Sundays With Ingrid
“Imagine,” said Jill Rubino, “that you’re walking through a dark dark forest. We’ve got a lot of good stuff left over from Macbeth – “ a disastrous production from the year before Ingrid joined the Prescott Players, Meredith O’Malley’s Out-Damned-Spot speech ending in a fit of giggles that people still talked about – “and I know Mr. Rubino will come up with scary lighting effects.”
Ingrid and Brucie walked across the stage.
“Brucie?” said Jill. “Is that you whistling?”
He nodded vigorously, kept whistling.
“And your thinking?”
“Whistling in the dark,” said Brucie. “Ever heard that expression?”
“I have,” said Jill. “But wasn’t that Yankee Doodle Dandy?”
“So?”
“I’m not sure Yankee Doodle Dandy fits the mood,” said Jill. “Silence, building tension – that’s what we’re about in this scene.”
“But – “
In a very low voice, Ingrid, stealing a line from Mr. Sidney, said, “Zip it.”
Brucie’s eyes widened. He zipped it. The rehearsal went smoothly after that. Ingrid lost herself totally in Gretel’s fear. Today, for some reason, she could do fear effortlessly.
On the way out, Jill said, “You were great today.”
Ingrid felt herself beaming.
Jill put her hand on Ingrid’s shoulder. “Holding up okay?”
Ingrid nodded. Jill was about to say something else when Brucie sidled up.
“Got a question, Bruce?”
“Yeah,” said Brucie. “Who’s your agent?”
Jill turned a little pink. “Why do you ask?”
“Thought maybe it was time.”
“Time?”
“For me to get one, too.”
“I’ll tell you when,” said Jill.
From Into the Dark.
Tags: Echo Falls Series
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 20th, 2011 at 8:33 am and is filed under Chet The Dog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
8:35 am on February 20th, 2011
Agents, Snort! (paraphrased from Riö)
Don’t get me started!
Snow coming. Sunny now though.
9:31 am on February 20th, 2011
Good morning.
Zoe, Melanie and Kirby’s mom – if you like Anne Rivers S, you might like Dorthea Benton Frank. Saucy southern humor and characters. And Kirby’s mom – Kathryn Wall’s Bay Tanner mysteries are set in the low country, Hilton Head and Beaufort.
Our boy rescued a red heeler yesterday! Mom’s off to the pet store for toys and bed but before that, B&N for a book about Australian Cattle Dogs. Yay. A puppy in the family, not living here, but close.
9:44 am on February 20th, 2011
Rio – The only problem I have with The Dark Side is that it loses my place marker so a refresh puts me back on side 1 and somewhere in the middle of those posts. If it’s your service provider (ISP) that is slow and not our blog server, you might want to consider something faster for all of your computer use.
10:27 am on February 20th, 2011
Good morning Chet, Ingrid and everyone. I’ve forgotten what is going on in Ingrid’s life at this point that makes Jill ask if she’s holding up. Anyone remember?
10:37 am on February 20th, 2011
Rio: When you call the hippies thieving lawyers and bankers on Wall Street you are confusing generations. That greed comes from a younger generation…perhaps yours.
11:12 am on February 20th, 2011
Good morning! We are back home, but haven’t gotten to read all the posts that we missed yet. Will do that today. Barb had a great time with the Grands.
Glad she traveled yesterday and not today. When she let me out this morning onto the front porch, all four legs went out from under me. Slippery as hell out there! I figured it out pretty quick, and walked back in with no problems. Today we are going to stay indoors and read and watch a movie. A Dog Year with Jeff Bridges, taken from a Jon Katz’s book. He is not one of our favorites, BTW.
11:14 am on February 20th, 2011
Not one of our favorites, meaning Jon Katz, not Jeff Bridges.
11:26 am on February 20th, 2011
Rio, I am certainly not going to stomp on your opinion from last night. I agree with you about greed…if it is not greed for money, it is greed for power.
Mollypop, The same thing happens to me when I refresh.
Rio, who is your ISP provider? I have Quest, but yours could be your cable tv company.
11:32 am on February 20th, 2011
Good morning everyone – Gilly here, checking in since I got to the computer before either Tupper or the (grrrr) Wrotten Kats!
