Oy. I'm feeling ya.  I don't think the weather helps anything. We're getting the same rain and it's a lot colder today then it was supposed to be. But hopefully that keeps the whole 'hail and high winds' thing to a minimum.  Hope your day starts getting better!

RYC: Thanks for the job info. I sent Ed the site and he sent them an email about how to apply. I appreciate it more then you know. And technically, they HAVE to give him his job back, but they said it didn't have to be at the same rate of pay and yada yada. They've already replaced him with a permanent replacement. I thought it was highly illegal, but Ed doesn't seem to want to press the issue. So who the hell knows.

My uncle got the mountain lion when it was only a few months old at the swap meet. I have no idea how these people get ahold of these things, but needless to say, the guy selling them had a few babies. It was about the size of a small dog, and I think it cost him somewhere around 300$ or so.. Cute as all get out, but jesus- they weren't kidding when they say they have sharp ass teeth! He lived in this giant old 3 story house and kept it up on the 3rd floor for almost a year. It got to the point where he was feeding it the hind quarters of the deers he'd catch while hunting. And when the season was up, he'd buy huge chunks of pork and cow and feed it to it.  He didn't socialize it enough so it became pretty combative, as well as not having any place to get out and run, so he eventually had to call the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and they came in, captured it, and release it god knows where.  They didn't charge him with anything because they have some kind of program here where if you release it to them, instead of just letting it go, they won't make a big deal out of it. My uncle likes to do weird stuff like and it definitely wasn't a very well thought out plan. But it was cool at 10 years old to be able to wrestle around with a mountain lion cub. So I can at least thank him for an experience I otherwise never would have had! *L*