Category: Misc

I hear it over and over again, things that suggest Hitler had outlawed gun ownership in Nazi Germany and that this is the reason he was able to do the evil things he did. The citizens of Germany were unarmed, so they had no means to stop him. That’s the belief anyway.

It’s not true.

To be fair, there was a time when I thought gun ownership was outlawed in Nazi Germany too, but then I looked into it. I found out that gun laws in Nazi Germany were very lax. Citizens of Germany were encouraged by the government to own guns.  Just about every German citizen was a legal gun owner.

It’s true that the Jewish and other minorities were not allowed to own guns, but they were not considered to be German citizens. Hitler had their citizenships revoked.

In discussions on the subject, some people have said that German citizens who opposed the government were not permitted to own guns. That’s also true, but if you were a German citizen at the time and you expressed disagreement with the government, you were likely to be in trouble anyway.

Last week, I told you how I found a bunch of pictures on my old Flickr account. Here’s some more of them. For a few years , we had a greenhouse business at my mom and dad’s. We’d start planting in the winter, and then in the spring we’d have flowers and plants ready to sell.

These pictures are from 2008.

I woke up this morning thinking about Fuzzball, the cat I had years ago. As the story goes, Fuzzball had been hanging around the woodpile at my mom and dad’s house and probably sleeping under the outdoor woodstove for warmth. It was my mom’s dog, Daisy, who discovered her in the woodpile.

My mom and dad took her in and kept her for a few months. They never had an official name for her, but I called her Fuzzball whenever I’d see her at my mom and dad’s house. When my mom told me they were thinking about getting rid of Fuzzball, I decided to take her.

So, I was thinking about Fuzzball this morning. Remembering how the first night I had her, after I’d turned off all the lights and went to bed, I heard her meowing. I guess she thought I’d left her there alone. I called to her and she stopped meowing at once. She climbed into the bed a minute later, curled up against my leg and stayed there.

I had Fuzzball for a couple years. In September 2009, she got sick and died. She was the first pet I’d had since I moved out of my mom and dad’s house in, I think, February 2001.

I found myself wishing I still had some of the pictures I’d taken of her, and then I remembered Flickr.com. I hadn’t used Flickr in ages, wasn’t even sure it still existed. I checked, it’s still there, and I was relieved that the login and password I entered worked. I have two pages of pictures on Flickr, of different things that I’ll be posting over the next few days. But today is Fuzzball’s day.

These first eight pictures were taken the day I brought her home. She’d been hiding for a while, but eventually she came out, poked around the house and finally settled on the living room chair.

Okay, that was the first day. The rest of these were taken over the couple years I’d had her.

One of the first things I did was buy her some toys. She immediately attacked the orange mouse.

And more pictures….

I recently decided I would get writing into a blog entry every day, to keep up a presence on my website. But I’ve been quiet the last couple days. I guess I ran out of topics. There’s probably another movie I could review and I got two other guns I can review, and I can probably review a book I read a while back. But I don’t really feel like writing a review right now.

How are things going for me? I’ve been quite productive lately. Besides blogging more regularly, I’ve been cleaning up the novel I finished back in March. It’s looking good so far. I’m pretty happy with it. There’s just a lot of the usual typos that need to be corrected, some grammar errors that need to be set straight and just a few things that need to be  rewritten. But otherwise, I like how the story is going.

So far 110 pages out of 394 are cleaned up. All other writing projects are set aside until this novel is ready to send out.

Been deer hunting a bit. Not as much as I’d like to, but a bit. It’s archery season and I’ve been using my crossbow. My dad got a trail camera and put it out by my hunting shack. The  pictures show that several deer have been poking around my shack, including bucks. But they’re usually only there at night or in the morning and I can’t get over to my mom and dad’s house in the morning very often. So, I just hope they start coming around in the afternoon.

