Yesterday, when I did my update for the day, I thought the rain was just about done. I was sadly mistaken. It rained most of the day, except for about a one-hour stretch in the early afternoon when I went out for lunch. My timing was good, at least. But the rain has really screwed things up for folks in Austin and Albert Lea.
Sometimes gloomy days work out really well for me, being an excuse to stay inside and get a ton of work done. Yesterday wasn’t one of those. The clear blue sky at lunchtime fooled me into thinking it might be a nice afternoon, and then when the clouds and rain moved back in, my motivation went went somewhere else with the nice weather. I did get to open up the windows last night and let in some fresh air. The humidity is back down to comfortable levels, and from the look of the forecast, I may well be done with the air conditioners for the year.
On the dog front, I visited both the Hennepin County and St. Paul animal shelters on Tuesday and played with a couple dogs. Both were nice dogs, and both made my allergies tweak out big-time. I’m going to try the greyhound meet & greet tonight I think, and see how I do with those dogs, but if that doesn’t work, I’ll probably have to give up on the idea of adopting a dog and start calling around to buy one. That’s not a huge crisis, but the biggest issue is that I prefer mutts, and when you go out to buy a dog, it’s a lot easier to find purebred ones than it is to find mutts.
I’ve been poking around, and other than the greyhounds, I’ve gone through the AKC’s list of breeds that are generally good for people with allergies, and looked up the information on the personalities of the breeds I didn’t know about, and I think I’ve narrowed the list of breeds to:
- Bichon Frise
- Border Terrier
- Irish Water Spaniel
- Italian Greyhound
- Kerry Blue Terrier
- Portuguese Water Dog
- Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier
- Spanish Water Dog
- Standard Poodle
Some of those are ones I would have dismissed as foo-foo dogs when I was younger, but now I’m not so sure. I’ll still want to check out an adult to see what the personality is like, but I think I could deal with a foo-foo dog as long as it’s not yappy. I think I’d rather get an adult than a puppy at this point, too. Puppies are cute and all, but I’m far from certain I have the time and energy to raise one right. Guess we’ll see how it turns out.
- There will be baseball in St. Paul on Friday and Saturday: Saints Survive Wild One To Even Series, so the only game that’s in question this weekend is Sunday’s. I’m a little concerned about Schaumburg’s power and the fact that we’re going to have mostly southerly winds all weekend (i.e. blowing out), but I’m excited to see the Saints contending for a championship.
- In Lover of birds, seller of guns, Doug Grow profiles Mark Koscielski, owner of the only gun shop in Minneapolis, and finds out that the major difference with the expiration of the AWB is that normal-capacity magazines are now available for reasonable prices. He also actually seems surprised to find out that Mark’s a pretty darned nice guy. [strib]
- We’re safer now, right? That’s why when Explosives found in contractor’s bags at JFK, they didn’t let him on his domestic flight even though he’d just flown in from the UAE with a lot more than a nail-file. Yeah, I feel a lot safer now. [fark!]
- It’s going to happen. There will be a directory of cell-phone numbers. Will new directory unlock cell secrets? Well, it’s hard to say. With 25% of the market, Verizon isn’t adding its customers to the list. And with people being able to stay out of the directory for free for now (have to remember to call in to do that), I don’t know how useful it will actually be. But at over a buck to look up numbers from this new directory, the cell carriers are probably going to make some money off the deal anyhow, and that’s what they’re really after. [strib]
- Claire’s got an article on Being a Good Carrier. Dang. It serves as a reminder that I’m not an especially good carrier most of the time, either. And that I need to get my butt in gear to get some more of the outside stuff done around the house before the snow starts flying. [claire]