:eek: talk about biting the hand that feeds you! :lol:

haha...yeah. I don't think she'd eat it though. She usually gets plenty to eat, and it's usually a lot fresher than a fingertip that spent a couple of days laying under a mower covered in grass and dirt.

Dogs LOVE that!

Certainly not with those fingers!

yeah, they've been pre-shortened.

He'll make a great secretary now that he knows shorthand.

Yeah. He'll never make much of a fiddle player now though.

/posts

Oh Ali that's horrible!
Your poor Dad.

I wonder if he will get phantom itches in his missing tips?

Aliantha, my sympathies to your Dad.

That voice "I shouldn't do this" I've heard that voice and it sometimes speaks up in time... sometimes not.

I watched my Dad shorten his left thumb with a hand saw during some home construction. My eyes bugged out of my head like in the cartoons, but I don't remember even a curse coming from him. He did tell me to go get a towel. Yeah... stoic.

Right. Listening to Danny Baker on BBCiPlayer. His show from this morning.

Diz woke me up early early early. Well before Danny Baker.
Established lock-in procedures (shut my bedroom door and put some food down for him)
Let the Mia cat into the house. Opened the blinds and switched the kitchen light on so that the neighbours don't think the 'rents are filthy degenerates for sleeping after 05.45
Back to my room to share lock-in.

Woke up again when the 'rents got up, switched the radio on, read a bit and drifted again.
Diz puked.
I was sleepy.
I cleaned up.
Happened again. Ditto.
Yes, I am worried.

I am now able to understand that I drifted back into awake when the interview started. All I remember was a man talking about changing his life and how he was writing or involved in opera. "Alex James [Blur]" said my sleepy mind. I waded in and out of the shallows of the interview and heard nothing to contradict my assumption.

Drugs, public adoration, leaving that behind, making up with the band, new life...
I couldn't remember Alex James being all that outspoken but I wasn't obsessive about Blur, I just liked them.

Sleep, Diz, wipe up, sleep, Dizzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

No.
It was Boy George.

Danny Baker called him by name (George O'Dowd) towards the end of the interview and it was like an electrical current passing through me. WHAT? Of course I hadn't been listening to it. And I'd have sleepily enjoyed an interview with either man. But it was just a jolt to the system to realise I'd drowsed through so many key points. No wonder he never talked about pig-farming.

If I'd been drinking I would call it partial blackout.
Sleep is a powerful drug.
Never introduce me as a witness in a trial.

Good job I'm only in charge of a cat. Even a sicky one.

ETA OMG - this would have been the whole post had I known it at the beginning. In the interview Boy George said he went for lunch at the Pelton Arms in Greenwich the other week. I worked there! Dani drank there! I don't mean it in a celebrity connection way, only in a bizarre coincidence way. Shows how knacked I was. Someone on the radio says the name of a previous workplace and somewhere I actually lived and it didn't even stir me out of torpor.

I have finished my homework. But I needed to be in bed 1 minute ago in order to be ready for tomorrow. how do these kids do it?

Diz is still sicking up beebles, but keeping down other food.
From tomorrow morning feeding him cooked chicken as an experiment. Sainsbury's Basics chicken that is.
He'll love that; the only issue will be how quick he scarfs it down - if he throws it up, will it be because of a stomach problem or because he's bolted it?

Anyway, trying chicken because that's what the vet suggested for Mia.
She's not sick in the same way as Diz (that would set off massive alarm bells) but is slow, lethargic, uninterested in food. Vet thinks it might be liver failure, but she is 17 and Diz is 6. And she's not barfing.

He threw up on the windowsill today. Nice.
Well, not too bad, it's the first time out of my room and the first time I've had anyone else clean it up. Mum told me to take him out into the garden and she would deal with it. Okay! It doesn't gross me out as it just looks like beeble soup, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Oh, Mia's checkup, so the vet could say he wasn't sure, was £71.
She#s had antibiotics, a stick up her bum and a course of tablets. She goes back on Thursday for blood tests (no doubt another £70+)
So some bland chicken breakfasts for Diz are cheap by comparison.
I will strangulate him if it turns out to be the food though. We're halfway through a 4kg bag, with another to go.

Which reminds me - had a very grummpy old giffer deliver my latest zooplus order.
"What have you got in here? Weighs a ton!" he gasped as he dragged the box down the path.
"Oh that's my new anvil" I quipped.
He wasn't amused.

