Monday morning stuff

We inadvertently packed and brought with us part of Austin's Christmas village collection last fall.

He and I did a bit of excavating in the mountain of boxes still piled up in the garage yesterday morning before his departure, but failed to find the box with his his stuff.

But we did turn up a box I've spent hours searching for since last October - the one containing my Nikon Coolscan IV negative scanner and my Epson flatbed scanner. And, as an added bonus, the box contained the remote control for my DLO Homedock Deluxe - a device that lets me play my iPod through our TV/home theater setup. It's useless without the remote and I'd toyed with the idea of buying a new one.

So I set up the negative scanner this morning and this photo is the first test image I scanned. It's a really grainy black-and-white negative shot on Kodak Tri-X iso 400 film in July, 1970 of Sean and Diane at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Fla. Sean was about 2½ and Diane was pregnant with Steve, who was born three months later on Halloween.

The pleasure of having the negative scanner working and finding the DLO remote this morning helps a bit to counter the effects of the rude awakening Ruthie gave us.

Ruthie has been sleeping at the foot of our bed for the last few months because she decided that is her proper place and because she will bark all night if left in her kennel in the garage. Pete, on the other hand, has better manners. He loves to sleep in our room too, but maintains a dignified silence when we banish him to his kennel. Pete sleeps in his kennel outside our closed bedroom door because when he sleeps in our room he gets me up at odd hours to go out and do his business in the yard. He's able to hold it until about 5:30 or 6 a.m. when confined to his kennel.

We're loathe to kennel either dog in the garage now that the weather has turned beastly hot.

But I digress.

While Maria and I were waking up, watching what passes for local TV news - I heard Ruthie barfing on the carpet at the foot of the bed. I investigated and found her staring at a couple of lumpy puddles on the beige carpet. I hustled her and Pete outside and decided the wet/try ShopVac was the appropriate tool to lift the stuff off of the carpet and minimize absorption.

That done, I headed for the bathroom and discovered that Ruthie had suffered an attack of the brown squirts on the tile bathroom floor. Thank God neither of us shuffled in there in bare feet in the pre-dawn darkness. She also peed, making the mess even more interesting.

Maria graciously volunteered to do the preliminary bathroom cleanup and I followed up with our Hoover Floor Mate floor scrubber, trying to avoid stained grout.

Both dogs have remained outside for the past four hours and I'm inclined to leave them out there all day.

Our local BMW friend Deb says her dogs have occasional digestive problems like this when they eat acrorns. Our back yard is littered with acorns from all of the oak trees, so that's a likely explanation for Ruthie's problems this morning.