More things Annie has chewed

- Susan's workout gloves
- the garden hose
- the connector to the garden hose
- a lawnchair
- Grommet
- a pillow
- the vacuum cleaner cord (again)
- the lid to the blender (how did she even get this? Was she making a smoothie?)
- Susan's arm
- a sock
- a drum stick
- a rag
- a bucket
- a supposedly indestructible toy
- a shampoo bottle

She really is slowly improving....

Things Annie has Chewed

- Mike's shoe
- the vacuum cleaner cord
- the rug
- a facecloth
- some bedding
- Susan's slipper
- the starter cord on the lawn mower
- a bag of peat moss
- a newspaper
- the shoelaces on Susan's sneakers
- the shoelace on Mike's sneaker
- a garden hose
- a juice jug
- a towel
- Susan's favorite sweatshirt
- a sock
- a microwaveable heating bag
- her leg
- Grommet

Spit Valves

I recently had the opportunity to sing a concert with San Francisco Choral Artists and The Wholy Noyse. The Whole Noyse is a renaissance wind ensemble, and I enjoyed hearing them play recorders, shawms, kurtles, and sackbutts.

The Sackbutt, or trombone, that was played during the renaissance, is very similar to a modern trombone. Like modern trombones, it came in alto, tenor, bass and contra-bass versions. Pitches are changed by moving a slide. A few improvements have been made - like changing the inner tubing bore, the flair of the bell, and the location of the bell flare. Modern trombones sound brighter and louder, and are a solo or orchestral instrument; renaissance trombones were designed to accompany the very first musical instrument, the human voice.

One marked improvement in today's modern trombones is the spit valve. Sackbutt players must remove the slide to empty the 'water' from the instruments. Modern players simply push the valve open, and the water dribbles out onto the floor (perhaps the best reason never to eat anything that has fallen on the floor in a music room). The spit valve also allows players to perform longer passages without major discombobulation of their instruments and upset to other nearby players, conductors, and the audience.

So who invented this modern convenience? Certainly, such a noteable addition was hailed as a major improvement by players. Perhaps Mr. S. Valve was given the keys to a city, or heralded as the brass player's best friend in the latest broadside of 'Sackbutt Players' Monthly'.

Alas, history has lost the name of this great inventor. Like so many innovators, he (or she) was lost in the annuals of time, no doubt crowded out by the next new and exciting invention.

Take time today to raise your glass....full of water....to the spit valve inventor.

Annie the Bully takes Pierce household by storm!

Interviewer: I'd like to take a moment to welcome Annie to our program tonight. Annie is the new dog on the block, currently residing in the Pierce household, where she recently proved herself and her bullying skills despite her small size. Welcome, Annie!
Annie: Thank you.
I: Tell us a bit about yourself.
A: Of course. I came to the Pierce household about 3 weeks ago from the Pinole Animal Shelter. Although I was covered with grease and dirt from my life on the streets, I managed to project a calm and shy personality, cleverly concealing my true nature, so that Ms. Pierce would be convinced to free me from the confines of a small holding cell. As I gently licked her hand, I could see that she was an easy target. From that point, it was a simple task to convince her to take me home.
I: Do you have any comments on life in jail?
A: It's a period of my life that I'd rather not discuss.
I: I understand. So, you convinced Ms. Pierce to take you home.
A: Yes. Though it was a few days and some pretty stressful medical procedures later, Ms. Pierce finally liberated me and brought me to my new domain - her house and backyard. Of course, it wasn't as easy as it seemed at first.
I: You met your first target, Grommet.
A: That's right. Once home, I was confronted with Grommet, the resident pooch. He couldn't leave me alone. It was obvious the poor old guy was smitten with my girlish charm. Naturally, I used that to my advantage.
I: And did things improve at that point?
A: For a couple of weeks things were great. Daily walks, training my owner to reward me with regular treats for doing menial tasks, pretty much having the run of the house and yard.
I: Then what happened?
A: One day the Pierces were gone for an hour or so. When they got back, they brought a hideous giant slobbering monster with them. It was horrible.
I: A monster?
A: Yes. They fawned over him and called him 'Buddy'. He was easily four times my size with great big jaws and long trailing hair. He had no sense of personal space and lumbered across the yard like a semi.
I: How did you react?
A: I'll admit that at first I was overcome. I'd never seen anything like this before. He came onto my turf like he owned it. Later, talking with Grommet, I came to learn that this 'Buddy' had come to visit before. Grommet seemed to have no trouble, even welcoming Buddy. Poor dog, he's been living with humans too long.
I: So what did you do?
A: I knew that there could only be one approach with a monster like this: a full on assault. I took advantage of Buddy's lack of agility and his complete and utter trusting nature. I attacked.
I: You attacked a monster four times your own size?
A: When you've lived on the streets like I have, you soon learn that it is eat or be eaten. I wasn't going to end up as dinner for a slobbering hairy mass. So, I started off by warning him. Simple growls, that kind of thing. But he just didn't get it. I guess his gait wasn't the only thing that was slow. Hey, those weren't growls of friendship, y'know? Anyway, since growls didn't work, I escalated the attack, adding biting and jumping.
I: At what point did Buddy get the message?
A: It didn't take long. I soon had him lumbering back to the house with his fluffly tail between his skinny hind legs. I put him in his place. Turns out that he only stayed in my territory for a few more days. Guess he couldn't take the heat.
I: Do you have any plans in case he returns?
A: Well, I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. But at this time, I can't reveal what they are.
I: Annie, thanks for taking the time to interview with us today. Any closing remarks?
A: Yeah. Buddy, if you're listening, take note. Next time I won't be so nice.

