A Buncha Stuff

Wow, I happened to check back on my earlier posts just now, and found that my blog is one year old today. Yee! Today I brought Billie in for a checkup with her regular doctor, who is awesome. Their clinic just moved to a brand new office and the exam rooms have little shelves staggered across the walls for the cats to jump on. Very clever. But they also have a garbage bin stored under the counter with a Billie-sized hole in the cabinet door to throw things in. While I was filling out forms I turned my head for a couple seconds, then looked up to find Billie - hind legs on a stool, half her body hanging in the hole for the garbage bin. She wasn't impressed by the thoughtfully arranged wall-perches.

I was thinking about jury duty again the other day, and remembered that a couple of the guys on the jury were avid hunters. They both occasionally wore flannel collared shirts with patterns of illustrated game on them. Like, a dark green shirt with little flying ducks, or a maroon shirt with scattered elk wandering across it. I'm not what I'd call a fashion guru or anything. Far from it, in fact. But what statement does one of these shirts make, exactly? "Yes, here are some trendy animals I like to shoot and turn into sausage". What I loved was when one of them would use the term 'harvest' when referring to shooting a creature, bleeding it, and slicing its guts out. Really now, isn't that just fooling yourself? Harvesting sounds like such a non-violent activity to me. "This brown bear frolicking across my gut may compliment the color of my eyes, but he's nothing compared to the fella I harvested last winter". There's something going on here that I just don't understand.

Here's a picture of the intersection in front of my sister's house after the nor' easter hit NY the other day.