Are You Going To Yolo Fair?

My poor neighbors. Ever since I got back from the dog park (where everyone was talking about the upcoming Yolo County Fair), I've had "Scarborough Fair" stuck in my head. And since I live alone, naturally I've been belting out the three lines that I know over and over as I put the groceries away.

Yeah. Not really a song that's in my (admittedly very limited) range. And the windows are all open.

To make it worse, my neighbors' grown daughter can really sing. She majored in music and teaches voice lessons. So they know what singing is supposed to sound like. And I'm pretty sure my rendition doesn't qualify.

Anyhow, the point of this was that the Yolo County Fair (and we're a salt-of-the-earth farming community, so it's a "fair" not a "faire") starts on Wednesday. There's no entry fee, and I can walk to the fairgrounds from here.

But... why would I? I know I'm known for being apathetic and all that, but this is one of those things I just really don't get. I want to like the fair but I can't figure out why I would.

Children's swingsets make me nauseated, so the fair rides are right out. The food... just doesn't sound appealing. I don't like regular Twinkies, and deep-frying them doesn't make that any better. Vegetarian options are few and far between.

The animals... okay, baby goats are cute, but I don't really like most farm animals, and unlike many people, I know exactly what's going to happen to them the day after auction.

Live bands... not really interested. Car races... again, not my thing.

So I'm not really sure why I would go wander around in crowds of people in the summer heat.

What am I missing?

The Dog Tripper

It turns out that although I know a fair amount of information about different dog training methods, and I even did agility with one of the resident blood donor dogs during vet school (the dog did well, I kept crashing into things...), my own dogs have come to me pretty much trained.

I did teach (deaf) Molly the hand signal for sit, and I taught (blind) Lucy the command "step-down" so she would go carefully down stairs and not just launch herself wildly into the air after the first step. But I've never had to do more than that.

Until now.

Molly Speedbump only has one bad habit. Every time I go into a room and close the door, she will lie down with her back against the door and block the entryway so I trip over her on my way out.

Now, I could put down spike strips (or some humane equivalent) to make lying there less appealing, but then I wouldn't be able to walk around in bare feet. So what I've been doing instead of just stepping over her is nudging her with my foot until she heaves herself off the floor.

Lately she's been leaving a roughly twelve inch gap between her rear end and the side of the door, which is just enough space to get by without tripping over her as long as I don't step on her tail.

I thought we were making progress, but it's actually worse, because when she sees me, she wags her tail, and since she is lying on her side, her tail wags perpendicularly to the floor. Then she goes from being a speedbump to being the extra-difficult last hole in miniature golf, where you have to time it just right or the windmill knocks your ball to the side.

So... yeah. Maybe we can work on that...

I Hear the Approaching Thunder Now...

I'm feeling a little old this evening. I spent the weekend digging out ivy from around the fence, hand-weeding the front yard, mowing, edging, hoeing the weeds from the side yard, and generally being pretty darn active.

My back hurts, my shoulder is sore, I had a blister on my index finger until it was ripped off by the next weed, I still have a blister on my middle finger, there's a bruise on my right arm, and my neck is stiff. I walked the dog on our usual weekend route (which adds an extra block) both mornings. (Jim is at a pow-wow in North Fork, in case you're curious.)

So why, when I go to the Hollywood Market, do I still get pointedly asked if I want to buy a Diet Coke with my chocolate?

Someday lightening is going to strike that woman. And I will laugh.

Up Down Up Down Rah Rah Rah

This week has been a little mixed as far as accomplishments go. Here's an example:

Positive: I bought everything I needed to make the rice/bean/corn/peppers/etc salad for lunches for the week on Sunday.

Negative: Okay, I didn't quite buy everything I needed. Why don't I have a lime tree yet? I never remember to buy lime juice.

Positive: I was able to cook at 11pm while watering the lawn, doing laundry, feeding the cats, feeding the coral, feeding the dog, and watching the latest episode of "Lie To Me". That's multitasking.

Negative: Forgot I had rice coming to a boil on the stove until I smelled it.

Positive: Didn't burn down the house, and I still had just enough rice for a second try.

Negative: Probably should replace my pot. Realized at about this point that I didn't have the lime juice. Too lazy to find a store open at 11pm and go buy some.

Positive: Had orange extract and lemon zest in the cupboard. That's close, right?

Negative: No, it's not really close.

Positive: Still edible. Probably because of the jalapeno drowning out all other flavors.

