Something to be thankful for: You're not this guy.

New state laws banning smoking in all businesses, including bars, recently took effect here, much to the dismay of smokers like this man, quoted in the local paper:

“This law violates the Constitution, which gives us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. My idea of happiness is smoking a cigarette while I drink my beer.”

In sixth grade, his idea of happiness must have been cutting civics class.

What are the odds that the same guy would be interviewed by the Lake County Leader and The Onion in the same week?

Critter Central

I’ve been taking the bird feeders down at night and haven’t seen the raccoons again, but the collection of critters Dean has seen nearby on his way to work recently include not just raccoons but a black bear and a wolf. I think I prefer the bears. At least they run when you yell at them. The raccoons just give you a dismissive glance and get back to rooting around for sunflower seeds.


Top five signs critters keep coming up on your deck:


5. The old regular squirrels don’t show up any more, because it’s gone all “touristy” now.

4. The new show on Animal Planet is just a feed from a webcam on your patio table.

3. Your weird neighbor has a restraining order to stop him from “coming over to leave you a little something,” but you’re still cleaning odd piles of poop off the deck.

2. Your weirder neighbor keeps coming over with a knife, fork and a shaker of salt, asking if he can hang around until “something tasty comes scurrying along.”

1. Sarah Palin keeps shooting at your house, and she must have a reason.

Caught! Sort of.

And here I thought I caught ‘em red-pawed last night.

But Dean said “those must be the babies. The one I saw was much bigger.” These two no doubt have an alibi for the night in question. They ate up some seeds that the birds had spilled on the deck, but didn’t get into the feeders, so technically I guess I could only charge them with trespassing, or perhaps loitering with intent to raid.

They're bold little bastards. They pretty much ignored my "Hey, you guys, get the hell off my deck" attempt to scare them off, and left only when they damn well felt like it. But at least they posed nicely for pictures.

Top five signs you’re having a bad Friday the 13th:

5. You’ve produced this great expose on how illegal immigrants are bringing bad luck into the US. You can’t wait to air it on your CNN show this Friday the 13th.

4. You’re on your book tour, and the mean old MSM keeps practicing “gotcha” journalism by asking questions about stuff that’s in your book.

3. You’re on your book tour, and the mean old MSM keeps practicing “gotcha” journalism by asking questions, period.

2. You have to plead guilty to highly publicized crimes involving your son. And you’re not even George Bush Sr.

1. You just found this great place with all the sunflower seeds you can eat, and some mean lady took it away. Hey, raccoons have bad luck, too.

CSI: Critter Scene Investigation

The other day I noticed that the metal bracket holding one of my bird feeders was bent and the feeder was missing. Our crack critter forensics team immediately sprang into action. After a thorough investigation, which was conducted through the process of “going outside to take a look,” we decided it must have been a raccoon.

The crime scene


A squirrel wouldn’t be strong enough to bend the bracket, and a bear would have done more damage to the feeder, which was lying in the flower bed below the deck. In fact, this particular feeder was still a bit bent from its last bear encounter in June.

The victim


I decided to start taking the feeders in at night, but the other night I forgot and left one sitting on our patio table. In the middle of the night Dean heard something on the deck. He got up to check it out and saw a furry critter on the patio table, getting into the feeder. He switched on the light, and there was the biggest, fattest raccoon he’d ever seen. “At first I thought it was a bear cub. The thing was huge.”

Huge and bold. Dean turned the light on, thinking it would run (or waddle) away. It just glanced up, gave Dean a nonchalant look and went back to its meal. Dean opened the door to make some noise, and the raccoon finally ambled off.

The next morning as Dean recounted his visual confirmation of our CSI hypothesis, I reminded him that I keep our camera handy for critter photo ops like this. If he comes back, we’ll try to catch him red-pawed and get a mug shot.

Bride of the Clueless

I have a friend who is utterly clueless about computers. She calls me now and then for tech support. The problem is usually something simple, but walking her through the steps to figure it out is torture because she doesn’t know the most basic terms and gets stumped when I ask her to do something like “launch your browser” or “right-click.” I still have nightmares about the time I tried to get her to ping.

She called the other day. She’d gotten a new computer the day before and it “wouldn’t work.” Apparently a technician had set it up for her the day before and it had worked fine. The next day when she tried to turn it on, “nothing happened.” I checked the basics – is it plugged in, is there power to the outlet, is the power currently out by any chance (yes, I had to ask), is the monitor turned on, when you hit the power switch do you see any lights or hear any activity, etc. That was all I had time for, so I said I’d have to call her back later.

She called back in a couple of minutes. Her computer was now on and running fine. What she had been hitting to turn it on wasn’t the power switch. She’d been pressing the Dell logo.