uncommonly feeble and random thoughts

Puck on the deck, and the back yard ... a video. A quick impromptu shoot. The camera did not refocus after the closeup of the ribs, but here's our post-op puppy. A month ago + he had a laparoscopic procedure to ascertain the source of his inability to process protein. MSU Vet Clinic grabbed some tissue samples from his small intestine. Prognosis is guarded. His seven days in the hospital were hard on him, but the month prior to admission wasn't exactly power prep. We'd been working with our DeWitt vet to pull him through some intestinal issue, what we did not know, except his excrement was liquid. He's now on the mend, eating a totally prescription diet, but not putting on the weight we'd like. But he's getting around better than post-op, and goes up and down stairs, and urinates with lifted leg. So we're hoping things will continue to improve. It's always about quality of life.

I am not the grammar police. I am but a lowly rent-a-cop. Mall police. Retail security. I carry adjectives and adverbs in little pouches and dangle participles from my belt, my pants tucked into my boots and my aviator sunglasses shielding me from the dangers of fluorescent and incandescent wavelengths alike, allowing me to covertly survey the masses for signs of the nefarious and despicable among us. Yes, they're everywhere. I have a dog-eared spiral notebook, and pen, part of my talisman tchotchke awarded at my graduation ceremony. I got them from a real English Teacher. High School. And just as I am poised to assimilate "conversate" into the common lexicon, jamming my baton back into my belt to menace no one ever again who utters that epithet, along comes "woah". I know. In 2013. So my enforcement lags in a temporal fashion. It's an artifact of the work to be done, and the part-time nature of the profession. Nonetheless, I must profess... O forc...

I posted on FB earlier today that folks should get out and walk. Here's my morning. 5.47 miles, average just under 18 min/mile. 37 degrees, wind chill 31:

A year ago today I was released from the hospital with a new knee. So we can start with that celebration. And meander through family, and loss, and gain, and around pets with the same themes, from Oregon to Virginia, across all ages, seeing so many and being with so many and missing those we can't see. Missing them when we most wish to see them. The ups, and the downs, as the river we call life wends its way ever onward. Cancer. Presenting everywhere. Some bullets dodged; others, well, the battles go on. The struggles are real. Casual thoughts, moments really, come and go, when we think of someone we lost; in a particular context, wanting either to say something to them or hear from them, and just as immediately realizing, no. They are gone. But the legacy... who we are, who we have become, has been shaped either gently or not so gently by our parents, first. Some genetic predispositions inhere in us, some givens that define stature, or mannerisms, perhaps more. I heard m...

I went to home games forever. As a kid, second grader, walking past the fire station and little grocery store, the only brick-and-mortar structures amid all the barracks and quonset huts that were south campus back in the day; selling programs as a teen (thanks Jim Bowers!); as a student; later tailgating with my parents for a long, long time... parking in the library lot, just across the Red Cedar from the stadium. Then things got busier and we relocated to Hort Building lots. Then... well, my folks got old and it was me and Linda. Then Linda got less and less... enthusiastic. Then James and I picked up. Parking on West Circle between the Virgin Islands and the band practice field, hard by Cowles House. Later still, parking behind the dorms, and when that got too busy, parking across MI Ave. in an alley. Always one step ahead of fees and parking tickets... Great times, watching the band warm up and such with James. Then, when he got into percussion, walking with the drum line as t...

Yee haw!!! It's not often you get a chance to attend a real life barn-raisin' hootenanny. Perhaps I'm over-hyping the actual events. So un-American! But when friends get to a certain point in the construction of their utility shed, aka pole barn, and want to share it with friends and neighbors... this is what you get. In DeWitt. Tie your horse to the hitchin' post... or park your Suburban in the grass. Hey, nice mow job, Tony! (note the construction crew center frame) Amble up to the outside (crossing a treacherous mud road... on a wooden path crafted by Tony's girls, depicted above... there were candles lighting the way!). Behold the south-facing porch. Sit a spell. Have an adult beverage. Tell some lies... I'm told it may have happened already, once or twice. Then proceed inside, to the main salon. We're told a car collection is soon to occupy this space. But first, the band!!! The Garage Sale Band. Yep.  And just to be ...