I delete most of them, but I’ve started keeping some of them, except I edit them to remove the spam link and add a comment making fun of them.  Why?  I don’t know. It’s just kind of fun.

Background: One day while mowing my postage-stamp-sized lawn, Dolce began attacking the lawnmower. I didn’t encourage it, but didn’t strongly discourage it either. Soon, she began attacking it even when I wasn’t using it. Within a week, both tires were chewed off, making it much less usable. I’m unsure as to what’s going on here; does she think it is alive? Or is she just playing with it like a toy? Though she’ll play with it sometimes by herself, she really gets excited when I push it around. (She has a thing for the weedwacker, as well; for obvious safety reasons, I lock her in the house when I use that).

Snopes

Lovely Listings

Cakewrecks

Photobombs

The People Of Walmart

F*ck my life

Fail blog

The Onion

Emails from an @sshole

Giant Isopods feasting on Doritos brand chips!

I came across this fascinating and funny photo in this SomethingAwful article. I used to read every animal, nature, and insect book I could get my hand on as a kid, but I’d never seen anything like this odd beast. I tried Googling “modern trilobite” and similar, but to no avail. Finally, I returned to SA and found the answer in the forums; they are Giant Isopods, crustaceans that live deep in the ocean. They are closely related to the woodlouse, a small critter that most people are familiar with; back East, we called them “sowbugs.”

Apparently, they’ve sparked a small Internet meme, inspiring clothing and music.

I’d love to know that backstory behind this photo. Who fed their three Isopods a bag of Doritos? And what’s their favorite flavor?

This morning, our former foster dog Bianca passed away at her home after suffering two strokes. After we lost Poncho in March, we decided to try to make something good out of something bad by getting involved with dog fostering via Pit Bull Rescue San Diego (Poncho was a Pit bull mix). Bianca, an American Bulldog, was our first foster; she arrived at our home on March 20th, and was adopted on May 5th. People always ask us if it’s difficult to give up a foster dog. It is in some ways, but when the family that adopts the dog is a wonderful match, it makes it so much easier. Bianca was a very fortunate dog. She was adopted by a family with a 4-year old girl, who became Bianca’s best friend and protectee. They played hide and seek, dress-up, and shared a bed.

As you can see in the photos, Bianca’s early life was probably on the rough side. Given all of her callouses, she probably spent most of her time in a concrete kennel, perhaps as a breeder dog. Though we’re very saddened by Bianca’s death, it’s consoling to know that her last seven months in the world were wonderful months for her. In fact, she was slated to be euthanized in the shelter after being abandoned by her original owner. One of the Pit Bull Rescue volunteers recognized Bianca as a wonderful dog and saved her from imminent euthanasia. Bianca was a sweet soul; she had a particularly charming habit of extending her paw to anyone who paused to give her attention. She was gentle and loving with everyone, including cats and young children. Many older dogs like Bianca never make it out of the shelter, and end up as an anonymous statistic. Fortunately for her, there are caring people in the world like Bianca’s family who are willing to give older dogs a second chance at having a good home life, even if for a relatively short time.

Bianca will always have a special place in our hearts as the dog that helped keep our spirits up in the wake of Poncho’s untimely death. She was dearly loved by her family and by the volunteers at Pit Bull Rescue who were lucky enough to meet and help such a wonderful dog.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing everyone….I missed the 15 year, but the 10 year was fun and went really fast.

Here’s the site for general information and updates:

Reunion information

And here’s a forum for general discussion, catching up, name calling, etc.

Discussion forum

The UT put together a pretty nice fire map here that shows the location of many of the destroyed houses. Rancho Bernardo was hit really hard.

Air quality is pretty bad here, but other than that, it seems like the county has made it through the worst of it.

Here’s a map of the fires as of 6:00 am Wednesday morning. As you can see, winds have shifted and moved the active fronts of some of the fires.

We know lots of people who’ve been evacuated. Two of them had houses either within or very close to a burn zone. Thankfully, the fires seem to have spared them (though some of their neighbors weren’t so lucky).

As of 1 PM, the air in our corner of Serra Mesa is still OK, though I’m starting to see little bits of ash floating around (which means there’s probably lots of tiny particles floating around that I can’t see).  Our area seems to be one of the least affected by the smoke, based on pollution report data. The easiest way to find our neighborhood on a map is to find the spot where Highway 163 and Interstate 805 cross each other diagonally; our neighborhood is directly south of that crossing. (All of the steets are named after birds).