Guns, grenades or peanut butter?

Alex is gone. Read the post "Alex the Squirrel" below for the story behind the squirrel in the fireplace.


E 'handled' the situation. Note that E has access to a lot of weapons and ammo and was looking for a way to stay entertained while home on a sick day, so any of the scenarios shown below is within the realm of possibility.

What happened to Alex?












Enter your guess in the Mercenary or Merciful Contest by posting a comment. Tell whether you think Alex was killed or set free, and then explain how you think it was accomplished. The actual scenario may or may not be depicted in the photos above. If you enter the actual answer, you'll win! The actual prize is TBD, but your real reward will be glory and recognition. Contest closes 9:00 a.m. on Friday, March 2, 2007.
In case of a tie, the winner will be chosen from a random draw of the correct entries. If there are no correct entries, the winner will be chosen by a random draw from the correct entries for the "killed" or "set free" portion of the answer.
Karen, Alex, and E are not eligible to participate in the contest.

Alex the Squirrel

Walking through the living room this morning, I glanced at the fireplace and saw two eyes looking back at me. Through some navigational error, excess of curiousity or lack of coordination, a squirrel managed to land in the fireplace and survive. Other than a sooty nose, the squirrel seems to be ok.

Me: "There's a squirrel in the fireplace"
E: (Eyes not open/ still sleeping) "Light a fire under it."
Me: "Can't we somehow get it outside alive?"
E: "Work on that plan while I get more sleep"
update/clarification: E is struck down with a plague-like cold and is home trying (unsuccessfully) to rest. He is normally not snoozing late on Friday morning.

Later, when E is more rested, and we're sitting on the couch looking at Alex (In lieu of coming up with a workable plan, I named the squirrel hoping to personalize him/her, increasing his/her odds of survival)
E: "It's like a mammal aquarium"
Me: Noting that Alex is crammed in a corner, not moving "It's a boring mammal aquarium"
E: "Yah. We need to add hornets or something"

Later, after I've convinced myself he was kidding
Me: "So what's your plan, seriously?"
E: "Smoke bomb"
Me: "Isn't there any way to not kill Alex?"
E: "I could put on two layers of fleece and gloves and try to grab it - depends how skittish it is. Knock on the fireplace door to see if it runs around"
Me: (Sad that E is referring to Alex as 'it', but happy that he didn't suggest that I put on 2 layers of fleece and gloves) --after jiggling the fireplace door latch--"Alex is just sitting there blinking."

E:"It can't be very smart - it probably wouldn't even survive outside. Too bad it didn't go down the other way. It would have been incinerated"
Me: "Maybe Alex is VERY smart, but Alex's friends said to go on the roof and Alex isn't coordinated and Alex slipped."
E - sighing.
Me - sighing.

Alex's fate is still unknown, but I'm afraid if I leave E down there too long unsupervised, Alex will 'disappear'

I prefer my romance unscheduled, thank you very much

Yes, yes, E and I celebrated Valentine's Day - romantic dinner for two, lovely bottle of wine, and the romantic movie Quick Change (ok, not romantic, but funny). But honestly, this is a busy week, and VDay didn't exactly fall at an ideal time. There have been other evenings when we've had much more time to linger over dinner, chatting and letting the evening pass by.

I was more touched by what E did the day before VDay. I've been whining and complaining about diet and exercise for pretty much all of February. This is normal for this tme of year, but as my jeans get tighter and I still can't get motivated to stop snacking and work out more, I get increasingly crabby and E gets to listen to it. Instead of telling me to snap out of it and get on with the eat better/exercise more program that we all know works, he went out of his way to go to the bookstore to pick up two women's fitness magazines for me. He pointed out specific articles he thought I would like and let me curl up to read them. The fact that he listens and is supportive of whatever it is I'm trying to do means much more to me than a handful of overpriced dead roses on a manufactured romance day.

I think we'll have time for a nice, long, no-rush dinner sometime in March...

HUMOR: Adapting to change

Watch Introducing the Book on YouTube


Also funny: March of the Librarians

Productivity: low
At least I'm laughing, not whining

No disgruntled poets, please!

Tonight I am going to meet a group of 'Montreal Writers.' I found this group via meetups.com in my never-ending quest to find critique partners who are not my friends or family. We'll see how this goes. My last foray into critique groups resulted in me quitting due to the less-than-useful suggestions from the over-abundance of self-proclaimed unappreciated, misunderstood poets in the group.

So far, tonight's group has two strikes against it:
one - the host is charging $10 per person. For what? Wine and hors d'oevres. Great. Apparently we need to be liquored up to read each other's work
two - writers tend to not be particularly social, which means we'll all stand around feeling uncomfortable wishing we were at home, alone, reading.

However, I'm going. I will do my best to conjure up 'outgoing Karen' and see how it goes. I promise to not rip the head off the first disgruntled poet who sneers at my commercial women's fiction, but if there is more than one in the group I won't be held responsible for my actions.

Coming soon: winter camping 07 pictures. I need to finish some freelance work before monkeying around with flickr but I should have time tomorrow.