This Week

It's been a mish-mash of a week here. So here's a mish mash of a post to fill you in.

Have you seen the news about the discovery of extensive ancient Mayan ruins in the jungles of Guatamala? (If not, you can read about it here.)  This appeals to the latent archeologist in me, but it also makes me glad I didn't follow that career - the jungle is probably even worse than the desert in terms of working environment. I'm glad there are people who pursue this line of work even under such adverse conditions. Our world's knowledge base and understanding of our history is much richer for finding lost sites like these.

Also in the news (although it was a few weeks ago, so maybe it should be called "olds"), a research team in Australia has released a paper about raptors intentionally spreading fire in order to flush out prey, something that the team says has been known by indigeneous peoples for more than 40,000 years (so maybe it should actually be called "ancients"?) For the full story, click here.

And in a warmer, fuzzier story from Australia, go here for a YouTube clip from The Kangaroo Sanctuary. If it doesn't melt your heart, check to see that you still have one. If you live nearby, you can even book a sunset tour, meet their kangaroo family and (swoon) HOLD A BABY KANGAROO. Now I have three things that I would do if I were a traveller and won the lottery (two things that unfortunately will never happen, but that doesn't keep me from making a list): (1) visit the giant redwoods in California, (2) visit the tabletop mountains in Newfoundland, and (3) HOLD A BABY KANGAROO.

Closer to (my) home, I am about to be driven batty by a neighbour's dog that barks constantly. About two years ago I undertook to check out this barking dog in case it was a reportable case of animal neglect or cruelty. From my clandestine observations it seemed that the only issue was that the dog liked to bark. And it has probably been driving its owner batty, too. But in the winter I am always thinking that pets (even barky ones) are too cold and my brain can't shut out the sound.

Add to that the fact that one of our cats has become extremely needy, and my head feels like it may explode any day now. Our kitty is only nine but before we got her she had been hit by a car and had a serious leg injury. It has occurred to me more than once that she may have had a brain injury as well. She has always been an extreme meower, as I've mentioned before (here). But the last couple of years, and ramping up the last six months or so, her ability to find her food dish or to realize that there is food in her dish is not a sure thing. Sometimes I have to bring her to her food, or put her dish right under her nose. Her eyesight is fine. Her hearing is fine. She just seems confused. And the resulting meowing is making my eye twitch. That's not true. My eye is twitching because I've been reading too much and sleeping too little, but the meowing is not helping. At least she can still find the litter box, thank goodness.

No, I would never do that!

Speaking of reading too much, I've been having a hard time finding a good book from our collection bought at the second hand sale in the fall. I've started three since the first of January which I've had to give up on partway through. And I've read another three that were only so-so. Is this what comes of my greediness in buying so many? The year before, we had such good luck with our finds. I'm hoping this was just a string of unfortunate picks and that I've now read or dumped all the duds and gotten them out of the way.

And hopefully good to read, too, kitty!

Lately we've been EXTRA lucky here because we are getting both the frozen AND the non-frozen forms of water falling from the sky! Yes, that is sarcasm, the lowest form of humour! Constant temperature swings and the possibility of breaking a hip on the ice or drowning in the puddles will do that to a person!

Good news - we're over our technical difficulties. Our computer problems have been fixed by our son, the computer whiz. Somehow a setting got changed and the wrong DNS (domain name system) was being used whenever we tried to access the internet. We aren't sure how this happened, but it had a clear starting point and when our son changed it back to the original settings it had a clear ending point too. So I've been catching up on a month's worth of internet surfing and, you know what, that might have something to do with my eye twitching too.

 Over and out, people! Hope you have a good weekend.



All funnies gratefully borrowed from icanhas.cheezburger.com