40 responses to
“Trouble is gone to.”

1. Dexter said on June 10th, 2009 at 2:20 am

   All I did was copy an email and post it. My brother’s friend Sarah, the turtle-saver, seems like a remark­able woman, though, very car­ing.
   Also, we learned dur­ing the hockey game last night that Kurt Maltby of the Detroit Red Wings is a spokesman for this orga­ni­za­tion, which makes him a good person

2. James said on June 10th, 2009 at 7:12 am

   Hey… I saved a tur­tle the other day.

   Lake Avon­dale (actu­ally, a pond) is filled with tur­tles, and it seems that this time of year they’re com­pelled to cross the road. Maybe look­ing for a place to lay eggs? I dunno.

   Any­way I was tak­ing my walk and saw that a SUV had stopped beyond where this tur­tle was cross­ing the road, and a dad was point­ing out the tur­tle to his son (“Look son. It’s the cir­cle of life…”) but doing noth­ing about relo­cat­ing the tur­tle, who was in dan­ger of being run over by the other SUV head­ing down the road toward this lit­tle scene.

   So I picked up the tur­tle (who wasn’t very happy about it) and returned it to the lake side of the road. So I have those karma points going for me.

3. alex said on June 10th, 2009 at 7:36 am

   They are lay­ing eggs and this is the time of year. Flat tur­tles all over the roads around here.

   I see some that come back to the same spot every year and always around the same date. It’s as if they’re in a trance. They’ll lay their eggs even if you’re stand­ing over them watch­ing. At my mom and dad’s house there’s a giant snap­per that goes to the same spot every time. At my house there’s this funky tur­tle with a shell that looks like a baked potato and it does its thing by the gate to my veg­etable gar­den. It prefers dusk while the snap­per at my folks’ likes the morning.

4. Sue said on June 10th, 2009 at 8:48 am

   We have to stay classy today? Where’s the fun in that?

5. Dorothy said on June 10th, 2009 at 9:36 am

   Now you’re all mak­ing me feel guilty as hell. A cou­ple of weeks ago I had the after­noon off and headed to a quilt show at the Dairy Barn at Ohio Uni­ver­sity. On the way there I had my brand new cam­era beside me on the front seat of the car. I’m zoom­ing down Sycamore Road (longest county road in Ohio, I’ve heard) and what do I see but a tur­tle cross­ing. At first I wasn’t sure what it was, but as I approached I real­ized what it was. I slowed down but did not stop, since there was no traf­fic around at all behind or ahead of me. But I do feel badly now that I didn’t get out and (1) take a pic­ture of the lit­tle fella or gal and (2) help the crea­ture make it safely across the road.

   Sarah is a very spe­cial young lady, Dex­ter! Thanks for shar­ing the story.

   And Sue is right — do we have to stay classy all DAY or just for an hour or so before things slip into degradation??

   (almost for­got — did any­one else see the pre­mier of “Nurse Jackie” with Edie Falco the other night? It is on Show­time. We watched it last night on our DVR. What a hoot!! This show’s gonna be another favorite of ours, I can tell already. They showed lots of pre­views and a few of them made me laugh out loud. Can’t wait to see the rest of the season.)

6. Connie said on June 10th, 2009 at 9:55 am

   I’ve posted tur­tle pic­tures before so.… some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Yes­ter­day my hus­band took this amaz­ing series of pics of a fish­ing heron, just a cou­ple of blocks from my cen­ter city office. http://​dude​.nfshost​.com/​june9/

7. Randy said on June 10th, 2009 at 10:16 am

   It’s not tur­tles, but here is a link to a fam­ily of pere­grine fal­cons rais­ing their babies on a hotel rooftop here in Winnipeg:

   http://​www​.cbc​.ca/​m​a​n​i​t​o​b​a​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​s​/​f​alcon/

   They have been going to that same spot for 20 years. Prior to that, they used the rooftop of a 30-story office tower a few blocks away. I was a sum­mer stu­dent for the building’s main­te­nance crew, and so I had roof access that sum­mer. It’s just stun­ning to see a fal­con perched on a ledge, then to see it swoop effort­lessly to the roof of another building.

   Any­way, there is a lot of antic­i­pa­tion this year, because last year all the chicks drowned dur­ing a severe rain­storm. There was con­cern we wouldn’t see the fal­cons return. Cur­rently, we are told the chicks are bored, and have “delu­sions of flight”, so a close watch is going on, try­ing to pro­tect them until they are ready to go.

8. Catherine said on June 10th, 2009 at 11:11 am

   You all have pere­grine fal­cons and tur­tles; I have a mourn­ing dove pair that wants to nest in the grape trel­lis out­side my office (and over our out­side din­ing table — ewww). These have got to be the stu­pid­est birds on Earth. You look in their eyes and there’s noth­ing there. Some other ani­mal always steals their eggs, but they keep com­ing back.

   Re the TJ’s feast, good idea. One year when we went camp­ing, my sis­ter only brought TJ’s pupus and wine. It was perfect.