So, yeah, that's the way this week has gone...

Darling, You Are Such A Darling

Just for fun sometimes I see what hulu.com is recommending for me.

For the most part hulu has decided that I like science fiction, police procedurals, and (for some completely unknown reason) anime. I pretty much don't watch anything animated as a rule, and I'm not a huge fan of police shows, but sometimes you find some good things ("Raines", starring Jeff Goldblum as a homicide detective who carries on conversations in his head with the victims) along with the bad ("Cleopatra 2525", which I didn't get far enough along in the pilot episode to even figure out if there was a plot beyond "there are three girls with minimal clothing in the future").

Hulu also has some older series available, and somehow "Hart To Hart" was on my list of recommendations. I vaguely remember watching a few episodes as a kid, something about the rich guy (Jonathan Hart), his wife (Jennifer (?) Hart) and their superannuated factotum Max (who sounds like he should be dragging around an oxygen tank, not helping these people fight crime). I tried to watch the pilot today. Oh boy.

• This show is the seventies. Mrs. Hart's hair is like a fourth cast member. She looks like a poodle -- not the little ones you see walking down the street, but the standard poodles all fluffed up for the show ring. I kept losing track of the dialog because I was mesmerized by her hair.
• Sideburns. Dear god.
• Men in tight pants. All the men. Not an exceptionally good look for most of them.
  
• Brown suits.
• A car phone. Granted, they don't show anything other than the handset, which looks like a regular handset, connected by a regular coiled wire to some place in the dashboard. But still, Mr. Hart had a car phone.
• Insipid dialog. Really, this is the thing that made it impossible for me to get past the fifteen minute mark. The Harts call each other "Darling" so incessantly that it ceases to sound like a term of endearment, and starts sounding like they want to be cursing at each other through gritted teeth, but can't because it won't get past the network censors. Really, when they have interchanges like "Darling?" "Yes, Darling?" "I think I'll take a drive to the coast this afternoon, Darling.", you can only think that the original version of the script said something completely different...
• There were payphones on every corner. For some reason this struck me as the strangest part of the whole show.
  

I don't know. Maybe the series got better after the first episode. Maybe all television was just so bad back then that this looked good in comparison. Or maybe I was a little less picky when I was eleven years old.

Or just possibly, Sydney Sheldon created the easiest drinking game of all time...

Sorry, I can Not Hear You, I'm Kinda Busy...

It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of the telephone.

This was completely understandable during my internship and residency when I would get calls at 2am like "Hi Dr. B. Your patient just arrested. Do you want us to keep doing CPR?" or "We have an owner on the line whose ferret just had a bookcase fall on it and now it can't move its back legs. Do they need to come in?" (Yes, those were actual calls I received on two different nights.)

However, my hatred of the telephone goes back at least a decade before that. I went for months at least once without answering my home phone. Granted, all I ever ended up with on the answering machine was some old guy loudly repeating "Marta?.... Marta?...", but still.

I realize that this is somewhat heretical since a cell phone company pays my bills, but audio quality on cell phones is terrible and seems to be getting worse. As much as I like to blame everything on my LG Chocolate POS, it's just the nature of cell phones. I'd rather not talk to anyone than try to carry on a conversation on a cell phone.

And now, of course, they're switching all the phones at work to VOIP (voice over IP, which is all digital). We had the old and new phones active this week, and guess what? The VOIP phones have terrible sound quality and have a noticeable lag. This is progress.

Anyhow, I was setting up my voice mail on the new phone, and after I recorded my name, I got to the section on recording a greeting. It started with "Outgoing greetings encourage people to leave you messages."

That was all I needed to know. I left it blank.

Q: What Time Is It When It's Time To Get A New Fence?

A: Time to get an elephant to sit on the fence. (Insert sound of Jojo and K-poo laughing maniacally here)

It's time for Hot (and possibly Hotter as well, although the fact that he took off in the middle of the last fence rebuild to go visit his girlfriend in Texas might have put a damper on their business relationship, so I wouldn't be surprised if Ponch found someone else to fill in) to put in a new fence on the other side of the house.

Yes, this means that all of the ivy and wisteria and trumpet vines and oleander need to be trimmed back, so that's what I was doing all weekend. I managed not to injure myself, although I did have a few fence boards fall on me when I removed the vegetation holding them up.

Here are a few oh-so-artistic shots that show why I need a new fence:










And, just for fun, one shot of the finished cat porch:


See how productive I can be?