Dr. Dog's House

On our recent trip to Canada (the Canada part of the story is still to come), I got to fulfill a pledge I had made a long time ago, on some dead or dying blog or another: I saw Christmas in June.

It's about a five-hour drive from our home to Sault Ste. Marie and the International Bridge. We went via Marquette, and less than an hour past the Upper Peninsula's largest city (population almost 20,000) we entered Christmas. How could you miss it? ...

There are various places around the country that try to capitalize on holiday-inspired names. Christmas. Santa Claus. St. Nicholas. North Pole. They do so with varying amounts of success, especially in this more cynical era. But it's tourism, you know, and souvenir shops. A few dollars change hands. There are certain places where it's Christmas 365 days a year, and this is one of them.

We first came upon a motel that didn't look very busy, regardless of what the sign in front says. Note the bow on the gift-shaped sign ...

The unmown lawn and the gravel in the driveway both indicate that it's been pretty quiet at the Christmas Motel for a while.

A little later, we came upon the Christmas Mall. Alas, it also looked like it has seen better days. For example, how did Mrs. Claus lose her head? ...

And as you see on the right, you can get your eggnog or whatever you fancy in Christmas.

I felt sorry for Mrs. Claus, so I took a picture from the other direction, where you can see a faint smile. Note that the Christmas Mall, which has a fudge shop, an ice cream shop, a liquor store and a gift shop, also houses the post office. When you get mail postmarked Christmas, Mich., this is where it comes from ...

Despite the state of her sign, they still have a street names for Mrs. Claus. And they have a Santa Lane. And a St. Nicholas Avenue. And the main drag through town is Christmas Avenue.

Then we hit paydirt: Santa's Workshop. It says so right there. In case you have any doubts whether this is a viable place, just look at the left of this photo. That ought to erase all doubts ...

Of course, right outside is a huge Santa, standing right next to the North Pole. I mean, how could it not be the North Pole? It says so right on it.

The business of Christmas may be Christmas, but they have other businesses, too.  On the way out of town, we came upon the place where Santa gets his sled tuned up ...

When Santa has visitors in town--maybe some elves brought in for short-term seasonal work--they probably stay here ...

Soon we were out of town and on our way to the Soo. About three hours later, we were on the International Bridge. The two flags mark the international border ...

and the end of this part of the story ..

"Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam / Where the deer and the antelope play. / Where seldom is heard a discouraging word / And the skies are not cloudy all day ... "

We sure have deer up here. No antelope. More than our share of grouches and cloudy days.

But we do have buffalo. Near our home, within 50 miles, there are at least two ranches where bison are raised and bred. The one closer to us has been holding a Baby Bison Fest every June for the last few years, but we had never been to one because of other events taking place--either stuff I have to cover for the paper or our vacations.

This year we made a note of the date, and we adjusted the dates of the Canada trip (a story not yet written) to make sure we were home in time to take it in. So, on a recent Saturday, we got in the car and made the journey as a side trip during a normal visit to Iron Mountain.

The place keeps 50 head of bison, and the website explains that they are 100% grass-fed and pharm-free. "No drugs, pesticides or herbicides involved ... ever. Our buffalo are raised in an open, natural setting in an effort to keep them as stress-free as possible. They are never feed-lotted."

In case you didn't see the website, they tell you that several times while you're there.

We first visited a large metal storage building where they were selling buffalo-based items. (More on that later.) They also had littler, cuddlier bison for the littler, cuddlier people ...

They also had a petting zoo, a car show and a number of vendors for a number of things. But the stars of the show were grazing in the field a short distance away ...
They had a tractor pulling farm wagons into the field, where you could get up close and personal (but not too close or too personal) to the bison. Of course, we joined the line ...
When we finally got our turn, I found out we would be riding in the royal carriage. Two of the county's "Fairest of the Fair" were in our wagon, along with the reigning Wisconsin "Fairest of the Fair," who was crowned at the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis last summer ...
All three were wearing their tiaras, and they were taking pictures of the bison like everyone else ...

We heard once more how naturally the bison are being raised. It's hard to tell a happy bison from an unhappy one, but these looked reasonably content--at least until the wagon got too close. Then they moved off--both the big ones and the little ones ...


It was low-cost entertainment. You could park on the grounds in exchange for a $3 donation to the local high school's forensics team. The ride into the field to look at the bison close-up was $1 a head, which went to the local county fair.