Perhaps because Mum appeared and told him off for knocking on the glass door instead of ringing the bell. Everyone makes that mistake because it's covered with tape. This embarasses Mum, so she takes it out on aging delivery men who have just dragged 30 litres of cat litter down the path :facepalm:

ctrl + scroll is my friend. Now if only I could make it work on my text book......

The Deli counter worker and I have differing views of thin-sliced. Shoulda checked..... but she made such a point of asking.....

thin sliced vs shaved?

There are important distinctions here. ;)

this stuff is like half an inch thick.....

I don't really know if I'm happy or sad about this, but I'm still losing weight. At the rate I'm going, with the additional 10kg or so that I'll lose when I give birth, I'll be at my goal weight (or within about 5 - 10kg) by the time the baby is born.

I am concerned the baby might not be getting all the nutrition it needs, but it seems to be moving about and being quite comfortable, so the doc says not to worry too much.

The problem is, I haven't lost weight from healthy eating and exercise. I'm losing it simply because I'm lucky if I can keep one meal down each day. Lunch is about the only meal that stays down. If I have anything besides liquid and maybe a small piece of fruit in the morning I throw up. If I eat dinner, no matter what it is, I throw up about 80% of the time.

I think after writing this, it should have been the sad thread.

Doc is right. Whatever you believe, your body is catholic -baby over mother! :lol: ;) In the main, you will suffer malnutrition befor the baby does.

Carrot had a really busy day today. Off to Hebbers to walk with Merlot and Lucky. Splahing in the river etc. Then playing at the Js' house.

Got back at 9:30. He went into a deep sleep and started waking up around 10:30.

Tried to get him to go for a wee....wont. Goes outside and just sits down. Wont go on the pad either. Been trying to get him to on and off, thinking it's not good to lock him in for the night when his last wee was before 9pm.

Cept now we're at 1am. He still hasnt. I am now going to bed late and he'll be wanting out of the crate at silly o'clock in the morning.

Wtf didnt I just shut up shop at 10 o'clock and grab the early night whilst it was on offer?

yes. Parasite is the word that comes to mind. :(

umm. you spoken to a trick cyclist/couselor recently? mebbe y'awt. Is it another boy?

Don't know yet. I'll have a scan in another couple of weeks and might know then. I'm sort of hoping it's another boy, but I have a feeling it's not. :(

Even if it is, it'll probably be gay being the youngest of a bunch of male siblings and all.

"I'm pretty much convinced my son is going to be gay. Now I'm just praying he's a top."
-- Adam Carolla

Diz made a stinky shit.
I made a cake.
They were both brown.

That is all.

Late Saturday night I was playing a computer game, tv off, very little light. I hear a very loud and distinctive "meow." I check the game to see if there are any cats running around in it. No. So I went to the hallway and saw that the window was open and there was indeed a cat on my back porch, meowing very loudly.

My first thought when I heard it was "omg that sounds like Gaines." Then I got ahold of my brain and thought maybe it was Gaines' old fighting buddy (The Cat Fight Club) looking for a quick brawl.

I thought about opening the door to see the cat but my security light is out and I couldn't be totally sure that there weren't thugs out there making cat noises so I'd come out and they could kill me. You can't be too careful, living alone. ;)

Iñfini - it's a sign.

Now go get a kitty.

I love that wiggly line over the 'n'

Maybe later this year, on the kitteh. I miss having them around but I don't miss having them around, if that makes sense. I will get another one and believe me it's been difficult not to (I can't go anywhere near the animal shelter site!) but I'm just not ready.

Some poor baby will need me though and I'll know when it's right!

Pour vous: :apaw:

You're ready when you're ready, babe.

No idea where to put this, so I'll be a post whore.

I had always thought that Redwood trees were very special because they would only grow in a very narrow strip along the West Coast where the temperature and humidity are just right. And if you go a mile or two further inland, you won't see them growing.

Imagine my surprise when I was in England and saw an Avenue in Ascot lined with these majestic trees.

I suppose the weather in England is cool and wet like the West Coast. Perfect for planting redwoods. Based on my web sleuthing, these were planted in the 1860s or so. And named Wellingtonia Redwoods after the Duke of Wellington who introduced them from America. But they are known as Sequoias over here.

And there you have me too, not knowing that Sequoias could possibly grow in England.
I do love the insight tourists bring to things I can otherwise see and not notice.