Hi Barb and Maggie – welcome home. Be careful out there on that ice little Magpie. Or, you can do like Tupper and limp just a little bit now and then for sympathy. Mama gives Tupper a special herbal pill wrapped in cheddar cheese spread whenever she limps, so I think Tup has just figured out how to get cheese. It’s ok by me – I get cheese too.
11:36 am on February 20th, 2011
Barb and Maggie, Welcome back…we missed you.
It is interesting that you brought up Jon Katz. Mom has a couple of his books, but she hasn’t read them, which is totally unlike mom. Could it be that she senses she wouldn’t like them? I don’t know.
Bluecat, The Australian Cattle Dog is going to live with your boy then? That is so neat that he rescued one.
I have always wondered why the AKC changed their name from red heelers to Australian Cattle dogs.
Maybe Liz can come along and tell us what they call them in Australia..
11:40 am on February 20th, 2011
Ha Ha – we chased Gilly away!
We just had to tell B.Stover – we read the wikipedia entry about dreamcatchers, and we are still rolling around the floor laughing.
Sheesh – people always seem to want to assign “mystical” properties to anything Native American. Dreamcatchers as a “sign of unity among the tribes”..giggle,giggle, snicker, snort, gaffaw!
All the original dc’s were were cradle charms to keep babies safe from night terrors. They are based on an old Ojibway story about how Spider wove a web to catch the bad dreams that her babies were having, and then taught a young human mother how to weave the web.
They do work, but Mama thinks its the funniest thing in the world to see people hang a sleep aid in their car….not the best place to be taking a snooze.
11:43 am on February 20th, 2011
This is an interesting article about Egypt’s cultural revolution from today’s book review in the NYTimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/books/review/Creswell-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=review
11:49 am on February 20th, 2011
B&M: What is it that Maggie figured out so that she could walk on the ice?
B&S: I just think that the dreamcatchers I saw on Amazon are beautiful. They seem very natural…don’t know if I can explain what I mean by that.
11:57 am on February 20th, 2011
We just got a dream catcher in the mail last week and Barb gave it to Ben, almost 5-yr old Grand. His sister Lily had one so now he has his own. We got it in the mail from St. Joseph’s Indian School. One of the few non-animal donations that Barb does. It is a school for Lakota (Sioux) kids, in Chamberlain. S.D.
Barb didn’t really dislike the Jon Katz books so much as that she doesn’t have a good feeling about him personally. She just doesn’t think he loves dogs and relates to him like Spence does. For one thing she read that he euthanized the B.C. that he first writes about. Supposedly because it bit someone, but that just didn’t ring true to us. He knew the dog had some issues to begin with, so maybe he just didn’t want to deal with it. Just left her with a bad feeling.
12:00 pm on February 20th, 2011
Barb and her daughter and the 3 Grands went out to the flower garden Friday night and made their wishes and gathered some moon dust. Can we tell what Barb wished for, or is it a secret, like birthday candles?
12:04 pm on February 20th, 2011
How cool is this – the LA Times has just named one of our local, non-box bookstores as the Finest Bookstore-Cafe in the World! Really – in the world!!
Its called the Montague Bookmill, and their slogann is “books you don’t need in a place you can’t find”. Not a real high pressure kind of sales pitch, huh?
It is a wonderful place – kind of magical in its scenic beauty on the riverbank, with all kinds of great books that contrary to their slogan, Mama seems to feel that she needs implicitly!
12:07 pm on February 20th, 2011
T & G, Is this bookstore connected to the Montagues that we all know and love?
12:09 pm on February 20th, 2011
B.Stover: Do you have Ingrid on Kindle?
Bluecat: How exciting, an Australian cattle dog rescue. Kudos to your boy.
Welcome back Barb and Maggie.
12:09 pm on February 20th, 2011
Herbal kats, Your mom is from NM so she knows…..
Once in awhile we see those large foam dice hanging from rear view mirrors.
My dad has a large, beautiful dreamcatcher with a wolf on it. It was given to him. He likes it because of the wolf on it, but I don’t think he has ever given any thought to the fact that it is a dreamcatcher.