Make no mistake, they raise the bison for harvest. They had bison burgers and bison brats for sale inside the metal building (also a benefit for the fair), and we each bought one. Yum! So good that my wife bought another five pounds of them. Last Saturday, we each had a home-cooked bison burger for lunch.

That's the ultimate fate of the bison at ranches today, like the beef cattle we see in the fields.  But there were 50 bison at the ranch we visited recently, and there sure were a lot of baby bison to look at. The population is no danger. It's a short life but a happy one.

****

I have spent most of the last week watching with increasing disgust what is happening in Iran. It is a very important story, and the media finally started paying attention. Not that there is a lot we can do to influence things one way or another.

Weatherwise, we got pretty warm Sunday. I covered the local Father's Day car show and other events Sunday afternoon, and luckily I remembered to put on the sunscreen--it was mostly sunny and very warm. When I got back home, I found it had gotten up to 88F (31C), though the humidity was not too high. I had wanted to mow the lawn, but I delayed that until after supper, when it was a little cooler.

On Tuesday, the temperature rose into the low 90s (about 33 C), and it got close to 90 today (Wednesday). It is supposed to cool off over the weekend.

This started out as a very cool June, but that changed about two weeks ago. Now it's summer here, too. Unlike other parts of the Midwest, though, we haven't had a lot of rain. We could use a little more.

If you happen to bump into the weather man, tell him that for me.

(Not the red stuff that you pour all over your fries. Just “ketch(ing) up” with things.)

Life has been moving on swiftly for me, much too swiftly for me to write blog posts when I get some quiet time. Last week, my wife and I made that brief trip to Canada. Last weekend, we went to a Baby Bison Fest. And in two weeks, I will be at the airport in the Twin Cities to pick up B, at the start of our adventure.

I will post about the Canada trip and the Bison Fest when I find the time. We also recently went to a logging museum that had an old-time one-room school that I liked, plus I got some interesting handouts. I’ll also put that on the “to do … eventually” list.

Long-time readers know that for the last few years, I have been documenting the life of the robins that have nested on our front porch. In case you were wondering, there have been no nests so far this summer. We cleaned out those corners of the porch and put out the welcome mat, but no tenants yet. I don’t require them to sign a lease, either. I’m quite a nice landlord. Even if I am a bit intrusive with the camera.

Another occasional topic for me is my adventures with wildlife–especially bears. Early this week, I found out about a wandering bruin near a city park, so I went over with my camera to watch the fun.

It was at a far corner of the park, in a mostly wooded area but still close to city streets and residential homes and little kids playing. Mr. Bear was about halfway up a tall tree, and the authorities were on the scene, trying to persuade him to climb back down. Mr. Bear said no, I like it right where I am …

By the way, he was not a large bear (and there’s no way of knowing if he really was a he). Some people watching the fun said he was a second-year cub–a bear born last year.

Enter the DNR–the Department of Natural Resources–whose biologist came over to try to help. The plan was to tranquilize the bear and give him a ride out of town. But the local DNR biologists don’t have the kind of tranquiilizer gun you see all the time on animal shows on TV. What they use instead is use a long aluminum stick that has a needle in one end. Give him a couple of pokes with the tranquilizer, and pretty soon your target will get very sleepy.

The DNR guy climbed the ladder and got his stick ready. But Mr. Bear climbed higher, out of range. Up, up, up he climbed until he reached the very top of the tree, where he sat and thought bearish thoughts.

The cops were on the scene, too, with the county animal control officer. No ladder was anywhere near tall enough, so a new plan was needed. How about guns? How about making lots of noise with loud guns and shooting at the tree above the bear, to scare him back down? Bang! Bang! Bang! Mr. Bear didn’t seem impressed … or scared. The standoff continued.

But then the heavy artillery was brought in–a city bucket truck. The DNR guy got into the bucket, and up he went, up, up, up until he was nearly at the bear’s altitude. He brought his tranquilizer stick along, too, and took aim …

Mr. Bear got the message and started climbing down. Down, down, down. He paused about 12 feet above the ground then climbed down some more–maybe about 4 feet from terra firma. But then he noticed another DNR guy standing by the base of the tree. It must have been a scary sight–the bear reversed course and started climbing up, up, up again. Within moments, he was about 2/3rds of the way up.