As I look out my window at the 5th straight day of rain, I wonder why we say 'it's raining cats and dogs'.

Reprinted from The Phrase Finder:

Origin
This is an interesting phrase in that, although there's no definitive origin, there is a likely derivation. Before we get to that, let's get some of the fanciful proposed derivations out of the way.
The phrase isn't related to the well-known antipathy between dogs and cats, which is exemplified in the phrase 'fight like cat and dog'. Nor is the phrase in any sense literal, i.e. it doesn't record an incident where cats and dogs fell from the sky. Small creatures, of the size of frogs or fish, do occasionally get carried skywards in freak weather. Impromptu involuntary flight must also happen to dogs or cats from time to time, but there's no record of groups of them being scooped up in that way and causing this phrase to be coined. Not that we need to study English meteorological records for that - it's plainly implausible.
One supposed origin is that the phrase derives from mythology. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms, and sailors associated them with rain. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Well, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.It has also been suggested that cats and dogs were washed from roofs during heavy weather. This is a widely repeated tale. It got a new lease of life with the e-mail message "Life in the 1500s", which began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Here's the relevant part of that:
I'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs."
This is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking but, lest there be any doubt, let's do that anyway. In order to believe this tale we would have to accept that dogs lived in thatched roofs, which, of course, they didn't. Even accepting that bizarre idea, for dogs to have slipped off when it rained they would have needed to be sitting on the outside of the thatch - hardly the place an animal would head for as shelter in bad weather.
Another suggestion is that 'raining cats and dogs' comes from a version of the French word 'catadoupe', meaning waterfall. Again, no evidence. If the phrase were just 'raining cats', or even if there also existed a French word 'dogadoupe', we might be going somewhere with this one. As there isn't, let's pass this by.
There's a similar phrase originating from the North of England - 'raining stair-rods'. No one has gone to the effort of speculating that this is from mythic reports of stairs being carried into the air in storms and falling on gullible peasants. It's just a rather expressive phrase giving a graphic impression of heavy rain - as is 'raining cats and dogs'.
The much more probable source of 'raining cats and dogs' is the prosaic fact that, in the filthy streets of 17th/18th century England, heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals and other debris. The animals didn't fall from the sky, but the sight of dead cats and dogs floating by in storms could well have caused the coining of this colourful phrase. Jonathan Swift described such an event in his satirical poem 'A Description of a City Shower', first published in the 1710 collection of the Tatler magazine. The poem was a denunciation of contemporary London society and its meaning has been much debated. While the poem is metaphorical and doesn't describe a specific flood, it seems that, in describing water-borne animal corpses, Swift was referring to an occurrence that his readers would have been well familiar with:
Now in contiguous Drops the Flood comes down,Threat'ning with Deluge this devoted Town....Now from all Parts the swelling Kennels flow,And bear their Trophies with them as they go:Filth of all Hues and Odours seem to tellWhat Street they sail'd from, by their Sight and Smell.They, as each Torrent drives, with rapid Force,From Smithfield or St. Pulchre's shape their Course,And in huge Confluent join'd at Snow-Hill Ridge,Fall from the Conduit, prone to Holbourn-Bridge.Sweeping from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts, and Blood,Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud,Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.
We do know that the phrase was in use in a modified form in 1653, when Richard Brome's comedy The City Wit or The Woman Wears the Breeches referred to stormy weather with the line:
"It shall raine... Dogs and Polecats".
Polecats aren't cats as such but the jump between them in linguistic rather than veterinary terms isn't large and it seems clear that Broome's version was essentially the same phrase. The first appearance of the currently used version is in Jonathan Swift’s A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation in 1738:
"I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs".
The fact that Swift had alluded to the streets flowing with dead cats and dogs some years earlier and now used 'rain cats and dogs' explicitly is good evidence that poor sanitation was the source of the phrase as we now use it.

