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I got last weekend off from the Farmer’s Market because the behemoth Art Fair on the Square was occupying the space. That means I had lot less to do and I’ve finally run out of excuses for not writing something here. So, how’s by you? We’re all OK. Me and Don and the hedgehog survived early July heat spell by moving into the downstairs into a large nest of blankets in front of the air conditioner. During our waking hours, T-Bone ran free through the downstairs allowing him to choose whether or not he wanted to be in the air conditioned room or near his cage in the foyer. That was pretty great. Once when I went to the refrigerator to get some ham T-Bone was sitting there on the floor and I said “Do you want some ham, T-Bone?”. He sniffed vigorously at the smell coming out of the refrigerator, whatever that smell was. I interpreted his interest as a “yes” and gave him a tiny piece of ham which he devoured and then skittered away. So cute, and so like a regular pet.

As far as I can tell, T-Bone kept his pooping confined to the cage during his free run of the living room. So there really was no downside to having a hedgehog loose in the house. That was probably the high point of my summer.

In other heat news, we bought one of those 10 ft. inflatable swimming pools and installed it in our pals Aaron and Erika’s backyard. We were going to put it in our backyard but the yard is too tiny and does not afford us the privacy we require to soak while wearing pirate hats and playing with wind-up bath toys. We probably could have crammed it in but it would block access to the tractor tire garden and make it difficult to get to the plants if they caught on fire, which they might. (My plants, by the way, are another story–I bought three tomato plants from a nun at the Farmer’s Market. Two are normal cherry tomatoes but the third is some kind of puny ornamental plant that grows about ten inches high and produces tomatoes the size of your fingernail. I didn’t know there were ornamental tomato plants–no vines, just a little bush with tiny, tiny tomatoes. Who would engineer something like that? Someone who’s not very hungry, I guess.) But back to the pool, it is the best $80. we’ve spent on anything. Everyone should have one of those.

In work news, I started making rings again and they are proving to be popular in a positive and not so positive way.

A very unassuming woman stole this one after it was on my stand for only about 4 hours, which is probably a record. In these situations, people often talk about Karma in relation to the thief getting some come-uppance, which is admittedly a fun and comforting thing to think about. But, I think that if you believe in Karma, then wasn’t something awful I did responsible for me suffering the loss of the ring in the first place? Am I thinking about this right? Because that’s not comforting to me at all. Real revenge is more comforting, but it’s not very practical since I’ll probably never see her again. The solution here is to keep an eye on your shit when the 40 year old, middle class ladies are around. Then you won’t have any problems Karmic or otherwise.

In other news, I finally got around to listing more stuff in Aardvark’s Etsy store. I could have listed more during my free time but I didn’t because I have a swimming pool to sit in. There are some nice knobs and fish and what have you. Go take a look, if you want.

Last evening there was this tremendous wind storm and a giant branch broke off of a tree by our driveway.

The cracking sound was really quite something so I went outside to see what the hell was going on. All my neighbors were there, too, so I embraced this chance to caught up on the blood trail story. I stopped wondering about the blood’s origin about a week ago I asked a friend who works 911 calls about it. She said someone punched through a glass window about 3 blocks away. No stabbing or gunshot, just drunk people. That’s really all I was concerned about. Anyway, my neighbors affirmed that the two men involved were very inebriated. I guess my neighbor just found a collapsed bleeding man in his front yard around 1:30am and called 911. The man left standing repeatedly referred to the other as “bro”, so we know they were bros, but not much else. I’m sure they’re fine now as drunk people are surprisingly resilient and almost always survive drunken brushes with death so they can do the same thing next weekend. One person’s wake-up call is just another day at the office for others.

So you see, it isn’t disinterest or fear or anything that keeps neighbors from talking to one another–it’s a lack of shared common experiences. Now in the evening when I walk T-Bone the hedgehog people ask “What kind of a creature is that?” and I say “It’s a hedgehog. He likes walking on the sidewalk.” And they say “What a great little animal! Say, did you see that trail of blood on the sidewalk?” And then we have two things to talk about, three if you count the tree.

On Tuesday morning I noticed a significant trail of blood on our sidewalk starting (or ending) just up the street from our house and continuing all the way down the 800 block of Dayton Street. Emergency vehicles arrived but I was asleep so I don’t know what the heck happened, though I am quite curious. I could knock on my neighbor’s door and ask them what happened but, just as I prefer to ask the computer what the weather is rather than stick my fat head out the window, I decided to look up police reports on the web.

So I’ve been browsing the Madison Police website for the past few days looking for information. I haven’t learned anything about what happened in front of my house but I have discovered completely by accident that the police blotter is an awesome read. I also found out that I am the last to learn this. According to this article, the Madison Police blotter, written by Joel De Spain, is actually an “underground cult sensation” replete with Facebook fan page. I’ve been browsing through it and the longer entries are really good. It’s in my queue now like a blog.

Meanwhile, I’ll post a picture of a portion of the now 4 day old mysterious blood trail:

There must be a pint of it or so as it goes for more than a city block. Not everything goes into the Police Blotter so it was probably just a fight. I guess I’ll have to ask the neighbors next time I see them.

I was eating pizza today and little strings of cheese kept falling on my bosom. I glanced down and tried to pick off what I thought was cheese but turned out to be a long-legged spider, which ran away when my hand came near. Scared the shit out of me. Don said I should make that a Facebook post but I don’t like Facebook so I wrote it here.