But the guy in the bucket soon was close by, and he took aim. Another stick or two, and Mr. Bear started thinking it was time to go beddy-bye. …

Before anybody could sing him a lullaby, he lost his grip on the tree trunk and fell to the ground. The DNR guys brought over an oversize plastic pet carrier, quickly had the bear inside and carried him to their pickup truck. After that, I presume, they gave him a long ride into the deep woods, opened the door and sent him on his way.

****
Bloggy blahs seem to be nearly universal now. I can understand why I am not writing so much–I’m busy with other stuff and never can seem to catch up. But everybody else? They’re under a different standard!

Namely … a double standard.

Oh, that was a big stone to pass!

That big stone was the spring sports season, which ended last Saturday with the track finals. Because of budget cuts here in the office, I couldn’t travel to cover much of it in person, and because of space restrictions, I couldn’t write too much or put in too many pictures. The shoe in pinching here, too. So the trick I had to perform was to squeeze in the same amount of information in less space. Just one trip per week. Write tight. Trim down the pictures and use fewer of them.

Anyway, now it’s over. The local sports scene should be a lot quieter now that high school is done with until next August, and I will have a more time for other things. The hockey playoffs are still going on, but that’s in the final lap, too. It may be over this Saturday night. It could go until next Friday. Either way, it won’t be long.

It’s nice and sunny today, with temperatures close to 70, but spring has been reaaaaaalllllllyyy slow to arrive up here. A couple days ago we never reached 50 all day. It’s a spring characterized by persistent chilly winds from the northwest. Lots of wind, too. We also have had freeze warnings from time to time, including last night. Sweet! Are we really in June? I’ve got a feeling that all of a sudden summer will hump on our backs, and we’ll go from brisk days in the 60s to muggy ones in the 90s–just like that.

Whatever the weather, my wife and I are going on a little trip next week, a mini vacation. We are going to the eastern end of the U.P. and then north, across the border into Canada–Sault Ste. Marie, specifically. We will be looking around town and taking a train excursion north into the interior–a one-day trip.

Yes, we know about the new travel laws, but we went to the post office about a month ago, filled out the forms and had pictures taken. A week or two ago, our brand new passport cards arrived in the mail. Neither of us have ever had a passport (or had any need of them), so this was a new experience.

The cards are only good for crossing into Canada (or Mexico) by land or sea. If we ever fly into Canada, we would need the familiar passport book. But we have never flown anywhere. Our vacations have always been short and close to home, and this one will be no exception.

In all, we’ll be gone four days, including two days of driving. We are hoping to be back home on Saturday, in time to go to a Baby Bison fest at a nearby ranch where they raise–you guessed it!–buffalo. Maybe that will have to wait for another year, but I hope not.

On Friday, I’m taking the afternoon off and driving my wife and son to Rhinelander–just for fun and to look around, maybe a little shopping. We haven’t been down there for a while. We were planning to there over Memorial Day, but my car blew a muffler (or so it sounded) on my way to Memorial Day events.

Meanwhile, B and I continue to fine-tune plans for our first visit and our trip to the neopagan event in southern Wisconsin around the Fourth of July. I sent in the registration forms and the check Wednesday morning. (In case you forgot my plan: I am driving my wife for a visit to her sisters in northwest Wisconsin, then continuing west to the Twin Cities airport to pick up B. We drive down there, spend three nights on the road (one in a tent, two in a motel), then I drive her back to the airport. Then, I’m solo as I drive back to the inlaws, pick up my wife again and head for home.)

We have been talking a lot about it, and we’re both really excited at the thoought of finally getting to meet each other.

Have you ever heard that old advice to “Leave well enough alone”?

This is the sad tale of someone who didn’t heed that advice and the trouble it led to.

This won’t make sense to those of you who read this on Vox or Blogger. It refers to my efx3 blog and specifically to my dissatisfaction with the width available to me (and my photos) to the theme I had been using. I liked the theme, but my pictures have to be cut too short to really show them, and I finally had enough of it.

So on Friday, I went shopping for a new theme, one that can show my photos in all their glory. I saw a couple and tried them out. But the preview either (A) didn’t work at all, or (B) showed things way skewed around. What the? I finally picked one, took a deep breath and hit the button. No turning back now.

