Stay-At-Home Shenaner-gans

I have a more pen-related post in the works for you, but before I get to that in my next post, I have at least one more "coping with COVID 19 lockdown" post to share with you nice folks first, if folks don't mind. For right now: dog shenanigans!

The Busted Nib office staff, during a team building exercise.

After several weeks of being furloughed, I am officially back to work. The office cubicle-farm I dwell in for 8+ hours a day is largely under-populated, as many of the employees as possible are still allowed to work from home on borrowed company laptops. Disclaimer: I don't have internet service at home; I upload blog posts from my sister's living room during family visits, or from free Wi-Fi spots (with all online security concerns addressed) so I didn't have that work-from-home option. Until my car is paid for, paying for internet service is a bit of a luxury, so I have to make do. Had I realized that not having home internet service would result in getting laid off of work, I might have planned differently.

So...I found ways to while away the time while I was stuck at home. There's a fenced-in "dog park" perhaps 1/4th of an acre in size in a big grassy lot near my apartment, and a week ago on May 4th ("May the Fourth be With You!" Did you know that term was invented purely by Star Wars fans, but Disney just recently, angrily, tried to copyright it and penalize anyone using it in tweets and such?) I took my dogs out there. Someone had left an old blue volleyball behind, and Molly was thrilled.

"Oh look, Maggie, is that a squirrel? --Fooled ya! Ball is MINE now"

That's Molly, the Busted Nib's Chief Kitchen Floor Cleanup Technician, on the left, hoarding the ball for herself. Assistant Editor Maggie is on the right, making sure there are no witnesses before making her move to filch the ball, but without success. Molly is "too ninja" to be robbed of her toy like that.

"Daaaaad!! She won't share!!"

The weather was great for this, that day.

"You can't have it."

Later that day, I took these two trouble makers to the local park, and took some photos while I took them for a walk. I'm going to bore you with a few photos of that. (Not many; I promise. All photos are "clickable" for a bigger picture.) But first, I needed to run an errand: a quick trip to the local Wal-Mart for a few groceries...and I couldn't believe what I saw. Here's what the "busy" Wal-Mart parking lot looked like in the middle of a Monday afternoon:

It was all but deserted, and there was a "queue" area created with orange cones and yellow caution-tape, forcing customers to line up in an orderly fashion into one controlled entrance & exit. Seems to me that would work against the whole "social distancing" mandate. Is anyone else sick to death of that rather contrived term? That's what all the little blue signs atop the orange cones demand of you, so presumably in this narrow queue, you're expected to stand 6' away from the shopper in front & behind you, making the store's choke-point entrance even slower.

Anyway, by confining shoppers into a tight area, when they are unlikely to stand so far apart from one another (just human nature, that), it would seem to be to be counter productive. But I don't pretend to understand the mysterious convolutions of the "Wal-Mart manager brain"...and in my youth, I even used to work for these mean spirited devils. (Don't get me started.) But in all fairness, I guess it was working, because take a look at this "crowd" of shoppers.

It was absolutely deserted. I've never seen this at a Wal-Mart store before.

I was allowed into the store, which was simple enough given how underpopulated the place was, bought my snacks & doggie biscuits, and made my way to the park.

Oh, by the way! Speaking of doggie snacks, Pen Pal Jodie recently Maggie & Molly a generous gift! Have a look-see at this:

She included that fun postcard where that cute dog stared down at a photographer from a house window in Paris, as if assessing him for his own treat-carrying situation. Good dog.

Here we see the photographic evidence of their delight in these healthy dog treats. Thank you Jodie! :-) Jodie also recently sent me a hilarious newspaper clipping of a doggie Halloween costume so one can dress up one's dog as a mailman carrying a Priority Mail package, right down to the mailman's baseball cap. I'm actually considering buying that for Molly, and promoting her to the Busted Nib Mail Room Supervisor. Photos would of course be provided.

Anyway, off to the park we went.

