Idioms are for the birds.

Plane crash #2

Plane crash #2

Al did better today. No accidents inside of either sort. I spent almost all day outside so he was left unsupervised, which makes an incident-free day even better. Every couple of hours I'd hear him whining at the screen door and take him out for relief but I'm not sure there's any cause and effect thing going on there. Could be he was just lonely and wanted some attention. In that case he's training me well.
And in the training dept. I'm trying to find a treat that this dog likes so I can use it as reward. They told us Greyhounds like marshmallows because that's what they use for race training. Al doesn't respond at all. Won't hardly sniff them. They said Greyhounds love peanut butter. Al is unimpressed. As he is with sandwich meat and cheese. Who ever heard of a dog that didn't like cheese?
They also told us Greyhounds like frozen Twinkies, so Pam got some and put them in the freezer. If he turns his nose up at those too I'll figure out something to do with them.

I didn't buy a Pontiac a week ago. But I wonder what's going through the minds of those who did. I think if I was one of them I'd be back at the dealer with some serious issues to discuss. Then again, it could be worse. Instead of a car from a defunct brand they could have a car from a bankrupt company. O wait, they'll have both.

The first third of our direct mail piece went out yesterday and should have arrived in many of the homes today. We are praying very earnestly that God will bless this effort with results. Tomorrow morning I'll check the stats on hits to our church site.

We've had fewer than 100 diagnosed cases of swine flu in the U.S. and no deaths. It's hard to tell how many deaths in Mexico City are due to the swine flu. Only seven are confirmed to be related to that virus but another 150 may be tied to it.

I can't understand why this is news, and why the federal govt. has raised the "threat level" to 4 out of 6. They're talking about the possibility of a pandemic. Yesterday, while I was at Home Depot in the hardware dept. I heard a woman ask an employee, "Is this the mask that will save me from the swine flu?"

I sure don't know enough about this to say it couldn't, or won't turn into something widespread and serious. But an estimated 36,000 people will die in the U.S. this year from the regular flu and we hear almost nothing about that. People don't wash their hands, never mind wear masks.

I have a theory. The politicians are scared silly that something terrible will happen and they will be accused of not doing what they should have done to prevent it. Think Katrina. So they over compensate with overkill (pun intended). Their efforts serve primarily to increase the irrational fear of the population, most of whom are not interested in looking into the facts. As their level of fear increases the govt. realizes the stakes are getting higher and therefore ramps up the appearance of crisis response. The press, meanwhile, has a vested interest in feeding this dog-chasing-its-tail circus which only speeds up the cycle.

So tomorrow I'm going to get a T-shirt that says, "I kissed a pig and survived." My small effort to spit on the fire.

I am exhausted. I worked outside from 8 this morning until 4 this afternoon shoveling, raking and digging. I'll show you pics tomorrow. Now I need to get to bed!