HoundBlog

I have a hairy tale to tell you this morning.

This was the most disGUSTing looking thing you’ve ever laid eyes on! It crooked and kinked and was l-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-ng! I know it had to have been there, right in front of my eyes for WEEKS!!! yet I didn’t see it until it was this GROSS thing! It was sticking out of my chin! YUCKKK!! This horrible long HAIR!!! How can a person go without noticing such a thing? It surely didn’t just spring up overnight!  Well, let me tell you — I jerked that sucker right off my face! No way was I letting that thing stay a moment longer! Bye bye nasty hair.

I may have to let it grow back for halloween along with the wart on the end of my nose.

Love to all,

Margaret

I received an email last night authored by a veterinarian who recently attended a conference. One of the speakers was an authority on parasites (sorry — I don’t remember his name, but do still have the email, so if you need to know who, what and where, drop me a line and I’ll look it all up). His talk was on form of ascarid (round worm) who’s primary host is actually raccoons, but which can and will cross species to dogs and humans (but curiously, not cats).

This worm is particuarly dangerous to humans as one of it’s stages migrates to the brain and can cause blindness in children and other problems in adults. The upshot is, if you live in an area where raccoons are, watch out for their feces (they like to poop on roofs, at the base of trees and in mulch, straw or hay) and keep your pets and children away from it. If you suspect that your pet or child has been exposed, the pet needs to undergo a treatment of de-wormer such as Drontal or Pyrantel Pamoate and your child should see his/her physician for appropriate treatment.

I was (as always ) listening to NPR on the way in to work this morning. A couple of times a week, they read e-mails from listeners and this morning was one of those days. It seems their broadcast of interviews of Muslims on the anniversary of 9/11 was not received well by many. The interviews did not pertain to 9/11 specifically, but were more aimed at learning about the Muslim culture and way of life. They mostly centered around the head scarf worn by Muslim women when out in public. Many Americans and Europeans view the headscarf as a way for Muslim men to oppress their women and there are no doubt some men who employ it in that manner, but, according to the two young women interviewed, it’s a personal choice to wear it or not.

I had no problem with the interviews themselves or the date they occurred on — they were interesting enough although insubstantive in content. What they did do was to drive home once more to me how perceptions without information create misunderstanding, intolerance and strife.

Standing as I do, on the other side of the world (literally) from the Middle East, I can’t help but wonder ***IF*** the Palestinians, Jews, Arabs, Nepalese and Kurdistans could/would all learn each other’s history, a bit about thier culture and religions if they would not be more tolerant of each other and somehow learn to live in harmony with each other. They all have so much to offer this world that it seems a terrible waste of human lives, energy and materials to be used for war just because we don’t understand why they wear their turbans a certain way. I know in my heart that extremists will always focus on those differences and label them as evil and frighten or coerce others into believing the worst of their neighbors, but there HAS to be more people who are desiring the road of peace and who could, by their sheer numbers, prevail over these few. I also know that diplomatic solutions to such problems is harder to achieve and has less visible results than waging war on the “enemy” which is what makes war so attractive to many. It was the argument Mr. Bush used on Congress to talk them into waging war in Iran and is the argument he continues to use to keep us there. While I admire Mr. Bush for many of the things he has accomplished, this is one area that I have not and do not support.

Well, need to get to work.

Have a wonderful day everyone.

Love to all,

Margaret

This week has had me thinking a lot about communication.

So much of our daily interaction with fellow beings is done via internet communications or by telephone and it is difficult to impart subtle meanings with the written and facelessly spoken word. Body language and facial expressions add so much meaning to face-to-face conversations. Oh, I know we can use various forms of punctuation such as underline or bolding to emphasize certain words or phrases in the written language and use voice inflections when speaking, but it’s just not the same as hand gestures, smiles or frowns, brow wrinkling — that list can go on and on! I think overall, this lack of personal conversation making us less sensitive to those very things when we do have the opportunity to speak in person. I know I’ve recently caught myself not looking at the person speaking, so miss those gestures or expressions. I’ve gotten so used to looking at the computer screen or concentrating on what I’m hearing that I let my eyes wander when talking face-to-face. And when my eyes wander, sometimes, so does my concentration!

I was taught in my public speaking course (taken way back in the dark ages) that it’s very important to make eye contact and to notice body language when speaking to others. I’m dissapointed in myself for letting that habit get away from me. I used to be someone people enjoyed talking to as I would look at their face and keep my own mouth shut until they were finished their part of our conversation. I still keep my mouth shut or only offer encouraging sounds at most, but I’m not making eye contact like I used to and not watching facial expressions and so I’m missing out on important things. 

It’s sort of like the difference in an orchestra playing with or without a conductor. You can certainly play a musical piece without a conductor, but HAVING that conductor waving his baton, using his body to highlight the highs and lows and imparting his energy into your playing makes the music come to life.

At any rate, my personal goal this week is to work harder at making eye contact when speaking or being spoken to and to notice those things I’ve been missing in conversations.

