What made you smile today?

Now THAT is what I call a smart dog :wink:

sunday morning here. just went into the garden to pick some lettuce. "annie" -another neighbour's dog -was in her backyard. i got some friendly barks to let me know that some dogtreats would be appreciated. so had to go and get some treats ("milkbone" is the preferred treat); they were accepted with thanks . hbg

hamburger, you're quite the friend to the dogs in your neighborhood! I wish there were a nice dog around here to love... We've just got a neighborhood cat that comes around pretending to be a stray, asking for food. Of course, two out of the three of us are allergic to cats, so we guiltily turn her away.

*sigh*

My day didn't start off very smiley. I waited a half hour for the bus this morning, and when one finally did come by, it did not stop. It didn't even slow down. I was so angry!

I went home and asked Hyoun for a ride in to work. He's the best roommate ever. He takes such good care of me! Because he is such a good friend, I was only 15 minutes late for work, instead of goodness-knows-how-late I might have been. Hyoun makes me smile.

hamburger is a very good friend to his neighbourhood dogs, and a very good Opa to his grand-dogs.

The grand-dogs, Bailey and Cleo, made me smile A LOT this weekend. They were very happy, mellow dogs - and had great fun running in the schoolyard with our new best friend, Janetta. It always makes me smile to see her little pink bicycle going up and down on the sidewalk in front of our house when she thinks it's time for us all to go for a walk.

My side of the street is a great haven for rescued dogs. My neighbour Joe just took delivery of a 15 month old Shi-Poo, who would have been taken to the pound if he hadn't said he'd take Leo in. Leo looks like he's going to be fun (he arrived about 30 minutes ago).

I bought a wonderful print last week in an ornate gold frame. My angel and I hung it in the dining room tonight. It looks great.

Smile, or perhaps stare in wonder.
We had a brand new dumpster delivered today, replacing the one that had fallen prey to rust.
In addition to a sticker admonishing that it was not for public use and one warning against putting flammable materials in was this one:
"Do not play in or occupy this container for any reason." johnboy

When I went to sit down by the canal, around the corner, on the steps down where everyone goes to sit when they've bought an icecream at Il Mulino, I got disturbed. I'd planned to sit down and not read, but write some stuff down, stuff to do. But across the canal at Ekko, the alternative music stage/club/moviehouse/whatever, two guys had come out, sitting on their own steps, music wafting from the open first-floor window. Loungy house beat, something I vaguely knew. It was four in the afternoon. They looked dishevelled. Late night, I guess. Music sounded like my old "after E" playlist - music choice is pretty tricky, the morning after, you know. It annoyed me - house music makes me sad nowadays. Next up was The Gorillaz, familiar track. This way I was never going to get my mind clear.

So I got up, repacked my fat agenda, and the raisinbread and cheese sandwiches I'd actually prepared at home (hey - I'm getting there). Got up on my recently repaired bike, and drifted off to the tunnel and beyond, into Lombok, down to where the quaie meets the water, where the coots used to nest. But on second thought I moved on a little bit further still. Over at the lock, an old green bridge takes you across half the canal, onto this long strip of useless land in the middle of the canal. You turn onto it, drive down a brick roadlet for 50 meters, and turn right onto a more boring bridge that takes you across the other half. Call it a traffic isle in the canal, to separate the lock for outgoing boats from that for incoming ones.

On this strip of land, there's nothing much but the brick track down half of it, grass and weeds peeking through the cracks, the view towards the now disused, nineteenth-century looking factory, and on either end (but one end in particular) a long stretch of nothing. Just grass, trees, weeds ... tiny strip of forgotten land. And all the way on the "head" of one end, overlooking the canal towards the city, someone had put up a tent. It'd been there a week or two before, too, quite a flashy tent.

Shortly after I sat myself down in the shade, looking out over the pretty, elaborate former factory, a guy and a gal came down from by the tent. Thirty or something I guess, thirty-five probably, but definitely weathered by life beyond their years. I grinned and said hi, they grinned and said hi back. Some to and fro between the two ensued over by the street, she returned alone and said hi again. Still standing, half-going, she started to talk. She was so in love! Good for you, I say. He's really sweet - you know? Yeah? Yeah! She started walking, but half-turned and said "oh, I'm from Limburg by the way!" Awright - me, from the Hague. Oh yeah?

She started explaining - this guy she knew from the Hague, in this squat, he'd had long black hair, but then this was when she still had long red hair (she gestured) - the story became very confusing very quickly. There'd been a squat, and a long, black shed where people could sleep, down by this street and, you know ACU? Yeah sure I did. Her speech trailed off here and there, sometimes she was hard to make out, incoherent. Had it been drugs that had taken her off into the marginal? Homelessness? Once, apparently, she'd just been this alternative kid, hanging out with punks just like the rest of us who-knew-someone-who-lived-in-a-squat. But now she talked the talk of the people who live in Hoog Catharijne, the shopping centre.

