Listics

Technorati Tags: eek the cat, sharky

Got here this morning via 495 to Colesville Road. Heath Row is copy typing the thing at media diet. Good to see so many friends and acquaintances. Doc Searls asked Donna Edwards, et al. if we can fix congress like we fix dogs.

We had a little Easter basket on the dining room sideboard — jelly beans, a chocolate/coconut “nest,” a couple of large chocolate bunnies for ear nipping on an Easter afternoon, and of course a few Peeps. If I lived alone, there would be no Peeps in the basket, but Beth has a taste for them at a certain age, and so they are part of our annual tooth-decay ritual.

Imagine my surprise to learn that in the night a certain dog had stood on her hind feet and with what must have been heroically athletic tongue-work managed to enjoy a lot of the candy near the front of the basket. Casualties included the chocolate/coconut nest and two Peeps. The first Peep she must have pretty much inhaled, as they do. The second was found on the floor, bitten in half and discarded. Too much of a good thing, I wondered; or, more likely, Peeps are an acquired taste and even the dog hates them.

Technorati Tags: peeps, homies, dawg

Life in the country provides room for expansive expression. Walking with the dog I often find myself singing. The lyrics don’t matter and the tunes are either my own or oldies that emerge from my mind to match my pace. Walking on the road with Molly, singing something like “Nooncy nooncy bow-wow, doggy-doggy doo…” to the tune of Lily Marlene, one is occasionally overtaken by a silent riding bicyclist and the illusion of privacy is dispelled.

“Loony old man,” thinks the bicyclist.

“I wonder if I should podcast these tunes,” thinks the loony old man.

Technorati Tags: doggies, doggerel, Molly Bloom, spring is coming

Photo by Chris McGrath, Getty Images — 2/12/2008

Since its introduction at the Westminster Kennel Club show in 1877, the noble Beagle has never until this year won a Best in Show award. Congratulations to Kathy Weichert and Leah Bertagnolli, breeders of Uno, or more formally “Ch K-Run’s Park Me In First,” this year’s top dog!

(More photos here at the Baltimore Sun)

I sense a move in our future. It will be a well considered move if it happens. There are some things you don’t give up to improve your position in residential real estate. For the last eighteen years it has been our good fortune to be able to walk out into virtually a private park every morning when we wake up, to be able to hike in the woods and around the marshlands, to walk miles straight out our back door without encountering another person, to let the dogs run free, to scatter herds of deer and flocks of turkeys, to listen to crowing cock pheasants and smile at the bunnies squirting out of the brush ahead of the dog. In the winter we feed the birds, and incidentally the squirrels. There is seldom a time when less than a dozen different varieties of birds are represented in the back yard — downy, hairy, and red-bellied woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees, a flock of cardinals, blue jays, mourning doves, juncos, two or three different kinds of sparrows, and goldfinches all regularly appear together only to disappear when a hawk takes a perch in the windbreak.

This little northern paradise, thirty-three acres of our own set within almost a thousand acres of Nature Conservancy, protected State Dept. of Natural Resources lands, and adjacent farms protected forever from development by conservation easements is a twenty minute drive from the Capitol steps, from the University, from downtown Madison. So why would we think about moving? Maybe, if we take our time and explore our options we can take some equity out of our place, trade out for a place that is nearly as wonderful but a tad more “conventional,” and plump up our retirement savings.

I went digging into the online MLS searchable listings to try to get a sense of our options. The web provides a window on the market, but the tools we have available to explore housing choices are very narrowly bounded. It seems like it’s more art than science to search the listings. No fuzzy logicians need apply. The search parameters you enter regarding price, square footage, number of bedrooms and so forth will lock you into search results that almost certainly will not include all the options you would prefer to consider.

The industry is addressing standards for online listings. I hope they’ve thought to include flexible search options.

Technorati Tags: great horned owls are nesting now

Molly may be somewhat spoiled.  She has more toys than I had when I was her age.  Tonight she spotted a plushy bear on the piano that we intend to share with her on Xmas.   I explained that yes, that was her present but she would have to wait.  We had a lengthy if one-sided discussion about delayed gratification.  I don’t think she heard a word I said.

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