A Stranger Among Us

i was sitting in my dining room yesterday when i heard a loud meow coming from a cat. it was not the meow of one of our cats. thinking that it was coming from outside, i checked all windows, but saw no cat.

to my dismay the meow was coming from our basement door! the stranger was among us and wanting in. i went outside to check our basement windows wondering how in the hell a cat could have gotten in there. sure enough, there is was one open window that didnt' have a screen on it. after many failed attempts to get the cat to come back through that open window we had to open the basement door, let him come in the house and try to get him out the door before he made contact with one of our felines or the oversized canine.

this cat didn't want to leave, but finally we were able to get him outside. but, he tormented us all fucking night, meowing, and meowing, coming up to our deck in back, our front porch etc. he is a tenacious fucker. we even let smith bark and chase him, but he wouldn't back down. i yelled for him to leave, but each time he returned.

we were trying to enjoy being outdoors last night, but this cat made it impossible. we gave up, came inside and tried to forget about him. we suspect he was abandoned by some neighbors who just moved out, but left him behind.

he's a beautiful, black cat who is obviously hungry but we can't help him out. we have too many charity cases on our hands as it is.

haven't seen (or heard) him today and hope he as moved on to torment someone else.

jb

The Case of the Missing Flower Pots

a scandal has rocked our quiet, quaint little street.

sunday afternoon anne and i discovered a strange, hanging basket of flowers on our front porch. realizing this didn't belong to us we, of course, wondered where the hell it came from. we also noticed that one of our pots of gerber daisies was missing from the same front porch. we had other pots of flowers on this porch, but only the daisies were missing.

we went over to our neighbor, stan, to see if the hanging basket belonged to him, and was horrified to see that our pot of daisies was in his front yard, neatly placed by the light pole. it then dawned on us that someone, at some time, had switched potted plants and hanging baskets on our street.

we recovered our daisies, but still don't know who is the owner of the hanging basket of flowers. it's still on our front porch, and we have a slight fear that if the owner spots it there he or she will think we stole it.

we have been amused with this creative mischief and view it as nothing more than bored, rural kids trying to have some fun. stan, however, is not amused and called the police! a bit of an over-reaction, i think. i suppose this will show up in the weekly police blotter of the clinton courier and some kid, somewhere will chuckle while his or her parents discuss the case of the missing flower pots on dwight ave. in clint-in.

jb

Burning Down the House

A quick post because i'm hot in my un-airconditioned house, and i have to dash off to the library.

Right after i hit the "post" command on my last blog entry (from the Ferrum College dorm) a horrific fire broke out and we all had to be immediately evacuated. Okay, I'm exaggerating and being overly dramatic. What happened was this: after our delicious last supper (made my lisa) I went upstairs to make my final post and get the rest of my stuff from the room. All of the sudden i smell smoke, and all fire alarms in this dorm are going off - smoke, lights, and sirens everywhere. Needless to say we all ran out of our quads to see what happening and discovered that Lisa had left an iron skillet on the oven so that she could "burn off" whatever was left on there. She had went back into her room to do something else (mulit-tasking can sometimes be hazardous)and forgot about the burning skillet.

A campus policemen answered the call, and we all felt foolish. He made his rounds through the dorm, and called off the local fire truck that was en route. He then opened all the doors to let the smoke out, and seemed relieved that this was nothing serious. I took a picture of him investigating the scene, which I hoped to include in the blog posting. However, with all my packings, and unpackings and living like a rock star for 5 weeks, I forgot to charge my PDA, and lost all information I had stored on it.

So, we left Ferrrum not in a blaze of glory, but a smokey, hazy fog of glory. We made our mark afterall.

jb