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Refill on that?

The Star­bucks clos­ing list is now pub­lic, and I’m pleased to see our local isn’t on it. I’m gen­er­ally pleased with Star­bucks, except when I am not. I won’t rehash all the stan­dard bitch­ing about the mer­maid, because it doesn’t mat­ter; Star­bucks intro­duced dark roasts to much of Amer­ica, and give them that at the very least. If it’s much more dif­fi­cult to palm off a watery brown tinc­ture as some­thing worth your $1.25, then they’ve done the world a service.

Of course there’s a down­side. I saw it last week in the Las Vegas air­port, on a short lay­over when all I wanted was a great big cuppa strong black cof­fee, and got stuck in line behind the eight pick­i­est peo­ple in the world. When one opened with, “I’d like two tall skinny soy lattes, one just a tad cooler than the other,” I threw up my hands and sought out a fast-food place down the row.

Once upon a time Amer­ica drank cof­fee. And Amer­ica was strong. An Amer­ica that drinks tall skinny soy lattes — one just a tad cooler than the other — is an Amer­ica that is, dare I say, French.

Ah, well. I have big­ger fish to fry today. Picked up the dog yes­ter­day, and could feel his bones pok­ing through his coat. He’d been off his feed most of the week, the vet said. OK, can’t blame him — aban­don­ment in one’s dotage is prob­a­bly grounds for a hunger strike. Since he’s got­ten home, he’s done noth­ing but eat. And then some­time last night, he got up and pooped on the din­ing room floor. Which is either the begin­ning of the end, or just evi­dence of a senior citizen’s dis­com­bob­u­lated con­sti­tu­tion. I’m going with the lat­ter. Poor old man. In seven weeks, he’ll be 17. Deaf, mostly blind, but still swingin’.

Speak­ing of dogs, let’s swing into some tasty blog­gage today with one I’ve been car­ry­ing around a while. I don’t know how many of you read the NYT’s mag­a­zine cover story week­end before last, the one on psy­chotropic phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for pets, but it made me laugh so hard I nearly had my own dining-room accident:

Aggres­sion is a feline prob­lem too. A few weeks after vis­it­ing Dod­man, I went to the home of a man in West Los Ange­les whose pet was on Prozac. The owner, Doug, asked me not to use his last name because he didn’t want busi­ness asso­ciates to know about what he called his “cougar psy­cho lit­tle minia­ture stalker” — Booboo the cat.

Boo­boo was appar­ently poi­soned by an unfor­tu­nate dried-flower-eating inci­dent, which led to the onset of, I dunno, catzophrenia:

From then on Boo­boo was dif­fer­ent. He would peri­od­i­cally ambush Doug. Over time, Doug noticed that attacks were more likely if he smelled at all abnor­mal — for instance, if he had been near a woman wear­ing per­fume — so he would take a shower after com­ing home and then change into his des­ig­nated cat-wrangling outfit.

…Doug led me up the stairs in his house to the sec­ond floor. He donned a pair of khakis that he had lined with heavy-gauge bal­lis­tic nylon and washed up because he had shaken hands with me. He crept toward the mas­ter bed­room, where Boo­boo was per­ma­nently quar­an­tined behind a door that had been remounted to swing out­ward to facil­i­tate quick escapes by Doug. “Just behind this door lurks the Tas­man­ian devil,” Doug said before slip­ping inside. I squat­ted at ground level and watched through a trans­par­ent doggy door. The 400-square-foot room had a walk-in closet, a four-poster bed and a floor-to-ceiling view of Bev­erly Hills man­sions dot­ting a scenic canyon. The suite belonged entirely to Boo­boo, though Doug said he was now able to sleep over a few nights a week. Boo­boo slinked past the win­dow and gave me a steady gaze. He had a tuxedo coat, mostly black but with patches of white on his feet, under­belly and fore­head. Doug scooped him up and they nuz­zled face to face. “He’s just warm, soft and fuzzy, and he purrs, and he’s cud­dly,” he murmured.

The theme of the story: These crit­ters wouldn’t need all these drugs if we, their own­ers, weren’t quite so crazy our­selves. Good reading.

Those who can get back to the land, do. Those who can’t, del­e­gate. Another rea­son to hate Cal­i­for­nia food­ies:

Eat­ing locally raised food is a grow­ing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer’s mar­ket, let alone plant a gar­den? That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Fran­cisco, will build an organic gar­den in your back­yard, weed it weekly and even har­vest the bounty, gen­tly plac­ing a box of veg­eta­bles on the back porch when he leaves. Call them the lazy loca­vores — city dwellers who insist on eat­ing food grown close to home but have no incli­na­tion to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typ­i­cal of a new breed of busi­ness owner serv­ing their needs.

Here’s a story that’s been get­ting some play here of late, about a Michi­gan woman who escaped from prison in 1976 (drug charges), went straight, assumed a new iden­tity and was found 30 years later liv­ing the good life in the sub­urbs of San Diego. The ques­tion is, of course, how do you treat a self-rehabilitated soc­cer mom whose orig­i­nal crime was non-violent but whose escape from cus­tody remains unpun­ished? As one, the howl goes up in Michi­gan: Send her back to prison, for a very very very long time!