Oh!!! Sequoias = Redwoods? Did not know that.

Sequoias are a type of redwood. There are also Coast Redwoods. And another kind that grows in China. My internet sleuthing found that Wellington introduced the Sequoia to England. They are all 150 years old or younger, so they are not quite as huge as the ones in California. But I expect they will be. The British don't chop down trees willy nilly like we do. I saw some oak trees in Windsor older than the US.

Sigh. Sadly not true.
The old/ named/ significant ones get preservation orders slapped on them.
There is a fight in Aylesbury at present to save a row of Horse Chestnuts which will effectively be ignored by the Council. A guess, but the last attempt to save them was over-ruled.

Bill Bryson says it's because we have such a surfeit of history we've become blase about living monuments. Or indeed any monuments.

Aylesbury Town Centre is a perfect case in point. The wholescale descruction of the perfect delineation of a hilltown from the Saxon period was necessary for progress. Wiping out centuries of information, moving brutally forwards.

Ending up, then as now, with a homogeneous High Street/ Shopping Centre culture. Except now it is failing. Nearby market towns were small enough to maintain their culture. To keep the individuality that drew people. To be too small for McDonalds or Tesco but have shops that sold local duck eggs.

Depends very much on a number of factors, including character of the planning authority and balance of benefits on individual applications.

We've knocked back a lot of applications for felling of trees under a TPO and you'd be surprised at some of the ordinary trees that have such orders oin them. And that doesn;t include the ones covered by a woodland order which works on boundaries rather than specific trees.

If an application for something major, which could help with housing shortage or bring employment to the area, is likely to be made non-viable by TPOs then that sometimes swings it, but there have to be genuinely exceptional circcumstances.

There is a least one sequoia in Canberra, deliberately planted on the grounds of the Australian National University. About 20 metres from a library building. This is a tree which approaches 100 metres tall. :facepalm:

Some people are a bit dopey.

Well I guess it depends on your interpretation of "willy-nilly" but glatt is right. Brits are no way near as ax(e) happy as Americans. It may feel bad there, but come over here and you'll soon revise your opinions. But then it's really easy to grow trees here.....

I've had a number of people come to me wanting help getting the right to fell trees in their gardens and so on. One in particular I remember very clearly, involved an elderly couple in a bungalow with a sycamore that was massive and dropping slippyshit al over their path. They were talking about possibly selling up[ and moving if the tree wasn't removed.

They were refused the right to fell the tree. It was there before thgeir bungalow. It was subject to a TPO (tree preservation order). They appealed the decision of the planning committee and lost the appeal.

At the same time I know of several large scale developments who've had to go back to the drawing board and come up with new designs in order to work around the clumps of trees on their site that are protected.

I also know of occasions when permission has been given to fell trees. In one instance the positioning of trees on the site made any serious use of the site very difficult. With the trees left as they were only 10 houses could have been built on the site. Without the trees there could be up to 15 dwellings. The applicant made a good case for the development not being viable with fewer than 15 dwellings, particularly as the houses in quesytion were so-called 'affordable housing' which we as a borough are desperately short of.

They were allowed to chop down some of the trees, on the understandimng they would plant new trees in other, less awkward parts of the site.

I also know of one in which a family with a severely disabled adult daughter wanted to fell a protected tree in order to build a separate little bungalow in their garden for their girl. We gave permission for that one, though it was a close call.

There are great variations across Australia.

In the southern states, clearing land which wasn't already cleared usually requires a (hard to get) permit and/or gets you in trouble. Unless you're felling old growth forests for woodchips for pulp for paper, and replanting with native but non-local monocultures, then it's OK. Most cities have rules protecting significant trees, and a tree has to be obviously dangerous to human life to get chopped.

The further north you go, the easier trees grow, and the less protection they have.

In northern New South Wales, where the hippies gather (remember that IotD about the woman who was besieged by a pig because she was too much of a hippie to deal with it? That area) there is STRONG protection. I recall a newspaper report of a developer who cut down 20 trees without permission. He was fined $50,000, and ordered to replant 20 trees of the same species in the same locations and put up a $1,000 bond per tree to guarantee the care and survival or replacement of those trees for 20 years.

Once you cross the border and move north in Queensland, property development is pretty much done by getting Saruman to send in the half-orcs for a recreational rampage.