12:10 pm on February 20th, 2011
No – it is named for the town that it is in – however, the family that we love is actually responsible for that town name many generations ago, if we remember correctly… wonder if Melanie can clarify further.
12:13 pm on February 20th, 2011
Hi Siber – Those dice sound like lots of fun – Gilly would love to tear them down and throw them around. She just loves squishy toys and she never even tears them up!
12:21 pm on February 20th, 2011
Maggie, Now mom knows she isn’t going to read those Katz books. She always likes to ask a “dog” person about dog books and movies before she tries them.
It is funny, she only had good feelings when she picked up Chet’s first book in the bookstore.
12:22 pm on February 20th, 2011
I remember winning a pair of those dice at the Minnesota State Fair in 1963.
12:23 pm on February 20th, 2011
Crap!… We have to leave again. Her mother wants to go shopping….sniff!…Someone here hates shopping with a passion and is now in a very bad mood. All we want to do is stay home and read our book and take it easy…snort!…Every damned weekend its the same damned thing…grump!
12:27 pm on February 20th, 2011
Poor Rio – at least you are all clean and shiny from your bath…
12:36 pm on February 20th, 2011
Hey Rio: Look for that story about the moon landing that your friend wrote while you are at her mothers’ house.
12:36 pm on February 20th, 2011
Hey Rio: Look for that story about the moon landing that your friend wrote while you are at her mothers’ house.
12:47 pm on February 20th, 2011
Okay, short history lesson: In 1066 Our ancestor came over from France to England to help William to take over England. Big in the Battle of Hastings. Our dude was William’s right hand. He got some of the English land.
Go forward a couple of few hundred years, and Montage had two younger sons who decided to seek, fame and fortune in the Colonies.
One brother stayed North and the other went South. What’s weird?
When we moved to VA we were just a few miles from the town of Montague that the Southern brother created.
When we moved to Marblehead, MA, we found out the Northern brother actually stayed in Marblehead (at that time a place for those who liked the more “fun” things in life that the Puritans in Salem didn’t, which explains a lot).
We moved out here and this is the area that the Northern brother ended up. He actually lived in Hadley, but the town of Montague is named for him and his “get” lived there before going out and becoming fruitful in the whole US!
12:47 pm on February 20th, 2011
Dawson, you double dipper you!
12:49 pm on February 20th, 2011
Phooey!
1:05 pm on February 20th, 2011
Well we are getting snow again. When I first woke up there had been no snow so I wondered if maybe the weather guys were off by 8 inches or so. But now they are saying they were only off by 4 inches. And it is 4 MORE inches not 4 less. Supposedly we are going for a foot of snow……
go to http://www.noaa.gov and put 55410 into the search bar on the left where it says “city,ST” for further info.
1:08 pm on February 20th, 2011
Melanie, That is a fascinating story! How cool.
1:22 pm on February 20th, 2011
Melanie: What fun to have an ancestor in the Battle of Hastings.
Dawson: Yes, I have Into the Dark on my Kindle.
We are on a winter storm watch from 4PM today. Supposed to get a wintry mix–snow, sleet and ice–but not as much as Staff.
1:42 pm on February 20th, 2011
Bee, From Barb – Maggie went charging out on the porch when I let her out, sliding all over the place. When she came back in, she cautiously stepped, one foot at a time, digging her nails into the icy surface. She is one smart doggie!
We watched A Dog Year, and would NOT recommend it. Movie was ok if you did not think about Jon Katz. We ordered it from Netflix, because Barb’s sister recommended it, not knowing the background at the time. If you really want to dislike Katz, Google “Did Jon Katz euthanize Devon?” Would never read another of his books. He is a self-serving, egotistical jerk, if we are allowed to say that on the blog. He used the dog to make a bundle on his books, then killed it, along with some of his other dogs, when it was too much trouble. Double boo to him.
1:52 pm on February 20th, 2011
Melanie, not only is that an interesting family history, but it is neat that you know it.
Staff, that was facinating what you posted yesterday about the moisture content in the snow. Our weathermen here never have to explain anything like that.
1:53 pm on February 20th, 2011
No spoiler alerts about “Into the Dark” please. Mom-the-slow just finished the first 2 this week and our library doesn’t have ITD, so we are going out in search of it this week. “We” probably does not mean me. I do not understand why I cannot go in, since I have not lifted my leg on anything. Ever.