Great news everyone! A giant can of SPAM will be dancing around outside during the Meat Show on May 4th. The ingredients for the costume (gold foil, 10x2ft printed SPAM label, giant cardboard box) are ready to go. I’d hoped to have everything out of my living room and a picture of the completed piece by now but, since assembly requires a large amount of spray adhesive, we have to wait for the wind to die down outside before we can get it together. Or go to Erika’s studio and make it there. Either way there is going to be a dancing SPAM can at the show. That is what I want you to take away from this.

This is news, too: We got our house re-financed. I know that’s not a particularly difficult thing for most people to do but our bank, the Fuck Shit Piss Bank, likes to make things extremely difficult and expensive for people, even if you have stellar credit ratings and have paid off a third of your mortgage in 6 years. Thinking about the process kind of ticks me off so, really long story short, we ended up going to a Credit Union and they refinanced us right away, like a normal lending institution would. Thanks Credit Union! So long, Stink Bank!

So, everything is moving right along and going swimmingly. As I was writing this post, the Fire Inspector popped into the store, which was a surprise. Fire inspectors are supposed to be a surprise (hence the term “surprise inspection”) but they’re not, really, because they always show up around Easter. I’m just surprised when anyone comes in here. I got a verbal pat on the head for having my gas tanks chained up and he did not cite me for anything. Yay!

Time is flying by and I have to go pick dandelions for the iguana’s supper. I’ll post more about meat when the art starts coming in.

My awesome pal Gianofer Fields produced a radio segment about my octopus beads for WUWM in Milwaukee. Ago, Gianofer worked for NPR but now she’s a freelance radio producer. Her asking me to participate in this series made me feel important, and the way she edited the piece made me sound kind of interesting and funny, like a person on the radio. I’m actually making an octopus bead as she interviews me. Here’s the link if you want to hear it. It’s part of a series where she talks to various craftspeople about their favorite tools. Interviews with Erika the welder, Aaron the blacksmith and Missy the jeweler are forthcoming. I like the way she promotes from within our group of friends–they are a goddamn talented bunch of people.

Now that I’ve shared that with you, I realize that if I can come up with six more things about myself, I can get out from under that blog award Jean bestowed upon me in my comment area. (Just kidding, Jean–I like writing seven things. As you know from my constant complaining, I’m just not down with the tagging and the linking.)

So, I found out the other day that T-Bone is naturally predisposed to walking down the sidewalk. He seems to enjoy it more than walking in the grass. The implications of this are that it may one day be possible for me to walk down the block with my hedgehog next to me and blow people’s minds as they pass by. My dream is to walk down the street with T-Bone and introduce him to people as “My gentleman friend”. The last few days I’ve played that scenario over and over in my head. If I am able to do that there will truly be nothing left in life to wish for.

The other day I found two dollars on the ground. I used it to buy milk.

I have a patch of skin on my thumb that is peeling off in a perfect circle. It’s probably nothing but in the back of my mind I’m worried that it is ringworm.

This isn’t about me but it is a fun fact: The other day it was 83 degrees here. It has never been 83 degrees in March in Madison ever in the history of recorded temperatures. I read that on a weather site.

Last year, I counted the number of hats Don and I own. We have 72. We weeded out some but ended up just buying a bigger container for them. That’s our answer for everything.

I heard a show on WPR the other day about the dangers of eating canned soup (on account of the plastic lining inside the can being something you shouldn’t ingest). I still eat canned soup but now I’m afraid of it-that adds an interesting dynamic to my meals.

I’m sick again. So is Don. What else is new? Frankly, I did not expect to fly to Mexico, run around there for a week and fly back without catching something so I guess everything is normal.

I was pretty tired and crabby on Monday and Tuesday and Don was at work so, during this illness I didn’t make any cartoons. I enjoyed some Ny-Quil and slept a lot and had a crazy-ass dream that bears repeating. In this dream myself, Don, or friend Gianofer and a fourth person (who I can’t remember) decided that it would be a really good idea to clone ourselves so that we could eat our clone. We weren’t short on food or anything so I don’t know why this struck us as such a stellar plan, but it did, so away we went to the cloning.

I don’t know how I managed to clone myself but somehow I did because, suddenly, there was another me around. My clone looked like me except it’s skin was sort of off-white and it had blue spots on it’s back. And it was growing a tail, like a lizard. Instead of being all “Oh Boy! I can’t wait to eat that clone!” I was suddenly really afraid about how I was going to dispose of the body as, you know, there’s no way I could eat all that. I remembered in my dream that I had just seen episodes of CSI on Mexican television so I knew how frequently body disposal trips up people’s plans. I decided I had to get a hold of Don and Gianofer before they made clones of themselves. I spent some time unsuccessfully trying to locate them, then I woke up.

Yep. I had a different dream in which Don was a lizard. He looked like him but there was something kooky with his arm and leg joints. And he had a tail. I don’t remember that one as well but I assure you it was a lot more interesting than real life.

Speaking of real life, right now it’s 75 degrees outside. Do you see how I like to use this blog to document my illnesses as well as record ambient temperatures? Success on both fronts with this entry. Anyway, I think taking T-Bone the hedgehog outside for a run would be a better use of my time than sitting in the store. What am I saying? I know that’s a better use of my time. I’m outta here.