Jim's quiet musings . . .

Hi everybody,

As of today I've decided to place this blog back into the public mainstream. 

After today it will not be private anymore unless I end up with problems again from the moronic foreigners here in Southeast Asia who find it necessary to stalk this site, for whatever reason, and leave brainless, immature comments.  I've changed the settings so it will be impossible for anyone who is not a member of this blog to post comments.

Onto bigger and better things...

A lot has happened in the last month or so, since my last posting in November. 

I've dumped the idea of interviewing people since it just isn't working out, with some people taking way too long to answer my e-mails and not sufficiently following simple protocol.  I just chalk it up to another bad idea like the one I had about doing a piece on the guitar masters - Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Joe Satriani, Jimi Hendrix, etc., trying to find who would be considered the all-round best guitar player of all time...there were just too many variables. 

There hasn't been any more cobra snakes in the house, but there have been two other occasions of snakes of unknown species coming into my abode.  It's the monsoon season here and the animals all seek refuge inside my cottage since it's only a tad drier in here than outside...ha!

The funniest thing happened the other night.  I was upstairs watching a movie and suddenly noticed the dogs were not with me.  Even Boo Boo, my cat was nowhere to be seen.  The animals never leave my side when I'm home...if I go upstairs, they follow.  If I decide to go downstairs to the bathroom, when I leave the bathroom, there they all are...sitting in the middle of the floor waiting for me.  So, I turned the volume down and listened.  I heard some muffled noises downstairs and figured they were up to no good.

When I got downstairs, there they all were huddled around something, staring at the floor.  Seriously!  Two dogs on either side of the cat, all looking down at the floor.  Odd, but then I figured they had found an interesting bug, so I went closer to investigate.  What I saw even surprised me.

A snail...but not just any snail.  A snail with a shell on it's back the size of my whole hand!

Now...I see snails all the time, but they are all the little ones, about the diameter of a U.S. quarter.  Then I see the big slugs with no shell, the biggest ones going maybe four to five inches in length and maybe an inch in width. 

This thing was huge! 

I don't think the dogs or the cat even noticed I was there.  They were mesmerized. 

I sat down on the floor and watched as first, Chok reached out and tapped at the snail with her paw.  Immediately the snail retracted into it's shell and the shell rolled off to one side. 

They all just sat there watching it.

Then, slowly it started coming out of it's shell again and in short order was mobile.  Then it was the cat's turn.  Boo Boo reached out and gave it a light tap. 

Slurp!  Back in it's shell. 

A minute or so and it began coming out again.  Then it was Puppy's turn. 

Tap!

Gone. 

This went on for seemingly fifteen or twenty minutes.  I was laughing until my sides hurt.  Here were all three of my animals gathered around something they'd obviously never seen before, with the wonder of a small child on all their faces.  It couldn't have been funnier or sweeter. 

Sometimes it's the simple things in life that really make your day.

-Jeeem-