Melanie, reading your history made mom sit up and take note. Her great-uncle, a serious genealogist (meaning he actually got paid sometimes), has done our family back to the very same time. To sort of quote him, To _________ (sorry Uncle Bob)right hand man to William the Conquerer. So either we are sort of related or EVERYone comes from this guy. Uncle Bob did beautiful caligraphy on very large family trees for mom and dad when they got married, and then updated it for each of our girls when they were born. We would have to have an English drawing room to have a place large enough to frame this beauty. He also did fantastic family crests in pen and ink. Now that mom is old enough to truly understand more about what he did, she wishes he was still around to talk to, or more precisely, to listen to him, since he could talk for hours without taking a breath.
BTW it has been in the 70’s and 80’s for the last few days. Mom prefers cold,, but she is not in charge of the weather.
1:56 pm on February 20th, 2011
Maggie, mom is not giving her Katz books away…she will now throw them away and is very glad she didn’t read them.
2:05 pm on February 20th, 2011
Siber, One reviewer said they hurled the book across the room and then into the fireplace! Thank Dog we never hear that stuff about our favorite author!
2:13 pm on February 20th, 2011
T & G, Maybe I should have tried that limp trick. Some cheese would hit the spot right now. Barb is going to go do some reading – either Laura Levine or Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Maybe a nap, too. BBL
2:22 pm on February 20th, 2011
Snicker Macy! I was trying to google the name of the guy which is French for Left side of the Mountain (you can sort of see that in Montague), so I put in right hand man for William and came up with LOTS of right hand men. So William must have had a lot of right hands. Now I have to find the huge book on the Montagues and look that up again and see why they say that.
2:24 pm on February 20th, 2011
Yes, Maggie is a very smart dog.
It has started to snow here…fast and furious.
2:34 pm on February 20th, 2011
Okay, so not William but William’s favorite brother Robert, earl of Moriton or Mortain.
That ancestor was Drogo De Montagu. He went over with William and Robert and received “large Possessions and Manors”. Mostly in Summerset.
Cool. I had forgotten that since I haven’t looked at the 500 page book on the genealogy of the Montagues. In fact it’s been since 1986. That’s a long time ago.
2:36 pm on February 20th, 2011
Our family has some local history but it’s not like Melanie or Macy. Mom is the descendant of the founder of Buffalo so she thinks she’s some kind of royalty here. Her great great grandfather set up a trading post with the Indians.
Mom did some research and another man back then wrote that he couldn’t stay with the grandfather because drunken Indians were coming in and out of the house all day and night.
2:38 pm on February 20th, 2011
Well shucks, YSAS and OTAS aren’t in the book but my sister’s oldest daughter is and she’s younger than both the guys.
2:43 pm on February 20th, 2011
Snowing here in Grand Rapids. Mom is watching the Daytona 500. I’m going back to my nap. BBL
4:08 pm on February 20th, 2011
Mollypop: Cool! Why did they name it Buffalo?
Melanie: Who wrote the geneology? What fun that would be.
Jasper: We have one inch of snow already and it doesn’t look like it will let up. At least it’s just snow….at this point.
4:14 pm on February 20th, 2011
B.Stover: Right now it’s downstairs and I’m upstairs. But I’ll find out. I do know that my ex did all the copying and restoring of the pictures in the book. I remember that much.
No snow here yet.
4:17 pm on February 20th, 2011
Melanie: No rush. You ex was artistic…
5:08 pm on February 20th, 2011
Back!….Another Sunday wasted. No laundry done, no groceries bought, no meals made….sniff!…Someone is very unhappy right now. She is going to go lay on the bed and cry….Me too! Up! Up! Up!…snort!
5:27 pm on February 20th, 2011
Riö, sorry your friend is feeling sad. Give her some kisses and licks.
B.Stover: Lois Ridley: “Montague Genealogy”
YSAS’s SO is in NYC for four days! I probably will NOT hear from him until she leaves!
Jasper’s mom: Did the pictures ever get uploaded about your son’s question to someone in FL?