I am not among those howl­ing. Of course she deserves pun­ish­ment; the state has to do some­thing. But jail­ing her again seems point­less, and what’s more, I know of a pun­ish­ment that will a) hurt; b) hit her where she lives; and c) help the state of Michi­gan. Among many other things. And it is? Ahem. Fine her.

Fine her big. If her fam­ily wants her on the out­side so bad, make them pay a hearty sum. Half a mil­lion, say. Or more. Why is this so hard? You’re wel­come. Just call me Solomon.

Off to the gym, which I am dreading.

Posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 9:39 am
in Current events, Same ol' same ol'.

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62 responses to
“Refill on that?”

  1. Julie Robinson said on July 22nd, 2008 at 9:56 am

    Count me among those who don’t get the whole Star­bucks thing. Of course, I also don’t drink cof­fee, but $4 for a cuppa joe? Does any­one remem­ber the quaint old days when peo­ple used a thermos?

    My chuckle of the day.

    Man grow­ing pot plant out­side his trailer read­ily admits that it’s his and there’s only one because he’s try­ing to cut back on his use. Insert appro­pri­ate stoner joke here.

  2. coozledad said on July 22nd, 2008 at 10:17 am

    I always thought soy milk was a lit­tle too “green” fla­vored for cof­fee. Wouldn’t it be like shred­ding Napa cab­bage into your break­fast cereal?
    I guess you could also sell a but­ter­milk cap­puc­cino in some locales.

  3. Dorothy said on July 22nd, 2008 at 10:18 am

    I am so glad I don’t drink cof­fee. I get snotty enough about the prices for pop­corn and drinks at the movies. Which I never ever buy.

    Hey in case any­one is inter­ested, I read at the Comic Curmudgeon’s site the other day that he’s going to be on Jeop­ardy tonight. His first name is Josh.

  4. MichaelG said on July 22nd, 2008 at 10:31 am

    I was inter­ested to see that the Starbuck’s at Shat­tuck and Cedar in Berke­ley is clos­ing. It’s a block and change from Peet’s  —  the very first Peet’s opened by Alfred Peet his own self back in the late ‘60s. The mother church. I used to buy my cof­fee there back when I lived in the neigh­bor­hood. I’m not at all sur­prised that the Star­bucks there is clos­ing. I still drink Peet’s  —  there’s one not far from where I live and I pass at least two Starbuck’s to get there.

    Herb Caen once observed some­body order­ing a non-fat latte with decaf cof­fee and named the drink a “why bother”.

    I’d let LeFevre go with a slap on the wrist. Maybe a $50 fine. I’ll think about putting her in jail the day after “Scooter” Libby goes to jail.

  5. brian stouder said on July 22nd, 2008 at 10:39 am

    My lovely wife pointed this out to me:

    http://​www​.msnbc​.msn​.com/​i​d​/​2​5​7​94327/

    No sooner does The Dark Knight fall upon box office records accross the land, than Chris­t­ian Bale has to try and make bail

  6. moe99 said on July 22nd, 2008 at 10:41 am

    The sec­ond Star­bucks ever con­structed was in Seat­tle and across the street from the fed­eral build­ing where I worked. Now the fed­eral build­ing had recently put into effect an edict that you could not main­tain a cof­fee pot at your work­site. All the bet­ter to pro­mote the cafe­te­ria in the base­ment, they thought.

    Well, you can imag­ine the stream of folks that moseyed over to this Star­bucks daily from a 30 story build­ing. And our office was there every day. We liked to credit our­selves with the push that lifted Star­bucks up into the stratos­phere. But, of course, being employed by the SEC meant you were barred from buy­ing ini­tial offer­ing stock. So that kept me out of buy­ing both Microsoft or Star­bucks when it came out. And of course, I could not envi­sion buy­ing in the sec­ondary mar­ket because, by that time the stock would be so over val­ued. >bangs head on desk< Ah well, I always wanted to work my whole life.

  7. LAMary said on July 22nd, 2008 at 10:50 am

    Regard­ing the guy who will plant and tend organic gar­dens: at last, a career for my old­est son. He could so do that. I have to show him this story.
    Soy milk in cof­fee is revolt­ing. Soy milk in decaf cof­fee is as a French friend once said, “like keess­ing tru a teessue.“
    Dorothy, if pop­corn prices at the movies kill you, con­sider how much a movie ticket costs here in LA. $11.75 for an adult ticket, plus pay­ing for park­ing in most places. We didn’t see Bat­man or Mama Mia last week­end, but if we had it would have cost us over fifty bucks just for tick­ets and park­ing. I stayed home and watched most of the Mad Men marathon instead.