That'll teach me to drink coffee whilst reading the Cellar.

That's in the urban areas Zen. In rural areas, farmers are encouraged to replant in return for carbon credit, which has been going on for years now. I'm not sure if that's in place in other states, but I suspect most states have similar programs.

I am sick of the clear felling in new estates, but since they put the houses so close together, it really doesn't leave much room for large growth trees anyway.

I've noticed plenty of clear felling in urban areas around Melb and Sydney too though. I don't think the problem is isolated to Qld.

'S funny I never used to notice before, but do now, often in supermarkets or large industrial estates there will be odd trees that have been left in place and built around. You'll have a carpark all perfect and smooth except for a round patch where a big old tree stands.

I should add that my information about Queensland is around a decade old.

OK. You have rented a car in England. You know enough to drive on the left, so you are in the proper lane. You come to this exact scene. What do you do?

(Hint: I did the wrong thing. Extra bonus points if you guess what I did.)

I'm sensing this is a trick question, as that's looks obvious. But then that might be because I am an British driver.
So as not to spoil it for anyone else wanting to answer:
Pull up to the Give Way sign and wait for a gap in the traffic before turning left.

Yeah. The guy behind me thought it was obvious too. He waited for about ten seconds of me stopping at the red light with no cars coming before he honked at me.

I knew I couldn't go straight, because I saw the bit about buses and taxis only, but I thought the red light applied to me as I was turning left. And I understood that England doesn't have left turn on red, so I had to wait for the light to change before I could turn, even though no cars were coming.

That was my worst mistake in two days of driving. I'd say I did pretty well. (Of course I may still get a speed ticket in the mail. So many speed cameras on the M25.)

Picture was taken just in front of our hotel in Canterbury.

I thought maybe you tried to park between the plants.:headshake

The price of chewing gum fell over night, and green trees have been happier than egg-laying geese.

The mistake is that some fool put a freakin castle in the middle of the road. I'm sure that wasn't you glatt.

Yeah, I would have picked turn left if the road was clear, mainly because we have a similar system here, except in Victoria, but they're just plain weird down there.

Park the car in the middle of the road and take a picture?

Did you try to drive through the castle gate?

I'm fascinated by every word you say, I cling to your words like so many lifesavers at sea. The topics...how do you come up with such amazing stuff? You can't be human, you have to be superhuman to possess such vast and varied knowledge. You're the most interesting person I've ever seen. Your quick wit and razor sharp intelligence make me ashamed to be me. How is it that those who surround you aren't killing themselves to avoid feeling so inadequate? I think you should turn that megawatt personality down to 'low' because you make the rest of us look bad. My GAWD that such a person exists on this earth, and that I KNOW YOU.

No, not you.

IM - please share more ...

Cheers, Infi. I knew I was getting through somewhere :)

I am fed up with this bloody cough.
Chest Xray came back clear (HURRAY!) and have finished the course of steroids. But apart from a decrease in the amount of phlegm I am coughing up, I am still hacking away like a hag far too often for my (or anyone else's) liking.

My throat hurts.
My eyes feel bugged out.
I am exhausted.
And tonight I am cold, which is the ultimate indignity for me.

The Doc is calling me back on Friday morning.
Given that he won't be able to listen to my lungs or check the oxygen level in my blood over the phone I expect another appointment later in the day.

I would sigh.
But it would make me cough.

Sundae, you've had this for what, a week or more? Yuck! :(

A not so big wig (except in her own mind) here has 'viral pneumonia' or so she says. What's that, pneumonia with a really popular youtube video? Of course, no ordinary cold or flu for her, she's too important. But GAWD bless her widdle heart she's a twooper and is here today. Her indispensibility serves us all. I say this as my throat starts to hurt and my head starts to ache and my body goes hot/cold/hot/cold. Selfish beeatch. Maybe she was afraid someone else would lodge themselves up her boss's ass and there wouldn't be room for her anymore.

I'm sorry, did I type that out loud?

thanks, I needed that.
I used a grand total of 7 sick days for my last employer, in the 18 years I was there.
All of them when my son had his accident.
Sick or not you WERE expected to be there.
Needed a reason to not hate where I am - even if for only a moment.

Wow! I'm all about using my sick time, sometimes just for a 'mental health' day. Of course, this is a different environment.

Yes, classic, remember those feelings about that job and it might give you some relief for where you are now. And something is going to come along really soon.