Hello and welcome to the wonderful world of the Dogpound, where we keep on sending out articles so I can enjoy my vacation…with no interruptions from you-know-who. LOL I must tell you the presidential race is something to behold. There was that little trip to Mexico by Trump. When I first heard he was invited to meet with the president of Mexico, I just brushed it off as someone’s poor attempt to make a joke. It was for real! It appears it went well enough….there were no reported shouting matches and Trump was not excommunicated from Mexico for life. The…

Hello and welcome back to the wonderful and rested world of the Dogpound. Here is hoping you had a nice long weekend, since it will be a while before we see another one. As for me…I am still writing these articles ahead of time, since I plan to take a few days off and do some traveling to go visit my oldest daughter. Most of my vacations of late have been long three-day weekends, where I take a Friday off to make it a four-day week. This time I am flying on Thursday and returning the following Tuesday. I have…

Hello and welcome back to the “we are ready for a three-day weekend!” Dogpound. Hard to believe we are here already…where has the summer gone? Labor Day officially marks the end of summer, kids are tucked nicely back into school, and this is our last three-day weekend till Thanksgiving. Seems like a long time between holidays…but fortunately I still have a few vacation days left so I can squeeze out a couple four-day work weeks. Did you know that Labor Day actually started out as a state holiday and Oregon was the first state to put this on their calendar…

Hello, and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound.  There are a lot of things going on these days, I mean there are the big ones like the big main circus event “Trump vs. Hillary,” and there are a lot of little things that just keep things from getting a tad boring if you just open your eyes to them.  For example, I am on the treadmill at the gym and there is a female gazelle runner next to me.  You know…the kind that can run for 30 minutes without working up a sweat, while I am doing…

Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. I had an interesting weekend…I went to my first body building contest. Whoa! Better back up before you bust a gut…I did not enter the contest…my middle daughter did…I was just there for moral support. She has recently gotten back into getting into shape and some people at the gym were urging her to enter the physical fitness part of the bodybuilding show that was being held in her home town of Knoxville. So she got a coach and really got into it; special meals…gym at 5am in the…

Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound.  As a faithful reader,  you know I come down pretty hard on customer service, not to be mean, it just seems that companies have forgotten one of the most important golden rules of business.  That rule is: “Every person that interacts with your customer base serves as a salesperson for your company.”  It takes a long time to get a customer and sometimes only a few minutes to lose one.  So when they farm out this service, as many companies do these days,  there is no real invested interest.…

Hello, and welcome to the wonderful world of the Dogpound.  I will admit up front that I am not mechanically inclined.   I was more of a nerdy kid but I did do some simple work on my car…changing the spark plugs, oil, or air filter…sometimes venturing into working on the alternator, battery, or radiator, but nothing complicated like brakes or the carburetor.  One of the main reasons was that I was afraid I would get into something like that and not be able to get it back together, leaving me stranded since that was my only means of transportation.  Although…

Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound.  Some good news.  The little doe I mentioned that is hanging around the house…well…she finally gave birth…twins!  Now I have another doe hovering around the woods down by the lake…might have another set of Bambies in the near future!  Wahoo!  Oh yes…before I forget…more good news..my colonoscopy came back clean as a whistle…[pun intended].  When I had my first one many, many years ago, they just gave me enough juice to make me forget that I was on a bed wrapped in an apron that barely covered the essentials…however…

Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound.  With summer, come visions of fresh veggies from the garden or from the local farmer’s market.  I don’t have a garden now… too many pests to fight off, but I do have six potted tomato plants that I keep up close to the garage away from prying eyes and mouths.  They are primarily cherry tomatoes, and the first few have ripened and been devoured.  There is nothing like a tomato right off the bush.  As a footnote, tomatoes are actually a fruit, but in 1893 the Supreme Court ruled…

Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound.  Well, not so wonderful at this point in time.  I finally decided to have my decade (plus) colonoscopy done Monday…so I’m sitting here on Sunday drinking this terrible tasting salt mixture.  They want me to drink a gallon of this in five hours.  I don’t drink that much water in two days, let alone in five hours!  Plus I am not allowed to eat for the next 24 hours…so that kind of puts the crimp in the weekend activities. Then to add insult to injury…when I signed up to…