Fishing!

I've been sort of "missing in action" for the past week -thanks to a problem I apparently created for myself on a blog post I was trying to write.

I was trying to do a post about a little "gig" I had last week -dog-sitting for my son and his girlfriend's beautiful German Shepherd puppy, Dora. The video is of Dora and our mutt, Sammy, rough-housing over a chew toy of Sammy's and it was really comical to see those two dogs in action. My plan was to share the video in a blog post but somehow or other, after I uploaded the video to U-tube and then tried to embed it in my post, apparently I clicked something wrong because something went haywire and I couldn't get the darned video-mistake deleted from the post and it took me two days of playing around with it until finally, I just deleted the whole darned post!

I don't have a clue as to what I must have done wrong but I was really ticked off over the whole thing along with being leery of trying again to do a post with said video in it either. Add to that, I've been a bit engrossed in a few other things the past couple of days then too and just began doing something I do so well -procrastinating -and well, here it is a week later and finally, I decided to take the time to do a new post again.

I've been doing a lot of reading lately -since Christmas-and as a result, I've read about 10-12 books that were either given to me for Christmas, my birthday, others I had purchased over the past 2-3 years but hadn't got around to reading them because I was so engrossed all the time with doing embroidery -so I decided the time had come to get busy and get at least some of those books read while my eyes still function well enough to be able to read and the brain still works well enough to understand what I'm reading too! That, plus I heard someplace that active reading helps to ward off Alzheimer's so I figured it was worth a shot.

Right now, I'm reading a book by one of my favorite authors -James A. Michener.  The name of the book is "Texas" and I have to say that I think this has to be the largest book I have ever tackled -1,096 pages -so in size alone, it really is the epitome of Texas then, isn't it? This book also -regardless of the size -is taking me the LONGEST it has ever taken me to read a book! Hard to believe it but I've been reading this book for going on three weeks now and I finally am down to a little over 200 pages till I complete it. It's never taken me that long to read a book before! (Heck, I read Gone With The Wind in about 2 1/2 days and it's one fat book too, ya know.)

My older grandson was here over the past weekend and he, like me, likes to read about history -fictionalized or non-fiction -so I thought I'd maybe introduce him to Mr. Michener and his works by giving him another book I happen to have on hand that I really liked and thought maybe it would be a good one to use to perhaps show Alex what a great story teller James A. Michener really is. I did explain a bit to him that in the beginning of his books, he often goes into mega minute details about things that make you wonder why on earth he does that but if one can plow through that stuff and get into what he's really doing there, before you know it then you get into the meat of his story and the reading does tend to get a bit easier. The book I gave Alex to hopefully get him started is "Chesapeake" and by Tuesday, Alex reported back to me that he had begun reading the book, saw what I meant about the first chapters being a bit difficult at times to read and grasp but that he was now getting into the finer points of the story and enjoying it very much! Now, I wish I still had some of the other books by this man that I have read and loved to pass them on to Alex too. (Books like "Hawaii," "Alaska," "Centennial", and "Poland" -which I think was my absolute favorite read thus far of his stuff.) But I'm just happy that Alex is liking this book and maybe he will become as big a fan as I am of his works.

Now, enough of my excuse of being busy reading to do much of anything else, and also, because I really did want to show the video of the dogs, I'm making  a second try here to share it with you now.



And, after you've seen the two dogs in action, I'm also going to present you with some still photos of Pearl the Purrball cat -the one who went missing for a little over 2 days two weeks ago and really had the household in total uproar till she finally made her way back home. Thankfully!

Pearl, it would seem, has taken up a new sport here. About a month or so ago, Mandy's best friend and her family brought a gift down here for Miss Maya which consisted of a small aquarium and 1 beta fish! Maya named the fish "Mike" -go figure where she came up with that for a name for a fish -but when asked about her name choice, she informed us that Mr. Fry (father of a set of twins at our church and his name just happens to be Mike, "is named after her fish." Okay -she got the name choice process a little reversed there and Mandy couldn't wait to tell Mike and his wife, Betty, about Maya's name (and why) for the fish which they both got a big charge out of too.

But anyway, here's a few of the pictures I got tonight of Pearl watching Mike, then trying to the best of her ability to get a paw into the aquarium and make a nice little meal then out of poor little Mike!

Here's Pearl as she began her fishing expedition today. Just checking out the aquarium from the top down, ya know.

Then she decided to look at her prospects of capturing Mike from a different angle.

Not fully satisfied with things, she tried other ways to get at the fish -like trying to fool him into thinking she was tired of that game or had given up on the fishing.

But then, after a little rest, she decided to resume her work.

And then, finally, she reverted back to just sitting up and watching Mike swim around a bit before she got down and headed to the kitchen to her own bowl of cat food and gave up on the fishing for today.

I figure that her antics around the fish's home may have just shaved several years of the poor fish's life from sheer fright of seeing her sitting there, watching and waiting for some opportunity to get to him.

In the meantime though, she does provide a whole lot of entertainment for us as she's fascinated by this little creature.

Now that I got this stuff posted and I think it's all going to be stable and not muck up my blog the way things went for me last week, time for me to call it a day (or night) and go to bed!

Happy fishing and remember to be willing to share toys -my motto for today as shown in the video and Pearl's fish-watching.