Quirkblog

There’s a guy just outside my office with a helper monkey. Seeing eye dogs are almost passe around the hospital, but people will stop and ooh and ahh about the cute monkey perched on the shoulder of the guy in the wheelchair. It’s an almost irresistible combination of cool and cute.

We’ve jumped on the whole Lemony Snicket “Series of Unfortunate Events” bandwagon… And I’ve developed a theory about what’s REALLY going on. All just idle speculation at this point, obviously, given that I’ve just finished book six out of the eleven that have been released so far. I’m going to try to avoid giving too many spoilers, or to cite anything beyond where my Wife has gotten to (she’s finished book four). In addition to my desire to avoid bibliodomestic strife, this is where I began to formulate my theory.

So, if you’re enjoying the series and don’t want to have your reading ruined by my theoretical ruminations, stop here. Otherwise, read on…
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One of the docs here has been working on a rat breeding program, selecting for athletic ability in order to study genetic predisposition for particular diseases… There’s a whole press release on it from last year when he was in Ohio, so it’s not exactly breaking news… On the other hand, now that he’s here I got to film him. And the rats.
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Caught Professor Juan Cole’s lecture on democracy in Iraq. Outstanding stuff, despite the strange influx of freaky LaRouche followers who decided the best way to get publicity was to pack the line for the Q&A session after the lecture. And that’s enough about them.
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The dogs arrived last night & are settling in, with only minor difficulty. Lucy wet her cage and Charlie wet on the towel we had put by the front door for wiping snow off their feet. Lucy may have been too excited by the new & strange neighborhood to take care of her business when we were taking her for late-night walkies before putting her to bed. Charlie is probably just showing a bit of attitude.

I haven’t written for a while, for a couple of reasons. First off, I was enjoying the vacation from work and decided to give myself a bit of a vacation from writing at the same time. Second, there wasn’t a huge bunch of things going on that I wanted to write about. And the volumes of writing about how there isn’t much to write about is possibly the most egregious crime that will be laid at the feet of the inventors of blogging software when the revolution comes…
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You want to know a quick formula for feeling old? Go to a museum and see some of your childhood toys on display. My folks have a bunch of stuff in the local library’s seasonal exhibit of “Timeless Toys.” Some of it is stuff of theirs, some of mine and some used to belong to my grandpa.

This was his little toy horse on wheels. We’ve got a photo of him at age six playing with this. We’ve got another one from the same era showing the huge spreading elm trees on the farm…
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