The federal employee who spat on me last week?

At today's meeting, I sat across the table from her, outside of normal spitting range.

But apparently not outside kicking range...

My delayed lunch hour was interrupted by barking heelers.

Remember the fellow from the power company who came by earlier to swap out our old electric meter? And couldn't because ours was a design he had never seen before?

This was his boss. Here to do the swap.

And couldn't. Seems the replacement he brought won't fit in our box.

He says he's seen a few like ours in town. But apparently we're the first to be replaced with the new remotely read meters.

And he's not sure how to do it.

Never mind that I cleaned the window on the old box, which was the only reason the meter reader wanted it swapped in the first place. The change to remote sensing is coming eventually anyway, so it looks like we get to be first.

Which, as you know, is usually not a good thing. That means the learning curve starts with us.

The boss is going to come back and do the swap next week. And has a technician or two who need to see how it's done. And the original electrician who first showed up should probably learn this style, too.

They're going to have an electrician's training school in our back yard next week.

I asked if I should make coffee.

And in other urban-domestic news that nobody else will care about...

Grady got a fence this weekend!

Grady being the big black dog catty-corner in Mrs. Humphrey's house, which isn't her house any more, 'cause she's dead. Now it's Larry's son's house.

But Grady grew up chained to the front porch, demolishing their front yard as he chased at the end of his chain after anybody and anything on their corner sidewalks.

Particularly me and the heelers.

Twice he charged at us full tilt and snapped his chain. Leaving me in the unenviable position of restraining two defending heelers with one hand whilst trying to back off this huge attacking black thing with the other.

It didn't help that the replacement chain after the first break was longer, and allowed him to reach half the sidewalks.

It didn't help that Larry's son's wife took to letting Grady outside just after we passed, so's he could ambush us on the return trip.

The second Grady chain-breaking escape was just a few weeks ago, and ended up with him following, snarling and snapping at us halfway to the post office, and me unsnapping the sheath on my belt.

Yeah. He's no longer intimidated by a grown human.

Larry's son apologized sincerely, but we had words, just the same. They included the words "vicious" and "police".

So yesterday, as we headed to the PO, I was pleasantly surprised to see Grady barking furiously at us as we left home.

From behind a new chain link fence.

Cool.