Mike's Place

I'm still working on a better design, than one of the generic templates from Blogger. I'm doing the work locally, so I don't need to keep publishing changes. Eventually, I might even get it done. :) I found a showcase of really nice blog designs, from which I'm hoping to pull an idea or two. I wish I had the artistic talent of some of these people.

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For some time now, I've been toying with morphing this into a general-use Maughmer site for the descendants of Jacob Maughmer. In 1976, my great-grandfather published a family history. Unfortunately there are holes, including just about any useful information about our legendary progenitor, the children born since 1976, and an entire branch of Maughmers in Chillicothe, OH.

As I own the domain (and have for 15 years), I've also been toying with setting up maughmer.com addresses for Maughmers around the country. I need to switch ISPs though, before proceeding with that plan, as I'm not impressed with the company who bought my existing ISP. I'm now looking at Speakeasy.

I did set up a Facebook group for Jacob's descendants, and plan on inviting the assorted Maughmers on that site. We'll see how it goes. I'm not sure how many will react to getting group invites from some random Maughmer they've never heard of. :) In reviewing the list, I did speak with a few of them twelve years ago, when I was doing some geneological research. Unfortunately my job and marathon training kept me very busy at the time, so I shelved the project. My aunt, however, has been busy continuing her grandfather's research over the intervening twelve years.

Toby's pestering me for a walk, so I'll continue this later. :)

Labels: Facebook, Geneology, Toby

Caught a brief whiff of skunk off Toby last night. Ugh, every now and then it resurfaces. The vet said it could take a few months to go away completely. I read one person's account on the interwebs, saying it took two years for the skunk smell to dissipate completely from from their dog. It seems mostly to reappear when he gets wet, or when he's curled up in a ball, sleeping, thus heating the affected area.

Labels: Skunk, Toby

Again, a long delay on posting. I have friends who update their blogs almost daily. I used to, but now seem to be posting once every couple of months.

The most significant recent event was...

The Skunk!

A tale of tragedy. Four weeks ago today, as I was leaving a friends' house, Toby ran into a skunk. And lost.

We've all smelled skunk road kill. At ground zero, it's even worse. The fur on his chest turned bright yellow, and he smelled like some combination of sulfur, sulfur, something long since dead, and sulfur. It was vile.

I took him into my friends' guest shower, and spent about half an hour shampooing him. When we got home, I made him stay in the garage for two days. I had to pick up some Nature's Miracle Skunk Odor Remover, and regularly spray the car, the furniture, and the garage throw runs, for about a week and a half. The object was less getting rid of the smell, than it was breaking down the enzymes in the oil, to keep the scent from spreading from one object to the next.

I also treated Toby's fur with it a few times, but the smell remained.

I ended up shaving off all the fur on his chest and neck areas, down to about 1/8th of an inch. Calling the vet, I was also given a suggestion to use a mix of peroxide and baking soda (1/4 cup of each, along with 1/4 cup of water, and 2 tablespoons of dish soap -- saturate the area, and let it sit for 15 minutes). I applied this mixture to the chest and neck area a couple of times, then the next day did a full-body shampoo to break down the oils in the rest of his fur.

This did the trick to keep the smell from spreading, but Toby continued to stink for three full weeks. That's also about the time my friends' house stopped smelling.

Today, Toby still smells of skunk up close, but it's very, very faint.

I had hoped he'd learned his lesson about chasing small animals, but no, he continues chasing squirrels and birds. Last night, again at my friends' house, he noticed a skunk on the back porch. We closed the curtains, but he was nonetheless curious. At least he didn't get up to the glass and start barking at it -- having the house sprayed would probably not have been a good follow-up to the previous experience.

Labels: Skunk, Toby

McCain seems to have failed to gain any ground over Obama in Friday's debate. That Obama was able to hold his own against McCain on foreign policy, the area in which McCain is supposedly strong, is a good thing.

Sadly, during the debate, I saw bits and pieces of the McCain I used to like. I'd still be willing to consider him as a candidate, but for his desire to keep us in Iraq, and his selection of Palin as a running mate.

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I refinanced the house last month, cutting $400 off my monthly expenses. Woot! What with the layoff, lowering the mortgage is a good thing. I also switched my DSL from Earthlink to AT&T, and haven't experienced a single failure. Earthlink was DREADFUL. For almost six years, my connection would drop multiple times a day. And for the several days before I finally switched, I was seeing 2,000 ms pings (for those who don't know what that means, it means I may as well have been passing notes on paper, than communicating electronically).

The switch to AT&T also had the benefit of cutting that expense by $20 a month, and increased my download speed by almost 4x.

Did I mention Earthlink was crap?

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Toby's doing well, though he seems terminally bored. Even when I manage to get him playing, he loses interest in that after only a couple of minutes. He's fine, per his last physical a few months ago, so I'm not sure what's going on. He just seems to prefer to lie around the house. He used to bring me toys all the time, to play fetch or tug. He's only six -- I wouldn't have expected him to lose interest in playing just yet.

Labels: House, Toby

During the winter storms, the support posts on the rear fence snapped at ground level. The fence leaned into the backyard neighbor's backyard, who propped it up with supports.

Today he has workers in the yard (my yard) replacing the supports. I'm not sure why there doing this from my side, except, possibly, for the fact that I don't have as many plants along the fence. Heh, good thing I removed all the bougainvillea shortly after I moved in. It was growing along most of the back fence, and I didn't find the inch-long spikes particularly friendly. PG&E had a crew here shortly after I moved in, topping the Italian cypress. The bougainvillea drew blood from at least one of them, which is ultimately what prompted their removal.

Of course, their being here has Toby in stress mode. I have to keep him inside while they're working in the yard, and he keeps shoving aside the blinds to look outside and whine. Twice they've rang the doorbell -- first to let me know they'd be back there, again to ask where they could plug in their Sawzall. Both times, Toby became barky dog.

Labels: House, Toby

Heh, I just found a piece of paper with a poem my nephew had written about my dog...

Toby
He runs he plays
He jumps he stays,
He's Toby.
He drops fur here
He runs in fear,
He's Toby.
He smells real bad
He grunts when he's mad,
He's Toby.

Labels: Nephew, Toby

We're three days away, which means about a week of idiot neighbors driving Toby insane by setting off fireworks in their driveways.

Dogs really don't like loud noises, and every hear around this time he turns frantic, trying to figure out where all the shrieking is coming from. Kaylin told me that last night, two neighbors were setting off fireworks in their yards, and yelling back and forth to one another, "Is that the best you can do?" I wasn't home, but would likely have called the cops on them.

The 4th, itself, is really bad. Toby spends the entire evening running around the house in a panic. I think I'll ask if I can just take him over to Darren & Corrii's house to help keep him calm. No noise equals calm dog.

Labels: Toby