The Legend of 100% Long Little Doggie

You stay here, Lucky. I'm going after the sidewinders who stole my cows.


















Pardon my intrusion, ma'am, but have you seen 36 head of longhorn cattle pass your way? They went missing while me and the boys were fixing the brakes on the Silverado.















Excuse me, partner, have . . . my, but you're a tall one, ain't ya? Mind if I climb on your head and see if I can situate my longhorns?
















To be continued . . .

Wednesday Night with Sylvie

I thought you might like to see one of our Therapy Dog classes with Sylvie's K9 Solutions

Here's 100% dog (complete with therapy class bandanna) in rapt attention to his handler. . . er, his daddy.








Here's my other favorite, Gracie, the Pembroke Corgi. My friend at Yasashiikuma raises Cardigan Corgis and says you can tell the difference between the types by the 'broke' part on the Pembroke'. Wanna see where?















Walk and sit your dog. Walk and sit your dog . . .

100% Dog needs a little help. Hope the teacher isn't looking.







Gracie shows him how it's done.








Holding the dog correctly for some loving.

Do you wanna pet my dog?








Sure do!








Stranger test!
100% lets Syvlie cuddle him and passes with flying bandannas. This is a test? Piece of cake for 100P.






Gracie keeps all four paws on the ground for this exercise.







The 'don't be startled by humans with junk' exercise.
Pardon my walker


















It's just an umbrella, silly!














So where was Princess Dog during all this? On my lap, of course.

She has the option to join the class, but complains about old back surgeries whenever she'd rather just lounge around.

Another quiz for the bored

Do you think you know the 100 most common words in the English language? To try the quiz click: words and start entering those words. I got 48 in five minutes, but only got 2 from the top 10.

Chain of Foods

The Toronto Star says university researchers tested the DNA of 100 supermarket and restaurant fish and found 25% was mislabeled. This isn't terribly surprising considering how many stops there are in our food supply chain, and how hard it is to tell fish apart once it's been filleted.

And speaking of Ontario, an outbreak of Listeria there has killed four people. Same story as we've seen here in the states with tomatoes and peppers -- huge recall, not sure about the source, large food company had to close to clean up anyway took a dive in its stock price. Our food safety really is much better than it was years ago, but it could be better still if only the industry would slow down a little, keep better records and do more training.

Here's a good example. NaturalNews reports the FDA wants to start irradiating lettuce and spinach to kill e.coli. The problem is irradiation may destroy nutritional value. I can see why the FDA is doing this -- bacterial outbreaks are deadly and very hard to trace. The last one was devastating to tomato growers before we found out that Mexican peppers, not U.S. tomatoes were the culprit. So a decision which supports business and kills a deadly bacteria seems like a win-win. Nutrition? Well, many people believe Americans already get a nutritious diet. But we don't, and the big win-win would be that modification to our food supply chain mentioned above.

Weekly Wrapup - Microsoft and Morrisville

From my workplace: The S(c)pammers are actually getting smarter. They realize now that poorly-worded, misspelled, shoddy-looking e-mails that scream at you to "send this to everyone in your address book" aren't fooling anybody anymore (or most anybody). The latest virus-generating e-mail looks like it comes from Microsoft with links to a security update. You only need to remember Microsoft does not send security updates through e-mail.

From my neighborhood: Orange, striped barrels in a flock! Surveyors, and the tattle-tale sign of disappearing trees. Construction is actually on at Morrisville-Carpenter Road and 54.

From my email: I promised an update on the newly sold (actually, under contract) vacant lot next to Morrisville Square link. Morrisville's planning Director wrote that the land is indeed zoned O&I, but will be translated over to High Density Residential since it is part of the Town Center Plan. Now get this. Only about 20% of the property is buildable because the rest is in a 100 year flood plain. Whoever spent $1.1 million for that will need to get their money's worth.

What the World Eats

At the right is a link to my favorite blogs, including My Money Blog, which today has it's own link to a Time photo essay: What the World Eats. Here's the link: Time

Very interesting from a foodie POV. Although one family does not a country represent, I think the magazine tried to find consumers who were average for their areas of the world. Here's some things I noticed as I clicked through the photos:

1. All the world loves pizza.
2. And Coke.
3. Americans don't eat nearly enough fresh fruit and vegetables.
4. Britons do love their sweets.
5. The bigger the economy, the more prepackaged foods.
6. If you have two teenage sons you go through a lot of chips.
7. Germans pay an uber lot for food, and a good deal of it is in drink form.
8. Wherever you go in the world, a lot of people don't smile for the camera.

The most shocking thing was seeing the scant items laid out for the family of four from Chad. Outside of some bags of gain, they barely had the equivalent what might fall off of a Food Lion truck during packing.

