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Ramona's special stick
Saturday, April 20 2013
It was April 20th, international marijuana day, and this might have been the first 4/20 in years when there was no marijuana in the house. I take that back, there was marijuana in the house, but it was all in the form of spectacular five-leaflet compound leaves dating to that time in 2006 or 2007 when I grew a single fairly impressive-looking marijuana plant whose buds nonetheless had proved pharmacologically disappointing.
Last night I'd managed to drink myself into a hangover that persisted throughout today. It was never debilitating until evening, when all I found myself able to do was sit in front of the teevee watching Nova (there's been a miniseries about the ancient life of Australia) and Storage Wars (which I'm finding less watchable since discovering how thoroughly fake it is).
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I've taken delivery of two different LGA 775 motherboards in recent days in hopes of getting my spare Core 2 Duo processor functioning before it becomes completely obsolete. In the past, a motherboard with a certain type of socket would support any CPU designed for that socket, but evidently this is no longer the case; neither motherboard would work with my particular processor, mostly because it demanded a much faster front-side bus than either motherboard could provide.
Our neighbor the farm at the end of the farm road recently had a pool and pool house constructed near his farm house (probably at the request of his new wife). Their construction required a lot of contractor hours involving a great range of earth-moving equipment. In the past our dogs used to run out and chase the various contractor vehicles as they slowly bumped and swayed down the farm road, but over time they became accustomed to all this activity (and, in turn, the contractors became accustomed to the dogs).
Today one of the contractors parked a large earthmover on the side of Dug Hill Road near the intersection with the farm road and then went walking towards the farm. Seeing a pedestrian, the dogs immediately ran over to investigate. Normally I would have call them off, but today I kept myself concealed and watched to see what would happen. For her part, Eleanor did what she always does, standing some distance away, eyeing the pedestrian suspiciously, and barking monotonously. Ramona, on the other hand, immediately regarded the pedestrian as a friend and jumped up on him with her paws to his chest in that way we're always telling her she must not do. But the pedestrian didn't seem to mind. He reached down and picked up a stick and tossed it, and a delighted Ramona ran after it and retrieved it. Tossing the stick a few more times, the pedestrian eventually disappeared from sight. A minute or so later I heard a clunking. It was Ramona trying to bring that stick in through the pet door. I opened the door and let her in, and she proceeded to make a ungodly mess of bark and woodchips on the nice green super-shag carpet in Gretchen's office (the place the dogs like to go whenever they have something special).
This incident game me a real insight into Ramona's thinking. Normally she would never bring a stick into the house; only bones are interesting enough to carry for more than a few dozen feet. But this particular stick had special significance for her; someone she didn't know very well (the pedestrian) had engaged her with it so now she wanted to celebrate with it; indeed, it seemed important for her that I know the stick's significance as well.
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