  8. brian stouder said on July 22nd, 2008 at 10:56 am

    Mary — two young folks plus me, plus snack combo # 1 —  two large Diet Cokes (refill­able!) and one large pop­corn with no but­ter (also refill­able!) — = $~40 total (I started with two $20 bills, and came home with 75 cents)

    but park­ing is free here, and it was the Rave — the only sta­dium the­ater hereabouts

  9. Julie Robinson said on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 am

    We went to Mamma Mia, which is good fluffy fun. The price seemed very rea­son­able at $6.50, and then I saw they had given us senior cit­i­zen rates! The fru­gal part of me was happy, but the vain part of me was very, very dis­ap­pointed. Our fam­ily always smug­gles in our own snacks, and we usu­ally go to mati­nees, but we also watch most of our movies from Netflix.

  10. Sue said on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:17 am

    Oh, yay! Crazy cat sto­ries! Our youngest cat is nick­named “Evil One” and has to be sep­a­rated from the other two. We have actu­ally bought a prod­uct called “Happy Cat” (hey, it was rec­om­mended by our vet) to try to calm him down. But, we have a legit excuse. He was found near death and had neu­ro­log­i­cal issues from the start, so we can always blame it on that. He loves his humans, and is one of the most cheer­ful cats I have ever seen, but when he gets that look in his eyes, every­one backs off. He won’t go near my hus­band after he’s been up north for the week­end and bites me if he smells the other cats on me. But we love him, he’s such a sweetie…

  11. Dorothy said on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:31 am

    Mary I watched the Mad Men marathon, too. I actu­ally got through 10 straight hours and taped the last three — and watched them last night. And that’s the last time I am ever going to watch a marathon of any­thing. One good thing is that in our tiny apart­ment I could still make din­ner, set the table and wash up a few things in the sink while still see­ing every­thing on the t.v. The com­mer­cials were timed pretty evenly so I knew when I could use the bathroom.

    I hate to brag, but for $14 we saw “The Dark Knight”. We walked to the the­ater because it’s about 1/4 mile from our apartment.

  12. brian stouder said on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:46 am

    we saw “The Dark Knight”.

    Dorothy — what did you think of it? Leav­ing aside the movie’s (frankly sur­pris­ing, to me!) polit­i­cal miasma, wasn’t it almost lit­er­ally like a thrill ride?

    The movie struck me as very like one of those ‘vir­tual rides’ wherein you sit there and feel the vir­tual ‘motion’. With the con­tin­u­ously turn­ing, spin­ning, rotat­ing pans, and with the point of view on the screen swirling so much of the time, it really did begin to make me dizzy!!

    (‘course, I START OUT a bit light headed, most times!)

    edit: and I noticed that the movie is heav­ily booked into IMAX theaters.…hmmmm

  13. LAMary said on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:48 am

    When I lived in NYC I had a roof gar­den that sup­plied the us with toma­toes, let­tuce, basil, pars­ley and zuc­chini. Haul­ing the dirt up to the roof in a five story walk up was the worst part of the job.

  14. Gasman said on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:49 am

    Nancy,
    Hug your dog for me. Our dog “Pecos” escaped a very scary bout of some bac­te­r­ial infec­tion this week­end. He is already in remis­sion from mul­ti­ple myeloma, so he didn’t need any addi­tional health prob­lems. Makes you appre­ci­ate them all the more.

  15. del said on July 22nd, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    Julie’s “insert stoner joke” com­ment about the self-incriminating pot-grower reminded me of one of my wife’s rel­a­tives — one of the … slow­est … talk­ers … I’ve … ever … known. Sev­eral years back he dropped by our house to tell me about a legal prob­lem. (When he left another friend in the house wanted to know who “the dude was who sounded like Cheech & Chong?)” His legal prob­lem? A cop had pulled him over and searched his car. Find­ing noth­ing he asked, “You got any mar­i­juana in the vehi­cle?” And “Tommy Chong,” hon­est stoner, led him directly to his stash.
    As for Ms. LeFevre, I’d give her a slap on the wrist too, like MichaelG.

  16. Dexter said on July 22nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    I have to jump in off topic straight away.

    Today is George Clinton’s 68th birth­day. Here’s a remem­brance from last September:

    “# ash­ley says:
    Sep­tem­ber 17th, 2007 at 10:37 am

    When he plays in New Orleans, he usu­ally doesn’t even go on until about 2:00, and plays til sunrise.

    I’m try­ing to find out what his cur­rent lineup is. Drum­mers Den­nis Cham­bers and old-Skool Frankie Waddy are amaz­ing
    # nancy says:
    Sep­tem­ber 17th, 2007 at 10:45 am

    Looks like you’re in luck, Ash­ley.
    Octo­ber 5 is a Fri­day, too. Call a sit­ter now.“
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I still make Star­bucks from daily-ground beans at home. I drink a quart in the morn­ing and make a quart ther­mos for a nip here and there dur­ing the day. Star­bucks beans are about $9.50 a bag and I can make quite a few pots from one bag. Some­times I buy Seattle’s best and I really love Trader Joe’s beans…as high qual­ity as Star­bucks. I still have never tried Peete’s, which all my fel­low cafe-philes west of Kansas City rave on about. My ther­mos bot­tle is a Stan­ley, a hol­i­day gift from decades ago, with my name engraved onto it for ID pur­poses because many co-workers had the same type bot­tle.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I had to skim over the cat sto­ries, sorry…my cat Wolfie died of the poi­son Chinese/Wal*Mart envelopes of cat food. He was 15, healthy , and then he was so sick he could not walk or eat, and he died, and is buried deep beside an oak tree I planted 27 years ago. Wolfie died March 18, 2007. I keep his grave clean. God­dam, I miss that cat. Fuck.

