Sad Sylvia News

My regular readers will remember my hedgehog Sylvia, who was often featured on this blog. Sylvia passed away yesterday at the age of five years, nine months. She fell asleep in her little house and simply never woke up, since her eyes were closed when I found her. I could tell the end was near because the last week or so she was acting very bewildered, hanging around out in the open, wandering around when the lights were on, and running right into Charlie the rabbit at one point, as he watched in disbelief. She was no longer curling into a ball and no longer hiding when I came into the kitchen while she was eating. She may have been totally blind and mostly deaf by the end. To commemorate her long hedgehog life, I am reposting the video of her bath from last year.

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Working Hard

My office mate Light Bright and I worked hard on a couple of joint projects this afternoon.

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Aloysius: Best Christmas Present Ever

After watching this video, you will surely agree with me that Aloysius is the best Christmas present ever. My goal is to make him an internet sensation. Go to YouTube and like my video and maybe he can become the star he was meant to be.

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The Naked Candle

Thanks to those of you at my birthday bash on Saturday. I know a lot of you read this blog, like Hardingfele, Banjo Player, Luxuli, Anna Banana II, and Jilly Moose, and of course our wonderful host, Richard Bonomo. Isn’t he fantastic? Let me give a shout-out to his sous-chefs Anna Banana II and Luxuli as well. And thanks to everyone who brought food and gifts. It was a great time! I’ll admit certain people who do not read this blog did take the game “Man Bites Dog” a little too seriously, but most of us enjoyed it. And… a hot air balloon ride?!? Wow!! Thanks, everyone!

So now life goes back to normal and I am no longer the Queen for the Day. How quickly today reminded me of that; I went to have a crown redone on my back tooth, and they decided it was too far gone and the best solution was to pull it. Believe me, I don’t like parting with teeth if I don’t have to – I put off having my wisdom teeth removed for years – but that’s how I got into this situation in the first place. A wisdom tooth I left in too long grew in sideways and put a dent in the root of the very molar I now no longer have, and that became decayed. Sad to think my poor tooth would not have suffered extraction if I had gotten the other ones removed promptly, but I have never understood why I would have teeth I didn’t need. They tell me I won’t need an implant since the upper molar meets up with the tooth in front of the extracted one. Yes, I have a very crooked bite. They talked about fixing it when I was a kid but ended up taking out my top bicuspids, so this is far from the first permanent tooth I have lost.

You may be saying to yourself, Famous Hat, none of this has anything to do with the title of your blog post. How right you are. That was a phrase Kathbert uttered Friday night at the Lutheran Cathedral Epiphany Potluck, Burning of the Greens, and Service. We each grabbed a small white candle in a plastic holder, but she insisted on taking hers out of the holder. “I want a naked candle!” she proclaimed. I said that would make a great blog post title, and so here it is.

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Mayor of Hell

People have been asking me what it was like to be Mayor of Hell, so I figured this would make a good blog post.

6:30 am – got a wake up call from Hell: “The dam water is running over! We’re up to our knees and the dam workers aren’t coming in to fix it! What should we do?” My only suggestion was to find some beavers to patch the dam, but apparently there are no beavers in Hell.

Morning: Rich gave me devil horns and a button proclaiming I was the Mayor of Hell for the day. Then he took a picture of me wearing them. He also gave me a Hell mug, a deed to a square inch of Hell (singed along the bottom) and some dirt from Hell, along with a chemical analysis showing it had high levels of sulfur.

Late morning: Tiffy and I were at a coffee shop when she gave me the Key to Hell.

Lunch: Hell called with another problem – it was cold there! Practically frozen over! What did I plan to do about it? I had no suggestions.

Things were pretty quiet in Hell the rest of the day, but that evening Hell called again to say that while I was having a pretty good day, it was just another day in Hell for them, and I was impeached. Rich gave me a certificate of impeachment (singed along the bottom) and a T-shirt proclaiming that I had been impeached. So that was how it was to be Mayor of Hell for a day. Thanks to all of you who were in on the planning!

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Toner Pirates Goin' Down!

I have some very exciting news, unless you are a toner pirate: the government is now going after the toner pirates who scammed my office mate Light Bright! As you may recall, she was fooled by someone who called, claiming to be our regular supplier, and she agreed to have them send us a toner at a 625% markup. We sent the toner back, but they claimed we never got it, so she sent another toner, and then we heard nothing from them. We decided it was a learning experience and left it at that, but just yesterday Light Bright got a letter in the mail from the US Postal Service asking her to fill out an online survey about how Generic Company had scammed her. We were so happy to hear the Feds are now investigating the toner pirates! They knew their modus operandi too, because they asked questions about how the toner pirates misled Light Bright into thinking they were our regular suppliers. This must mean there are lots of toner pirate victims, and now someone is coming to wreak vengeance. That made our day!

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Twice as Good as Twenty

Is forty twice as good as twenty? That remains to be seen, but my fortieth birthday was much better than my twentieth.  When I turned twenty, I had an ear infection and had to go to the doctor, and then I didn't feel like doing anything the rest of the day. Today I took the day off of work, since I was busy being mayor of a place called Hell. They called me at 6:30 this morning to let me know the dam water was backing up and the dam workers weren't showing up to do anything about it. Then Tiffy and I got some coffee (and I got a free flavor shot), and then we had lunch at one of those choose your stir fry grills. Hell called again to complain that it was cold as Hell, and what was I going to do about the temperature? After that Tiffy and I got massages, and then I got a free piece of dark chocolate infused with key lime for my birthday. And the fun isn't even over! I am going to Date Night with Jesus in a short while, and then Richard Bonomo is taking me out to dinner at a really nice Italian place. So far being forty is kind of fun!

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