I soon realized that the culprit was the customized CSS that I had “adjusted” when I first started using the theme. The customized parts were still in place, even though the theme it referred to had been replaced. So I cleared that out. Things started looking a lot better.

Then I saw another theme that I liked better, so I chose that. It was OK (came out the way I expected), but everything was green. That’s because the theme actually was done in green. Green is OK, but I like blue a lot better. So I decided to change the greens to blues, different shades.

Efx3 has a couple plugins that allow you to tweak themes–colors, typefaces, etc. So I decided to venture into that, changing greens to blues. Alas, it was a lot of work and it took a great deal of free time, which I haven’t been blessed with lately. I managed to change some of the greens to blues, but by no means all, and my frustration with the process eventually got the better of me. (On top of that, some of the blues that I changed and fiddled with and finally was satisfied with have reverted to green since then. You can imagine how happy I feel about that!)

The theme still has green headers, and I’m just going to leave it that way … until I pick still another new theme. Betcha that one will be in blues.

And when I do — I vow solemnly — I will not mess with theme tweakers or CSS customizers or anything like that. I’m just going to obey my philosophy of life: to take things as they come, to accept them as they are and not try to change them. It’s a good philosophy in life, and I now realize it’s a good philosophy to follow in blogging, too. Especially for those of us not blessed with lots of free time or infinite patience.

That’s not me. Neither of them are.

****

There has been a blogging malaise sweeping the world lately, sort of like the swine flu. Maybe that’s what came over me lately. It’s not fatal or permanent.

So many topics I could have written about lately. What I’ve been doing lately. What I plan to do in the weeks and months to come. Little observations about everyday life–nothing earthshaking, probably not terribly interesting, but no less interesting than other things I’ve written about in the past. Face it, my life can get a tad, um, mundane.

But I’ve had a hard time writing blog posts about them. Don’t understand why. Writer’s block? But I don’t have writer’s block at work. I still know how to write letters to close friends. Still, writing for the blogosphere has been hard lately. Whyizzzatt?

True, I don’t like having to use the narrow pictures because of the narrow style I used, but I’m changing that now. Also, efx3 doesn’t seem to get along that well with Photobucket. But I want my photos at some public site–I’m afraid to uploading them to a blog host that may not be around tomorrow.

Remember, I’m a refugee of both Modblog and Efx2, so I know what it’s like when a blog hosting service goes belly-up on you. When the site vanishes or the guy who runs the place decides to go off somewhere and redefine his life, the stuff you put at his place is in grave danger. That’s why you don’t see me at efx2blogs any more.

But there are other reasons, and they all fall under the heading of lack of time or opportunity. Let me count the ways. (1) I’ve been writing a lot to B and occasionally to S. (2) I’ve been watching the hockey playoffs. (3) I’ve been focusing a lot on work. (4) I’ve been watching movies with my wife. (5) At night, when I sit down to type on my desktop upstairs, Charlie comes around and plops herself into my lap so I am obliged to pet her for a while. (6) Occasionally I play games and get sidetracked with them. (7) Maggie, our old (16+) cat, has lately taken to sleeping on the glider rocker in the living room that I like to use when writing on my laptop. (8) I also get tired a little earlier than I used to.

Oh, it’s a wild and crazy life I lead!

Maybe I should write a post about all the topics I have been letting get past me, touching on a few things that might have made a full post on other days.

This week, I read a post from DeeJay, which mentioned how few people are writing now and how the old “community” seems to have fallen on hard times, with refugees moving to many other places or just not writing so often. I can relate.

I’m still here. Pretty soon, I’ll break out of this blogging malaise and get back to writing about this and that. Maybe I’ll even do better with pictures after I find a new theme I like. For right now, this is what I can manage.

See this photo?

It’s a pretty picture, but I almost didn’t see it. I did because I did something I haven’t been doing lately–I took time and looked up.

I saw these clouds as I was driving back from a boys high school golf tournament last Thursday morning. I had enjoyed being on the links, zipping around on a golf cart, trying to find some of our local kids. I don’t get out on golf courses too often–never have been a golfer. I enjoyed the sun and breeze and singing birds along the way, but I was too busy to be really aware of them.

Until I turned the corner on my way back to the office, when my eyes fell on these clouds, and I felt compelled to pull over and get out my camera for a photo or two. The squirrel escapes his wheel for a moment.