5:53 pm on February 20th, 2011
Rio: Please tell your friend not to cry. Instead, do something that SHE wants to do. (Well, if she wants to cry and that works…okay. It doesn’t for me.)
5:54 pm on February 20th, 2011
Melanie: Is that a book that anyone could buy? No….it’s one of a kind right?
6:10 pm on February 20th, 2011
Tired!….She actually didn’t cry too much, just a little. I snuffled in her ear and started snoring even though I was awake and she laughed. The whole act of lying down brings on some sort of snoring no matter what. At least I didn’t fart and I think I helped her mood…heh!… I am good for something sometimes…sneeze!
Grief!… Her mother is going through an intense grieving period (again) and it is really taking it’s toll on her. It’s as if her mother has aged so much in a matter of months….sniff!…Plus, she’s been sick ever since Grandma passed, making things even tougher. So on days where someone here is not feeling that good, she and I still have to be there for her mother….snuffle!… It’s quite emotionally draining, especially this weekend for some reason….grunt!…She is going to do her laundry now and take stock of the groceries, make something that will be low salt and healthy for lunch or supper for a few days this week….wheeze!… I will supervise all the cooking if it actually happens. Sometimes good plans never get executed properly…heh!
6:17 pm on February 20th, 2011
What amazing family histories you guys have! And knowing about it, that’s something.
That bookstore sounds wonderful.
And how great that a cattledog is being rescued. Re the name, all I know is that we call them both but the official name is cattledog because genetically there’s no difference between red heelers and blue heelers – as I understand it, the colours are just an accident of birth. So they can’t be bred for that, maybe – i hope that’s making sense.
Macy, I’m really interested in Uncle Bob’s calligraphy and heraldry skills, did he do it for a living?
6:39 pm on February 20th, 2011
B. Stover: I looked on line. This book is not available. It was a limited edition. There were two other books that dealt with the same family, both were unavailable. I can’t remember how many she had printed.
We’ve always been more interested in the McKey (McKee, Mackay, Mackee) connection in the family. I had that family Bible until my ex threw it out when we split.
Jeez.
LizF: I think it is also cool that another dog was rescued. And I met two just the other day. You appear to have dancing cyclones around your country!
6:43 pm on February 20th, 2011
Riö: Grief . . . Painful . . . And your friend is not only dealing with her own grief but with her mother’s. I am sorry. Unfortunately, grief can not be “dealt” with but just lived through to get to the other side.
To cheer you up I’ll tell you what we had for dinner. We had salt free, gluten free, double dipped fried shrimp in good for you oil. It was delish. Then all the crumbles and gook went into the crock pot for the dogs.
We do not use the crock pot for humans. The crock pot is for the Pack. We put in marrow bones, water and simmer. Then we add leftovers and vegies. This gets poured onto their kibble.
6:55 pm on February 20th, 2011
Liz!… Hi! Where have you been? Have you been out and about having fun in the sun?…snort!… When my friend adopted Cassie The Butt Sniffing Dog, they told her she was part Australian Cattledog….wheeze!… My friend says she never saw any Cattle dog in Cassie except for a good natured temperament and a tendency to butt other dogs around with her wide chest if they got in her way…chorkel!….She once butted a huge Golden Retriever down an embankment into a ditch with running water…heh!… No offence to Wookie, mind you….sniff!
6:57 pm on February 20th, 2011
We do have cyclone issues at the moment, Sir Melanie. I’m calling you that now since you have that long impressive lineage plus ‘possessions and manors’.
I think Cricket would be very jealous of your dogs if she heard about that crock pot.
6:57 pm on February 20th, 2011
Rio: Helping someone else work through their grief can be much more emotionally draining than working through your own grief.
Melanie: Both meals sound delish. 🙂
7:02 pm on February 20th, 2011
Melanie, There is a show on Friday nights that we have watched a few times, called “Who Do You Think You Are?”. On one of the main channels, CBS maybe. Each week they take a celebrity and trace their ancestors. We watched one recently with Vanessa Williams, and one with Tim McGraw. They were very interesting, but the show probably makes it look easier to research those long lost relatives than it really is. Think it is sponsored by Ancestory.com.
