Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. We are officially in the last month of 2018; where has the time gone? Hope you had a nice long Thanksgiving weekend. I had one down side to the weekend, I got a touch of the gout. Usually I get it in my right toe once or twice a year, mainly because I cracked it many years ago. This time however, I got it on my left foot, right below the big toe joint. It was kind of painful for a few days, so I drank a lot of…
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Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. I am writing this on Thanksgiving morning, and this holiday did not get off to a good start. I woke up early this morning, and there was no electric power. I don’t think it was off very long, but it did make for a chilly morning. However, the sun is out now, and it is shaping up to be a very nice day. Is it me, or do you agree that the Thanksgiving holiday seems to get shorted compared to the holidays that preceded it, Halloween and the holiday…
You probably saw the same news footage that I saw recently when a mother dropped her child out of a third-story window of a multi-family dwelling to neighbors waiting below. The building looked like a garden-style apartment building, which means that the only door leads into a common breezeway in the middle of four apartments. As I watched some footage on Facebook, there were three or four adult victims who had to exit through third-story windows after neighbors got a sheet and caught each person as they dropped. Leaving an apartment through a window happens because the space has become…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the thankful Dogpound. Hard to believe it is Thanksgiving already, and it is even harder to imagine that we even have a Thanksgiving considering that the Pilgrims barely made it through the first few years after they landed at Plymouth Rock. They left in September of 1620, and it took 66 days of sailing on a cramped Mayflower to reach their destination. That winter they had to stay on the ship, and by spring almost half of the crew and passengers had died. The first harvest was successful with the help…
I do not think that a statistic has ever come out naming Thanksgiving as the top cooking day of the year, but for the sake of this article, we will treat it as such. I am getting hungry just thinking about all that will be fixed for the feast. The problem is that with more cooking comes an exponentially higher probability and possibility of an unattended cooking related fire. As you have heard me say, 3.7 out of every 10 residential fires, whether single-family or multi-family, occur in the kitchen. The disadvantage to multi-family dwellings is that you can do…
This morning, I visited with a friend who had fallen from a tree stand. Due to the nature of the fall, he does not remember anything about the incident. One thing he said was that it all happened in a split second. His experience reminded me of when I fell from a tree stand in 2002. I can remember every detail as if it happened yesterday. Hunting season has been in for a while, but better late than never on this safety message. I look at tree stands, trees and my actions when climbing tree stands differently since my accident.…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. As I mentioned last week, I took a short vacation to visit my two daughters and toured the Biltmore Estates in Asheville, N.C. If you ever get the chance to go there, take the opportunity. It is an amazing place to go through. Overall, the trip was pretty uneventful. I have not flown for almost a year, so there were a few things that stood out. Number one, the airline kiosks still do not like me. I tried several times and had to finally ask for assistance from a…
By Caleb M. Soptelean, editor/reporter Chesterfield voted for criminal justice reform, barely. Scott Miles overcame a Republican registration advantage in the county and pulled off an upset in the commonwealth attorney’s race, but he did it at the same time that Abigail Spanberger was winning the District 7 portion of the county by some 10,000 votes. Miles only won by 2,500-plus votes. He has one year to establish the kind of commonwealth attorney’s office he’d like because the seat is up again next year for a full four-year term. Miles has vowed to not ask for cash bail or jail…
Every year from June 1 to Nov. 1, coastal states and adjoining states must be prepared for a land-falling hurricane. In other words, it is not when, but where. I cannot explain it, but North Carolina is in the bull’s-eye every year. I am not counting out Florida or the Gulf Coast, but for the sake of my point, I am going to center in on North Carolina and coastal Virginia. Authorities have made changes and improvements that allow for a rapid and efficient evacuation of coastal areas. While in Southport, N.C., last week, my wife and I had a…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. I am in a bit of a quandary about writing this article because I plan on taking a small vacation next week. I’m wondering if I should push through this article or take a vacation from the Dogpound as well. Over the many years I cannot remember ever purposely just skipping the opportunity to write an article. I have been late a few times, and my master has at times “accidentally” misplaced a few of my articles, but overall I think I have delivered every week without taking a…