Otherwise, he has been in the wheel and running very hard for very little that seems meaningful. Work on the summer tourism section is over, and now we are in the crazy May spring sports season. It’s just one month long in the U.P., since spring usually is slow to arrive and everything has to be wrapped up by early June. That means lots of events are crammed into four poor little weeks, along with the graduation runup, special editions, Memorial Day previews, early deadlines and all that. Run, run, run, run, run. In June, we can exhale and get into summertime mode.

Plus the other stuff in my life, away from the job. Driving back and forth to visit my mom. The Stanley Cup playoffs, which I find entertaining but which sure can suck up many space hours. A bunch of other things. B and I have been writing back and forth a lot, and we even tried out Skype a time or two. A face-to-face, so to speak, thanks to the webcam on my laptop. The countdown to our first-ever meeting now stands at less than eight weeks.

Today, of course, is Mother’s Day. My wife and I decided to go out to a nice lunch and then take a nap together. Naps are fun! She got her flowers yesterday, at the same time we got my mom some–we drove down and visited her for a while. Then, on Monday, I go back into my wheel.

I’ve got one other thing in my life right now. It is a very major thing, one that would be great and wonderful news if it comes about. I’m not superstitious by nature, but maybe if I say nothing about it, it may enhance its chances of coming true. That’s how I’m playing it for now. It it comes about, you’ll know about it. Definitely.

****
I can tell you about a major project my wife recently finished. She was in charge of things for her church’s fellowship dinner last Sunday. It involved plenty of time on the phone and, during the week before the dinner, a special mission to ***-mart, where we raided their frozen food chests. Frozen green beans, to be specific. For a dish she wanted to make (100 servings), she calculated she needed 15 pounds of frozen green beans.

They didn’t have large bags of frozen green beans, as we had hoped, but they did have 28-ounce bags of beans. Hmmm, says my wife, let’s see. How many 28-ounce bags of frozen beans equals 15 pounds? She remembered that my phone has a calculator, so I converted 28 ounces to 1 3/4 pounds, then divided 15 by 1 3/4. Turns out we needed 8 4/7 28-ounce bags to get 15 pounds. But ***-mart only had seven bags, so we bought out what they had and got the remaining 2 3/4 pounds from one of our local stores.

We also got mushrooms and tomatoes. A bunch of other stuff. The final thing we got was frozen sherbet. Six half-gallon containers of that. All that stuff was taken to the church basement over several days.

Sunday came. It was a nice day, they had a big turnout and lots of food to feed everyone. The beans were very good, and so were the mushrooms and things other people made–ham, casseroles, salads, desserts, cakes, you name it. They even opened one of those six half-gallon containers of sherbet. But people were sort of stuffed by then and didn’t have much room left over for dessert. Don’t know what became of those five other half-gallons of sherbet (some rainbow, some orange).

This last week, I noticed, my wife was observed relaxing a bit more than usual. Deserved it, don’t you think?

(Now with images included–supposedly.)

This post has had a strange history. I wrote most of it offline last week and was at the point where all I had to do was final proofing and inserting the photos where appropriate.

But I hadn’t inserted photos at Efx3 yet, and it took me a while to learn how. Also, the end of last week got to be very busy. Then … fate took a strange turn.

First, here is the original version …

****
It’s really spring here. We started last week with highs in the low 30s and a cold wind out of the north. But it gradually got better. Late in the week, we reached the mid 40s, and we got to the low 50s over the weekend. This week–more 50s and maybe even the low 60s. Then it’s going to get colder just in time for our trip.

The recent warmth has done a lot to finish off nearly all the final remnants of the former mountains of snow where the plow piled it all up during the winter. Doesn’t look so imposing now …

The forecast for this week calls for a constant run of sunny weather. That’s nice, but notice how brown the grass is. We could really use some rain, and it’s not in the forecast. That leads to more problems than dry vegetation.

In a word: grit. All winter, the city and county trucks have been dumping sand on all the snow and ice and slush on the local roads. Now, with nearly all the snow melted away, the sand and grit is all that’s left of our snowbanks. That stuff doesn’t melt, and there hasn’t been rain to wash it away. This is the sidewalk near our house, looking down the street …

But there’s not as much sand on the sidewalk now. My wife devoted much of Monday afternoon to sweeping it into piles and putting it onto the street by the curb. That way, she explains, when the street sweepers come along, away goes the sand. Besides, the city and county trucks are responsible for most of the stuff, so it is going back where it came from. Return to sender.