Got to run — time for work.

Love to all,

Margaret

Just thought I would update you on Ashley — he’s still at Kaye’s and is doing fine. She said he slept jammed up against her last night and woke her up this morning with kisses and nose nibbles. She’s used the morning to take down the fliers she put up yesterday and will go over to the neighborhood where we found him to take those fliers down this afternoon.

Dog show last weekend was the big Southern. Butterfly did fairly well — placed all but one day of the event while Tigger just had fun. Next weekend is a small show in Columbia, SC and we’ll just drive back and forth for that one.

The Crested puppies make their debut the following weekend at the one-day show in Augusta. We didn’t enter any Whippets at that show as we don’t like the judge.

We’ve talked about entering a one day show in Jacksonville and going to see Yvonne and Randy that Saturday before, but Ken hasn’t committed to me yet for that one.

Bought gas for $1.94 yesterday. It’s really nice to have gas prices below $2 a gallon. I know we’ll never see 99¢ gas again which is a bummer.

Back to work…..

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, I don’t know what happened to the posts from last week. It seems they have just disappeared! That’s different. I know I got a notice to upgrade to a new version, but that should not have lost posts.

Yesterday was an awful day. I sure hope today is better.

Started out yesterday trying to catch up from being out of the office for two days last week. I came in to an e-mail from the people we consult with on Great Plains telling me how to correct an issue we are having with the software, so began running the utility that was suggested. I sent an email out to other departments letting them know that I was running it and that they would not have access to inventory functions until it was complete. When the manager of Logistics came in, he immediately began screaming at me that I was making his 8 people sit idle. (not). At any rate, that was the start of my day.

Got home to an email from the lady who got Ashley telling me that he escaped from her fence and she had hunted for him all day, had had reports of him being spotted some 7 miles from her house. I immediately jumped in the car and headed back to Greenville. Ken, Janet, Kaye, and a friend of hers met at the restauraunt where he was last sighted and began searching the neighborhood behind it. Long story short, I found him about 2 blocks from the restauraunt some 2 hours later. He’s fine and none the worse for wear — not even blown pads, but I am aged by about 10 years. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done to put him in her car and send him off again, but Kaye was just as devastated as I was over his “adventure”. I know she will take extra care that he not get away from her again.

Well, I need to get ready for work. Love to all,

Margaret

Ahhh……Friday!!! That day of days that those of us in the 9-5 Monday-Friday grind so look forward to…..it’s here…just a few short hours until that magic time of “weekend”!! You who are retired no longer experience this magical time. I feel sorry for you in a way, for what do you now have to look forward to that’s such a nice, reachable short term goal? Oh don’t get me wrong! I’m now looking forward to retirement — and some of you will know that I fought that tooth and nail for a LONG time!!! I just could not envision myself “retired” — no job — no responsibilities — no paycheck. Well, now I realize that retirement does not have to mean (and really won’t in many ways) those things. There will still be “jobs” although they may not be 9-5 or Monday – Friday. There will still be responsibilities galore!!! And, well, perhaps a retirement check will take the place of a paycheck if I’m lucky. I MIGHT have more time to do some of the things I keep saying I don’t have time to do now — like train a dog to do therapy work and actually DO therapy work again.

Heck, just train a dog!! It’s been 8 years since I put an obedience title leg on a dog. I still teach my dogs to be obedient for the most part, but not to the extent that they could compete in an obedience ring with any hope of qualifying.

I will have to admit that my heart went out of training and competing when I lost Brylee in ’98. As long as he was alive even though I wasn’t showing him any more, I still had drive and incentive to train and exhibit and was training and showing Tazz, the Standard Poodle. Tazz will be 10 years old next month. Even if I wanted to complete his CDX, I couldn’t as his vision has deteriorated too much. No, if I wanted to compete again in obedience, I would have to train (don’t laugh) a Whippet or a Crested.  

This weekend I will be attending a two-day seminar in Greenville. It’s a geeky thing — called SC Code Camp and it’s supported by Microsoft and a couple of local headhunter outfits. We get free lunch out of it and an opportunity to learn some stuff from the leaders in our fields. I expect a lot of it to be over my head, but it will give me the opportunity to network with my peers and who knows — maybe this old dog will learn a new trick or two.

Well, it’s that time again folks… tune in next week…same bat time, same bat channel.

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, so far only two ‘tiel babies. That’s ok as the more I read about what can go wrong, the better I feel about having a limited number to worry about. Also, the extra work involved is fairly significant even allowing for the parents doing most of the work. I’m now cooking breakfast and dinner for birds!!! Who would have thought??? Of course, Taji won’t be left out of the pampering — after all, he’s a baby, too.

