Ick, and ugh. Waste of a perfectly good alligator and snake, if you ask me.

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Oh, I saw that the other day. Creeped me right out.

The local newscaster here was introducing a segment with something to do about dogs, and commented that she's had her dogs for five years now and they're still not fully house trained. WTF? It took me like a week to train Lucy, and she maybe had some accidents for a few months after that, but five years? How do you live like that? And it's not good for dogs, anyway - they like to do what they're supposed to. If five years have gone by and you haven't managed to communicate that, it makes me feel really bad for the dogs.

(I think the segment is on dealing with smells, or stains, or something.)

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Neat! [link]

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What kind of embassy swag are we talking about? Spy gear, classified documents, that kind of thing?

Hmm...I could send you the ambassador.

Waste of a perfectly good alligator and snake, if you ask me.

Concur.

If five years have gone by and you haven't managed to communicate that, it makes me feel really bad for the dogs.

And again, I agree.

In other dogly news, my niece just sent me a photo of her latest dog wearing Doggles. Apparently they are driving to Oregon from NM, and the dog will be riding in the bed of the pickup the whole way, so they are making him wear goggles. (bangs head)

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If five years have gone by and you haven't managed to communicate that, it makes me feel really bad for the dogs.

Yep. Makes me wonder how much time the owner's spending with the dogs, that she can't work out a decent release-and-relief schedule. Or if the dogs are just wandering about with bladder and/or diabetes problems. My step-dog took one day to get trained, and since then has only peed inside due to an occasional uti, even when she was recovering from major surgery. Heck, even my sister's pom, with a bladder the size of an acorn, was house trained in a week.

[sniff] I miss my step-dog.

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hrmm, I love sports AND my cats. Yes, I even like to watch sports on TV. Here's the dealio though, in this age of DVRs and and even the old programmable VCRs, why don;t the networks replay anything pre-empted in the late night/wee morning hours? HUH?

I took a bus in to work today, not an express bus, a local-stop every 2-3 blocks bus. I did this because I promised my grandmother. This means I left my house close to 7 and got to work at 8:35. doubling my commute time. it is of the ugh making.

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Cindy, I don't know if you confirmed this elsewhere, but the re-run of LOST will be at 8 on Saturday (per a little blurb in the Globe's arts section).

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Baseball stories are like the Chinese in Firefly to me.

The Chinese in Firefly is, to me, like baseball stories to you.

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The world's first autonomously-controlled robotic fish were unveiled yesterday at the London Aquarium.

Can they have lasers?

Please?

eta: There's more than one!

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Thank you, Frank!

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The Boston Globe has been running a sitcom theme song tourney. It's in the final round now, and the Cheers theme is up against the the one from The Jeffersons. I think The Jeffersons theme is a better sitcom theme, although I am partial to the Cheers song, as well. But what's great about it, is that they have sound clips from all the songs they've had in the contest. They only provide 8 seconds of the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies. Pffeh. The rest of the themes are either complete or the short version of complete, though. They have themes from these shows:

Cheers
The Beverly Hillbillies (8 sec)
Family Ties (which makes me sad for Michael J. Fox)
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
Gilligan's Island (the original version that says, "The movie star, and the rest")
All in the Family (I would have liked to see the final come down to this and The Jeffersons)
Growing Pains
Diff'rent Strokes (if ever there was an unnecessary contraction...)
The Jeffersons
Full House
Three's Company (which makes me sad for John Ritter)
Welcome Back Kotter (love this one)
Good Times
The Facts of Life
The Brady Bunch.

Very fun.

If you vote/after you vote, you have to hit your browser's back button to see the results of the vote. The page will then contain all the links to the sound files. It's funny how sitcom theme songs can bring back lots of memories that have nothing to do with the sitcoms. It's also funny (sad?) how well most of these were burned into my brain.

[link]

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It took me like a week to train Lucy, and she maybe had some accidents for a few months after that, but five years? How do you live like that? And it's not good for dogs, anyway - they like to do what they're supposed to. If five years have gone by and you haven't managed to communicate that, it makes me feel really bad for the dogs.

I have no clue. We mostly don't have a pet, because we (in theory, the last few summers have challenged the theory) go away a lot on the weekends in the summer. I don't think my mother would be excited (in a good way, that is) if we brought a pet with us. There are too many weekends involved (in theory) to impose upon a neighbor or friend to mind the pet.

That said, I could probably work something out, but I still consider myself on sabbatical from cleaning up poop. The diaper years took their toll on me. I can see me taking up krav sooner than I can see me following behind a dog, bearing a pooper-scooper and plastic bag. That leaves me with getting a cat. I probably prefer cats to dogs, but I know so many people who've gotten cats from pet stores, and the cats ended up with one of those awful feline illnesses. I don't feel like paying actual money for my kids' childhood tragedies. I think the best way to get a cat is to get one from someone you know. You can tell a lot about a kitten from its mother. If the mother is clean, she generally teaches her kittens to be clean, etc., but all my friends who have cats, have had their cats spayed.

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