Baby Bunnies

A couple of baby rabbits were discovered by my two dogs this week. I found the nest area, with the help of the dogs after I took the babies away. They weren't hurt, just slobbered on. Baby rabbits are pretty darn good at playing dead though. I put them back in the little hollow at the base of a tree at the edge of our yard and tried to keep the dogs away. Yesterday while I was at work, I was told by the wife and kids that the younger, stupider dog went ahead and killed one. The kids were pretty upset. At dinner time that night, the other baby was found in the garage with the younger dog's mouth around it again. It was ok though, and I decided we should try to figure out a way to keep this one alive. We were going to keep it in a box and feed it until it was big enough to run away from the stupid dogs. I went to the internet and found out that the best thing to do was to put the baby back and put a fence around the nesting area. Anyone with a garden knows that most fences won't keep out rabbits, but the idea is just to keep out the dogs. I put the baby back and stacked three pallets around the tree to keep the mutts away. We'll go back this afternoon and see if the doe (mom rabbit) visited last night to nurse the remaining baby. The web page we found said that the doe only comes to the nest once every 24 hours, usually late at night, so as not to draw attention to the babies. It also say that the mom won't abandon a baby because of human scent...hopefully the same applies to dog slobber.

Thoughts on God and Bridges

Over the last couple of days there has been a lot of coverage of the I35W Bridge collapse here in Minneapolis. One of the things I have noticed, and I don't really know why, is the presence of God. The President, the Governor and the Mayor have all uttered the phrase "our thoughts and prayers..."
News reporters and witnesses alike have used the phrase "but for the grace of God..." several times.
On the way in this morning I heard the story of a bystander feeling hopeless about not being able to help more. She called out to the crowd around her, "Does anyone want to pray with me?" At first she was met with looks of skepticism, then one person answered. Then another, and soon a dozen or more people were standing in a circle, holding hands, praying for the rescuers, the to be rescued and those who didn't survive the bridge collapse.
In the press conferences after the initial reporting started to become repetitive, there was talk of rebuilding, money being allocated and resources dedicated to ensuring this sort of thing doesn't happen again...and I heard the phrase more than once, "God willing..."
The same people that stand by and let God be taken out of the classroom, off our money, out of our pledge and basically removed from the public view are the ones that publicly invoke His name in times of need and tragedy. Its kind of sad, but I guess its the way God wants it. He's always here, no matter what we do to try and remove Him. We only notice when we need Him. Good Friends are always like that.

Who is this person we are looking for?

Mark Sanborn found a good article and wrote about it today.

Robert Kegan, the article's author says:

The tragedy of the Bush presidency is not about failure; it is about a conception of success that is much too simple.

Trying to boil everything down to red and blue, black and white or right and wrong just isn't going to cut it anymore. I really wonder what happened to taking the good with the bad. No candidate is going to make everyone happy; but is there someone complex enough to have qualities that will interest both sides and compel them to vote for a leader next November?

Saving money

Here's a question...if the whole album costs $9.99, but you are only interested in one song off the album, and you can get the single for $0.99 on iTunes, are you saving $9.00? I would probably like at least a few of the other songs on it, and who knows, when they are released as singles and I actually hear them, I might buy them for a dollar. In fact, I just went back out to iTunes to look, and there are 11 songs on it, one of which is a cover of the classic "Devil went down to Georgia." Maybe I should have spent the $9 extra.
[edit]
I just realized I never mentioned the name of the band, or the album, so here it is.

Emerson Drive

Update

Couple things today that I wanted to write down. Mark Sanborn talks about how he likes blogs (and likes TO blog) because he likes to write less and more frequently than stressing out about longer content on a regular basis - printed articles and books I imagine.
I am in the same boat, although I don't do either frequently. Of course his saying it is what prompted me to write this post, so although he'll probably never know it, his post caused action in others. Sometimes a reminder to yourself is that trigger that someone else is looking for.

I also posted something I read at the Meebo blog. They did a little research on Wikipedia about the origin of the emoticon, otherwise known as the smiley. Check it out on my quick-n-dirty _rock_tumblr.

Tumblr is pretty cool, especially if you are looking for a really, really quick and easy way to start blogging. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that a typepad or blogger.com have, but for some people, simple is good.