So, it’s past time I wrote blog entry about my dog, Luci, who is also known as The Best Dog Ever. I’m not kidding, Luci is the best dog ever.

I admit, I lost track of her age. Was she seven when I got her, or was she six? I guess she’s ten or eleven now. I probably got her birth year on a paper somewhere, but it’d take a lot of digging to find it and I’m not ready to do that.

Anyway, my Aunt Rosie was moving to Texas to live with my cousins Irene and Chuckie. Because they already had dogs at the house in Texas, Rosie felt it was best to find Luci a new home. Since I had just moved into this house and have a fenced backyard, Rosie thought I would want Luci.

I did. We’ve had family dogs all my life, but since I moved out of my mom and dad’s house when I was twenty-three I haven’t had a dog before Luci. I think it was December 2011 when Rosie gave Luci to me. So, that would be almost four years ago.

Luci is a very smart dog. She understands commands very well. And if I ask her a yes or no question, sometimes she’ll actually say yes. It’s a sniffing sound, but it sure sounds like yes and I think that is what she’s saying. I don’t know if Aunt Rosie taught her to do that or not, but it’s Luci’s response to yes or no questions so often that I think she probably was taught to do that.

She’s a small dog, but she has a big bark. Whenever anyone sets foot in my yard, Luci’s at the window (or the gate, if she’s outside) going “HALT! WHO GOES THERE? INDENTIFY YOURSELF AT ONCE! I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS TERRITORY! DO NOT UNDERMINE MY AUTHORITY!”

She’s a great watchdog, but she’s also very sweet and loves people. And she’s very loyal. When I’m at my desk at night, Luci’s lying in her bed beside my desk.

But for a small dog, she really sheds. A lot.

Sometimes I feel pretty confident. I’m all upbeat, not so shy. Not worrying about much. Feeling great. Not afraid to be funny, not afraid to strike up conversations and I hold my head up high without thinking about it.

I like being that way. But far too often it will fade and I tend to look down a lot, unable to make eye contact with anyone. I just can’t seem to will my head up or to really talk.

Though I feel pretty good today, this issue has been on my mind for a few days now.

For example, recently I was on one of my up-days. I walked into the store on the corner to buy beer. I’ve been going to this store for years. I’ve gotten to know the owner and the owner has gotten to know me. And it was him at the register that day and I struck up a brief conversation as I was paying for my beer. About the scores of the Michigan game. I didn’t actually see the game that day, but I saw some highlights later and it showed that the score was 27-0, but I wasn’t sure if that was the final score or not and I didn’t see or hear what the final score was.

So, I asked the owner what the final score was and he told me it was 38-0. Anyway, the point is, that’s how I am on my up-days. More able to hold my head up, to talk to people, and not be so nervous. I wish I had more days like that, but it’s just not so.

Like a few days later, I’m at the store again and it’s the owner at the register again. But this time, for some reason, I’m all nervous and looking down, unable to will myself to look up and make eye contact, nor do I say much. I want to, but I’m just overwhelmed with anxiety.

There are far too many days like that. I hope I don’t come across as rude when I’m in that state.

Well, that’s just what was on my mind today.

That’s right. My cat, Buddy, he’s six years old. I don’t know if I’m one of those people who keeps track of the ages of their pets, but I got Buddy’s age pinned down. I’ve been living on my own since I was twenty-three  and I’ve only had three pets in all that time.

I got Buddy in September 2009 when he was still a kitten. I remember how small he was. But he quickly grew into the big purring monster that he is now. I mean he’s huge and quite heavy. He weighs more than my dog. Though he lies around the house a lot, he’s healthy and happy. He’s the best cat ever.

He ended up getting the name Buddy because when I first got him, I didn’t know what name to give him. I was just calling him buddy because I didn’t know what else to call him. After a couple weeks of that nonsense, I realized Buddy should be his name. It fit. He likes it.

Buddy”s my buddy. Though it looks like he was annoyed with me taking his picture this morning.