9. LAMary said on June 10th, 2009 at 11:26 am

   Nurse Jackie was very good. I saw the free pre­view and actu­ally went back to pay­ing for pre­mium cable to get the show. Edie Falco is just the best.
   Mourn­ing doves seem pretty stu­pid. When I had an out­door cat, she used to score mourn­ing doves even when she was ancient, deaf, and nearly blind. One of my dogs has caught mourn­ing doves. They remind me of chick­ens peck­ing the ground for bugs obliv­i­ous to every­thing else.

10. alex said on June 10th, 2009 at 11:28 am

    Great heron shots, Con­nie. There’s a heron that hangs out on my beach­front a lot. This morn­ing saw two in flight together, which was a first. (Prob­a­bly the mating/chasing game, I’m guess­ing.) There’s a rook­ery nearby that I’m aware of. Con­ser­va­tion­ists failed to stop a devel­oper from putting up new hous­ing around it (despite the world not need­ing or want­ing any more taupe vinyl sub­di­vi­sions, as we have plenty of those sit­ting largely vacant).

11. Dorothy said on June 10th, 2009 at 11:35 am

    Well, not as cool as Mr. Connie’s heron shots, but I got some nice hum­ming­bird ones this past weekend:

    http://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​t​r​u​v​y​5​7​/​s​e​t​s​/​7​2​1​5​7​6​1​9​4​0​5​0​59554/

12. Jolene said on June 10th, 2009 at 11:39 am

    Had enough of being classy? Check out this long online con­ver­sa­tion, which some­one linked to in Gene Weingarten’s WaPo web chat yes­ter­day. I don’t think a per­son strictly needs to read the whole thing, but it’s impres­sive to see how suc­cess­ful and good-humored peo­ple are avout sus­tain­ing the metaphor.

13. LAMary said on June 10th, 2009 at 11:56 am

    http://​www​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​0​7​/​1​0​/​1​0​/​f​a​l​w​e​l​l​-​p​a​s​t​o​r​-​f​o​u​n​d​-​d​e​a​d​_​n​_​6​7​8​9​1.html

    In case any­one needs to be reminded of the scuba suit kink story.

14. del said on June 10th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    That was a funny thread Jolene.

15. brian stouder said on June 10th, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    Dorothy — great pic­ture! And the really strik­ing thing about it is that the hum­ming­bird is drawn to your hum­ming­bird feeder. My mother in-law has got­ten a few of those over the years, and they never work; but she gets hum­ming­birds near her front win­dow all the time.

    The reten­tion pond near my work­place draws herons from time to time; quite majes­tic, even in the face of the (lately) hec­tor­ing geese — who are only now begin­ning to relax a lit­tle, with their rapidly grow­ing young’ns (and the absence of our coy­ote friend)

16. Scout said on June 10th, 2009 at 12:42 pm

    I’ve got a pair of house finches that built their nest in the upturned light fix­ture attached to the ceil­ing fan on the back porch. The two of them are con­stantly swoop­ing in and out of there and each time they return we hear the babies going wild. Any­way, we have taped the switches into the off posi­tion for both the light and the fan until the fam­ily vacates.

17. Sue said on June 10th, 2009 at 12:53 pm

    Jolene: Oh my heav­ens. “Is the kitchen spot­less?” Some of those com­menters are NN.c-worthy.

18. paddyo' said on June 10th, 2009 at 1:25 pm

    Mourn­ing doves dumb? I always thought, “slow,” but maybe that’s the same thing (same result, too, per­haps).
    At any rate, about a dozen of them come in daily for the pick­ings left beneath my back­yard bird feeder by the messy flocks of house spar­rows and house finches that seem to dom­i­nate my cor­ner of Denver.

    That said, it’s hard out there for nest­ing birds. Here’s a tale of woe from up Aspen way.
    Hun­gry golden eagle + six heron nests = scram­bled egg buffet …

    http://​www​.aspen​times​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​9​0​6​1​0​/​N​E​W​S​/​9​0​6​0​9​9​9​6​1​/​1​0​7​7​&​a​m​p​;​P​a​r​e​n​t​P​r​o​f​i​l​e=1058

19. Dorothy said on June 10th, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    I’m never going to have a grilled cheese sand­wich again with­out think­ing of this thread, Jolene! (com­ment #263 is espe­cially funny)

20. Julie Robinson said on June 10th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    So, how we doing on the stay­ing classy? Grilled cheese indeed. Or, in the local par­lance, cheese toasties.

21. Dorothy said on June 10th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    We’re all gonna get a scold­ing when Nance gets back.

22. alex said on June 10th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    I liked the reply by the woman who said her hus­band doesn’t like to eat tacos.

    Grilled cheese was a pretty lame euphemism. I’m pretty sure what they’re talk­ing about is fudge poundcake.

23. MichaelG said on June 10th, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    We used to have a dove cou­ple that hung with the chick­ens. They would spend all day wan­der­ing around scratch­ing and pecking.

    That was a pretty amus­ing post. I never heard the grilled cheese metaphor before. I do know what tacos and fudge pack­ing are. Mood, love, gen­tle­ness and reci­procity are all.

