If this is Tuesday, then I'm random

I really hate my work week starting on Sunday- I keep forgetting which day I am on, but I'm pretty sure it's Tuesday, and that means randomness.

During stretch break at work last week, an announcement from another department came over the loudspeaker. "Mark from replenishment, could you check to see if you're bleeding? Mark, look to see if you have a cut on your hand."
The Black Knight immediately popped into my head as we all looked at each other, wondering exactly what goes on in replenishment?

Red grapes have been my snack of choice for the last year, and I used to share one occasionally with Rosie, until the vet told me grapes were bad for dogs.(lots of grapes, not a few) Rosie has felt quite put upon since. This morning a grape fell to the floor in front of  her and we stared at it for a moment, then I told her to go ahead. As she delicately picked it up, Ameranth and I simultaneously sang to her: "Die, if you want to".
Too much Jesus Christ Superstar?

J just came in to ask what I wanted for Christmas. Of course I drew a blank and told him I would think about it and meanwhile he should make his wish list too.
J: I told you I wanted a caliper.
Me: You told everyone you wanted a caliper. You can't tell everyone the same thing.
J: When I was a kid I made a list and my parents took care of sharing it.
Me: This is the opposite of that. You can't tell 5 people the same thing. Do you want to end up with 5 calipers?
 J: That would be fine with me!
 It would serve him right if he did.

Who needs Roto Rooter?

You know what's not fun to do after working all day? Digging a two foot deep hole to access your septic tank, opening that sucker up and staring at it to report when 'stuff' starts flowing again. In 28 degree weather with icy winds blowing. And I had the good job!

J is the man! And I mean that in a cool, hip, complimentary way, not the basic gender- stating that means he gets the dirty jobs. (Although it does mean that too) He was in the basement, bravely removing the cap from the sewer pipe and steeling himself for the backflow-which didn't happen, thank goodness. I had excused myself to the yard to watch for developments.

[The back story (see what I did there?) is that the alarm in our septic tank had been going off now and then for the last few weeks. (What? You don't have an septic alarm? You don't have a septic tank? I don't need to hear bragging about city sewers, thank you very much) Since our leach field is on the other side of the driveway and 50+ feet away from our tank, we need a pump to send the fluid out from the tank and the alarm let us know that the pump stopped working. We attributed that to the massive amounts of rain we had and just kept resetting the breaker. Then the alarm stopped going off, and the pipes started backing up. This was Friday afternoon and we figured it was time to call the professionals, who said they would call Monday]

So instead of calling, the pump people showed up bright and early, startling Ameranth who had planned a leisurely arising on her day off, not 2 men asking her questions about the whereabouts of the septic tank. They found a shorted wire and a broken elbow on the floats- word was the pump was fixed. Yay!  Until we tried to wash dishes and flush the toilet. Pump people advised that we probably had a blockage and might be able to find it ourselves. Well, we did want showers and a flushable toilet so we dug the hole.

That green box in the middle of the garden is the electrical stuff for the pump. We use that and the two lily clumps to gauge where the other opening should be.  I tried not to say too much about the bulbs and plants we dug up today. I sensed it would not go over well.

The plumbing snake was deemed too small (plus we couldn't find it) so he used a 50 foot garden hose to probe the darkness. He got a little perturbed when I pointed out that it looked like he used a good hose, not one of the leaky ones that were going to be thrown away anyway.  I reported a lot of water coming through and we thought it was all good but tests soon showed that we still had a problem. That's when Super-J stepped up to the plate. Or down to the hole. He reached his hand into the pipe with a scrap piece of electrical wire and cleared it the rest of the way. I stood there holding the flashlight and thinking "That is some man I have! Thank God I'm married to a handy guy! He certainly deserves the first shower. And everything he's wearing need to be disinfected or discarded."


So much for my sort-of plan to take a nap so I could get up and watch the Patriots-Jets game tonight. Monday night games stink. Hmm, that reminds me, I need a shower too.

Patty-cake Cats

I saw this on the F***book and had to share. (Voiceover added to cat video)

TGIS

My goodness, it felt great to wake up on my own, not to an alarm, this morning. Actually, I did have an 'alarm' in the form of Boomer, whining at 2:15 to get out of his crate, but I sent him out to pee, then let him join Rosie in the living room and went back to sleep until 6:45. Lovely.

He stuffed himself full of old tomato sauce at the compost heap after our walk in the field yesterday, so may have had a bit of a tummy upset. Serves him right- we have to catch the others and leash them, but he has always come when called before. The rare chance of food to himself overwhelmed his drive to please.

Deer hunting season is over, so it's safe to take our dogs out in the pasture now. Rosie and Anna spend most of the time with heads buried in grassy tussocks, hunting shrews and mice. It's hard to get pictures since all we see is three curly tails waving madly. (While resizing the photos today I realized that I had overtaxed the zoom, hence the pixelation)

 

Boomer was perfectly willing to fetch the stick as long as we would throw it.  He was throwing it in the air himself here. It started out with broken pieces on either end attached with flaps of bark and when he shook it violently, he was bonking them on either side of his head, which didn't seem to to bother him at all.

Going back to the resizing of pictures, here's few of us trying to time smiles and attitudes to the 10 second camera timer. I left out the one where Sectaurs was trying to get back in time for the 2 second timer.

I'll finish up with some J took about a week ago. It looked like fog at first, but I think it was smoke from a neighbor's wood stove, hanging in the air over the low part of the pasture where our little ponds are.