I will be making some changes here in the next week or so; the purpose of the site will remain essentially the same as indicated in the message below this one from last February, but things will get more active in these parts. Stay tuned.
Per the last post, I have migrated some of the more significant posts from here over to Mermaids (well, copied them actually, since I left the originals in place here) and, as of now, those of you following my thoughts and adventures as recorded here should book mark that site to stay on the journey.
There will be irregular posts here in the days and weeks ahead but all those will be mentioned on and like from Mermaids, so you won’t miss anything if you regular visit there. Be sure to stop by Monday which is the anniversary of The Biggest Day Ever.
My ex-wife use to hate it when I said “Trust Me.”
She may have been onto something.
Despite all my grand promises of how this website stuff would be repurposed, I’ve found that the split between “personal” and “political” I made by moving all the latter over to the new I Have Heard The Mermaid Singing just isn’t working for me.
Come Monday, everything not related to beer (that stays at Jack Curtin’s Liquid Diet) will be posted at the Mermaids site. I’m even copying some of the recent posts from here over to there for the sake of continuity.
What will happen here is either the place will be, basically, dead or, more likely, it will be a repository for various print pieces I want to have online to link to when necessary, photos and other “support” material. There may be an occasional post, mostly to direct wayward visitors to one of the other sites, but the action will be at the new/old digs.
I hope you’ll join me.
From Dick Jerardi’s column in today’s Philadelphia Daily News:
Speaking of Villanova, football and basketball are 32-2 since Labor Day weekend with a national championship and, if Selection Sunday were today, a No. 1 seed.
Can you say “Golden Era,” boys & Girls?
Damages returned last night with an intricate and ultimately shocking third season premiere that was once again a reminder of just how great a show it is. Together with Mad Men and the soon-to-return Breaking Bad, this is high level, superbly written and well acted drama that proves that it is the message and not the medium which matters.
If you’re a fan and missed the opener, get thee now to a rebroadcast.
When I moved into this apartment over three years ago and the Girl Dogs, Fergie & Di, were still alive, I could leave them alone here for hours with no fear of any problems. And when I”d return, I’d open the front door and find Fergie sitting roughly 15 feet in front of me in the center of the hall. Always.* Sometimes Di was right behind her, sometimes she was lying further back in the middle of the living room. Fergie was always the alpha dog of the pair and so it was not surprising that, after she left us, Di moved up and took over The Spot.
High Maintenance Buddy, on the other hand, earned those adjectives in large part because of his deep separation anxiety, a not unusual characteristic for a rescue dog. The result has been that I take him with me whenever the situation is right and leave him in a crate when I have to go without him, generally cutting things short to get back as soon as I can because he is given to constant barking and the last thing I need is trouble with the neighbors. To be honest, though, most of them, after they meet him, assure me that anything he wants to do is fine with them and isn’t he so cute. Man, I haven’t been able to pull that off myself in decades now.
Of late, when I’ve left him for brief stints, no more than 10-15 minutes, I’ve come back and heard no barking as I approached the door. There he was, in The Spot. Last night, with the apartment in front of me empty and the guy upstairs away, I took the big leap and left him here for a couple of hours while I did the Robbie Burns thing, the longest stretch ever. Damned if it didn’t work. In the spot, on the spot, when I got back, smiling happily.
Whether this is a long-term breakthrough will be determined as we do it several more times, but I sure wish I knew what it was about that spot on the rug. If I could bottle and market it, I’d be a rich man.
* Requisite disclosure: once during Fergie’s last year, I went out the front and snuck around the building and in the rear door and saw her up by the door I’d left through, standing and staring at it. I assume this was her behavior in the period right after I would leave and that she would then move back to The Spot, so there’s some sort of timing factor involved in all this mysterious doggie lore.