She is getting busy with other things, too. Her little kitchen plantation is doing very well. See for yourself …

In time, if everything goes right, this is what we will have near the clotheslines this summmer …

… oodles of morning glories, like these from 2007.

****
But I didn’t get the photo links set up before our trip. It was 74 degrees when we left Oshkosh Saturday afternoon. T-shirt weather. It was 49 by the time we got home that evening. Spring jacket weather.

Sunday, temperatures were in the 40s and getting windy. A cold wind from the north. Around bedtime, it started snowing. Snowing & Blowing, a familiar wintertime combination. Except it was April 20.

Snowing & Blowing kept on doing their thing all day Monday and picked up the pace after dark. On Tuesday morning, here was the view from the back porch …

The lilac bush next door had a heavy coating of white …

I really didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice. I put on the heavy boots, picked up the heavy aluminum shovel and went to work .

And once I finished that, I trudged through the extremely wet snow to work …

We got roughly 10 inches of snow here, and other places in the U.P. got around 20 inches. Heavy, wet, “heart attack” snow. But it won’t stay around long. The sun finally broke through the clouds today, and we reached the low 40s this afternoon. On Thursday, the high is supposed to be 63. On Friday, we’re forecast for 75 degrees, along with rain and thundershowers. Next week, highs back in the 40s.

What can I say? Springtime in the U.P.

I am going to do something I really didn’t want to do, that I didn’t plan on doing.

I am going to resurrect my fantasy baseball team this year. This weekend, as a matter of fact.

I am doing this despite the fact that I really don’t follow baseball very closely any more. I don’t really follow which players are on which team, who the hot new players are, which long-time stars really aren’t worth the trouble any more. I watch the playoffs and the World Series. Beyond that …

But I have been running a fantasy baseball league for many years, and I run the draft (an auction-type draft) at the start of each season. I had a team in the league for many years, too. I let the team go a few years ago. I really wasn’t following baseball that closely any more. I kept running the league, though.

My reasons for getting back into it are complex and probably don’t make a lot of sense to anyone. What happened is that one team dropped out of the league, and I had commissioner’s access to the stat website through that particular team. I can’t see a way for me to delete that team from the server without creating lots of problems.

Part of me, of course, wants to get back into it. The stat website has lots of services, and it would be fun to run a team using those services. But the fact is, I’m “off” baseball now. Exhibit A is the neglect and mishandling of the entire drug/steroid situation, culminating in Barry F—ing Bonds taking the all-time home run record from Hank Aaron, a decent, noble man and my favorite player since I was 7 years old.

That and the total helplessness/cluelessness the gods of baseball regarding the income disparities between rich and poor teams. Being a Milwaukee Brewers fan for many year, I feel it keenly. The Brewers got C.C. Sabathia in a trade from Cleveland last summer, and his pitching led the Brewers into the playoffs for the first time in 2o-some years. But Sabathia was at the end of his contract, and he signed with the New York Yankees for almost as much money as Bernie Madoff stole from all those people in his Ponzi scheme.

Like my dad was fond of saying, “Them’s that has, gets.” He never had. Neither have I.

The “owners’ meeting” was Friday night, where some of the guys in the league meet and renew acquaintances at a local bar and then head off to a strip joint. Been there, done that. I stayed home. Well, OK, I went to the bar for a soda pop or two, but then I went home.

I’m not against strip clubs, mind you. It’s just … they’re fun for maybe a half hour, but I don’t drink beer, the girls are just after your money, at my age I prefer older women anyway, and it gets to be a bore after a while. You know what happened last year? When I decided I had enough, I walked over to the bar next door, where I got a drink and watched a basketball game on TV. I was gone for about an hour, and everybody was wondering what had become of me. I spared them the drama this year.

The real drama starts in less than two weeks, when the Stanley Cup playoffs start. Oh, boy. They will have doubleheaders on TV almost every night, and I watch as much as I can take. Last spring, when games went into overtime and beyond midnight, Charlie sat with me on the couch and we both tried to stay awake till the game was over. Of course, Charlie was there to get her tummy rubbed and her ears scratched.