As I look out my window at teh 5th straight day of rain, I wonder why we say 'It's raining cats and dogs'. The internet is a wonderful place!

Reprinted from The Phrase Finder:

Origin
This is an interesting phrase in that, although there's no definitive origin, there is a likely derivation. Before we get to that, let's get some of the fanciful proposed derivations out of the way.
The phrase isn't related to the well-known antipathy between dogs and cats, which is exemplified in the phrase 'fight like cat and dog'. Nor is the phrase in any sense literal, i.e. it doesn't record an incident where cats and dogs fell from the sky. Small creatures, of the size of frogs or fish, do occasionally get carried skywards in freak weather. Impromptu involuntary flight must also happen to dogs or cats from time to time, but there's no record of groups of them being scooped up in that way and causing this phrase to be coined. Not that we need to study English meteorological records for that - it's plainly implausible.
One supposed origin is that the phrase derives from mythology. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms, and sailors associated them with rain. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Well, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.It has also been suggested that cats and dogs were washed from roofs during heavy weather. This is a widely repeated tale. It got a new lease of life with the e-mail message "Life in the 1500s", which began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Here's the relevant part of that:
I'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs."
This is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking but, lest there be any doubt, let's do that anyway. In order to believe this tale we would have to accept that dogs lived in thatched roofs, which, of course, they didn't. Even accepting that bizarre idea, for dogs to have slipped off when it rained they would have needed to be sitting on the outside of the thatch - hardly the place an animal would head for as shelter in bad weather.
Another suggestion is that 'raining cats and dogs' comes from a version of the French word 'catadoupe', meaning waterfall. Again, no evidence. If the phrase were just 'raining cats', or even if there also existed a French word 'dogadoupe', we might be going somewhere with this one. As there isn't, let's pass this by.
There's a similar phrase originating from the North of England - 'raining stair-rods'. No one has gone to the effort of speculating that this is from mythic reports of stairs being carried into the air in storms and falling on gullible peasants. It's just a rather expressive phrase giving a graphic impression of heavy rain - as is 'raining cats and dogs'.
The much more probable source of 'raining cats and dogs' is the prosaic fact that, in the filthy streets of 17th/18th century England, heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals and other debris. The animals didn't fall from the sky, but the sight of dead cats and dogs floating by in storms could well have caused the coining of this colourful phrase. Jonathan Swift described such an event in his satirical poem 'A Description of a City Shower', first published in the 1710 collection of the Tatler magazine. The poem was a denunciation of contemporary London society and its meaning has been much debated. While the poem is metaphorical and doesn't describe a specific flood, it seems that, in describing water-borne animal corpses, Swift was referring to an occurrence that his readers would have been well familiar with:
Now in contiguous Drops the Flood comes down,Threat'ning with Deluge this devoted Town....Now from all Parts the swelling Kennels flow,And bear their Trophies with them as they go:Filth of all Hues and Odours seem to tellWhat Street they sail'd from, by their Sight and Smell.They, as each Torrent drives, with rapid Force,From Smithfield or St. Pulchre's shape their Course,And in huge Confluent join'd at Snow-Hill Ridge,Fall from the Conduit, prone to Holbourn-Bridge.Sweeping from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts, and Blood,Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud,Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.
We do know that the phrase was in use in a modified form in 1653, when Richard Brome's comedy The City Wit or The Woman Wears the Breeches referred to stormy weather with the line:
"It shall raine... Dogs and Polecats".
Polecats aren't cats as such but the jump between them in linguistic rather than veterinary terms isn't large and it seems clear that Broome's version was essentially the same phrase. The first appearance of the currently used version is in Jonathan Swift’s A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation in 1738:
"I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs".
The fact that Swift had alluded to the streets flowing with dead cats and dogs some years earlier and now used 'rain cats and dogs' explicitly is good evidence that poor sanitation was the source of the phrase as we now use it.

