On the way to the vet’s today, a ring-necked pheasant sauntered across the road in front of me, in the heart of Grosse Pointe. This is, supposedly, a common sight in these parts, and yet, my heart always jumps a little. I mean, it’s hardly a pigeon.
I asked the vet about it, and he said he had the same feeling, but over time, you grow out of it. Mostly this happens if you live in a neighborhood with pheasant in it. “The cocks crow at first light,” he said. “And it’s not like a rooster crowing. It sounds like fingernails on a blackboard. That’s one thing at this time of year, when it comes at around 6:15. In the middle of summer, it can be as early as 3. That starts the dogs barking, and so on.”
Well, hell. They’re still pretty birds, and I reserve the right to be impressed by them.
Actually, the birds that wake me before I’m ready on summer mornings are, more often than not, sparrows. All that tuneless chirping — bleah. I’ll take a pheasant any day.
Lite bloggage today, until we hit the homestretch of this week:
Last year, I wrote something about insomnia here, which sparked a discussion in the comments about varioius pharmaceutical sleep aids. 4dbirds wrote: I took Ambien one evening to ensure a good night sleep. I seemed to wake-up fine but remember yawning quite a bit on the drive to work. At work, I started shutting down. I had to close the door to my office and slept the entire work day. I don’t remember driving home (what an idiot to even try it) and went straight to bed and sleep the second I got home. Next morning I was my usual self. One Ambien put me out for a good 32 hours.
NN.C, ahead of the curve again. From today’s NYT:
With a tendency to stare zombie-like and run into stationary objects, a new species of impaired motorist is hitting the roads: the Ambien driver. Ambien, the nation’s best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests, sometimes involving drivers who later say they were sleep-driving and have no memory of taking the wheel after taking the drug.
Wow. I feel all new-media and voice-of-the-people, don’t you?
Kirk said on March 8, 2006 at 8:50 am
hate to start this all over, but it sounds like the ring-necked pheasant was on the way to the vet. i know, though — having read yesterday — that it was you on the way to the vet.
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nancy said on March 8, 2006 at 8:53 am
Criminy. I write this stuff at 1 a.m., and these are the mistakes I make when I’m tired.
OK: “On my way to the vet’s today, a ring-necked pheasant…”
What a difference a word makes, eh?
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Dorothy said on March 8, 2006 at 9:46 am
But are you writing under the influence of Ambien? (heh heh)
On MY way to church on Easter Sunday about 12 years ago, a damned turkey nearly collided with our windshield! Let me tell ya, the underside of those things ain’t pretty. And we used to get pheasants in our back yard in Eighty Four, PA. I’d always let the dogs outside to chase them. That was fun to watch.
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nancy said on March 8, 2006 at 11:16 am
At the very first meeting of my fellowship group two years ago, my future friend Vince walked in and, in the course of making small talk, revealed that he’d been ambushed by a turkey en route from Oregon. Nine hundred dollars’ worth of damage to his Subaru. And the turkey walked away.
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MarkH said on March 8, 2006 at 11:24 am
After trying to figure this out for a week or so, I realize there is indeed, only ONE Nancy posting here, and it’s our webmistress. Sometimes you post as “Nance” with a link to your site, I guess. Other times (see above) you post as nancy, no link. Any significance here? Just asking…
Wow, Dorothy, Eighty-Four, PA 🙂
Our old home state does have some great town names, no?
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brian stouder said on March 8, 2006 at 11:34 am
“What a difference a word makes, eh?”
reminds me of those urban-legends-that-might-be-true, regarding translating advertising copy – such as the Coca Cola slogan “Coke adds life” translated in Taiwan as “Coke will bring your dead relatives back to life”…..(wherein the colloquialism regarding “adding life” could credibly go astray)
“Nine hundred dollars’ worth of damage to his Subaru. And the turkey walked away.”
But what about the bird? (barump-bump!)
Anyway – I DO get a kick out of the ‘new media voice of the people’ aspect of the ‘net….and indeed – although the internet allows rumors and untruths to travel at the speed of electrons, so too does the fact-checking and the debunking
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Danny said on March 8, 2006 at 11:39 am
Wait, I thought Brian was saying that “nancy” was not “Nance” a few weeks ago.
Dorothy, eighty four, PA? Is that where the company “84 lumber” started?
Why, yes it is. I just googled that.
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brian stouder said on March 8, 2006 at 11:56 am
I wuz wrong-oh!
(first time this year, too!)
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Danny said on March 8, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Nuh-uh. There were at least two other times. Remember?
The one where you disagreed with me about Bryant Gumbel and the other time where you disagreed with me about Pearl jam versus Led Zeppelin.
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brian stouder said on March 8, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I’ll grant you Gumbel, but not Eddie!
Pearl Jam is coming out with a new album soon, and there is a free download of one song today (Wednesday 3/8/06) and today only (age of the new media, indeed!).
I don’t know how to do any of that ripping stuff at all – but Pam got me one of those teeny tiny googahs that you can load eleventy-seven songs onto, and my whole Pearl Jam collection and all of my Police is now on there, with additions being planned.
