Just a lot of little stuff

Starting with thanks to all of those who commented encouragement to me over the two post-election posts.  There is a time and place to be tolerant, and a time and place to stop the insanity.  I had to stop and remember that I don't control other people's opinions, ignorance, or selfish immaturity, nor am I able to legislate God's morality to an immoral world.  Anyway, I am standing a little straighter now, and I have polished the rusty mail and the corroding short sword.  But I'm not going to be a tilter at everything.  I have seen already sites that are keeping track of each layoff since the election in order to pin them on Obama whether they are his fault or not.  And at least FoxNews is keeping fire to the feet of the liberal media, pointing out every real an imagined prejudice they report under the guise of news.  Good for them.  I'm not going to do that.  But I do have a set of rules I'm going to use as far as what I grill this man some people think is Presidential on.  I'll discuss them at a later time.  Suffice it to say, I am not done with this man.

But I am done for this post.  Moving on, I mentioned to one of my commenters that "the little commedian in the back of my head is back".  The first example of this came that next morning as Scrappy plastered himself on me to be scratched.  You see, when I stop scratching, Scrappy thinks it meet to remind me by scratching my face.  So I thought, "Too bad he can't do this for himself."  And from that thought came...

Whaddya think?  I'd say it's a winner- now we just need some intrepid soul to design it.


So another one of those weeks at work.  Back in September, they projected this week as the start of the busy season.  Here's the reality:

Sunday- spent the whole night at the trash compators.  Smashed ten gaylords worth after 5 PM.
Monday- Worked in the dot.com box making area.  My job was to keep the new "multi-line" stocked.  First shift seemed to have done nothing, and despite the fact that the line seemed to be stopped far more often than it was moving, the box makers were so far behind that many times I was passing processors getting their own boxes, fighting for boxes with processors trying to get their own boxes, and having boxes taken off my cart by processors trying to get their own boxes.
Tuesday- Same thing, except first actually had gotten ahead.  I swiftly found out that was because there was virtually no work.  They put out a go-home-at-5:30 sheet (which nobody told me about), but not enough people signed up and all the temp workes got sent home at 6:30.
Wednesday- Got called during a nap and told to stay home.  Apparently, they decided that they would keep the newest 50 temps home that day, and the fifty most senior on Thursday.
Thursday- The plan was to spend the first half of the night training as many people as they could on the multi-line.  I was in the first wave, and was moved afterwards to the pick-mods.  Just before lunch- a three hour period in which I saw just 19 boxes- the lead said, "Christopher, I have a project for you."  That turned out being scraping old aisle line tape off the floor on the shipping dock.  A go-home-at-ten list was put out, and by the time I signed, about 50 people were on it.

So now that you have a framework for when I was home and don't have to say, "is this doofus still working," I can get on with some of the neat stuff that happened.  One of the work nights, we no more went to bed and we saw Mr. Big Buck wander down the trail into the woods.

Tuesday night, we were watching the MLS soccer playoffs (sure can tell baseball season's over!) when Scrappy detected an enemy incursion on the porch.  We went out, and Scrappy searched everywhere for our enemy, but he was not to be seen.  I was just about to go in- and then I looked up.

He was on top of the shed, lying as flat as he could to avoid detection (woulda helped if ya didn't hang your nose over the roof), and scared spitless.  I tried to encourage him down with the door stick (Sliding door block), but his difficulty was that he was afraid to jump from the roof- he wanted to clamber down to the fence and jump off.  He came down the gate side, and I thought I would encourage him with the stick, as Scrappy was not on his chain and I REALLY didn't want the little bugger landing on our side.  The Coon, however, failed to grasp my intentions and climbed back up on the roof.  Whereupon I acquired chair and broom, and he finally decided that it wasn't that big a jump after all.  Seconds later, Scrappy declared the area secure, and went back in without another bark, so I declared case closed.

Scrappy, however, is not limited to nighttime manouvres.  He has developed an amusing and adversarial relationship with our usual daytime attacker:

I'm not really against Mr. Squirrel's presence, but since he can devour half a bell in an unopposed sitting, Scrappy gets to chase him about every other day.

This morning, we walked north up the greenway trail, thinking to cross at the road and follow it back into the complex (see the map page).  There is a gate at the north end to prevent stupid motorists from thinking they can drive it (for you out of towners, we just had a guy drive almost a mile down an elevated railroad track, so yeah, we have 'em), and when we were about oh, 20 yards from it, we watched a buck (well, I watched, Scrappy was sniffing his butt or something) cross just on the other side of the gate and head for the bridge construction.  By the time we got up there, he'd taken the better part of valor and shot across the yard of the guy who lives up between canal, road, and river, presumably towards the river according to Scrappy's nose.

Laurie decided to walk with us this afternoon, and despite the lack of photo-willing subjects lately, I always seem to have good luck with her along.  Even then, I almost missed these guys:

I just caught a glimpse of mama's tail, and almost walked past.

Then Laurie spotted the two young'uns bringing up the rear.

Of course, one of them has to be butt sniffing when I snapped the shot.

"Mommy, who are those funny looking deer up there?"

And so, now you are up to date on the daily minutiae of the Scrappy family for another week.