  17. Chris Steinbach said on July 22nd, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Time to stop lurk­ing and join the fun. I really like this blog. Since I don’t have Nancy’s courage and com­mon sense, I’m still a news­pa­per guy. Despite its flaws, it still beats really hav­ing to work for a liv­ing. Any­way, I’ve never under­stood pay­ing $4 for a cup of cof­fee. After join­ing my cur­rent news­pa­per, where, believe it or not, there is no cof­fee maker or machine in the build­ing — I started mak­ing my own and tak­ing it to work in a red Star­bucks Ther­mos. I grind the beans and brew really strong cof­fee in an old French press. Can’t start the day with­out it.

  18. john c said on July 22nd, 2008 at 2:46 pm

    One of my favorite Onion head­lines of all time is sort of ironic now.

    “Star­bucks to Open in Men’s Room of Starbucks”

    Also, Cof­fee doesn’t cost four bucks at Star­bucks. It’s usu­ally about $1.50. It’s the fancy drinks that are way expensive.

  19. Sue said on July 22nd, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    Aww, Dex­ter. That’s one of the rea­sons I’m “boy­cotting” this year’s Olympics. Stu­pid but it makes me feel bet­ter. Remem­ber that dis­cus­sion we had last spring when I said my sick cat was at $700 and count­ing? After sev­eral days of ups and downs, he was finally improv­ing until 2 o’clock one morn­ing when he went down­hill quickly. My vet now requires after-hours emer­gen­cies to go to a clinic half an hour away, and we knew we weren’t going to make it. So I watched him go, took about 25 min­utes, first time ever in 30+ years of pet own­er­ship that I haven’t had a vet to help a pet out of this world. Also the first time that I’ve ever cried for more than a day or so after­ward — such ridicu­lous guilt. And I’m mad at my vet for not haul­ing his ass out of bed to help me, which I know isn’t fair either.

  20. Danny said on July 22nd, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    Time to stop lurk­ing and join the fun. I really like this blog. Since I don’t have Nancy’s courage and com­mon sense, I’m still a news­pa­per guy…

    Chris, why not just become a famous nov­el­ist like your rel­a­tive, John Stein­bach?

    Seri­ously, I grind my own and take a ther­mos every day too. It is much cheaper. Plus, I’m, hooked on Jose’s Vanilla Nut and not a big fan of very strong roasts.

  21. Gasman said on July 22nd, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    We took a trip to Que­bec back in 1993 and I got seri­ously addicted to espresso. So much so that I can’t stand nor­mal cof­fee any­more. Espresso has much more fla­vor and is lower in caf­feine. I can also make all the sissy Starbucks-type cof­fee drinks at a frac­tion of the cost, even after pay­ing about 2/3 of a mort­gage pay­ment for a real espresso machine. Got a used grinder on e-bay from a café that was re-tooling and I am set.

    I may even try roast­ing my own beans. That is the only vari­able left that is not in my direct con­trol. Life is too short for bad cof­fee, beer, or whiskey. I’ve got the cof­fee and beer mak­ing down. Now, if I can just put together a still.…

  22. Dorothy said on July 22nd, 2008 at 4:10 pm

    I liked the movie, Brian. And it was a dizzy­ing expe­ri­ence in a way!

  23. Danny said on July 22nd, 2008 at 4:13 pm

    ..Life is too short for bad cof­fee, beer, or whiskey. I’ve got the cof­fee and beer mak­ing down.…

    So true.

    …Now, if I can just put together a still….

    Sounds like you need to talk to Coo­zle. He’s like the Fonz except slightly shorter and more south­ern. He’ll prob­a­bly know.

  24. moe99 said on July 22nd, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    I have a friend who has instruc­tions on how to make and run a still. He’s in China for the eclipse of the sun (not the Olympics) but here’s his web­site:
    http://​www​.amphora​-soci​ety​.com/

  25. brian stouder said on July 22nd, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    He’s in China for the eclipse of the sun

    Really?

    Does he know Carly Simon?

    (maybe his horse will win at Saratoga…)

  26. Jen said on July 22nd, 2008 at 4:34 pm

    I’ve sadly cut Star­bucks out of my life because I just can’t afford it, but in col­lege I gladly paid the high prices for a fancy cof­fee drink. I never drank straight cof­fee — just the stuff with lots of fla­vor­ing and stuff in it. I miss it — now I just drink cans of pop to get my caf­feine fix.

