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!)