Around the World in 80 Rolls

Belgrade is the new North Carolina. That is, on the Monopoly board.

Hasboro is putting out an international edition Monopoly game and who knew there was a vote on which cities should have the honor of being properties? Even more surprising -- Montreal, the cosmopolitan Canadian city where Europe and North America meet at the deli, got top spot.

Toronto is so proud to be on the board (it got into the purples) that the city is holding a celebration this afternoon at Ontario Place.

Here, then, is the list of lucky cities Chance. Points to anyone who doesn't have to look up that last city to see where it is. (and remember to save those points!)

All Your Brain Belong to Us

I read that the American Journal of Psychiatry says compulsive E-mailing is now considered an illness according to psychiatrists. (Actually it's all part of "Internet Addiction", but the E-mailing headline caught my eye because I am an E-mail administrator. Our 350 or so active users take a 2 gigabyte bite out of my disk space every day. I remember when a desktop computer didn't even come with 2 gigabytes on it.)

The problem isn't just E-mail, but other online pursuits like playing games, an area where I myself might be on the edge. The bad news is that Internet addiction is resistive to treatment. The good news is that I am up to 4 million points on Slingo.com.

I had always read it was debatable whether compulsive Internet use was a true addiction. But if you've ever seen the phones light up at a call center when E-mail went down, you'd be convinced there is surely some brain-web connection. I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Weekly Wrapup

From the Toronto Star: A investigative report turned up complaints against a moving company that held customer's goods for ransom until they got $1500 above the original estimate. They were clearly breaking the law, but felt they could get away with it because the police said it was a matter for the courts, the courts denied jurisdiction, and the attorney general referred it back to the courts. A sidebar says if it happens to you, contact the Ministry of Consumer Services. Yeah. Call the government. That'll speed things up.

From Morrisville: See that big, red "Sold" sign by the vacant lot next to Morrisville Square? The seller had advertised the property zoned as Office and industrial, but approved for high density residential. Morrisville's zoning map has no high density res' indications there. Was it just a sales ploy? I hope so, and I wrote to the Planning Director to find out.

Michale Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma warns about industrialized organic foods. I hoped he was just being an alarmist, but last week's recall of ground beef delivered to Whole Foods from Coleman Natural Beef shook me up. I bought ground beef from Whole Foods during the recall period. When I checked the label, I found I had fortunately chosen the local grass fed stuff. In July Full Circle dairy got a letter from the FDA for an infraction discovered five months earlier, which actually happened seven months before that (or a year ago).

From the homefront: The dogs are doing a great job in Pet Therapy training, and Poochy Boy started on Cosequin to relieve arthritis. Cosequin is supposed to work gradually, but Poochy has come alive during our morning exercise time.

Now even the Cat Needs to shop at Whole Foods

It's enough to think about what's in people food without the added burden of pet food. Articles are coming online now about glutamate, animal by-products and unregulated foreign ingredients going into pet food and these are not good things.

At home, along with Princess Dog and One-Hundred Percent Dog, we also have a gray, striped tabby: Poochy Boy. I don't have a picture right now, but here's a reasonable facsimile of what he would look like if he were solid white, thinner, and drunk.


(I know this picture isn't in the general domain, but darn if I can find the right owner to give credit.)







Anyway, Poochy Boy needs to change over to a special renal diet, and when I looked at the local vet prescription food, the twice-the-cost-of-quality-pet-store food, the first ingredient was animal by-products.

In the wild cats eat their prey whole, by-products and all. But these pet food animal by-products can be anything, even FDA-rejected meats. If I'm going to pay fillet mignon prices for cat food I don't want the main component to be some leftover, unlabeled, rejected ingredient.

So now I have to source some good quality critter food. A lofty project for a cat that eats catnip off the living room carpet.

Weekly Wrapup - The Weirdness of US

From yesterday's NC17: Tyson Foods recalled 51,000 pounds of frozen raw chicken breast tenderloin because it may have contained undeclared soy. Are we the only country in the world whose raw chicken breast actually contains other food?

From last week's N&O: IBM received $750,000 in incentives from Durham County to build their new cloud computing network center in RTP. The Center will employ 10 people. That's $75,000 in taxpayer money per employee. Worth it? Some old time IBMers I know said those 10 employees will be offshore folks working remotely. They may have been joking, I don't know.

From last month's AP: "An AP-Yahoo! News poll found that pet owners favor McCain over Obama 42 percent to 37 percent, with dog owners particularly in McCain's corner." Before I vote, I want to know how the numbers change when you include Cyber pets and Chia Turtles.

Morrisville Updates

Rendering of Park West Village courtesy of Castro Group
Park West Village
Tenants will be announced soon. They have an anchor store but have not said who it is.



