It is the “Rocky” one – Hank, Dalmatian and Budweiser. Watch it again here.

There are times when I am listening to someone speak and they will interject a parenthetical “pardon the pun” and go on. For my part, sometimes I mentally smack my forehead when I realize I had not caught it. Ever now and then, I will be reading and there will be a real parenthetical “pardon the pun” and I will usually go on because there is no reason to stop reading. However, sometimes the phrase surprises me because I am not aware of a pun. I will go back and it I still don’t get it, I will have to force myself to not linger forever trying to identify that pun.

Here’s one in a recent blog post: Digital downloads cost $8.99 on Amazon (free from Limewire or a friend), CDs average $10.50, but vinyl LPs sell for a whopping $14.00 a pop (pardon the pun).

So, where is the pun? I don’t get it. Is my mind a plodding one, wandering in a blogging world?

UPDATE: Okay, I’ve got it.  After someone remarked that he could not see a pun either,  I thought some more about it and considered perhaps the pop referred to pop music – or maybe a paternal parent was forking over the cash. I went back to the post from which this came and in the paragraph above was a reference to a 15-year-old’s remark that music  “sound(s) better on vinyl, even with the crackles and pops and hisses.”

On the pun scale, I give it a “hiss”.

“the dog”  . . . .”the dog”?  For crying out loud; he’s not “the dog”, he is Sydney and he gets fed every morning and evening. Today it was rice and browned ground beef and chopped up chicken and dog food for ‘sensitive stomachs’ all mixed up and microwaved. Now he is outside and I am waiting for him to come in, settle down and sleep. We have been through this out and in process several times this morning. Now he is in – again – and staring at the opposite end of the sofa. We have walking around on some afghans . . . circling . . . and down in a curled up position, although his head is still up, not yet resting on paws. YES! Houston, we have head on paws. We are a go for nap . . . we think.

Are you wondering about the punctuation in the first part of this post? Well, I am. I am fairly certain that we were taught to put punctuation outside of quotation marks in circumstances where the quoted section was not actually the complete sentence. I am confusing myself; I am going to research this. Not that doing this will get the house cleaning or get any food cooked, but I think it’s important.

Often when I look at the Internet news headlines, I see a little camera icon at the end. That means you have to watch it; you can’t quickly click and see the text of the article. No, first comes a commercial and then the introduction of the story and reporter and, finally, the story.

If you want to linger over a part of the story or go back to check on something, too bad. Well, I find that annoying.

Just now, I saw there was a story on Cooper Manning, the eldest brother. And it was one of those “watch” ones. Yes, it was interesting to hear Cooper’s interpretation of the Manning accent, but I really would have appreciated not having to listen to all the repartee between anchorperson and onsite reporter.

Okay, all day yesterday one family member worried that we would be snowed in beyond all snowed in periods of the past. We would never be able to get out of the house again  and, gasp, Wal-Mart trips would be a thing of the past. Ah, dare I dream of such a blessed outcome.

It snowed, but at 4 am, when I looked out the porch door as Sydney went to reconnoiter a location for his outdoor privy, there was very little on the ground and none on the bushes. An hour changed that and soon the school closing started moving across the bottom of the TV screen.

I got the worried nurse to the hospital, although I did take the precaution of leaving Sydney at home in case I were to slide and crash, slide and wind up on a curb or in a ditch, slide and slide and cause him to be jolted around the car and injure himself.

A dastardly freezing rain or really wet snow or, judging from the perfectly round ice balls on my trunk, hail smacked into windshield and clogged the windshield wipers. I ended up driving with my head hunched down to look out under the wiper arc for awhile – sort of in the posture of a little old lady with severe neck osteoporosis. It was slick and the intersection were ruts and humps of snow, shoved by cars turning and plows doing the same.

A short trip and actually  enchanting  once I was headed back down Riley Street. I got home; let the dog out and took some pictures of the night and the snow and the dog and the light left on for anyone wanting to come home.