roomba

What’s going on

1.  Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day, Mateys!

The word of the day is ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

For more emphasis, you can say Great Neptune’s Nutsack!

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2.  The roomba broke past its barrier and went into the bathroom yesterday.  It wadded up the throw rug and shoved it behind the door so the door closed and wouldn’t open easily.  It couldn’t get out.  Apparently that made it angry.   It went over to the basket of magazines and grabbed the hanging-down edge of the Rolling Stone (a three-page foldout cover) that had flopped over the side.  It ripped the cover off, took it over by the door and munched it to pieces.  And died.

Only temporary, though.  It chewed until its battery died.  Little fucker.

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3.  We have, as you may know,  a big retarded German Shepherd named Gunner.  He sleeps in a gigantic cage at the end of the bed, because we just don’t really trust him to know the right thing to do. He is perfectly nice, and is generally well-behaved, but he has cat fantasies, and garbage fantasies.  It’s just easier to lock him up at night and he likes it, anyway.

Cheetah, Bob’s hideous little diabetic cat, also likes the cage.  She sleeps in it whenever it’s devoid of dogs.

Cheetah pretending she's a caged animal

Cheetah

So, last week, Andrew was here.  He stays up late.  The dogs stay with him because he’s the main reason they live, apparently.

I got up at about 3 a.m.  and saw Goober/Gunnar in the hall, so I took him in the dark and put him in the cage.  He went in willingly, and I locked it up and went to bed.

Cheetah must have gotten hungry about 5:30, she started clawing the end of the bed, making a racket.  Bob finally had to get up and see what it was … and of course it was Goober and Cheetah in the cage together.  Goob was sitting up, pushed to the back and Cheetah walked to the cage door when Bob got up, none the worse for the wear.  She was just hungry, went straight in to the food bowl.  It’s that diabetic thing.   I guess this means Goob passes the kitty safety test, but Cheetah is the toughest cat alive so I’m not sure it’s a fair test.

Bob went to put Goob to bed last night and Goob went in front of Bob and opened the cage and walked in … over Cheetah, who walked out.  Guess they didn’t want to bunk together again.

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4.  I think this might be my new avatar, everywhere.

Mother’s little helper

And no, I don’t mean tequila.  Or reds or whatever Mick was referring to in that song from my golden youth.  I mean a Roomba.

We have a Roomba automatic vacuum.  It’s a refurb and a tiny bit quirky.  I blogged about it before, when it was trying to run away.  I think it’s gotten used to us because it hasn’t tried to escape lately. I haven’t yet created a little French maid’s outfit for it, but I will.

So, every day it runs around the house every day cleaning up after us.  When we empty the filter every day, it’s crammed with dog hair.  Mostly Goober’s. We could build a new dog every week with the discards.

I think the roomba may be mad at the dogs over this.  I caught it going down the hall, chasing after the hairy perps:

Poor Lewi, he doesn’t even shed, but I guess the Roomba thinks a dog is a dog is a dog.  He leapt over it and went the other way.  Sissy is down the hall a little further [farther? I can measure it …] and she just layed [laid? lie? Fuck, where are the grammar police when I need them?]  there until the Roomba hit her and turned around.  Really.  Apparently they’ve done this before and Sissy doesn’t chicken out.  Goober, the main offender, took off for the other room when it started toward him.  For a big scary dog, he’s an awful pussy when push comes to shove.

The only camera I could find was my old Treo, so the picture sucks, but it’s slightly better than no picture.