Surely nobody is more interested in what’s happening with us than, well, us. And we know it, because we’re the happenings that are happening. For the rest of you, here’s some reflected HinesLand headlines.
Straight talk about cougars. A few days ago Laurel dashed out a letter to the Statesman-Journal editor about the newspaper’s biased cougar coverage. Lo and behold, it was published immediately. Perhaps her truthiness struck a nerve. A few days earlier David Cox made equal good sense on a similar subject: let’s leave wildlife alone; after all, they’re wild.
Ridiculous reaction to Muhammad cartoons. Over on my Church of the Churchless blog I’ve been writing about the Muslim world freaking out over some drawings of Muhammad that were published in a Danish newspaper (and recently reprinted in other European papers). Just when I think Christian fundamentalists take the cake, their Islamic brethren up the ante on crazy dogmatism.
Doggy door bell training. For about a month Serena the Wonder Dog has been undergoing intensive doggy door bell, a.k.a. Pet Chime, training. It’s not going very well, based on what I hear coming from downstairs every night as Laurel puts Serena out for a final potty break before the family pet settles in on her futon for sweet dog dreams.
“Do you want to go out? Do you? Press the paw. Press it! Go ahead, press it. Press it to go out.” This goes on for about a minute, then I hear a ding followed by: “OK, I pressed it for you. That’s how you do it. Next time you’ll do it yourself.” Maybe. But it’s been weeks now, and I think Serena has made the pet chime go off once on her own. Laurel is getting good at it though.
Highlander Hybrid tanks on first fill-up. It was pretty thrilling yesterday to pull into the gas station for the first fill-up of our newly acquired Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV. A few minutes later I wasn’t so thrilled, after calculating the mpg by hand (for some reason the HiHy computer doesn’t show mileage for each tankful): 22.9.
Not so good, given the EPA city/highway rating is 31/27. But in the real world 4WD HiHy owners are reporting an average of 25.4 at last report. We’ve been getting about 10% lower mileage with our Prius during the winter, compared to summer. So hopefully HiHy will perk up its mpg as the weather warms up.
Don't sell that Volvo yet. We get 22 MPG with our XC90 and have a trip computer to boot!
Posted by: Carol Ann | February 03, 2006 at 06:52 AM