Cats and dogs

As I glanced out the window at the 5th straight day of rain, I wondered why we say 'It's raining cats and dogs'.

Reprinted from The Phrase Finder http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/raining%20cats%20and%20dogs.html

Origin
This is an interesting phrase in that, although there's no definitive origin, there is a likely derivation. Before we get to that, let's get some of the fanciful proposed derivations out of the way.
The phrase isn't related to the well-known antipathy between dogs and cats, which is exemplified in the phrase 'fight like cat and dog'. Nor is the phrase in any sense literal, i.e. it doesn't record an incident where cats and dogs fell from the sky. Small creatures, of the size of frogs or fish, do occasionally get carried skywards in freak weather. Impromptu involuntary flight must also happen to dogs or cats from time to time, but there's no record of groups of them being scooped up in that way and causing this phrase to be coined. Not that we need to study English meteorological records for that - it's plainly implausible.
One supposed origin is that the phrase derives from mythology. Dogs and wolves were attendants to Odin, the god of storms, and sailors associated them with rain. Witches, who often took the form of their familiars - cats, are supposed to have ridden the wind. Well, some evidence would be nice. There doesn't appear to be any to support this notion.It has also been suggested that cats and dogs were washed from roofs during heavy weather. This is a widely repeated tale. It got a new lease of life with the e-mail message "Life in the 1500s", which began circulating on the Internet in 1999. Here's the relevant part of that:
I'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs."
This is nonsense of course. It hardly needs debunking but, lest there be any doubt, let's do that anyway. In order to believe this tale we would have to accept that dogs lived in thatched roofs, which, of course, they didn't. Even accepting that bizarre idea, for dogs to have slipped off when it rained they would have needed to be sitting on the outside of the thatch - hardly the place an animal would head for as shelter in bad weather.
Another suggestion is that 'raining cats and dogs' comes from a version of the French word 'catadoupe', meaning waterfall. Again, no evidence. If the phrase were just 'raining cats', or even if there also existed a French word 'dogadoupe', we might be going somewhere with this one. As there isn't, let's pass this by.
There's a similar phrase originating from the North of England - 'raining stair-rods'. No one has gone to the effort of speculating that this is from mythic reports of stairs being carried into the air in storms and falling on gullible peasants. It's just a rather expressive phrase giving a graphic impression of heavy rain - as is 'raining cats and dogs'.
The much more probable source of 'raining cats and dogs' is the prosaic fact that, in the filthy streets of 17th/18th century England, heavy rain would occasionally carry along dead animals and other debris. The animals didn't fall from the sky, but the sight of dead cats and dogs floating by in storms could well have caused the coining of this colourful phrase. Jonathan Swift described such an event in his satirical poem 'A Description of a City Shower', first published in the 1710 collection of the Tatler magazine. The poem was a denunciation of contemporary London society and its meaning has been much debated. While the poem is metaphorical and doesn't describe a specific flood, it seems that, in describing water-borne animal corpses, Swift was referring to an occurrence that his readers would have been well familiar with:
Now in contiguous Drops the Flood comes down,Threat'ning with Deluge this devoted Town....Now from all Parts the swelling Kennels flow,And bear their Trophies with them as they go:Filth of all Hues and Odours seem to tellWhat Street they sail'd from, by their Sight and Smell.They, as each Torrent drives, with rapid Force,From Smithfield or St. Pulchre's shape their Course,And in huge Confluent join'd at Snow-Hill Ridge,Fall from the Conduit, prone to Holbourn-Bridge.Sweeping from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts, and Blood,Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud,Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.
We do know that the phrase was in use in a modified form in 1653, when Richard Brome's comedy The City Wit or The Woman Wears the Breeches referred to stormy weather with the line:
"It shall raine... Dogs and Polecats".
Polecats aren't cats as such but the jump between them in linguistic rather than veterinary terms isn't large and it seems clear that Broome's version was essentially the same phrase. The first appearance of the currently used version is in Jonathan Swift’s A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation in 1738:
"I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs".
The fact that Swift had alluded to the streets flowing with dead cats and dogs some years earlier and now used 'rain cats and dogs' explicitly is good evidence that poor sanitation was the source of the phrase as we now use it.