It was just hot as hell today. I’m starting a “healthy eating” diet thing on Monday with a friend of mine from HS who I still speak with (one of very few), so tonight I was going to have a rib-eye and baked potato and a salad, but it was just so damned hot I ended up having a salad, pita bread with some hummus, and than an apple with almond butter. Just too damned hot to even think about the grill or something heavy like meat and potatoes. Blech.
At any rate, thought I would share a picture of Thurston and Steve wrestling (something they do for hours every day- basically when Rosie is tired of playing with Thurston, Thurston bothers Steve until he plays).
They make an ungodly racket- with Thurston chirping and Steve doing his play meorawarrawr!
Hope it is cooler tomorrow.
redshirt
Where’s them other dogs u got?
John Cole
If you look closely in the lower left hand corner you can see Lily’s paw. Rosie is in the living room napping. She had Thurston duty earlier and was tired.
columbusqueen
You slay us with complete cuteness overload!
divF
@redshirt:
Jeez, Cole puts up a thread at 1:30 AM with photo of Steve (who’s been out of the picture for God-knows-how-long), bitches mightily and with good reason about the heat, and you say, “that’s all you got ?” Give the poor man a break !
NotMax
Am so old that recall when the only times one encountered the word ribeye (or the cut) was the Ribeye Sandwich invariably listed on the faded and beer-stained menus of less classy taverns or at cut-rate steak cafeteria chains such as Bonanza (Steak Dinner! $1.99!!).
Tad’s in NYC still hawked their 99¢ steaks back then. FSM only knows what old shoes were de-soled for those.
cckids
My Pixie (a Pom) and my biggest cat, Gryff, wrestle like this all the time. It is adorable, especially now that they’re getting to be old men (Pix is 16, Gryff is 13). I have tried all of those 13 years to get a decent pic or video, but whenever a camera is pointed at them, they stop & act insulted.
But trust me, it is so, so sweet.
Tree With Water
Semi-serious question for east coasters who are annually oppressed by their summer climate, and who vent accordingly: has the percentage of the population who likewise complain (like yourselves) during the summer been constant through the centuries, or has it grown with the advent of air conditioning? Or do all east coasters bellyache about it as a matter of course, and always have?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
One wonders if Steve is becoming more doglike since he’s surrounded by dogs, or if he forces the dogs to be more catlike and adapt to his preferences.
Given that cats are much more social and friendly than they usually get credit for, I suspect that John’s dogs exhibit more catlike behavior than they would if they were an all-dog household.
NotMax
@Tree With Water
During winter, they complain about the cold and snow (or, alternatively, about the dearth of snow), in spring about the rain, in summer about the heat. Come the autumn, they just complain. :)
City dwellers who were able to do so used to light out for the mountains or the shore during the peak summer months. Until modern air conditioning, Congress would recess for the months of heat as a matter of course.
Gian
@Tree With Water:
I was a kid in rural CT in the 70s and 80s. No AC, hell, well water and no cable. about 2 weeks a year we put fans in the windows at night.
when it was over 80 and over 80% humidity we were bummed, but IIRC only one car had air conditioning, and (no really) during the day we walked a couple miles to a lake. I my teens, we moved to coastal SoCal…. and what I recall most was that February didn’t totally suck.
Brachiator
@Tree With Water:
Well, consider a group of folks who gathered in Philly to work on a little thing called the Constitution back in 1787:
Summer in the city is always rough.
Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck gettin’ dirty-‘n’-gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city
All around people lookin’ half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match-head
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m648v4s5sFc
Amir Khalid
I need to go out, and there is a Bianca sleeping on my jacket. I shall have to wake her so I can put it on, which I am not keen to do. Sigh.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Amir Khalid:
A sad conundrum. I’ve been there.
Tree With Water
@Brachiator: I’m usually reminded of the heat in Philly that year in the musical 1776, but didn’t catch it on the tube over this 4th. I know my father wisely declined a promotion and transfer back to DC once, and the climate of the San Francisco Bay Area played a significant role in his decision. I acclimated pretty quickly to my trips back east. For the first time in my life during the first trip, however, I appreciated and felt thankful for AC. There being no need for AC in the patch of Bay Area where I grew up, I had never really given it a second’s thought until I stepped off the plane at Dulles..
Isobel
Is there video of this? Please tell me there’s video!