7:03 pm on February 20th, 2011
I have indeed been out there having fun in the sun Rio (cyclones are way off west of me). Cassie was part cattledog, wow! She sounds so cute.
Cricket did a lot of heel-nipping when she was a little pup, if I went in the back yard to hang out the clothes or something she’d be nipping away, trying to herd me in the right direction – and she also chest-butted a jack russell recently, so maybe that’s part of the breed’s characteristics!
Oh – i forgot to answer your question last week about how come Cricket was up the top of Chet’s friends on the old blog. She and I were pretty early arrivals, I guess. We miss being special like that!!
7:13 pm on February 20th, 2011
Hey y’all! I’m finally here — Mom went grocery shopping and to church and then she just “zoned out” (whatever that menas!), so she’s just now getting around to turning on the computer for me.
Bluecat: Mom has read Dorthea Benton Frank’s books, although she hasn’t been too thrilled by the last couple! Mom went to see her at the South Carolina Book Festival a few years ago. She was a hysterically funny speaker!!!
Mom has also seen Kathryn Wall speak, but has yet to read her books. It’s one of those things she’ll probably get around to doing one of these days!
7:13 pm on February 20th, 2011
Melanie!…. My friend has been though intense grieving when her best friend who was also like a big sister of 20 years died 5 years ago, but her mother has never truly experienced it until last year and now….sigh…She is not dealing with it very well. She dwells on it. She makes herself sick over it. .snuff!… I think her mother is totally bored and depressed but getting her to do or try anything new is like pulling teeth. Although, she finally finished Ingrid’s first book and is starting on the second one. Thank goodness for small miracles. ….grunt!
Dawson!…It has been the hardest thing ever these past 9 months…snort!…I think that is exactly the way my friend felt today. Drained. If she survives this, she can survive almost anything….sniff!…Her sister in Iowa only adds to all the heartbreak by being crazy, but thankfully her brother will be retiring early this summer and able to get up here and help her mother out with more outside projects that we here just can’t do…grunt! …. Maybe that will help, I hope….sniff!…That is a long way off though…sigh!
7:15 pm on February 20th, 2011
Oh, and Rio, we did see the Top Chef episode with Cookie Monster, et al. Pretty funny — I think the “non-baked” cookies were cheating, though!
7:35 pm on February 20th, 2011
Rio – keep plundering. You know we’re behind you.
Our “boy” is an adult, living about 40 minutes from here so we’ll see the puppy often. Her story is amazing. She’s about 3, had litters of puppies in a puppy mill before it was shut down. Then she went to a shelter. Then she was fostered in a rescue home for 4 months. The foster mom told our son the dog seemed to know someone was coming for her yesterday. She’s so grateful to be in a forever home – you could see that in her soft brown eyes and she licked our hands and necks often. 🙂 Happy ending.
Have a good week, Everybody.
7:43 pm on February 20th, 2011
Bluecat: Good for your boy! All our kind — and your kind, too! — ought to have forever homes. And by the way, Mom’s favorite DBF scene is the one where she’s packing up her hubby’s stuff and uses his toothbrush to scrub the toilet. Mom hasn’t ever been that mad, but she’s come close! I just have to make sure to keep an eye on Dad’s toothbrush!!!
7:44 pm on February 20th, 2011
Beautiful story Bluecat! I love happy endings like that. It’s great that she knew he was coming.
8:05 pm on February 20th, 2011
Dear Rio’s Friend,
I agree with Dawson. It is harder to deal with someone else’s grief than your own. Make sure you let your brother know that you need help. Don’t talk to your sister. Crazy people are no help at all.
We are all wishing you the best and are glad you have Rio there to snuffle in your ear.
For me the hardest thing is letting the other person grieve the way they want to. (I always want to fix it for them)
Remember that you can not really ‘fix’ your mother. Sometimes you just have to accept their agony and let them fix themselves in their own way.
Good luck.
And it is OK to let yourself cry when you need to. If you have to you have to.
Wishing you strength….
8:07 pm on February 20th, 2011
That’s wonderful Bluecat.
Melanie: Why are you more interested in the McKey connection?
