Yesterday I was at the Vet’s office with the OI Girl, getting the dogs some vaccinations. We were just walking out, wrassling our two dogs, who wanted to sniff and possibly devour all the other dogs in the waiting room, when this guy asked me if I was Mark. I said yes, and although he looked familiar, I didn’t really place him, till he said he read my website. (I thought that was funny, ’cause I never really considered this a website, its more like a TOY website). It clicked then and I asked him “are you Mad Bull?!” and he said yes! I said I always wanted to meet him and Trouble. He said he gets together with Trouble every now and then.
I gave him my business card and hopefully he’ll call and we’ll have a cuppa coffee or a cigar sometime. I had looked at Mad Bulls pic on his profile and had been keeping an eye out, but he is much taller than I expected!

It was cool, meeting another blogger!

I bought a bottle of this stuff. Dr Katz’s Thera Breath Oral Rinse. It is worthless. If you drink coffee, this won’t even get the coffee taste out of your mouth. I knew it reminded me of something, but couldn’t figure it out, suddenly it hit me- it is like swimming pool water. That’s about how strong it is. Worthless.

Q: Why was the skeleton afraid to cross the road?

A: He didn’t have the guts!

Q: What do you get when you take the insides out of a hot dog?

A: A Hollow-weenie!

Yesterday I turned my old ladder, which was replaced by the spiral staircase, into a workbench.

I’m working the night shift this week. Getting up at 3AM to be at work by 4.

I had a 401K with my company before I moved down here. I rolled it over to a CD when I left. I was watching it, and in a few short years it grew from $32k to almost 100k. I was waiting for it to hit a hundred.
Then George Bush got elected (George Bush getting elected, NOT Sept 11, 2001) and it dropped back down to almost 32. Almost the same as I started with.
Then over the years it slowly grew back to almost $80k.
Now it’s going to drop again, surely less than I started with.
Funny, a mason jar buried in the back yard would have yielded more than my IRA.

It’s Saturday, first sunny day it seems like in weeks.

For the past three days, I’ve been being trained on the Nautel FM V5 transmitter. We installed it a couple of months ago, but the purchase price included training, so the factory rep came down here and went through each module and greatly increased my knowledge. I have an older Nautel too, a Nautel FM5.
Our competition has Harris Transmitters in my same transmitter room and I tell you, they’re real pieces of shit. Nautel is going to kick their asses in the future.

This training is also partly why I’ve been a little slack on my posting this week.

The relationship between Ditto and Sheba is deteriorating. Ditto is less and less willing to put up with her shit.
A common scenario is Ditto walking through the house, fast, with Sheba on his tail. She just bugs him and bugs him like she wants to play all the time. If we pay any attention to Ditto, she comes and gets between us and Ditto.
We give them both a treat, Sheba eats hers fast, then tries to get his.
That’s what happened last night, and Ditto wouldn’t have any of it.
They got into a fight–for real. It’s becoming more and more common.
I was breaking them up and Sheba hit me on the wrist. It’s the first time I’ve ever been bitten and it drew blood.
Sheba seems to be non-trainable. She thinks she has to do what she is told only when she wants to. She just acts deaf when it suits her. Or, as another example, I teach her not to jump up on me, but the minute we have guests, she jumps up on them. I teach her ‘no jumping’, and she thinks jumping is OK, just not on me. She can’t get the point.
I want to get rid of her but the OI Girl wants to keep her, so we’ll keep her. Part of me wants to keep her too.
She is just so constantly annoying to me and Ditto. She won’t let anybody rest.
For a week we’ve been keeping her in the kennel in the daytime. She should be getting out of the kennel, not just going in. Proof of worsening behavior.

I don’t know what to say. It’s not like teaching her to sit or something, it’s teaching her to exist minute to minute without pissing everybody off.

I have this bench/lounge bed that I made for outside out of old scaffolding. It is the only thing that Sheba regularly chews. Day before yesterday I came home and found more missing chunks and Sheba acting guilty. I put her if front of the damage, showed her the wood chunks and told her NO! With a whack on the ass.
I know she knows, because she acts guilty and she won’t come because she knows what I want to talk to her about.
Yesterday afternoon I came home and it was worse than ever. She had chewed that bench from end to end. Maybe she thinks I’m telling her to chew more?
Yesterday afternoon I got the kennel from downstairs.
I had my doubts the OI Girl could get Sheba in there before she went to worrk.

She said Sheba walked right in.

Maybe she’s like someone who know they will become a werewolf when the moon gets full, “Lock me up so I won’t chew the bench!”