In Memoriam Buster Brown

I used to hate dogs. I hated, loathed and despised dogs. I hated dogs most of my life.

My first close contact with a dog came when I was about three and my aunt, who lived upstairs, got a tiny Pomeranian. It was a typical small dog, snippy, yappy and nasty. Whenever I came near it, it snapped at me.

My next dog was my grandparents’ Boston Terrier. I didn’t mind her because she didn’t bother me much, except for when she wanted to play tug and would push at me a rubber toy that was all slimy with dog spit. I hated dog spit.

Then there was the big Irish Setter that bit me, twice, when I was eight. This dog roamed our neighborhood, and I never bothered it at all; in fact, I’d go the other way when I saw him outside. On two (and only two) occasions I went into the house where he lived, and for no reason at all he ran over to me as soon as I stepped through the door and bit me in the leg. Both times.

As time went on, further unpleasant encounters with canines nurtured my hatred of dogs to the point that I was disgusted by the very idea that such things as dogs existed. I said unkind things about dogs, and I thought even worse things. I hated my late mother-in-law’s small but malicious Lhaso Apso so much that I used to wonder if I could kick it in the head hard enough to kill it.

I hated dogs.

My partner liked dogs, however, and after she was employed by our local humane society, it was pretty much inevitable that there would be a dog in my life. She brought home (just for the weekend) a Boxer/Pit Bull puppy who, within the first five minutes he was in our house, peed, pooped, and puked on the living room rug. She brought him home the next weekend too, and he never went back to the shelter.

He grew up to be a gangly, goofy, energetic, fun-loving dude who drooled all the time, and who was all elbows and knees when he tried to climb into your lap, and who went nuts when the doorbell rang. He played catch and fetch and tug-of-war and ran laps in the back yard. He respected other animals and was especially protective of smaller dogs. He bravely warned off every potential burglar and life-threatening intruder with his fierce bark, and he was reduced to a bowl of trembling doggie Jell-O during thunderstorms. He knew when you didn’t feel good and treated you accordingly, and he took his half of the bed out of the middle, sideways.

Of course, I wanted nothing to do with him, and I resisted for the first few years, but he was persistent and persuasive and gradually forced me to change my views. He went to his reward seven years ago tomorrow, and I still miss him.

I used to hate dogs, but I don’t any more, because a dog loved me.

Thinking might help

I have complained before about people publishing genealogical information that has glaring errors in it, like the guy who was supposed to have been born 70 years after his mother died.

It's a temptation, I know.  You find information about people with the same last name, living in the same place at about the same time, and you want to believe they are related.  I understand that.  What I don't understand is complete stupidity that admits no common sense at all.

Yesterday I saw information somebody had put out there about a woman that included her actual date of death in Indiana in 1858 as well as a listing for her in the 1860 Federal Census in South Carolina.  That's not only ridiculous, it also makes you wonder if you can trust any of their information.

What I ran across this morning takes the cake, though.  I found some stuff online about the ancestors of an ancestor of mine, one Alice Carew, born about 1455 in Gloucestershire, England.  There were several generations listed, and since it was all new to me (I don't even have her parents' names), I was pretty excited about it.

I started to copy it all down, but I gave up when I got to the part about one of Alice's great-great-grandfathers who was born about 1325, died about 1381, and got married on 23 July 1948 in Ogden, Utah.

Hel-lo-oh...?  Anybody home?

Remembering Mnemonics

I've still got mnemonics on my mind. My aunt told me she remembered which side of a boat is port and which is starboard by thinking, "Star light, star bright, starboard right." Not real catchy, but it works for me.

That reminded me of a story my piano teacher told me. A little boy is asked by his piano teacher to name the key that has one sharp. He says he doesn't know. His teacher tells him he had better find out before his next lesson or he'll get a spanking. The next week he is still unable to answer correctly, and his teacher says, "Do you remember what I said would happen if you couldn't tell me what key has one sharp?" The kid says, "Oh, gee," and the teacher says, "That's right!"

I know, I know, but it helped me for a lot of years.  Music teachers are full of little helpful tricks, like those famous acronyms for the lines and spaces of the staff -- Every Good Boy Does Fine and All Cows Eat Grass. My teacher had a problem with Good Boys Do Fine Always, however, being a real stickler about grammar. She insisted it should be Good Boys Do Finely Always, since it was an adverb.

That got me thinking about (and this is the last one, I promise) the acronym made up of the initials of the five Great Lakes -- HOMES -- to help you remember Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior, unless, of course, you're Jewish, in which case you'd probably want to remember them as Michigan, Ontario, Superior, Huron and Erie (MOSHE).

That's all.

Thanks for the Memories

Speaking of remembering how to spell lose and loose, in an email this morning, I wanted to say, “It’s the principle of the thing,” and I had to take a microsecond to be sure I was using the right spelling. I recalled the little trick I was taught in grade school -- the principal is your pal. And since that wasn’t the kind I meant, I knew “principle” was right.

There are plenty of mnemonics for distinguishing between similar words. Capitol is the building because it has a dome, and capital is right for all the other definitions. Stalagmites have to be mighty to push up from the floor, whereas stalactites have to hold tight to the ceiling.

But then there’s stationary (not moving) and stationery (office supplies). I was taught to remember stationery is like paper. Well, that’s fine, but somewhere along the line I got to thinking that maybe it was stationary like paper, and I still get confused sometimes. I think maybe I should go with e for envelopes.

Get Lost

When I was in the sixth grade, somebody put a lost-and-found box in the science room.  On the front of it was a sign, hand-lettered in bold, black Magic Marker, that looked like this:

At the time I assumed that someone who couldn't spell (probably a student) had made the sign and that someone else (probably a teacher) had made the correction rather than create a new sign.