I posted on a bird board asking for help regarding feeding the adults good food for the babies and got slammed for breeding — guess I am the equivalent of a back yard breeder of birds (can you breed ANYTHING without these extremists getting on your case??? — even had one tell me that it was totally unnatural to keep them caged!!!). I did learn that if you shake the eggs, they won’t develop, so at least I don’t have to separate a bonded pair in order to keep from adding to the “thousands of abused ‘tiels that are in rescue”. [soapbox] My personal take on this is to educate the prospective owners on the proper care of a bird before letting them have it. You all know how I do the dogs — talk, talk, talk, built up a website with information, joined clubs, read books, all with the goal in mind of teaching people how to humanely and realistically care for the dogs I breed. Owning a pet should not carry a stigma with it. Breeding pets should not carry stigma with it. There are right ways and wrong ways to do everything. There are humane ways to do everything. Educate don’t alienate! [off soapbox]

I didn’t hear from Yvonne if she got the wildlife rescue lady to take the ‘possums, but I sure hope she did. I know she’s gone on her trip by now. Pray that no storms disrupt her visit!

My HR director came in my office this morning to ask if I had had her arrested! I said no (of course), then she went on to tell me that someone had her arrested for the MS fundraising campaign. Guess I will have to try to come up with bail money — I sure like getting my paychecks :LOL: She did make me think evil thoughts about having the GKC president arrested — he was a city cop before he retired — think that would be justice served, don’t you?

The new programs from EService are working great. Now to put final touches on my piece and we’ll be cooking with gas.

Lunch time is over. Got to run.

Love to all,

Margaret

Good morning everyone! I hope your day is a good one. Woke up this morning to cool air and rain. It was a nasty drive into work with the rain coming down quite strongly and some fog to make visibility poor. Had a bit of a scare on the interstate when a car splashed enough water to completely obscure the windshield and overwhelm the wipers for a few seconds. It’s supposed to clear off and be sunny this afternoon with highs only into the mid-70’s today. That will be very nice! Even through the weekend, temps are not supposed to be but low to mid 80’s and that is perfect weather for me. I can turn off the AC and open windows for fresh air and birdsong!

Had presents waiting for me when I got to work in the form of new applications for EService. We’ll see if they work as promised. Carlos is installing them now.

Had a second egg hatch last night around 6:30 pm. Still have two more to go that the parents are still sitting on. The babies are so tiny! They have some yellow fluff on their bodies and naked heads. They are a rather aggressive shade of dark pink/red that reminds you of raw meat –not quite as dark as beef, but darker than pork. Beaks are not fully formed yet and look like something that should be removed 😆 They peep when they are hungry which is a fair amount of their waking time. Right now, they are fed about every 2 hours. I fixed oatmeal with banana, apples, broccoli and carrots ground up into it for the adults who will regurgitate it for the babies.

My cockatoo, Taji has decided that he needs to be treated like a baby and wants to be fed the baby food, too. Since he went on a hunger strike to achieve this goal, I guess I will feed him baby food until he’s ready to go back to eating like a grown up. He’s only 3, so I guess he really is still a baby if you think about him living into his 80’s. Riley (African Grey) eats the baby food, too, but he isn’t neglecting his other food in favor of it. They will both eat it off a spoon which is too funny to watch. They get all excited when they see a spoon. They like to be fed yoghurt this way, too. The don’t really like cold food though. They much prefer it no cooler than room temp and really like it to be around 100ºF.

I really didn’t know what I was getting into when I got these birds!!! I’m learning as fast as I can, though.

Break time is over. See you later!

Love to all,

Margaret

Worked from home today. Ken needed me to take him to meet his carpool this morning so he could drop one of the cars off at the dealership for a minor repair, then he had a Dr’s appointment later this morning for his annual physical. He has some toenail fungus, but other than that is in good health. Dr. wanted to wait to see what his blood work came back with before prescribing something for the fungus.

Anyway, around 9:30 this morning, my cockatiels started making this wierd noise. Then I heard peeping and looked inside their nestbox and there was a BABY! They’ve laid 3 clutches of eggs that were duds, so guess they finally got it right. There are still 3 more eggs and we’ll see if any of those hatch as well. They are being wonderful parents — feeding the baby at regular intervals and taking turns. Even Daddy bird has put in his time as bottle washer.

Had my camera out the other day taking photos of this and that. Came across a rather interesting caterpillar. Unfortunately, I got too close (I have a tendency to do that with this camera and small objects), so the pictures are a bit blurry, but hopefully you can see some of his strangeness. If any of you know what it is, I would appreciate your telling me.

Different isn’t he??

Have a kennel club meeting tonight. I’ve been asked to serve as Obedience Trial Chair. That’s a position I’ve wanted for years, but find myself wishing they had offered it 5 years ago instead of now.

Have a battle of hummers going on right now over the feeders. I’ve not seen many the last few days, but there are at least 3 out there right now — 2 females and a male. I see my cardinal babies are starting to get their adult plumage, too. It’s getting to be time for winter preparations.

Need to run. Got to clean kennels and feed before I get ready for my meeting.

Love to all,

Margaret