"Hallelujah I'm a Bum!"

NQBR but it occurred to me this morning that dogs are bums.

I mean bums in the old sense of living on handouts, doing no real work, imposing on people and generally being a drain on society.

I took my dogs with me to the barn this morning and they did their best to shed out their entire summer coats in my car while I rode.

Then I brought them home and Rufus continued his only mode of useful work which consists of staring at me relentlessly the whole time I'm home.



Everywhere I go I turn around and see him sitting and staring at me. I believe he expects me to explode, and wants to be there as an eye-witness.

Bums. Why do we adore them so??!

Jammin'! NQBR

NQBR (Not Quite Bento Related):

I picked strawberries this past Thursday at a nearby "U-Pick" farm - they were all really ripe so I had to make jam and such as soon as I could. My jam turned out about as well as my octo-dogs usually do, so I have a lot of strawberry sauce - about enough to drown a Queen Mary sized bowl of ice cream.

It is good!!

I noticed there were several philosophies of picking posture: the kneelers, the backbenders, the sitters, and the changers. I was a changer. As various body parts went to sleep or started to ache, I would move.

It made me think about being a migrant worker who does this all day every day for a meager living. And this gave me a real gestalt shift when walking down the produce aisle in the supermarket -- all the human work hours that lie behind those piles of berries, cherries, tomatoes, heads of lettuce... It's a little scary to contemplate. From one perspective, our food is expensive (prices have gone up). From another angle though, it is far too cheap.

NQBR: Cool Hearse I Saw!

Coming home yesterday I was passed by this huge old Detroit boat of a hearse, painted a lovely shade of purple and with this vanity plate on the back:



1ONICE Ha! When I'm dead I would like to be driven around in a purple hearse with a funny license plate. I wonder who owns this gas-guzzling monster and what possessed them to make it such a show-stopper. Don't you just love how crazy people can be??!