The comment spam has been building up quite a bit lately. I regularly junk 10-15 comments from my site and I know that is low compared to some sites. It’s all useless crap unless you want your penis enlarged or you are looking for a hot tip in the penny stock world.
I’m looking at 2 options for authentication. One is to have you commenters leave a legit email address. I know that some of you don’t want to post your email address. The other is to use TypeKey. I’m leaning towards TypeKey because it is a solid program and while you have to give TypeKey a valid email for authentication purposes, it does not have to be published when you comment on the site.
I know some of you are all like “I don’t want to give out my email because blah blah blah” and I can appreciate that. Sort of. So, leave a comment, tell me what you think and I’ll make my decision in a day or two. Fair enough?

We got something like 8 inches of snow or something. We shoveled it up and put it away and it’s done. The pain will be this evening when we bust out the snow boulder pile left on the sidewalk by the plow.
In direct defiance of the snow, David and I got up early on Saturday, drove 8 million miles across town to the office of the International Vet of Mystery to pick up Maddie’s ear medicine and then spent something like 3 hours at Fleet Farm. Sexy, no? We left there with 80 pounds of dog food, 4 dozen canning jars, 300 different stuffed dog toys, a flannel shirt, a bag of pig ears, pecan caramel clusters and 2 smoked pig kneecaps.
I bet you didn’t even know you could purchase smoked pig kneecaps! you can. They’re $.79 on sale and the dogs love them.
We are never going to Petsmart again. Petsmart is nice and all, but almost every dog related thing we looked at was 50% cheaper at Fleet Farm and when you have two dogs you have to consider these things. Of course there’s the added benefit of spending 3 hours in a store that sells “Poultry Meat Maker” chicken feed and had 3 fat guys inspecting the jeans trying to figure out the new “styles” for this year.
It’s this entire store marketed to a demographic that isn’t me in any way and yet I love it so much. I got 80 pounds of dog food people! 80 pounds!!! What is that? like a 4th grader or something?
Holy christ.
Yeah, I wish I had something more exciting, like a drunk fest or a moon raid, but it was just many hours at the farm suppply mega store and the finishing of the dino purse (photos soon)

Everyone is talking of the storm. There are whispers and warnings and amazing wonderments. It’s like somehow, one snowless winter has made everyone forget their Minnesota Heritage. Come on, people, we grew up with this. We know blizzards! There is nothing the sky can vomit on us that we can’t just wipe away with a ruddy nordic scoff.
And hell, I think we can all pretty much agree that those childhood photos of us standing in front of 6 foot snowdrifts are a thing of the past for Minnesota. Since the Halloween blizzard of ’91, our snow fall has diminished steadily. We know this. News of 6 foot snow drifts will only be coupled with “lake effect” and “colorado” from now on. And as things get warmer they will only be referred to in sort of a strange historical sense.
The snow is coming this weekend, sure. Fine. I imagine it won’t be nearly as awful as anyone expects.
I, for one, will be making a white bean and cabbage soup tonight along with some rosemary bread. If we get snowed in I’ll spend the weekend dining on soup, crocheting robots and dinosaurs and making jam.

Let’s all wish the nipple grabbing Irish Boy a very happy 32nd birthday and declare “Cá bhfuil an leithreas? Tá Dáithi ag glacadh cithfholctha sa ndorchadas.”
EDIT: If you have had trouble making comments on this post, the problems have been fixed. Apparently, Movable Type hates Irish. It’s not surprising, everyone hates everything from Ireland so a software program hating on the language is no real surprise. Please, leave a comment and wish him a very happy birthday (this means you, Anna, he introduced you to Mike and you owe him big time for that)