Walgreens
Davis Drive & Morrisville-Carpenter opening scheduled for end of August.

Walmart
- Hwy 54 & 540 store opening planned for January 2009 (though I wouldn't be surprised if they moved that to before Christmas).

- Hwy 54 & 540 Sam's Club opening planned for March 2009.

Land Use Transportation Plan
- Public can comment to the Planning Board at their August 14 meeting

- Public can comment to Town Council at their October 28 meeting

I was With the Program Until I Reached Chapter III-2

Deep into Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the author and I were on the same page (if you will) until I got to the chapter titled "Eat Food: Food Defined".

The book exposes the evils of our industrialized food chain, and this chapter revealed Pollan's full agenda -- to solely eat whole food. I think it was his reference to eating as our great-grandmas ate that flashed the amber light for me. I didn't know my great-grandma, but I imagine food was something she labored over up to six hours a day, every day, except the sabbath which she probably thanked God for each Friday as the sun went down.

I know I don't have to slaughter my own chicken or draw well water, but the thought of cooking everything from scratch, not to mention dealing with the shorter shelf life of whole food is daunting. I work, have hobbies, friends, and cable. My mental picture of a total dedication to whole foods is one where women's lib is set back 80 years.

I can see social advantages to some packaged food. The convenience frees us all to do other things. I'll probably keep my kitchen at around 80% wholeness, as long as the convenience foods on my shelves don't have high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fats or any varieties of MSG. And I'll keep buying my meat directly from local farmers. Happy livestock don't cost me anything but a few extra dollars.

Sorry if I disappoint you, Michael Pollan, but you really hit a nerve with that great-grandma thing.

Bored? Try These

I fielded a complaint the other day that the blog was getting boring. I admit I've been stymied; there's nothing going on. To tide you over until the world gets back to business in September, here's some of my more interesting weblinks:

Map of the Market
http://www.smartmoney.com/map-of-the-market/
Use the controls to see the market for the last 26 weeks. Not much in the way of green there.

Flight Aware
http://flightaware.com/
Visually track all US/Canadian flights by airport, operator, aircraft.

Unclaimed Balances (Canadian)
http://ucbswww.bank-banque-canada.ca/scripts/search_english.cfm

Le Piano Graphique
http://www.pianographique.com/
Create music with your keyboard.

2 Minute Primer: Magnesium and You

Yesterday I read in two separate places that Americans probably don't get enough magnesium. Industrial fertilization causes crops to lose magnesium and food processing wipes out even more. So here's your 2 minute primer on magnesium:

Here's what it takes care of:
Nerve function, muscle function (including heart rhythm), immune system, bones, blood sugar, blood pressure, digestion of other nutrients.

Here's where you get it:
Halibut, (organic) green veggies, beans and peas, nuts and seeds, unrefined grains, potato skins.

Here's what will happen to you if you don't have enough:

The government line from the National Institute of Health:
Appetite loss; fatigue, weakness and nausea; muscle contractions and spasms; abnormal heart rhythms.

The alternative health line from Mark Sircus Ac., OMD writing for naturalnews.com
As stated above, plus: migraines and headaches, increased toxicity, glaucoma, Alzheimer's disease, recurrent bacterial infections, fungal infections, behavioral disorders, pms, mood swings, tooth cavities, hearing loss, diabetes type II (a partial list).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some researchers also think magnesium is more important than calcium in preventing osteoporosis.

It's unlikely you'll get too much magnesium through diet, but beware that you can get too much if you take supplements.

You're probably smart enough to know, but this 2 minute report is for information only and not to be taken as medical advice.

Some Summer Events

For you Coffee Crisp Lite readers in the Raleigh area, Thursday is Watermelon Day at the State Farmers Market. There will be a $600 prize for the largest watermelon, a watermelon eating contest, and a visit from the NC Watermelon Queen.

Saturday is Gourd Day. There is no Gourd Queen; imagine that.

Cherokee Nation

FX's 30 Days sent the host, Morgan Spurlock to live on an Indian Reservation. Spurlock chose to spend a month with the Navajo Nation and the episode was very interesting. I would have chosen to go with the Eastern Band of Cherokees, who live close by in the western part of North Carolina. I've been to the reservation in Cherokee, NC, but I would be interested to see life off of U.S. 441.

The picture above is from the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Am I alone in thinking the figure on the right looks like Bruce Willis?

Weekly Wrapup

There is NOTHING NEW going on. That's pretty much summer for you.


Signs have gone up on Morrisville-Carpenter Road, just like promised.
















100PercentDog has started Therapy Dog Training (or we have, since most of the classes are to train us.)







And the new McDonald's at Davis Drive is open.

Another slow news day in Morrisville.