Still, here they were. In a flashy tent of their own, down at the end of a piece of land noone else needed (and where apparently, the police let them be). Camping wild in the middle of the city! And happy - a bit incoherent, perhaps (here she is asking me where he just went off to - I'm all, he'll come back! She's all, confused: yeah, will he, what did he say? Me: Well, I dunno ... but I'm sure he'll come back! And he did, too, a little later, dragging along a shopping cart with some groceries, saying a friendly hello himself). But optimistic and good-humoured and happy to be there. Just a happy woman with her man, holidaying down by the water. There's a thin line between here and there - and between there and here. A thin line.

Very nice story, nimh. I always enjoy your observations of life in your city
Two quickies:
Saturday, A regular customer came in with a tourist in tow; a lady from Sweden, trying to find out how much it would cost to mail postcards home.
We called the only post office branch open on Saturday but they never answered. Eventually we got a real person in some call-center somewhere.
"How much for a postcard to Sweden?"
There was a long pause, and then "Where's Sweden?"

I was at a long stop-light today, a very long stop-light where four lanes of traffic cross another four lanes. A power line spans the intersection that is not at all pedestrian friendly. Perhaps 70 meters between the poles on either side. As I sat there, waiting my turn to go left, I watched a squirrel make its way from one side of the road to the other using the overhead wire. I wondered: how many generations of squirrels got squashed before evolution kicked in and they figured out the safer route.

Out walking the dogs.
A nice peaceful walk.
Me walking and talking, them smiling and trotting along.
And then I heard the crickets.
That means summer is at least halfway through here.
I'm not smiling because we're heading toward autumn; I'm smiling because I'm remembering a lot of other evenings listening to the crickets with friends and people I've loved.
Talking, and then stopping to listen to the crickets.
Smiling along with the dogs.

For 2 days in a row, now, my neice has brought home ladybugs in her lunch box.

I went in the Thai snack bar for a quick spicy chicken soup. They got good spicy chicken soup. Next to me, also alone and looking outta the window, a guy; next to him, two guys, talking soccer. The place is really small - four seats by the window and four tables, now dragged outside - yet the kitchen is always bustling in stress and hurried to and fro. Lots of take-outs.

When I was about halfway through, the guy alone, a short, but strong-looking and otherwise inconspicuous guy, got up to pay. Next time I look up, it's because one of the Thai guys busying around has erupted in a nervous, elated giggle. I see the guy just finishing giving him a short treatment - apparently, he's one of them bone-crackers, them whatchamacallits, difficult word. Another kid from the kitchen volunteers while the first one is still intermitting his laughing with breathless lines in Thai and "thank you"s in English. The guy grabs him, reaches his arms around him and with a brief push or two shakes loose some kind of bone midway down his back. The kid almost collapses, literally falling through his knees for a sec, then sighs in surprised relief and goes what I guess is the Thai equivalent of Je-sus, goddammit - man! The guy turns him around and in another ten seconds grabs his neck like he be a cat, pushes or shakes something there, then takes his head between two hands and jerks it sideways - crack. Whoo, the kid shakes his head, ooy!, as the other guys are all milling around and laughing now.

The other two, three cooks/waiters are pulled forward by the first kid now, while meanwhile business still continues - its OK, the guy grins as he does the first one, he's from the East he knows what its about - but the kid don't look too sure … you can see he aint be wanting to show nothing, and his face does indeed remain admirably expressionless through the headjerk and neckclinch - but when he's turned around and gets his back done, he too yelps, jumps, shakes himself and laughs - in that sequence. The three of us at the window have turned in our seats, grinning, as nervous laughter clinks around, in between the still busy running to and fro with a plate full of rice here, a bowl of soup there. Five minutes later, when the guy's long left, the Thai kid is still excitedly retelling the story to the others, in shrieks and gestures and words I don't understand. The guys by the window still talking soccer.

I'm planning a big barbecue for next weekend and my husband is being very cooperative about his honey-do list. Big smile here!

I fixed my hair differently today. Curly. I call it "beach hair" (the heat & humidity there always make it curly.) I got three compliments!

Getting up out of bed.. and away from my wife!

'Getting away from my wife' as in: for the rest of your life, or as in: until dinner?

Until she got out of bed. Sometime around noon.

Well it's Saturday, you can not blame her for that :wink:

exactly what i hate tx weather. i know there are worse places or cities in tx to live in, but i hope the next place we live isn't this sticky.

houston tx was named #1 for stinkiest places to live.
last year it won #1 for fattest people too. this year someone else won it. i'm sure houston is relieved.

Oh, I'll take the heat and humidity over cold weather any day. I understand you don't do well in cold weather either, right? Houston is a sauna in the summertime, but at least it never gets really cold in winter.

yeah. I am miserable in cold weather. The condition I talked about on the other thread gives me an attack when I touch a cold steering wheel or even take something out of the freezer. I'm the strange girl you see wearing gloves in the middle of a tx summer.

With that said, I have lived in Belgium and Korea where it gets very cold, but I was always dreading those 3 words, "Let's go outside."