I watched her do a few of the cd’s; she found a web-site that facilitates the process and (in effect) does all the typing for you (song name/artist/album/category)….very cool stuff.
All I know is, now I don’t have a dozen cd’s stuffed into one of those thingys on the visor….and I can always zip to whatever I want to hear.
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brian stouder said on March 8, 2006 at 12:25 pm
http://www.theskyiscrape.com/
Hey – they’re coming to the D – and tix go on sale 3/10….I may have to go on a mission!
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nancy said on March 8, 2006 at 12:30 pm
I watched her do a few of the cd’s; she found a web-site that facilitates the process and (in effect) does all the typing for you (song name/artist/album/category)….very cool stuff.
Listen to the sound of my scoffing. To rip CDs in iTunes, you stick it in the slot and click a couple times, while your internet connection finds the CD Database and automatically labels your tracks.
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jcburns said on March 8, 2006 at 12:41 pm
None better than Breezewood, PA, the town of 1000 Motels.
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Danny said on March 8, 2006 at 1:14 pm
My grandparents use to live up on the mountain in Breezewood, PA. I do not remember the motels. Perhaps things have changed.
My scoff. I use CDex, open source software that rips my CD’s in highly controllable ways, in high variable bit rate quality, with no digital rights management bigbrother stuff, AND it uses freeCDDB, a free, open source CD database. WooHoo. Power to the people!
It took a bit of investigation, but now it is two clicks for me and Apple and M$ can stuff their DRM crippled tripe.
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Dorothy said on March 8, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Here in South Carolina there is a town called Ninety-Six, but I have never been there.
Actually when I lived in the Big 8-4, once the local post office put a flyer in everyone’s mailbox with this nice little story about how the town might have gotten it’s name. It seems no one could agree on how it got to be named. The Lumber Company came there AFTER the town was dubbed. So the school of thought was it was one of two things: (1) The town was the 84th stop along the Pennsylvania Rail Road or (2) they named it 84 to commemorate the Presidential election of 1884. I’m not good at doing links. Hope this works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty-four,_PA
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Dorothy said on March 8, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Oh and who doesn’t love Intercourse, PA?!
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John said on March 8, 2006 at 1:36 pm
I always liked Jersey Shore, PA. I actually lived at the (real) New Jersey Shore and had family driving out to visit from Fort Wayne. My mother-in-law saw the sign for Jersey Shore (which is almost 200 miles inland) and took the exit, figuring I knew nothing and it was a shortcut to the beach.
After being lost in central PA for hours they wised up and backtracked to Route 80.
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MarkH said on March 8, 2006 at 1:41 pm
…or Blue Ball…
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brian stouder said on March 8, 2006 at 2:21 pm
“Oh and who doesn’t love Intercourse, PA?!”
There is a Climax, Michigan. I was gabbing with a customer there one time, and asked him what they do for a summer festival there….
(maybe they can be Intercourse’s ‘sister city’)
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Danny said on March 8, 2006 at 2:27 pm
(maybe they can be Intercourse’s ’sister city’)
Judging by the proliferation of E.D. commercials, I would say that there probably needs to be another city, perhaps ‘Viagra Falls’, in between those two.
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Kirk said on March 8, 2006 at 2:53 pm
don’t forget hell, mich., and knockemstiff, ohio
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Joe Kobiela said on March 8, 2006 at 8:04 pm
I fly in the area of Climax Mich and have always wanted to tell air traffic control. That I am about to reach climax.
Joe
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basset said on March 8, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Ernest K. Gann, one of the all-time great aviation writers, flew DC-3s on a Newark to Chicago route in the Thirties… long trip, low and slow, unpressurized cabin and they went through the weather instead of over it.
somewhere along that trip lies White Pigeon, Michigan… Gann said that whenever a passenger asked where they were he’d just point at whatever settlement was visible and say “That’s White Pigeon right there.”
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Ricardo said on March 8, 2006 at 9:23 pm
I was suprised to see all those Geese lolling in Oakland County during my last October visit a couple of years ago. They weren’t there in the 1970’s. Big suckers, too.
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vince said on March 8, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Nance is right. A wild Michigan turkey flew right into the side of the front of my car, bounced off the windshield, flew over the top and landed behind me on one leg then flapped away into the bushes.
The damn thing crushed the left front fender, stripping paint to the metal.
Of course that $900 wild wing ding was nothing compared to the domestic turkey that caused $1200 damage 3 days later.
That was me.
When I drove into a parking garage with my bike still on the roof rack.
Ouch.
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Dorothy said on March 9, 2006 at 7:34 am
Please tell me I’m not the only one who has backed into her garage, hugging the wall too tightly, and ripped off the passenger side mirror?
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wade said on March 9, 2006 at 11:10 am
When I was a callow 19 year old, I drove the family Winnebego through the gates of Dearborn Village, neatly shearing off all the mirrors and shattering the open louvered side windows. My baby sister, who slept through the shower of saftey glass beads that covered her and filled her bassinette, still won’t ride with me. She won’t let any of her 5 kids ride with me, either.
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