    I hear you all with the movie snack prices, though. My hus­band always com­plains when I want pop­corn & a pop at the movies because it’s SO expen­sive. Our tick­ets to The Dark Knight were $8 each (for the first show­ing at mid­night Thurs­day night/Friday morn­ing), so not too bad. But the pop I bought to stay awake (not that I prob­a­bly would have needed it) was $4! I get reim­bursed for ticket price because I write a review every week for the paper, but I still have to pay for pop­corn. Now I only buy it when he refuses to go to the movie with me. If I’m sit­ting alone in a movie, I am at least going to eat some popcorn!

    I read part of the pet pills story, and plan to read the rest. My par­ents paid lots of money for med­i­cines for their epilep­tic golden retriever with a thy­roid prob­lem, but drew the line at ampu­tat­ing another dog’s leg and giv­ing him doggy chemother­apy because he had can­cer. I could say that I wouldn’t spend so much on an ani­mal, but if we needed to for our adorable, sweet lit­tle kitty, we prob­a­bly would with­out think­ing twice.

  27. brian stouder said on July 22nd, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    I get reim­bursed for ticket price because I write a review every week for the paper

    Is your Dark Knight review online some­where? Did it strike you as con­tain­ing a fairly pro­nounced bit of polit­i­cal topspin?

    Or, am I all wet? (as my lovely wife reg­u­larly reminds me)

  28. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 22nd, 2008 at 4:53 pm

    Nancy Nall for Supreme Court! (Or munic­i­pal court, domes­tic rela­tions mag­is­trate — they all need more com­mon sense up on the bench.)

    I’d fine her a wee bit more than $50, guys, but c’mon, when we’re giv­ing early release to all kinds of hair­balls due to facil­ity over­crowd­ing, why would we put her into cor­rec­tions? Route her over to repa­ra­tions and reha­bil­i­ta­tion, write up a plan, hand her a bill, set up a pay­ment plan, and let’s lock up the third armed rob­beries and fifth DUIs long enough to get them bored enough to com­plete the twelve steps.

    Or some­thing.

  29. Gasman said on July 22nd, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    MMJ­eff,
    Fifth DUI! We’ve got folks down here in New Mex­ico that are on their 22nd DUI! It’s only recently that law­mak­ers started actu­ally pay­ing atten­tion. There is still a long way to go, how­ever. We had a munic­i­pal judge who released a friend who’d been arrested for DUI. Though the local sher­iff refused to do so on the judge’s orders over the phone, he drove an hour and ordered the release in per­son. The idiot left a whole bunch of evi­dence to his arro­gant and ille­gal deed. The judge was sacked and the Supreme Court here stripped him of his robe for life.

  30. Mindy said on July 22nd, 2008 at 5:13 pm

    My awful luck with doggy well-being con­tin­ues this month with my Lab Eli ingest­ing bits of charred greasy alu­minum foil near a grill on the week­end of the Fourth. My hus­band thought he’d pulled Eli off this del­i­cacy just in time, but we found out oth­er­wise later in the day when Eli strained to pass stool that never appeared. That night we found out that the most chaotic night of the year in the vet­eri­nary ER is the Fourth of July with the sec­ond worst night being the Fifth of July. So there we were at 2:15 a.m. on July 6 sign­ing papers to save our dog’s life after spend­ing four hours in an exam room wait­ing our turn to see the vet. The bits of foil had lodged in Eli’s small intes­tine but were coaxed toward the exit with only one inci­sion. The whole expe­ri­ence was a night­mare and then we got the bill. So much for the vaca­tion to cel­e­brate our twenty-fifth anniver­sary. In other sad news, when I took Eli to our reg­u­lar vet to have his stitches removed, she told me that she’s get­ting mar­ried and mov­ing to Texas this fall. I’m delighted for her, but sick for me. At least I got the chance to give her a hug and say goodbye.

  31. moe99 said on July 22nd, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    Here’s another Indi­ana pas­tor named Jeff who has an inter­est­ing ser­mon style:
    http://​www​.kirotv​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​1​6​9​5​5​5​9​1​/​d​e​t​a​i​l.html

  32. Dexter said on July 22nd, 2008 at 5:46 pm

    Mindy, the vet my wife loved to take the ani­mals to got mar­ried and moved to Michi­gan, and the old vet who owned the busi­ness , who was a damn good vet (he was an Idi­tarod vet many years) retired June 30. Now we have to decide if we like the vet that bought the busi­ness. My, my…I don’t like to change vets or doc­tors. My fam­ily doc is an internist who has kept me alive for 31 years now. He so damn good…it’s amaz­ing.
    When I had swelling of the knees 22 years ago I was sent to a merry-go-round of spe­cial­ists , and then it was my doc who fig­ured it all out and cured me. Last Fri­day I had a spell of spiked blood pres­sure and he gave me two pills and today my B/P was 120/60, the low­est for me in my life. I sup­pose if Doc retires I will croak soon after.
    And thanks Sue, for your com­pas­sion about Wolfie, our Tabby Cat. We still have Princess Lab-Dog and Noellie-JRTerrier , and I love them , ’til death do us part!

