What are you doing today?

[gwand]

We aren't supposed to talk religion on the forum.
I'd like to have a company called "Bog Man Botanicals" and claim to be selling ancient lore and products used by the ancestors.
It could even have a beauty line attached to it, preserving us from the ravages of age.

Ha ha. No religion. I’m talking about the opera Norma by Bellini. Norma was a Druid priestess who falls in love with a Roman soldier, her avowed enemy. Very dramatic in the bel canto style.

 

[jaylach]

Watched my Cleveland Baseball Team win game 5 of the divisional playoffs to go on to face the NY Yankees in the conference championship series while doing my monthly updates on all my computers.

Other than that I am waging war in my apartment and losing. A danged fly got in and I haven't been able to get the thing yet. I SHALL prevail! I totally hate the things and very seldom get one in my place as I'm on the third floor. Just opened my window blinds to attract to the window. Battle has been engaged!!!! My sword (fly swatter) is at hand! I shall defeat this evil dragon!!!

 

[Fishmanic]

Was kind of hoping to find a guitarist and/or fiddler who knew Celtic music, as I really want to put together a band

 

[GaryE]

I'm jealous of places where a musician like @WhistlingBadger could just take his instruments down to the pub for a session, and people like me could sit in and enjoy it.

 

[jaylach]

Myself and a cichlid just had heart attacks! I have to keep my tank topped off as my rope fish likes to hang out in the pump and ceramic chambers of my built in sponge filter and, if I don't keep the tank topped off, he can't get out of the chambers.

Sooo... I flip the hinged hood to top off and I notice an odd shape on the surface among some plants. Figuring it was some dead plant matter I touched it. Cichlid goes straight up in the air like a bass on a tight fishing line and I barely avoided dumping about 1.5 gallons of water on the floor. One would think that when I flipped the tank hood the danged beastie would have left the surface for deeper water but no it never moved at all until I touched. Boy did it ever move when I touched!

Actually it was pretty funny but scared the daylights out of us both.

 

[Lanpenn]

I'm tired already. Helper is scraping and painting house trim, AC guy came and replaced my defective 3 month old motor, I cleared the porch off and got a coat of shellac on a Singer and a White Rotary, then my puppy was delivered. She's about 3 months old border collie lab mix and owner had to give her up and a return would have got her euthanized. She has met the pack, I think they approve as much as likely anyway. It will take time, she is crate training in my room, gonna be a long night

I'm shocked. Why would a return get her euthanized?

 

[Alice B]

I'm shocked. Why would a return get her euthanized?

Shelters in Texas are jammed with dogs. Adoption returns often do not get a second chance.

Sadie is a sweet little yippie thing and my dogs are old. 10, 11, 14 and 6. 10 year old has a metastasized mast cell I'm pretty sure, 14 is on thyroid meds and the average life expectancy for a shar pei is 12.

 

[jaylach]

Shelters in Texas are jammed with dogs. Adoption returns often do not get a second chance.

I hear what you say. In the past, for a couple of years, I donated $25.00/month USD to the ASPCA but stopped doing so after seriously researching them. Actually very little of the donated money actually goes to animals. Also they are supposed to give grants to local shelters but these grants are almost impossible to get.

I still donate $25.00/month USD to animals but now I do it to a local no kill shelter that isn't just dogs/cats but will take in any animal in need. They have a staff that is totally volunteers with no actual pay including two local veterinarians.

I remember a story about them from a couple of years ago. Someone brought a mom dog with five babes. The mom soon died from malnutrition and the pups would have died soon after. The volunteer staff stayed with the pups 24/7 and saved three by hand feeding and keeping them warm with their own bodies.

I think that my money is MUCH better served with this local shelter than the charity for profit that is the ASPCA.

 

[Back in the fold]

Today is homecoming day for “ She Who Must Be Obeyed “ . I am so very glad to get her out of the nursing home and back at home . This has been the longest three weeks of my life . We’re not out of the woods yet but I think we might be coming to a clearing that will give us some breathing room .

 

[GaryE]

Great news @Back in the fold .

As for shelter dogs, we actually get 18 wheelers full of dogs coming up here from Texas. I'm kind of skeptical because the dogs seem to be all about the same age, and all about the same breeds. I smell a puppy mill system posing as a shelter, but I could be wrong. You pay a couple of hundred bucks for shots and transport, and they get you a dog on the next truck. They stop at all the small cities and towns in the region.