I follow the Detroit Red Wings, of course, and they have one of the best records in the league this season. But they have been giving up too many goals in the last couple months, and I’m wondering whether it will be a short, unpleasant postseason for them.

Of course, I remember having similar fears last spring … and they went on to win the Stanley Cup. As I am fond of saying, time will tell.

Meanwhile, I have no illusions about this baseball team I’m going to draft Saturday, though. It could be ugly.

We had two cats in our house for many years. About 14 months ago, Frisky died. That left Maggie as the sole remaining cat–until we added Charlie last February and then Max last October.

Meanwhile, Maggie keeps on going. She is now 16 years old (in human years) and should turn 17 late this year. She used to be a really heavy cat with lots of calico fur. In the last couple years, though, she has become much thinner–still with lots of fur. Of course, we are watching her closely. She can get a bit cranky nowadays, especially when the other cats are around.

But she is still Mom’s baby. We got Maggie when she was just a little kitten, with a thin little ratlike tail that soon fluffed out magnificently. She got her name from her early habit of sucking my older son’s shirt sleeve as he held her–just the way Maggie from “The Simpsons” sucks her ever-present pacifier. When my wife “loves her up,” she still purrs loudly. She eats very well and will steal from the other cats’ bowls if they decide to leave something for later.

About the time Frisky was getting ill, Maggie started sleeping in our bed, right next to my wife’s pillow. She has done so ever since, for maybe the last year and a half. As a long-haired cat, Maggie leaves fur wherever she goes, especially in spring. Everywhere! I have issued an edict: Maggie will be the last long-haired cat we will ever own.

In recent weeks, we have been seeing something besides loose fur. On the sheets and in the clothes where she naps, my wife started seeing reddish stains. They smelled like cat urine. Lovely, I know. Last Saturday morning, my wife and I talked about it, and a few hours later we had Maggie in the cat carrier, heading for the veterinarian’s office.

We took the cat carrier to the examination table, and the vet said she was going to try get some urine from her bladder with a syringe. No problem–as soon as the needle went in, the table as flooded with urine, and we pulled Maggie away. The vet used her test strips to check the chemistry of the urine and reported they indicate she seems to be in good condition outside of a urinary tract infection.

So she gave Maggie a shot and gave us some antibiotics with instructions to give them to her every day. We have, and since then she seems to be feeling better–a little more spirit, more alert, and no more leaking, at least not so far.

So that’s how things stand now, four days later. As an elderly cat. she sleeps an awful lot during the day but occasionally gets up, walks over to my wife and meows. My wife picks her up, goes back to her favorite rocking chair and holds her for a while. Purr, purr, purr, and she eventually drifts off to sleep. My wife puts her down, returns to whatever she is doing. When Maggie wakes up, the cycle repeats.

And at about 9:45 p.m. each day, when my wife is watching TV downstairs, Maggie (and the other cats) show up and start watching us intently. They get fed a little after 10, just before my wife goes to bed.

After that, Maggie climbs the steps to her reserved space on the bed. Max gets all excited and runs back and forth. Charlie runs a little and wrestles wtih Max, but then she sits in one place. My wife and I go upstairs, and eventually Charlie follows and hops up into my lap as I sit at the computer. We have our little rituals, too.

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I drove up to Marquette for an all-day meeting on Tuesday. Snow was in the forecast–about two or three inches–but I didn’t see anything until about the halfway mark on the drive home. It was just starting to accumulate then–very wet stuff, and it didn’t break my heart that I didn’t have to drive through that mess. Eventually we got about two inches. With temperatures supposed to get back into the 40s in the next couple days, it won’t be around for long.

Of course … it can’t be gone soon enough.

I will be so happy when this new place adds subscriptions and alerts of friends’ posts, etc.

Patience. In due time. As WelshPixie says, they are big projects, and with any big project it’s better to be methodical to make sure it’s done right. That’s my usual approach, too.

Actually, that’s all right, because I think I’m dealing with a bit of writer’s block right now. Not that I am unable to write–obviously that’s not true–but I’m just not satisfied with what is appearing on the monitor. It seems my more creative thinking nowadays is in inverse relationship to my proximity to a keyboard. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself. Maybe I should just sit there, put on some music and let it loose.

Well, I can tell you about an experience I had today that I haven’t had in, oh, five years.