24. Catherine said on June 10th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    That open-faced club sounded pretty good, too!

    Mom’s gonna kill us.

25. moe99 said on June 10th, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    Any­one near the finan­cial dis­trict in San Fran? Beware of the dive bomb­ing bird pro­tect­ing her nest:

    http://​www​.cnn​.com/​v​i​d​e​o​/​#​/​v​i​d​e​o​/​o​f​f​b​e​a​t​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​0​9​/​v​o​.​b​i​r​d​.​a​t​t​a​c​k​.​p​e​d​e​s​t​r​i​a​ns.cnn

    There’s even a blog for the bird:

    http://​frontstree​tat​tack​bird​.blogspot​.com/

    Have to say I like my grilled cheese sand­wiches toasty. (duck­ing for cover)

26. Sue said on June 10th, 2009 at 4:11 pm

    All I can say is I’m glad it’s not shar­ing week anymore.

27. Scout said on June 10th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    My favorite com­ment so far:

    >Have you given any thought to watch­ing a few carefully-selected cook­ing classes together? It can really help to over­come resis­tance to some­thing she might be react­ing to as a fright­en­ing tech­ni­cal chal­lenge or an abnor­mal crav­ing, and give her more con­fi­dence in the kitchen.

    If she’s averse to this idea, then that’s another indi­ca­tion that she isn’t will­ing to make a rea­son­able accom­mo­da­tion in the rela­tion­ship. My hus­band and I have been enjoy­ing video cook­ing lessons for years, and it’s really improved both the qual­ity and quan­tity of our own kitchen efforts.<

28. coozledad said on June 10th, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    My prob­lem seems to be shoddy kitchen equip­ment. You’d think I’d show up at class with a proper spat­ula, but hell no. My wife’s always been pretty gra­cious about my cook­ing, but the truth is, we’re eat­ing a lot less these days.
    I’ve been think­ing about one of those bat­tery pow­ered Cuisinarts.

29. Julie Robinson said on June 10th, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    It’s NOT shar­ing week any­more, Cooz!

30. Jolene said on June 10th, 2009 at 5:42 pm

    Just drop­ping back in after being offline most of the day. Glad to see I was able to put that classi­ness idea to, um, bed. I don’t think it was fudge pound­ing that was being dis­cussed, Alex. Too many ref­er­ences to things oral. Weingarten’s com­ment, by the way, was,

    I do find it inter­est­ing, and pos­si­bly very sus­pi­cious, that the let­ter writer does not think to men­tion whether he fixes his girl­friend grilled-cheese sand­wiches, and whether or not he tries to make them as appe­tiz­ing and inter­est­ing as pos­si­ble, with nice lit­tle gar­nishes and cor­ni­chons and what­not. This does seem to be all about him, doesn’t it?

    So ladies, when your sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers start bring­ing pick­les to bed, you’ll know what they’re look­ing for.

31. Dexter said on June 10th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    Good catch on the non-taco eatin’ sumbitch, Alex, although I just couldn’t keep read­ing the advice on that thread.
    Con­fes­sion week redux: never had any fudge poundcake.

32. joodyb said on June 10th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

    Thank you, LAMary. I was try­ing to recall it.

33. alex said on June 10th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    Well, Dex, they’re a pain in the ass to pre­pare and always turn out bit­ter rather than sweet. So I’ve heard.

    I would think any­one who would want one is almost as twisted as the peo­ple who crave Lit­tle Deb­bies and Ho-Hoes.

34. Dexter said on June 10th, 2009 at 8:42 pm

    Ho ho, good one there, Imus!
    Off topic (ho ho) but I watched the 1998 Woody Allen movie “Celebrity” on cable recently. In one scene, a lady seeks instruc­tion from a lady-of-the-night on how to prop­erly fix a grilled cheese sand­wich, and first she must have been hun­gry so she starts act­ing all-weird with a peeled banana…so she must have been demon­strat­ing some­thing else…and the escort-lady chokes on the banana and has to have the Heim­lich maneu­ver applied, and before she is done gasp­ing she lights a ciggie…the star asks her if she really wants to smoke right now? — “Oh, yes!”

35. moe99 said on June 10th, 2009 at 9:23 pm

    Ham­mer­time:

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​n4stgu

36. beb said on June 10th, 2009 at 9:57 pm

    I hope Nancy is hav­ing a good time. For some rea­son, either I’m being very dis­tracted read­ing this thread or you peo­ple are being very random.

37. CrazyCatLady said on June 11th, 2009 at 1:59 am

    You peo­ple??? Ran­dom? lol

38. Connie said on June 11th, 2009 at 9:43 am

    Based on the com­ments, I am glad that I chose not to fol­low that link.

39. brian stouder said on June 11th, 2009 at 9:49 am

    Word, Con­nie!

    (why did this thread remind me of hav­ing a box lunch at the Y?)

40. moe99 said on June 11th, 2009 at 9:54 am

    Con­nie, Brian – you didn’t read the grilled cheese thread? It’s like the Sein­feld episode on onanism only bet­ter written!