Our local shelters are largely empty. There are plenty of cats, often trapped feral ones, but dogs are impossible to get. I looked for months before we gave up and bought a puppy. We've considered a second dog and I've been looking, but there are almost no options. There are enough pit bulls to keep some shelters open, as they seem to be a commonly discarded dog, but it isn't a type that has any appeal to me. I think a lot of men who want to look tougher than they are get them as accessories, and then dump them after a year or two when their lack of training becomes an issue. But even there, there are very few.

This is Canadian thanksgiving weekend, and I'm typing in the lull before the storm. There will be potato peeling in a few minutes, then 2 little kids, 13 adults and 5 dogs. It should be fun.

 

[Alice B]

I do not donate to the national organizations at all. Local animal shelters and low cost spay and neuter clinics only. There are many many puppy mills and backyard breeders as spay neuter laws are NOT enforced, (dogs are property and Texas is all about property rights), and there is glut particularly german shepherds, pit bulls and chihuahuas. And heelers, omg so many heelers, there is a puppy mill for them somewhere in Fort Worth. the pups get sold, they don't get trained and then they get dumped. Or they just get dumped when they don't sell, so the shelters are constantly full and many dogs go in and come out in plastic bags. 3 of my older dogs are shelter dogs, 2 were on death row when i got them with half an hour to spare, the 4th dog was headed for a crowded shelter with no vaccines. He's only 6 years old. Pup had a good night, had a couple of late potty runs, I took her water dish out of crate, put her bed and her sock monkey and a nylabone in, and she went to sleep. She's a keeper, super smart and she already knows how to fetch. Gave her a new ball from my hidden stash. She's comfortable following Teddy around and Teddy is not a nut job with her because she is female.

 

[Alice B]

but Teddy does not want her in his crate. My dogs are older, the youngest one is 6, and might play with Sadie, but grandchild entertainment would be very helpful. Happy Thanksgiving Gary, and happy homecoming Back in the Fold.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Hanging around with grownups has its appeal. Who are your favourite Celtic artists?

I've been listening to the sad but powerful Lankum, and lots of the Mary Wallopers for fun stuff. Ye Vagabonds are good, if almost too traditional in the bar band way. KInd of like the old Dubliners to me.

Ossian, William Jackson, Julie Fowlis, the Tannahill Weavers, Lunasa, Danu, Joanie Madden, the Chieftains, Wicked Tinkers, Gaelic Storm...several others. Peatbog Fairies and Enter the Haggis are fun when I'm in the mood for Rock and Roll. Never heard of Lankum and the Mary Wallopers. I'll have to check them out. There are several younger bands on the scene that I like but don't know well enough to comment on. It makes me happy that the Scottish and Irish (and Welsh and Breton, I hear) traditions are alive and well and not just kept among the old.

How about some pre Celtic Druid tunes? Especially the ones the Priestess chanted during human sacrifice.

Has anyone ever told you that you are a very strange person? I'm not a big opera fan, personally, even the pre-Celtic-child-sacrifice sub-genre.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Yesterday I did a huge water change on the 150g, got various elk skulls and jawbones soaking in hydrogen peroxide solution to whiten and de-stinkify them, and took the Badgerling to the ER with a severe, worsening, multi-day headache. Turns out it was just a bad sinus infection; pain is managed, medicines are being taken, and all is well. Then stayed up late talking on the phone with a distant best friend.

This morning, I slept late, which is unusual for me. Now I am drinking tea and contemplating whether I have time to do a water change on the 55 before church. That's about as far as I've gotten today.

 

[GaryE]

Yesterday I did a huge water change on the 150g, got various elk skulls and jawbones soaking in hydrogen peroxide solution to whiten and de-stinkify them,

Has anyone ever told you that you are a very strange person? I'm not a big opera fan, personally, even the pre-Celtic-child-sacrifice sub-genre.

Am I the only one who thinks practicing the de-stinkification of elk skulls in peroxide makes you possibly weirder than a fan of druidic sacrifice opera tunes? Face it, we're all a bit weird here!

Lankum is hard to take, as it is very depressing and very traditional murder ballad stuff. But there is something real there, very real and very passionate. In small doses, they're brilliant. Droney, but brilliant.

There seems to be a really vibrant alternative music scene developing in Dublin. Lisa O'Neill can be interesting from that scene, though I find her stuff uneven. Ye Vagabonds are a lot like the old bar bands, but sing in Irish as well as English. The Mary Wallopers are just a fun band from the border region.

Alexis Chartrand is a Quebec traditionalist, and my daughter says Genticorum and Les Chauffeurs a Pieds are good for the sound from my neck of the woods. Some of the early, Green Linnet Records era La Bottine Souriante is also good stuff. Quebecois has Breton and Irish influences run through a couple of hundred years musical isolation.