  33. Kirk said on July 22nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    The vet who has kept our 14 1/2-year-old Yorkie full of piss and vine­gar decided to retire and sell her prac­tice. The new folks (a hus­band and wife and another woman; they have another office not far away, too) seem quite com­pe­tent, though the prices seem to be going up. We do now have the added option of a vet who prac­tices some East­ern vet tech­niques, includ­ing acupunc­ture. We haven’t tried that yet.

  34. LAMary said on July 22nd, 2008 at 6:39 pm

    My vet cried with me when I had to put down Edith the cat at 22 years. That got him high rat­ings in my book.

  35. coozledad said on July 22nd, 2008 at 7:47 pm

    Danny: My wife is the one to ask about dis­til­la­tion. She majored in chem­istry.
    I quit drink­ing hard liquor after the bliz­zard of 2000. My wife and I shared (some­what unevenly) a fifth of Bushmill’s as it became appar­ent we would not be trav­el­ing any­where for the next sev­eral days. I enjoyed it, and didn’t have a hang­over, but some­thing told me that was it for me and whiskey.
    I’m kooky enough on wine.

  36. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on July 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm

    Moe99 — Yeah, i think we’ve all been there.

    Shall we assume that was the object les­son for the children’s moment? “Kids, the Word of God is like the hand brake that keeps our fiery, roar­ing pas­sions in check, so that we …aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeBAM.

    uuu­u­uh­h­h­h­h­hhh.….…

  37. Dexter said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    coo­zledad, I had a epiphany about whiskey too, in Jan­u­ary of 1992. I was stoked as the Lions were play­ing the Cow­boys in a huge play­off game. Lions fans sel­dom breathe such rar­efied air.
    I was par­ty­ing so hard come half­time I was passed out in my Lazy­Boy, and I awoke as the guests were leav­ing my house; the game was over, the Lions had won, and I missed it! Nary a drop since, and later that year I quit wine and beer too, for good. No brag, just fact.
    The first time I saw the prac­tice of “set-ups” was in North Car­olina. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I was an 18 year old base­ball player , play­ing out of Winston-Salem at Ernie Shore Field, out by Wake For­est Uni­ver­sity.
    We went into a restau­rant and all the peo­ple had brown bags with them. They ordered soda and water-backs and poured booze out of the paper bags. Crazy, I thought, just another day to a Tar Heel. Later I found out this is com­mon in The South.

  38. Sue said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    Huh — rum for me. I can’t han­dle my liquor any­way but I usu­ally fall asleep before any­thing unto­ward hap­pens. How­ever, one night we bought a bot­tle of some pre­mixed thing called “bahama mama”. Oh my good­ness. I didn’t stop drink­ing rum after that lit­tle episode, but I know I have to stop at one serving.

  39. Dexter said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:12 pm

    haha, Sue! Where I come from a Bahama Mama is a very spicy type of sausage, kinda like a Pol­ish sausage.
    I liked all booze, and after I tired of rum & coke, I got on a kick of rum, tonic water and lime juice with a lime twist.

  40. Dexter said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    Bushmills…coozledad, what fine mem­o­ries just the name con­jures! A fine Irish drink, indeed!

  41. Catherine said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    Tequila, here. No mas, por favor.

  42. alex said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    I love whiskey. I love cig­a­rettes. I keep telling myself oh just one more sum­mer of fun. Okay, Christ­mas. Okay summer.

  43. Danny said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:47 pm

    Though I’ve never offi­cially sworn off spir­its, its prob­a­bly been 15 years since I’ve had any. I just do not enjoy them like wine and ale. The last time it was this aged, single-malt scotch called Laphroaig. Very good if you like drink­ing from a incin­er­ated peat bog.

    But there was an inci­dent when I was 16 or 17 with Slow Gin and South­ern Com­fort. It makes me shud­der to even type those words.

  44. Danny said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    Alex. That. Was. Funny.

  45. coozledad said on July 22nd, 2008 at 8:51 pm

    There was a while there where we used to accu­mu­late bot­tles of liquor peo­ple had brought to var­i­ous par­ties at our house. I think I men­tioned to some of our friends that I had a fond­ness for a Pol­ish black pep­per fla­vored vodka ( it was the fam­ily drink of a restau­ra­teur in Chapel Hill). So we had bot­tles of vir­tu­ally every undrink­able fla­vored vodka on the mar­ket– chili pep­per, the par­tic­u­larly nox­ious vodka limon­aya, licorice…hell, there was prob­a­bly a cheese nacho fla­vored one in there some­where.
    They stayed in the liquor cab­i­net accu­mu­lat­ing dust until a friend of ours brought a guest over from the then Yugoslavia. It must have been right before all hell broke loose over there. His name was Lucca, and he was from Slove­nia. He’d been in the mil­i­tary, where he told us he’d acquired a rep­u­ta­tion for drunk­e­ness. Now when some­one from the for­mer east­ern bloc tells you that peo­ple there think they drink too much, you know you have a splen­did oppor­tu­nity to clear those unde­sir­able bot­tles from your bar. That’s pre­cisely what we did. Unfor­tu­nately, we assisted him. I gave him the Stoli Limonya first. “I can’t believe you don’t drink this! ” He said. “S’good !“
    We stayed up with him till three or so, when our comas began to set in. He stayed up and did house­clean­ing.
    I had to wear sun­glasses the rest of the fol­low­ing day to keep the sun from eat­ing what was left of my brains, while Lucca insisted we go fish­ing at a pond not too far from the house. He was absolutely unfazed.