8:15 pm on February 20th, 2011
So, Melanie’s ancestor was the right hand of blabbity blah…yeah, yeah. Well, WE have royal ancestry too! It is a little known fact (since Kats are known to be so modest and unpretentious)that we had a Great and Powerful ancestor who brought all the warring nations together in friendship. This was in the days long before the Nobel prize, so his accomplishments went largly unnoted by history.
He was known as Katz, the Nobel Coadjutor. However, Fox, the court scribe that year wasn’t the fastest mouse in the maze, if you catch our drift, and he couldn’t spell Coadjutor. So he asked someone at court for another word. Theo Saurus the Wise suggested a number of terms, such as Collaborationist or even Sympathizer, but Fox, the Dull Scribe still couldn’t spell those words either. So Theo thought some more and came up with Ally. THAT, even dull Fox should be able to get right. Alas, with his delusions of adequacy, Fox spelled it as Katz the Nobel Alley, and from that point on, history shortened the name to Alley Katz. And THAT was our nobel ancestor.
We did find further down the family tree we had another famous ancestor, Sir Bernard Katz who won one of the first Nobel prizes for medicine. He was quite a respected family member until his many good deeds got him sainted. Once he became Saint Bernard, we Katz had to disown him.
So that should beat Melanie’s family, who only have a couple of little old towns named for them. WE on the other hand have Alley Katz named for our family all over the world!
8:20 pm on February 20th, 2011
Oh dear…
Melanie is without electrical power tonight, so she can’t even scold those bad kitties. She says she’ll check in tomorrow if the electric company gets their act together and flips the switch in the town back on.
8:46 pm on February 20th, 2011
Herbal Kats!… I have to admit that is a very interesting and unique account of your history…heh!….Spell binding and riveting as it was, we here are getting sleepy…yawn!… We are watching The Good Wife it has one of our favorite characters in this episode. The quirky guy from Rubicon….heh!
Power!…Oh no! I hope Melanie and family are safe and warm tonight…snuff!…What a hard winter everyone is having this year….snort!
9:07 pm on February 20th, 2011
Herbals, What a rich ancestorial history you have, and Barb thinks you are very witty, too. She wishes she could be so creative, but she is stuck with gawd awful tin futures. Yuck!
9:30 pm on February 20th, 2011
I think the Herbals have been into the catnip…just kidding. That is a good story.
Maggie, none of the rest of us can do tin futures.
Rio, there has been some very good advice, as there always is, on this blog about what is best for your friend and her mom. There is nothing I can add to it but to let you know you are in our prayers.
9:43 pm on February 20th, 2011
What makes you all think that this is a STORY???
sniff!
But then again, catnip does sound like a good idea, lets go ask Mama to get it out of the cupboard.
Dam we wish we had opposible thumbs!
(and we wish we could spell better too!)
9:48 pm on February 20th, 2011
Hope Melanie, Zoe and Dan are okay.
Good night all.
9:49 pm on February 20th, 2011
Macy’s mom here
Liz, most of my uncle’s things are at my mom’s so I will call and have her dig some out and scan them so that you can see them. I am not sure how much money he actually made from his avocation. He was an odd man, eccentric I guess. When we went through his papers it took forever, because if he wrote a letter and made a mistake he would start over, and also had carbon copies of each letter. Not a nice neat collection, papers EVERYWHERE.
We also found letters that he wrote to Publisher’s Clearing House. In one, he advised them that he did not want a computer, so if he won could he have the cash instead. In the other, he advised them that he would be having surgery during the time of the awarding of the prize and would they hold the prize until he was out of the hospital. I have to say I felt like I knew him better after he was gone than I ever did while he was alive. I have dozens “uncle bob” stories.
9:54 pm on February 20th, 2011
Thanks!… My friend told me I had to thank Stover, Staff and SiberH for their suggestions and/or support…grunt!…So thanks to you guys out there. I think it’s just been a bad weekend and things will look better in the morning, unless it’s snowing or some horrible thing like that….sniff! ….We have to remember Spring Training is starting and Quacky Baseball is coming out next week. There are some good things to look forward to even during this bleak February….wheeze!
9:59 pm on February 20th, 2011
Thank you for the nice words, Siber.
We hope Rio’s friend has a better week ahead.
It is raining hard here, but so far it is too warm for snow. Good night, all.
