PopWars

Cars will never gain look as good as used to. It’s impossible. Forget about it. The weather has been so nice around here that many of the vintage cars and motorcycles are still on the road.

Peggi and I were still in our pjs, reading the morning paper, when we spotted a doe prancing across our front lawn. A big buck was right behind her. We counted eight points. He was drooling and and fixated on the doe he was pursuing. The doe looked about a year old like maybe one of this year’s crop and she was staying ahead of the buck but not exactly sprinting to get away. I grabbed my camera and we went outside in our slippers to watch. The doe went around our neighbor’s garden and was just standing there when the buck decided to leap the five foot fence and dart across the garden. We lost track of them both and can only imagine what happened.

I stopped in Staples to pick up some toner for our Canon S9000. It takes the BCI series and you need six cartridges. The six pack was $90 and individual cartridges were $15.99. Like George Eastman, they give the machine away and make their money on the peripherals. The store was eerily quiet and it crossed my mind that they might be going the way of Blockbuster as people take their business online. We had a $25 Staples coupon on the kitchen counter and I checked it before I left but it had expired on October 31st. It was only good online anyway. Stables even competes with themselves. While I was waiting to pay for $147 worth of toner the guy behind me said, “You have the same printer that I do. I love that printer. I buy the ink online though. You’ll save a bundle.”

Kevin Patrick posted a mono version of Lou Reed’s, “Walk On The Wild Side” this morning. You might want to give that a spin.

We take our favorite walking path a lot less often since Bulldozer Man drove through the park with his workers and heavy equipment. That path is now a road so we’ve been heading out in new directions and running into some interesting animals. We came across this alligator log this morning.

And a few weeks back we came head to head with a dog on a path in Durand. The dog wasn’t backing down and Peggi was about to turn around and go back. It kept coming toward us, growling and barking. I figured an owner was probably nearby so I yelled out, “Call your dog”. Nobody did but the dog turned and left us alone. A little further down the path we ran into the owner with the dog now on a leash. The owner said, “Don’t worry. This dog won’t bite you”. And then he let the dog come toward us while still on the leash and he told us to look into the dogs eyes. He said, “You can tell if a dog is going to hurt you by looking into their eyes.” Please.

Today we had confrontation with Jagger who lives near the park. He and his owners were outside and just like before the dog came running toward us. The owners call, “Jagger, Jagger” but Jagger keeps coming toward us. We hold our hands in the air because we have seen what dogs’ teeth can do to your hands and we wait for the owner to grab ahold of the dog. Then they say, “Don’t worry. He won’t hurt you”. But today they upped the ante and said, “he doesn’t do this to everybody”. He’s really very friendly. I said “OK. It’s our fault.”

Our neighbor was was asking us if we had ever taken the trail that runs along the river on the Saint Paul Boulevard side. We said we had taken the trail on the other side but we didn’t know there was one on the east side. We parked at the north end of the zoo and headed through the woods down to the river. This is near where serial killer, Arthur Shawcross did his thing and the trail is a little forlorn but it is beautiful. We didn’t make it down to the lake but we had some stunning views of the river valley. It still looks pretty much the way it must have to the native Americans.