What? I skipped a post again? Dammit.

In my defense, I've been busy these past few days. As you know, I've been supervising Dad's medications and dog-sitting Rambo and Scarlett (and trying to make July not jealous). Also, there have been issues with our commercial rental property, including an AC failure and an (unrelated) fallen tree that damaged the roof and destroyed the gutter over the back door that has a bad tendency to flood. Add to those that I have an end-of-July deadline on a coding project. And I helped one friend build some shelves and another fix her cable system. And my own ISP was down for most of Friday and Saturday. And I've been trying to find time to write more. And and and and.

But that's all just excuses.

On the up side, I did just recently discover that my phone takes great panoramic photos, a feature which I have been using exclusively to take photos of clouds.

So that's good. And that's enough.

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On Monday, May 13, I took in Rambo while his daddy was in Florida.

Rambo is a good dog, but he's significantly younger than the girls. He loves to play. All. The. Time. It can be a bit draining.

Rambo wasn't any trouble for me or the girls (he never is), but he doesn't get along with Teddy. Too bad that I had already promised to keep Teddy while his daddy was in Florida! There wasn't supposed to be any overlap, but Rambo's dad was delayed temporarily with a broken transmission.

Teddy is generally docile, but he hates to share "his" territory with Rambo. I think that the problem is that both boys still have all of their original parts (if you know what I mean). Rambo and Teddy have gotten into a fight before, sending Teddy to the animal hospital with puncture wounds. It was readily apparent when Teddy arrived that he hadn't learned from the experience.

Fortunately, I only had to keep the two in separate rooms for 12 hours before Rambo went home. Unlike Rambo, Teddy could generally care less about the girls. This is both good, in that he isn't always pestering them to play, and bad, in that he takes their spaces and destroys their routines without any consideration for the fact that it really is their house.

Well, Teddy has finally gone home, too, and the girls finally got their house back. They wasted little time before starting their celebration.

I bet they sleep for a week.

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I think I need a vacation from my family. True story: when I was younger, I thought my parents were normal, like you would see in a Norman Rockwell painting. How could I have been so wrong?

My mother suffers from chronic depression and anxiety. My father is a manic depressive sociopath. I have no idea how they stayed together long enough to have me.

For my father, I cut his dog's hair for two hours in the summer heat, and get yelled at because I didn't try hard enough. For my mother, I juggle one home improvement project after another but she's still not happy inside her own house. It's all a lot of work with nothing much to show for it. To keep trying to help them, I must be the crazy one.

On second thought, a vacation may not be enough. Maybe I need to move to a different state and take on an assumed name. How about "Dirk Rambo"? Yeah, that should be inconspicuous enough.

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I was really hoping that 2011 would be better than 2010, but that looks less and less likely. I sadly announce the death of Marquessa, my father's Black and Tan Coonhound.

Always afflicted with an insatiable wanderlust, Marquessa apparently escaped from my father's yard while he was out of town on New Year's Day and was struck by a car. She died on the side of the road, like her father and brother before her. My father found out when he returned home yesterday.

Marquessa would have turned 6 this year. She spent her first year with Chere before her death. That was just long enough for Chere to teach Marquessa all of her bad habits. Rambo has spent his first year with Marquessa. So thanks to Marquessa, Chere's bad habits live on in Rambo.

She was a good dog, and I loved her.

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I've been dog sitting for my father's poodle puppy, Rambo, and it turns out that his puppy is better behaved than mine. Victoria, my full grown poodle, is determined to catch one of dad's cats or hens, which makes every trip into the yard a struggle. So far, the score is Victoria 2, Hens 0 -- that's hens caught, not hens killed (Victoria has a poodle's typically soft mouth) -- before I could separate the combatants. Meanwhile, Victoria has her own cheering section as Rambo patiently stands at the top of the deck and barks his gleeful approval. He may be better behaved, but that doesn't mean that he's helping.

[UPDATE]: This blog post requires that I include the following picture of Rambo to illustrate just how vicious he is. You may want to shield the eyes of your impressionable children before scrolling down.

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Tis the season for poodles.

My aunt gifted me two rescued standard poodles this week. The black bitch is named July and is quite a playful handful. The light apricot bitch is named Victoria and is skittish and reserved. They came as a pair, previously owned by a woman who became unable to care for them following an injury. Despite the fact that they are both adults (2+ years old), they've kept me very, very busy.

Meanwhile, my father bought a new standard poodle puppy descended from a line including show champions. Though at this point the puppy remains unnamed, I'm sure that it can't help but do well considering that it's dam was named for Joanna Cameron's title character in television's The Secrets of Isis.

[UPDATE: For the record, Victoria isn't an apricot. She's just a really, really dirty white. Silly girl.]

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This is what 92,000 people standing in concern for a single person looks like:

With 1:16 remaining in the game, UGA's Bacarri Rambo suffered a severe concussion that left him motionless on the field. It was the first time I've seen the cart have to carry a motionless player off the field in person, and I must say that the crowd, including the many Auburn fans, was quite supportive.

And despite a dismal first quarter played by the Bulldogs (no first downs, 14 points scored by Auburn), the game itself turned out to be another in a series of fantastic games this season. It is a shame that our record isn't better considering how entertaining the home games have been this season (with the exception of the Tennessee Tech blowout last week). Once more to go as Kentucky visits next week for the final 2009 home game, our UGA-record setting fourth night game this year.

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Today is Groundhog Day. World-famous Punxsutawney Phil (which is more a title, like "Pope," than an actual name: groundhogs only live about a decade) has seen his shadow more than 6 times as often than not in the past century. What does this mean? That it's generally sunny in Punxsutawney in February.

And if you live in an English-speaking country, you no doubt know that the Super Bowl featuring the New York Giants and the New England Patriots is tomorrow. While it remains to be seen if a groundhog can predict the winner as poorly as it can predict the winter, Scripps Howard News Service isn't waiting to find out. As usual, they asked a bunch of celebrities for their picks, trusting to the observed phenomena that famous actors are more important and more right about everything from medical practices to political theory than common slobs like me.

This year, Dolph Lundgren predicted a Giants win (21-13). On the other hand, Carl Weathers presumes a Patriots victory (31-17). Amusingly enough, the only time these two masters of modern cinema have ever appeared in the same film, Weathers played a patriot ("It's too bad we've got to get old.") who was beaten to death by the fists of the giant Lundgren ("If he dies, he dies."). What does this mean? That apparently Sylvester Stallone was too busy gleefully mainlining HGH for the already green-lit Rambo V to comment. ("[I'm] your worst nightmare.")

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