types of Catholicism, and the Catholic Lite church is no different. Highly conservative bishops from many African dioceses evidently met on their own, a month before the deci-annual Lambeth Conference, to discuss the alarming trends of Paganism in the older (read = European) sectors of their denomination.

At Lambeth, nothing more substantive than "dialog" was on the menu, whereas the African church leaders were driving hard for a plan to create a new Anglican denomination, to properly house all those fringe parishes that have been splitting left and right, only to find themselves in a magesterial limbo. The article is quite informative, and I recommend that you find yourself a copy of the magazine and read it for yourself. If you live in any large city, or in California, it'll probably be in the "foreign language" section.

backstory

Snug the Cat (or, Snug the Amazing Incredible Warrior Cat) is, at the moment of this writing, on the back porch dining on my houseplant. Despite his recently-dramatic living arrangement alterations, he seems to have become a well adjusted house pet. His time is largely spent asleep, either in the bathtub or in the bedroom window. Today he got his first confirmed kill (a fly)!

Snug the Cat

Ladies and Gentlemen.......the dangling modifier.

"GRANITE CITY, Ill. — Police and FBI agents captured an ex-convict suspected of killing eight people in two states as he smoked a cigarette outside of a southwestern Illinois bar Tuesday night."

Zulu.....zulu.....zulu....

It is, yes, still weird to say “my husband.” In fact, I continue to word my sentences on purpose to not have to say “my husband,” because it still seems so strange. Pretentious, almost. Sniff. I have a husband. Ha!

Every morning, his alarm clock goes off at 0345. Then again at 0350. Then again at 0400. Also at 0400, my cell phone alarm goes off, and at 0402 his cell phone alarm goes off. At 0405, all three clocks go off together, then my cell phone goes off for a final time at 0415. This is to ensure that he gets to base on time. I’m convinced that this method does nothing more than deprive you of a half hour’s sleep, but enough people are disciples of the “wake up gradually by many alarms” method, that I can’t really knock it in earnest. Besides, my own method didn’t work so well this morning—I turned the darn thing off without even waking up, then slept in until the precise moment when I should have been leaving the house. Still made it to work on time (barely), but it made for a complicated morning. Especially since I’m the one driving the car without decals this week.