  46. Dorothy said on July 22nd, 2008 at 9:03 pm

    Doesn’t every­one drink sloe gin very early in their drink­ing career?

    We had a won­der­ful vet at our sec­ond home. When we had our 14 year old Cocker Spaniel put down (can­cer), we wanted to bury her in the yard. We had about 2 acres and it was the coun­try and we could do it. But Mike’s back was out very badly and he could not dig (plus it was win­ter time and the ground was frozen.) Dr Rubis offered to keep Peanut chilled until the time came when Mike could dig the grave. So over July 4th week­end we had a lit­tle cer­e­mony to bury her. I will never for­get what my son said at the gravesite (he was 10). We had our new dog there for the cer­e­mony, and Josh said “Mum, this is the first time the whole fam­ily is together!” Still chokes me up after 13 years.

  47. Danny said on July 22nd, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    So true about the sloe gin, Dorothy. I think Boone’s Farm is the gate­way drug to it.

  48. beb said on July 22nd, 2008 at 10:29 pm

    I don’t drink cof­fee so I feel way left out on this dus­cus­sion. There was a short piece in the Freep a while back that listed amount of caffine in var­i­ous prod­ucts. I was aston­ished to see that reg­u­lat cof­fee con­tains three times as much caffine as Coca Cola. I find it tales a cou­ple of cans of pop in the morn­ing to get started, with so much more caf­feine in it, no won­der peo­ple are addicted to cof­fee as their morn­ing wake up.

    While cof­fee upsets my stom­ach I have devel­oped a lik­ing for DQ’s mocha moolait’s. I’ve noticed that after drink­ing one I’m pretty ener­gized despite hav­ing just ingested 12 ounces of ice cream. That caffiene ready does jazz one up.

    The idea of some­one going into your back­yard to plant, tend and har­vest a gar­den for you does sound awfully indul­gent. But at least they are doing you a real ser­vice, because gar­den­ing is hard work. What’s really indul­gent and or lazy, are peo­ple who have postage-stamp size lawns hir­ing a ser­vice to mow their lawns.

    Glad to have you back, Nancy. Con­sid­er­ing the length of these com­ments since you’ve returned, a lot of peo­ple feel the same way. Keep on blogging.

  49. basset said on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:02 pm

    and now, we com­bine the topic of the day with one of our peren­nial favorites — the decline of jour­nal­is­tic standards:

    http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008…-opener-pitch/

  50. nancy said on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:11 pm

    Bas­set, you missed a beauty quote in the NYT story:

    “There was a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism, and I’m pleased there was — it means they’re being jour­nal­ists,” said Adam P. Brad­shaw, news direc­tor of KVVU.

    Because there was some real doubt there, I expect.

  51. del said on July 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 pm

    Danny, the spe­cific Boone’s Farm gate­way bev­er­age: Tickle Pink wine.

  52. Catherine said on July 23rd, 2008 at 12:40 am

    No, no, Andre’s Cold Duck. Ah, the late 70’s. Par­don me while I go hurl.

  53. Dexter said on July 23rd, 2008 at 2:26 am

    sloe gin fizz — cherry vodka. kid’s drinks they were. then came Boone’s Farm. I drank it for the first time in 1970. The label said “The Right­eous Apple”. Back in Cal we drank Mateus. That was Por­tuguese wine in a cool bot­tle. It was immor­tal­ized on Elton’s album, “Good­bye Yel­low Brick Road“
    Social Disease

    “My bull­dog is bark­ing in the back­yard
    Enough to raise a dead man from his grave
    And I can’t con­cen­trate on what I’m doing
    Dis­tur­bance going to cru­cify my days

    And the days they get longer and longer
    And the night­time is a time of lit­tle use
    For I just get ugly and older
    I get juiced on Mateus and just hang loose

    And I get bombed for break­fast in the morn­ing
    I get bombed for din­ner time and tea
    I dress in rags, smell a lot, and have a real good time
    I’m a gen­uine exam­ple of a social disease

    My land­lady lives in a car­a­van
    Well that is when she isn’t in my arms
    And it seems I pay the rent in human kind­ness
    But my liquor also helps to grease her palms

    And the ladies are all get­ting wrin­kles
    And they’re falling apart at the seams
    Well I just get high on tequila
    And see visions of vine­yards in my dreams“
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    See, my daugh­ter just called from her Las Vegas home. Iron­i­cally, since I had recently posted here about my cat dying, she told me that just Tues­day, yes­ter­day, her beau­ti­ful cat Patches expired. She said he was 14. They lived with us after her divorce and I fed and groomed that cat and another late cat of hers. My grand­daugh­ter is very sad.