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Nah, it’s a common little-dog thing. When our first Papillon Galliard and his mentor Siamese-mix Asmodeus started doing it, we referred to it as “the fierce wolf versus mightly mountain lion” game, because Asmo would leap to the back of the couch, lean over & swat Galley to lure him into a chase all through the house. (We hadn’t been 100% sure the older cat would accept the new puppy, or vice versa, until Asmo came over & did the feline flop-on-his-side invitation-to-wrestle, and Galley responded with a doggie play-bow. They had become bilingual!)
In the “mixed” households of my acquaintance, cats will often play like this with dogs who are either small enough or very, very trustworthy… it’s a hoot to watch a 4lb kitten pounce on a full-grown Great Dane’s head while both of them produce “hold me back!” mock-growls & snarls.
Right now we have two 12lb boy cats, who occasionally swat playfully at the three 18lb dogs. But Zevon just doesn’t care about cats, Sydney is afraid of them (Sydney is Woody Allen in a dog suit, he’s neurotic about everything), and Gloria gets… overexcited; she’ll play nicely for a few minutes before getting a little too physical, whereupon her ‘opponent’ has to retreat behind the safety gates strategically dividing our house into sectors. So mostly Piper (the Ninja) and Rocket (the Viking) wrestle each other, while the dogs act as a audience from the other side of the bars.
Brachiator
@Tree With Water: I went to school back east, and visited relatives there, but I was always able to get out of town before summer. The most recent crappy summer I had was during a business trip to Houston, hot and humid. During part of my stay, there was an AC malfunction in the hotel, and everyone was miserable.
Tree With Water
@Brachiator: To hear them tell it, no group of people were happier when the Astro’s bounced to the American League than the S.F. Giants broadcasters. Of all the MLB towns in the National League, they used to dread the road trips there most of all…
BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: Of all the cities I’ve ever traveled to, I detest Houston. Hot, Humid and doesn’t cool at night, in vast sprawl of blah.
opiejeanne
@Tree With Water: I about froze to death in August in Oakland, stepping off the plane from Ontario, Calif. where the ground temp at 5pm was over 100, and on landing in Oakland it was 60 or lower. Can’t remember the exact figure, but I was in shorts and my husband knew I’d be underdressed so he had brought a jacket for me when he picked me up.
raven
Sheet, it’s hot as a motherfucker in Georgia and it’s going to stay that way! My tenant’s AC went down but she was headed up to Asheville. I yanked the run capacitor after seeing them all over the Home Depot web page. Of course, when I got there, they told me it they were online only. I’m hoping I can get one early in the morning Monday but, if I do, it will probably be the fan relay.
Keith G
@BillinGlendaleCA: Since you brought us up, high yesterday was 95. Right now it is 79. Humidity is 88.
The next 10 days are supposed to see a bit more heat, hovering around 98-99.
Marilynd..so
Reporting in from the Rogue Valley in S OR…..typically this is the hottest week of the year….FAIR WEEK!! We got hot early, and are now enjoying ” highs only” in the upper 90’s…….and BIG PLUS! the lows dipping into the upper 50’s….open windows and cover with drapes til I wake up….humidity has been a minor-minus…This is late August weather, and I love it!!
Montarvillois
Thank you, thank you. We haven’t had mention of Rosie & Steve for some time, nor pics. I take the heat waves in stride, just have to drum up memories of our Montreal winters.
NotMax
Thinking back, there was one year when it got up to 110 in September when I was in St. Paul, and dropped to -40 in January, a swing of 150 degrees over 4 months.
Luci
It’s not just the east coast where people talk and gripe a lot about the weather. Here in the Upper Midwest, we do it all the time, and in fact, I think there is some kind of joke about how that’s ALL we talk about. It is true though that we get extremes, and then there is so much change in our seasons that there is plenty to talk about. I was once in San Diego visiting friends, and they were shocked when they started to talk about their weather, and I told them then “have no weather.” At least not by my standards. :)
geg6
Heh. That’s what Koda and Lovey do. All. Day. Long.
satby
@Marilynd..so: I visited friends at Fair time many years ago! Enjoy, it’s such a great time. Wish I could go back!
satby
@Tree With Water: @Luci: The main thing people will say is that ” it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” . And that’s true. All the east coast and Midwest get really humid heat, like here today where the temperature is expected to reach only the low 80s (83) but the high humidity will make the heat index 95. It’s not just that it’s hot, it’s also that sweating doesn’t cool you off at all because it doesn’t evaporate.
