Guy's blog about life with pets in northern mich.

Has anyone heard about what the guys who claim to have found the body of a dead Bigfoot, have shown to the hordes of enthusiasts and skeptics, besides photographs? An actual corpse and forensic samples of Bigfoot DNA would certainly rock the anthropological and zoological world. I for one will only be convinced of the existence of these creatures, by such proof. According to what I heard, the purported discoverers apparently interrupted a Bigfoot funeral service, and perhaps the service included... Sign in to see full entry.

I will always remember the instant that my brother Perry was instantly transformed from being a normally active, athletic young boy, into a sedentary board game playing, couch potato. I was reminded of that day while at my mother’s house with my other brother and sister looking at old photos of us kids, when we were growing up. Mom showed me a school picture of one of us boys, and asked if it was me in the photo. I knew that it was my brother Perry immediately, because of a prominent scab on his... Sign in to see full entry.

As I was getting ready to go out back to cut firewood Sunday, Baby knew where I was heading and began dancing around my feet, coaxing and anticipating another trip into the woods. I am familiar with his attention span and the amount of his patience, (about as much as a fruit fly or a small kid has) and I didn’t want to have to ride herd on him, while cutting wood. I thought about leaving him home but I knew that if I did, he would mope around and make me feel guilty for stomping on his little... Sign in to see full entry.

Bernie Mack, Isaac Hayes, Tony Snow, Tim Russert, and Heath Ledger, comparatively young men, have all died recently. If we ever needed to be reminded how tenuous our hold on life really is, these deaths should tell us again, how fortunate we are just to wake up each morning. Nobody is guaranteed tomorrow, regardless of wealth, age, health, physical conditioning, diet, or habits. I am always frustrated when some newsreader or print media reports that somebody died suddenly. EVERYBODY dies... Sign in to see full entry.

This weekend, it is blessedly cool and during August, this is a rare occurrence. I had intended to cut and haul a lot of firewood to take advantage of the cool weather. Of course, we were rained on all day yesterday, and the weather channel is calling for another all day soaker again today. What do you want to bet that next weekend, temperatures will be in the nineties and so humid that everyone will be stuck indoors, sitting in front of the air conditioner? The rain is a good thing for my... Sign in to see full entry.

Our dog Tarbaby, needs another dose of Frontline flea treatment. He jumps up during the night and starts enough ripples in the waterbed to whip cream, by attacking some flea with his hind leg. Everybody has seen a dog try to bite a flea with the machine-gun approach. They work over the area where they know the flea is hiding, with rapid-fire bites, sweeping back and forth faster that a flea can flee. I wonder how many bugs are bit this way, probably not many. I also wonder if Baby can tell when... Sign in to see full entry.

Being a “ Glass half-full ” kinda guy, when I pass my 2500 th read today, I will be able to tell people that I am closing in on my 5,000 th read. Looking on the bright side of life is not just a song from Monty Python’s “ The Meaning of Life,” it is my philosophy for how I try to live. Admittedly, I sometimes become so frustrated with the stumbling blocks and pitfalls that somehow litter my path as I follow it, all I can do is sputter and fume. Pulling out my remaining hair and grinding my teeth... Sign in to see full entry.

Do you remember “ barefoot summers?” Were barefoot summers something that only occurred in the days before P.F. Flyers became omnipresent? From sometime in April, until September, the kids I hung around with wore shoes only when forced to do so, by our parents. After 7 months of wearing shoes every day, I am sure that our feet were tender when we first walked on gravel, sticks, and bottle caps, but I don’t remember a period of transition between pussy-footing and running barefoot where ever we... Sign in to see full entry.

This is an embellished and hopefully improved, reposting of another childhood memory, from back in the " mists of a long ago time." It is a very good thing that nobody had started building those medieval piano-flinging machines (trebuchets?) when I was a teenager, the vandal years. In those long-ago days our thoughts were filled with plans for the world’s biggest slingshot, cast-iron pipe cannon, rockets and potato guns. There was an elm tree in our neighborhood that was shaped perfectly to... Sign in to see full entry.

Did everybody have a “ Dead man’s hill,” when growing up? When I was just a young sage, I can think of several, within our pedestrian or pedal-powered range of travel. The definition of what qualified one hill to be more deadly than another, depended on the means of getting to the bottom of the hill and the season of the year. Paved hills might be skated down, sledded down, tobogganed down, brakeless derby-raced down, or almost any gravity powered conveyance, like a barrel. “ Dead man’s hills ”... Sign in to see full entry.