In later years, however, I have wondered if it was not a mistake at all but a deliberate and very clever play on the words -- as in, Lose the O.

Regardless, it's how I remember that lose (as in, lost) has one O and loose (as in, as a goose) has two.

Pizza Pie

I love pizza.  I pretty much like anything that is sort of like pizza.  In addition to making my own with real pizza dough and real pizza sauce, I have used things like tortillas, pita bread, and crescent rolls from a can for the crust.  I have even been known to spread ketchup on white bread, top it with mozzarella, stick it under the broiler, and call it pizza.

I've tried all kinds of frozen pizzas and pizza-like things, my favorites being Bagel Bites and Stouffer's French bread pizza (sausage and pepperoni).  Although I've tried all kinds of microwavable pizza products, the best ones are baked in a conventional oven.

Cruising down the frozen foods aisle at Kroger yesterday, I spotted Kroger's own microwavable French bread pizza called "4 Minute French Bread Pizza Pepperoni."  I was intrigued, and since it only cost $1, I bought one.

The bread, a bit smaller than Stouffer's, comes in a little cardboard tray with that shiny silvery paper (technically called susceptor film, I believe) on the bottom and sides that's supposed to brown things in the microwave.  Despite its name, the directions say to nuke it for 2 to 3-1/2 minutes or until the cheese melts.  Since our microwave is more powerful than a locomotive, I checked it after 2 minutes, and it was then that the appalling lack of cheese (my favorite part of any pizza) became horrifyingly apparent.  I added my own shredded mozzarella, nuked it for 30 seconds more, and then began the taste test.

It was ... well, edible, but without the extra cheese I added, it would not have been.  As cheap, quick-to-prepare lunches go, it wasn't bad, but Bagel Bites have nothing to worry about.

OK, I get it now

I was cleaning out files in my desk this morning, mostly old receipts and other miscellaneous financial stuff, a great deal of which went in the trash.

I set aside all those pieces of heavy paper that come in the mail with credit cards attached to them with rubber cement.  It is recommended that you make a list of all your credit cards with the pertinent information, including phone numbers to call in case any are lost or stolen, but I never did because I always save these papers that come with the replacement cards instead.

Since I was in an organizing mood and there aren't very many of them, I decided to make one of those lists, but once I began to examine those papers, I realized I might as well have trashed them long ago.  Most of them don't show the account numbers, and only one gave the appropriate phone number to call.  I will have to get the details off the cards themselves.

That must be why they tell you to keep a list in case a card is lost or stolen.  If you don't have the card, you can't very well call the number on the back of it and read them the account number, can you?

Chihuahua de My-Oh

My tiny dog is slowing down in her old age, and I was rummaging around on the Internet this morning hoping to find something useful about dealing with an older dog when I came across the web site FamousChihuahuas.com.  It includes an online store that sells fashions and accessories for Chihuahuas, plus general and health information about the breed, and a gallery of photographs.

It is operated by a woman named nadia alterio who uses absolutely no capital letters and who loves Chihuahuas, especially her own.  She invites Chihuahua owners to submit pictures of their pets and, it being Cinco de Mayo, today's "featured" photos included dozens of pix showing Chihuahuas wearing sombreros and/or posing with a bottle of Jose Cuervo.

The amazing thing is how many people have submitted photographs of their dogs since they had to pay $4.95 for each one (or three for $9.95).  What a racket. Wish I'd thought of it.


I don't have to pay to publish my dog's picture on the Internet.  Here it is.

Is she the cutest, or what?

For the in-between

I went to our local Gordon's Food Service store yesterday to get a few things, including a case of Campbell's tomato juice in the little 5.5-ounce cans.  It's cheaper there than any place in the world.

We also needed some deli containers.  You know the kind -- those rather flimsy clear-plastic things the supermarket deli packs potato salad or cole slaw in.  We have one whole shelf in a cupboard devoted to this stuff, which we refer to as Gordonware. 

It has many uses, although we use it mostly to store leftovers or freeze extra quantities for later consumption.  The best part is that these containers are cheap enough that when you find a hairy baby monster hatching in one in the back of the refrigerator, you can simply throw the whole thing away.

We have deli containers in 1/4- and 1/2-cup sizes, ideal for including little things in the lunch box (crunchies for the yogurt, cream cheese for the bagel), or keeping something so good that even though there is only a little left, you can't bring yourself to throw it away.  For larger quantities, we have 1-cup and 2-cup and 4-cup sizes, which, happily, all use the same size lid, which simplifies storage.

While picking up the ones we needed yesterday, I saw that they have a new item (clearly labeled "NEW ITEM!"), and I couldn't pass it up:  1-1/2 cup containers!  Now we have the ideal vessel when something is too big for the 1-cupper but less than 2 cups.

Yes, they're about the same price as the others.  And yes, you could just use the 2-cup size and leave a half a cup of air at the top.  So why bother to bring home yet another package of flimsy plastic tubs?

Because it's there.

Trash Talk

It's Wednesday, which is garbage day.   I talked once about the tendency of the garbage man to leave our empty trash bins in the middle of the driveway, preventing entrance thereto (see "Garbage Day," August 10, 2011).  He's either changed his ways or it's a different guy, because now the bins are just as likely to be left in the drainage ditch that runs parallel to the street.

Our hired girl comes to us on Tuesdays, and one of her tasks is to gather up the trash and wheel the bin to the street.  The last time I looked last evening, the bin was standing upright at the end of the driveway near the mailbox.  This morning, however, I noticed that it had been blown over during the night and was lying mostly in the ditch.

After I heard the garbage truck go by, I looked out and saw that the empty bin was standing upright at the end of the driveway near the mailbox.

Is he trying to tell me something?