  54. whitebeard said on July 23rd, 2008 at 5:51 am

    I can relate to Star­bucks because the bot­tled Vanilla Frap­pa­cino caf­feine really hits the spot, unusual because I can­not drink real cof­fee, even though I would always vol­un­teer to grind the cof­fee beans (love the aroma) for the lunch room in the first news­pa­per for me.
    Being a young man, I would occa­sion­ally go out drink­ing with the gang and then have a cof­fee to “sober up” and get vio­lently sick. It wasn’t until I had cof­fee with a friend at the laun­dro­mat in the day­time that I dis­cov­ered that it was the cof­fee that was mak­ing me sick and not the booze.
    From then on, I never got sick and never got a hang­over, although after I had five bot­tles of white wine for lunch one time, my restau­rant friend said he had never seen a hap­pier drunk. Could be, I guess, because I bought my wife a sewing machine desk, or what­ever they call it, car­ried it home on my back with some ropes, care­fully hid it in our third-floor aspart­ment and couldn’t find it for about three months.
    It was OK to drink in The Soo or Mon­treal because I could always get a cab or even walk home when we lived down­town, but after one party with mucho free wine after mov­ing to Con­necti­cut, I decided it was not safe to drink and then drive 46 miles home. So I stopped party drink­ing, but didn’t stop par­ty­ing. I think I have had about half a dozen glasses of liquor (usu­ally rum, I avoid white wine because it tends to flow too eas­ily) in the past quar­ter cen­tury on occa­sions when I did not have to drive any­where.
    And guess what, I am just as wildly happy, out­ra­geously flir­ta­tious and hilar­i­ously crit­i­cal of Repub­li­cans when I don’t drink.

  55. del said on July 23rd, 2008 at 8:06 am

    Any­body who gets on such a happy buzz that he buys his wife a desk has got it goin’ on. As Bill Mur­ray would say, “I wanna party with you.”

  56. Danny said on July 23rd, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Dex­ter, that one stanza in that Elton John song reminds me of this one from Sublime:

    I smoke two joints in the morn­ing.
    I smoke two joints at night.
    I smoke two joints in the after­noon, it makes me feel alright
    I smoke two joints in time of peace, and two in time of war
    I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints,
    And then I smoke two more

  57. LAMary said on July 23rd, 2008 at 11:04 am

    I have a headache now from remem­ber­ing Mateus, Boone’s Farm Apple and worst of all, Andre Cold Duck.
    I haven’t drunk any­thing alco­holic since 1983 hav­ing watched the decline of a few fam­ily mem­bers into alco­holic hell and/or death by booze. I decided I didn’t need to hit rock bot­tom but I think I could have eas­ily slid down to that spot. I went cold turkey on cig­a­rettes two years later. All I have left is my coffee.

  58. brian stouder said on July 23rd, 2008 at 11:25 am

    Alco­hol never held many charms for me; I have a glass jaw when it comes to that stuff, and it always made me sick as a dog.

    Sim­i­larly, cig­a­rettes never pulled me in, since the pro­tracted demise of my 4-pack-a-day dad was a sort of IMAX Pub­lic Ser­vice Announcement.

    But Wic­can cer­e­monies in cemetaries involv­ing hot chicks with swords.…I’m THERE!!

    http://​ap​.google​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​A​L​e​q​M​5​h​3​d​T​V​s​W​R​F​U​2​t​n​q​f​w​7​_​D​3​C​8​W​4​A​L​y​w​D​9​2​34IU80

    an excerpt:

    A woman acci­den­tally stabbed her­self in the foot with a 3-foot-long sword while per­form­ing a Wic­can good luck rit­ual at a cen­tral Indi­ana ceme­tery. Kather­ine Gun­ther, 36, of Lebanon, pierced her left foot with the sword while per­form­ing the rite at Oak Hill Ceme­tery, police said. Gun­ther said she was per­form­ing the cer­e­mony to give thanks for a recent run of good luck. The cer­e­mony involves the use of can­dles, incense and dri­ving swords into the ground dur­ing the full moon.

  59. LAMary said on July 23rd, 2008 at 11:38 am

    I gave up wic­can cer­e­monies in 1989. Cold turkey.

  60. MichaelG said on July 23rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    My once wife used to main­tain that the time to plant the gar­den was at mid­night when the moon was full. To my knowl­edge that never hap­pened. But then who knows? I’m a pretty heavy sleeper.

  61. brian stouder said on July 23rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm

    If she has a 36″ long sword, and looks hot in black.….

    it might have been a Wic­can gar­den­ing trick

    (a Wiz­ard of Oz-type joke would be.…“and if she has a green thumb…”)

  62. poochlover said on July 24th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

    Nance, How happy I was when I checked in on your site today and read that Spriggy is still alive and kick­ing! Some­one once said that “grow­ing old ain’t for sissies.” That prob­a­bly goes for our furry friends as well, bless his heart. Best wishes.

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