Monday, June 25, 2012

For those hard-to-reach places . . .

When I saw this online last night, it reminded me of something, but I couldn't recall just what it was.


Then this morning it came to me. Ooh, yes . . . a little more to your left. No, your other left.

Friday, June 15, 2012

How many friends can one dog lose?

Too darn many! I'm usually a jolly fellow, but these days I'm starting to wonder if the ultimate purpose of life is to produce sadness.

Another good friend and neighbor--Shannon--died yesterday. I am really down and can only imagine how distraught her sister, Libby, and their own dog, Daisy, must feel.

Before today, I just knew Shannon and Libby as the nice ladies who took turns walking Daisy, a hound that they adopted and soon nicknamed "The Mouth of the South" due to her strange and rather howl-y way of barking. But Shannon, it turns out, was also a talented and successful writer. Mostly she co-wrote books known as romance novels. She wrote so many that she and her coauthors published them using different aliases. When authors go by fake names, these are usually called pseudonyms or noms de plume, so you can tell them from the ones used by criminals. Some of Shannon's writing names were Madeline Harper, Elizabeth Habersham, Anna James, Leigh Bristol, and Taylor Brady. Here are pictures of just a few of her books:












The list goes on and on. Mike says you can tell from some of the cover pictures why romance novels are also known as bodice rippers. He didn't say which pictures, though. I'll try to figure it out when I'm in a better mood.

Later in her career Shannon turned to a different genre, one that I'll admit is more in keeping with my own taste (pardon the pun): Cookbooks!


Yummy! This book is published by Pineapple Press, which M says specializes in Florida history and culture topics. Here's a link to the book's page on the publisher's website. And this one tells a little about the authors.

Goodbye, Shannon. M and J and I will miss you.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Goodbye, Old Paint!

I've been meaning to post this update for ages, but it seems like the hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

Back in December, when I blogged about our new car, I mentioned that the old one was 17. M tells me this is about a hundred in human years. He said she'd become a breakdown looking for a place to happen. One problem he had in figuring out how to get rid of her was that he couldn't bring himself to sell her to someone who actually needed transportation. And he didn't want to trade her in on the new one, because that's a recipe for getting yourself screwed to the wall by some slick-talking salesman.

Then he remembered an article he'd seen in the paper about donating cars to the Halifax Humane Society. He tracked it down and found a link to a special HHS website called rides4rescues.org, which is a charity partner of the nation's biggest vehicle donation program. One mouse-click and three form-filling steps later, he'd arranged for an auto auction company to come get Old Unreliable and haul her away. A few months later we learned that she sold at auction for $1,000, probably for scrap metal and parts. It was the final piece of a win-win deal: HHS got the much-needed money, and we got room in the garage for our new car. M says that when he can finally bear to ditch his 25-year-old pickup truck, he'll donate it to HHS, too.

We highly recommend this program to anyone who wants to dispose of a used-up vehicle without inflicting it on some innocent buyer who knows where you live. They'll take all kinds of vehicles, too, not just cars and trucks. And it will give you a good feeling to know you are helping to care for neglected animals while they wait to find loving homes. So please check it out--rides4rescues.org-- and be sure to tell them Buddy sent you.

While I'm on this subject, I want to give a special shout-out to Tyler Stover, the Halifax Humane Society's community outreach director. Tyler, who is one of my newest blog Followers, wrote the article about the vehicle donation program. His weekly column, "Tails from the Front," appears each Saturday in the Daytona Beach News-Journal. It's some very worthwhile reading for animal lovers!

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Diane

The lady across the street died this afternoon. I liked her a lot, and she liked me, too. I will miss her.

M and J said we should play this song for her.