This is the Finley River. It was really pretty there that day, and people were floating up and down it in kayaks while I was there. This is near a couple of local landmarks, like the old Finley River Bridge:

This is an oh-so-clever photo of it while I myself was driving on said bridge, with the park's old railroad caboose in the background. That caboose has been parked there at the park's entrance for about as long as the park itself has existed, so far as I know. Kinda like the way my caboose is currently parked on my sister's sofa right now as I type this. Ha!

Here's a better look at he old bridge. That building being renovated in the background is an old feed mill that has sat about 100 yards from the opposite direction of the bridge for as long as this small town (near Springfield, MO) has existed, before it was recently bought by the guy who owns Bass Pro Shops. He aims to renovate it into (according to rumor) a cafe, ice cream shop, and local museum attraction.

Like I said, it was a really nice day, while I was there. Maggie & Molly very much enjoyed their day a the park. Maggie had set aside her copy-reading and spell-checking duties to take home the various smells off of the grass, which I was REALLY hoping wasn't goose poop:

A better Assistant Editor would have caught the toe of my large foot intruding into the bottom of this photo, and would have been more observant of the Busted Nib office dress code. But, since I can only afford to pay my staff in Milk Bones, I can't complain too much.

Here's a better photo of the park entrance with that old caboose. The logo painted on its side says "Ship it on the Frisco!" Ya know, Missouri has at least two old and nicely level railroad corridors that have been "retired" and turned into really long trails and bicycle paths, and one of them is even a short (hour or so) drive from me. My sister and her entire family are currently in the process of shopping for bicycles, and I have no less than 3 bicycles myself...though a couple of them need repair work in one way or another. Those trails need to be explored properly, I say.

Hours spent at home have included a few card game & board game nights. This is a personal favorite of mine that you may not have heard of: "Arkham Horror, The Card Game." (Not to be confused with the rather large & complex board game of the same name, from the same game publisher.) It's based on the very cerebral horror stories by H.P. Lovecraft, who lived most of his life in Rhode Island in the 1920s & 1930s. My brother and I played through several of its "Dunwich Legacy" story scenarios while we were on furlough. "Dunwich", presumably pronounced "DUN-itch" if you're in 1925 New England, is a fictional farming village near the equally-fictional city of Arkham, Massachusetts which has been visited by unspeakable cosmic horrors thanks to a creepy old village elder who dabbles foolishly in heinous otherworldly Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know.

That's my handy neoprene card-playing mat, made specifically for this game. I'm pretty sure my brother and I lost (but survived) this scenario, and horrid, squirmingly-betentacled monsters "from beyond space and time" ran amok throughout the village. They were quite unstoppable, and nearly drove our "investigator" characters mad with their utter horror. But then, them's the breaks in a Lovecraft-inspired setting like this. Anyway, I also got in a game of chess with my 13 year old nephew, using the wooden chess set I found in a discount store and gave to him:

And naturally, my younger brother, my brother-in-law, and I got in a couple of poker games. I am so proud of my poker set-up (disclaimer: I'm not a "gambler") that I took this gratuitously posed photo of my poker table...that is, my round dining room table repurposed for same...with my poker night toys atop it just for this blog.

Pay no attention to the time stamp in the photo; the clock in my little camera had the date set wrong. Those are fancy-schmancy cellophane-acetate playing cards, crease-resistant and stain-resistant, and those equally fancy-schmancy poker chips were purchased solely because they're kinda vintage-ish looking. It had been so dang long since I'd played Seven Card Stud that I even hauled out the old Hoyle card game guide to remember which cards were dealt face-up in what order.

Oh, and just for laughs, there's this:

Side note...my brother in law just bought a new wallet the other day, and noticed this "gem" affixed to it when he got home, and allowed me to take a photograph for the fun of it. Am preeetty sure that when Wal-Mart printed these merchandise tags, they were using their "B-Team" in the QA Department. Just saying.

And that's all for now. When the hard-working staff of the Busted Nib got home, it was apparently nap time, immediately. It seems that the trip to the park was quite exhausting for our Assistant Editor...

Slackery.

Coming up next: a post about my very first EVER gold-nib fountain pen!

--John