10:00 pm on February 20th, 2011
Shoot!…. She just remembered that she DID NOT pre-order Quacky Baseball when she put an order in on Friday for another Quilling book and some other interesting books she wanted to read….grunt!…It was Free Shipping too!…growl!cough!sneeze!….This was a big mistake on her part and I am quite pissed off now…..sniff!
10:07 pm on February 20th, 2011
Oh, forgot to ask B & S if that Dull Scribe Fox was the same Fox that started the News Network bearing his name? Some of those guys are not the “fastest mice in the maze” either. Snicker
Good night again.
10:13 pm on February 20th, 2011
Rio!! If they haven’t shipped the order yet, she can add Quacky Baseball to it.
10:19 pm on February 20th, 2011
SiberH!….Good idea, but she’s not in the mood to deal with all that stuff tonight…huffle!…She will maybe give it a try tomorrow, but I bet it will be too late…damn!… Our local bookstore, Borders, is closing. I think she was counting on finding it there, but not know. We loved any excuse to go into that store, but now it will be gone, gone, gone….sad!
10:31 pm on February 20th, 2011
Tomorrow may not be too late, Rio. Our Borders is closing, also. That is really sad about Borders. The strange thing is we have a Barnes and Noble one block from it. They put those two stores really close together for some unknown reason.
10:34 pm on February 20th, 2011
Barb and Maggie – how sagacious of you to realize that the network was indeed founded by the decendants (and we mean that in all sorts of definitions) of the non-too-bright scribe of long ago. Some family traditions die hard.
And we have word that you all needn’t worry about the other family that is descended from historical adventurers – the lights are back on in the hilltowns, and the family and the Pack are all snug in their warm, toasty beds.
(Thank goodness Melanie didn’t check the blog before retiring!)
10:37 pm on February 20th, 2011
Quacky Baseball! You talking about PA’s new book just gave Mom a great idea! She is collecting children’s books to give to my girl when she graduates — she just realized she has to add Quacky Baseball to her pile! My girl is student teaching in a first-grade classroom right now, and she loves it. Mom just finished reading Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook, and he advocates teachers doing a lot of reading to their students. Mom got all excited about it, because she loves for kids to love reading, and decided to collect all the good books she can find, cover them with mylar to protect them (she learned how to do that at the library) and give a big box of them to my girl for part of her graduation present, so she can start her library for her first classroom. So far she’s got some Eric Carle books, and Stellaluna and The Dog Who Cried Wolf and a bunch more. Mom’s checking the sale racks at the bookstore so she can get my girl a whole lot of books!!!
(Now we just have to hope she can actually get a teaching job despite all the budget cutbacks!!!)
10:53 pm on February 20th, 2011
Kirby!…Please email my friend (riotheevilpug@yahoo.com), she has a unique suggestion for you! …snort!
10:56 pm on February 20th, 2011
Rio: I’ve sent you one of those special messages!
11:09 pm on February 20th, 2011
Herbs, thanks for the news that Melanie and family are safe and warm. I wasn’t worried about the pack…they would probably be happy without any heat, just like me.
night all!
11:15 pm on February 20th, 2011
Macy – thanks, I look forward to seeing the Uncle Bob Files. He sounds great!
11:22 pm on February 20th, 2011
Yawwwwwnnn….sleepy Corgis…goodnight all
11:36 pm on February 20th, 2011
Rio: Got your friend’s message — she’s right, we should be in bed, since we don’t want to rush through our message back, we’ll write you in the morning. Monday is Mom’s late day, so I’ll actually be able to get on the computer before nighttime!
Night, y’all!
11:46 pm on February 20th, 2011
Night!…All you Easterners! Westerners! Southerners! Northerners! …heh!…We here are feeling very tired too right now…sniff!…I doubt the Big Bed is in my future tonight so I will just go round and round on my warm soft bed with all my baseball toys and settle in there for the night…wuffle!… It’s been a trying weekend, but things will look better in the morning, I’m sure….snort!
Plus!… I vow never to get involved in any Political conversations on this here blog ever again, no matter how much I disagree with what is being written…sigh…It only adds to both of our feelings of discontent right now. On top of everything else, we can’t endure that…gruff!