Top five places “missing” governors go:

5. Montana: “Where was I last week -- that’s a good question, son. By the way, have you seen my gun collection? Mighty fine, isn’t it? Now you wanna ask me that again, or do ya figure it’s my own damn business?”

4. California: Anywhere, as long as the travel agency will take an I.O.U.

3. Alaska: Anywhere, as long as the government pays for the trip.

2. North Dakota: off to do something crazy in an exotic foreign destination, like fishing in Manitoba.

1. South Dakota: North Dakota. “And bring yer money!”

Another Day, Another GOP Sex Scandal

It’s been days since there was a Republican sex scandal, so kudos to Governor Mark Sanford for adding the “sneaking off to Argentina” twist, giving us a delightful new euphemism for infidelity in “hiking the Appalachian Trail,” and providing us with emails worthy of a tepid romance novel.

I’m not sure what’s worse: the affair, the lies, or the spelling.

By now we know the routine: the confessional press conference, followed by the inevitable Fox graphic misidentifying the party affiliation of the misbehaving politician.



They do this a lot.





Sometimes it's not even a scandal. Republican lost to a Democrat? Just switch those party affiliations on the graphic.



You have to admire their absolute confidence in the stupidity of their audience. “Just say they’re Dems. Our viewers will never know the difference.”

I can't come in to work today. My car has a virus.

I recently learned that some of my coworkers have cars that run on Microsoft Windows. Oddly, this does not seem to frighten them. Top five signs your car runs on Windows:

5. It takes five minutes to start it up, five minutes to shut it off, and it randomly restarts itself throughout the day.

4. Your engine has more bugs than your windshield.

3. If you use low-octane gas, you get an “invalid fuel format” error.

2. The good news: If you have an accident, it automatically calls for help. The bad news: It calls the Geek Squad.

1. You really, really don’t want to see its Blue Screen of Death.

AC Installation FAIL

This is room 225 of the Comfort Inn in Minot, North Dakota.



“Hey Bob, ya think we need to install this thing so it vents to the outside?”

“Nah, this’ll work just fine.”

Yes, the AC was installed to vent into the hallway. I was in Room 222, so I got a nice blast of hot air every time I went to or from my room. Note to self: when hiring contractors to do stuff like this, be very specific.

“Hey Bob, ya think it matters where the sewage drains out?”

“Nah. They just said to do the plumbing. They didn’t say how.”

Keeping the Bears at Bay

Our feeder-robbing friend didn’t come back yesterday, so maybe he’s moved on to someplace not protected by fearsome creatures like Woody, or me and my garden trowel.

Top five ways to keep the bears away:

5. When decorating your deck, don’t go with the pic-a-nic basket theme.

4. Scented outdoor candles: good idea. Scented outdoor candles that smell like honey, huckleberries and slightly rancid salmon: bad idea.

3. Make being on the deck dangerously unpredictable by throwing random things out the window. Like my *&^% laptop when it ^#$* reboots itself like it did just now.

2. Old fragrance: Opium. New fragrance: pepper spray.

1. Set a TV outside tuned to Fox News. That should repel almost anything.

He's baaack . . .

And this time I didn't even have a garden trowel. My camera was handy, though. He smushed the bird feeder but I think we can bend it back into shape. He doesn't seem too intimidated by people, which is definitely a bad thing. He jumped off the deck and was messing around in the big planter below the deck, where I had just planted the rest of the flowers last night.

I went out the downstairs door to make some noise to chase him away, and he just looked at me, like "hmmm, why is she making funny noises?" He finally did saunter away.

Woody loves to spend almost all day out on the deck when the weather's nice. Now I'm debating. Should I leave him out on bearwatch, or keep him in? I think keeping him in is winning for now. We don't know if this is a "run away from the dog" bear, or a "that dog looks tasty" bear.

Bearwatch 2009

Yesterday Dean and Woody went into town to get some Preen (I’m telling you, that stuff works) while I got out my trowel, a bunch of planters and the usual jumble of flowers. Every spring I have the same plan, which is “go buy a bunch of stuff that looks pretty and then come home and try to figure out what to do with it all.”

I spread everything out on the ground, allocated various petunias, geraniums and lantanas to various planters, and had just plunged my trowel into the potting soil to start planting when I heard a rustling noise in the embankment at the edge of our driveway. Oh great, the turkeys were coming to bother me when I was trying to get the planting done. They come up over the embankment and gobble at me until I give them some sunflower seeds.

Except it wasn’t a turkey. It was a black bear, about twenty feet away, looking at me curiously, like he was trying to figure out who I was and whether I’d be delicious. Oh crap. If the door behind me was locked, the only way into the house was up on the deck, and to get there I’d have to walk toward the bear.

When I stood up, the bear looked alarmed and ran off. Well, I was armed with a garden trowel. The door behind me turned out to be unlocked. I did what any sensible person would do when confronted with a bear in the front yard – I got my camera and went out on the deck to see if he felt like posing for a photo op. I heard rustling in the trees and it sounded like he was running off. Guess my trowel looked pretty fearsome.

Dean pulled up a few minutes later and said he’d seen a black bear running up the road just north of our place, going up a narrow gravel lane that heads steeply up into the mountains. So I couldn’t use “bear danger” as an excuse not to get on with the planting. Besides, now I had Woody there on bearwatch duty, and you know how good he is at that.

Thanks guys!

The problem with working in an office with just Woody is that he’s not very quotable. Adorable, sure, but his conversation tends to be limited to the dog version of “Could you open the door please?” and requests to have various body parts petted and/or scratched. So it was nice to work in a real office with real people, mainly because all I had to do for this week’s list was write down about five minutes’ worth of our Monday morning conversation.

Top five actual quotes from the Minot office:

5. “It was hard to find any pictures that were decent enough to post online.”

4. “Everyone was using the stripper pole.”

3. “Then they’d put the duck in an inappropriate place.”

2. “She’d taken her bra off and was swinging it over her head.”

1. “So I told him, ‘Go into your backside and check your junk.’”

Thanks guys! If I had live streaming audio from your office, the Friday 5 would write itself every week.