I had an eye exam.

It all started because the local optometrist asked me to come over a few weeks ago to do an article about a new piece of equipment he’s got that does a better job of detecting the warning signs of glaucoma. So I did that and got a picture and wrote the article. And while I was there, I decided … what the heck? I scheduled the exam.

I know, I know … five years is a long time. Next time, said the doctor, make it two years. What can I say? Sometimes I have more money than other times.

That was this morning. He said he liked my article. I told him how my vision seems to be changing–its’ getting harder to adjust from really bright conditions (sun on snow; oncoming bright headlights) to darker conditions (the office; the road at night). That’s part of getting older, said the doctor. Both my eyes and the darkening function of the lenses–they don’t darken as well over time, either, taking longer to adjust.

On to the exam itself. He discovered my prescription for near vision has to be strengthened … and the prescription for distance vision needs to be weakened. The frame selection was brief–the new frames are nearly the same as my old ones (light brown) with more rectangular lenses. The current ones are more rounded at the bottom. The new glasses should get here in a week to 10 days. Or thereabouts.

* * * *

Alice Springs. Wolverhampton. Duluth. Oaxaca. Buenos Aires. Mozambique. Yemen. Bangalore.

They are all places. But what do they have in common?

The answer: If you go there and buy a DVD and take to my house and stick it into a new DVD player I bought recently, it will play. It probably won’t play in yours.

This is my first “major” purchase in quite a while, bought about a month ago. I have wanted something like that for quite a while–but I didn’t know if such an animal existed.

It does. It is. And now it is hooked up to my TV.

Technically, it’s an all-region progressive scan DVD player. “All-region” means it will play a DVD from anywhere in the world–whether they were made for NTSC TV systems, like the U.S., Canada and Japan, or PAL systems, like in Europe, Australia and much of Asia.

I bought it–it cost well under $100–to watch DVDs from other continents.

I’d guess that 98% of the DVDs you see on the racks in U.S. stores are Region 1–which includes the U.S., Canada and Japan. The U.K. and the rest of Europe are in Region 2. Australia is in Region 4. Discs from those countries won’t work in a U.S. player–unless it’s an all-region DVD player like mine.

The other 2% of DVDs are Region 0 discs, which will play in all DVD players.

Why the different regions? According to Wikipedia, “The purpose of this is to allow motion picture studios to control aspects of a release, including content, release date and, especially, price, according to the region.” You can look at the different DVD regions in that article . Maybe too much information.

My fondness for cricket is behind my purchase. Just a few matches and events are available on Region 1 DVDs. The 2005 Ashes series between the U.K. and Australia being a notable exception along with various matches featuring India and Pakistan, for the ex-pats living in North America. But the 2007-08 Ashes series, played in Australia, is now only available in Region 4 (Australia–since England lost the Ashes again, they felt there was just a limited market in the U.K.).

It’s not that I plan to buy a lot of foreign discs. But I did buy a 1984 Australian TV miniseries about the notorious “Bodyline” Ashes series in 1932-33. And I have gotten two annual English “summer of cricket” multi-disc sets.

The Australians will be back in England this summer to defend the Ashes, and I’m sure someone will put out a nice multi-disc set after that, too. Even if it’s a Region 2 or 4 set, I’ll be able to see it–assuming I find a place that sells it, which really isn’t too hard.

But lest you think I’m only interested in sports, I’m also interested in foreign films. I have some favorite kinds. One are the Kurosawa samurai films. A lot of them are available on wonderfully restored DVDs here now, but I was also interested in several different versions of the 47 Ronin story. I have one from the ’60s “Chushingura,” in color) and the Japanese version from the 1940s–the first part was supported by the Imperial Japanese government in hopes it would rev the Japanese people up for World War II, but Kenji Mizoguchi (the director) made a very different story from what the government had expected. Part 2 was never made until after the war, in occupied Japan.

One other film genre I am particularly fond of are the German “Expressionist” films from after World War I and the early ’20s. Directors like Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and so forth. Thanks to DVDs, many restored films are available again, even to ordinary sorts like myself.

So I’m obviously fond of foreign films and the stories behind them. The sad thing is that I only can watch them by myself. My wife just isn’t interested. If I could ever find a “special friend” to do things with, watching movies together would rank at the very top of the list.