I don’t have air conditioning, but as long as I have power, my fans are fine.
bystander
Most of NYC is air conditioned…buses, taxis, the subway, all the stores. Imagine those poor Parisians. It’s been over 100 there and there’s no a/c. We were there one year over 7/14 (another thing to do once) and I could barely make myself leave the confines of our hotel room.
PBO was in NYC this weekend with his girls. Took them for a walk in Central Park, along with the security cordon you’d expect. The local news is showing a clip of Obama reaching out to shake the hand of a pushcart soda guy. Soda guy shakes Obama’s hand and in one motion sweeps his hand to his heart and does the universal symbol of the beating heart. I think that said a lot about how his Presidency will be remembered.
Pogonip
“Cole! Look! I caught a tribble! And my, he is a big one!”
RSA
Sounds good. I had a big Caesar salad last night for dinner, for much the same reason. If there’s anything that will get me eating healthy it’s the heat of summer. And the availability of good summer veggies.
I’m glad you’re talking about “eating healthy” rather than “eating clean”. There seems to be a recent trend in adopting the language and attitudes of religious dietary restrictions, toward secular ends. It sounds weird to me.
Bobby B.
@Marilynd..so: I live in your neighborhood and the only good thing about these “august” days of yours is the homeless disappear for the afternoon. Where do they go? Walmart? Weatherman say s 100 today, I predict 105.
Mack
John, you’re probably crashed, but if you see this…I’m completely curious about your diet, because i am trying to change how I eat as well. I grew up eating minimal fruits and veggies…it was Mexican food, lots of beans and rice or fideo and some portion of spiced meat. Tortillas every meal. I still eat that way, except I love most fruit and I can eat way more veggies now. Still, I struggle introducing new food to my unsophisticated palate, so I’m curious about your food quest. Good luck with it regardless.
geg6
@RSA:
I managed to make a healthy meal of salad last night into a profoundly fattening meal. That is my talent. Took some of the last of our butter lettuces and some cucumbers from the garden, some grape tomatoes from the farmer’s market, roasted a red pepper and used some olives and blue cheese I got from the deli last week. Nothing real bad yet. They had beef tenderloins on sale, so I put that on the grill. Figured I’d slice that up and make steak salads. Still okay, right? But because I’m a Pittsburgher, you can’t just have a steak salad. It has to be a Pittsburgh steak salad. Which means French fries. So I made oven fried Parmesan fries. Yummy.
Luci
@satby Yes… I hear that about the heat and humidity a lot, and it’s true. A not too hot temperature can be completely miserable with a lot of humidity, plus the molds and allergens seem worse then, so the misery is compounded. Lately my friends with asthma have had it rough.
shell
Tommorow (Sunday) cooler. Hah! Gonna be 95 here in NJ and the weather people only to happy to tell you how hot you should feel. ;Over 100!;
Does Steve ever get tired of playing and gives Thurston the bums rush…
The Other Chuck
Oppressive humid heat has a whole new dimension of suck when you’re living in your van and haven’t installed any roof vents. Here in NYC, I pretty much duck in there to go to sleep, and in the morning I crawl out of bed to turn on the AC for a few minutes so I can have the energy to get dressed and get out.
Should be nice preparation for when I go to India and Uganda next year 8-/
shell
@RSA: Make a lot bean salads as the main meal when its hot-hot-hot. : Last night it was whats called Confetti salad, I guess cause of all the colors. Black beans, white corn, cherry t omatoes, and avocado, in a nice vinaigrette.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: When that happens to me, I just root through my closet until I find another jacket.
bystander
Tom Friedman was just on NBC. He cracked wise about how media coverage of politics has become Political Sports Network. PSN. Count on him beating that one to death.
rikyrah
the animals are too cute Cole.
stay cool.
A Ghost To Most
I have lived on both coasts, north and south, and the weather here in Colorado is hands down the best of anywhere I have lived.
Four seasons,wonderful summers,and nice winters.
Mayur
In New Orleans for the week. Heat index 107 degrees.
Yeah, about that…
ET
STEVE! The Big Floofy!
kc
About time!
I love to see a cat playing with his dog …