Normally this dog sleeps through just about everything. Fireworks, thunder, the garbage man—you name it, he snores right through it.

But this week we discovered one thing Mojo will NOT sleep through; something so vile, so treacherous, so dangerous to his family’s safety that the bulldog must rise up from his repose and meet it head on:

NEIGHBOR ACROSS THE STREET: Ah-CHOO!!

MOJO: … Zzzzzzzz… Snort! Ruh ruh ruh RUFF! RUFF! Ruh ruh ruh RUFF! RUFF!

Yes, this is cul-de-sac living at its finest: when you can hear your neighbor sneeze at 1 am.

And apparently there was something about this sneeze I wasn’t getting, because Mojo was all fired up about it in a desperate sort of way—as if there was a hulking ax murderer with hay fever at our front door and we were acting like we could care less.

Hubby and I kept shushing him and he kept growling and grunting, until he finally gave up and went back to sleep. And so did we.

And then …

NEIGHBOR: Ah-CHOO!! Ah-CHOO!!

MOJO: Ruh ruh ruh RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! Ruh ruh ruh RUFF! RUFF! Ruh ruh ruh RUFF! RUFF! (etc.)

I don’t know about you, but I’m not the most charitable woman in the wee hours. I dragged Mojo downstairs and aimed him at his crate.

Now, usually he loves to sleep in his crate. If I say, “Go crate!” He runs right to it. But he fought me this time. He ran in every direction except toward the crate, so I dragged him over and pushed half of him inside. He wriggled loose and almost escaped, and surprisingly enough, wrestling with a bulldog in the pitch black isn’t as much fun as one might think.

I’d almost worked all of him into the crate when…

NEIGHBOR: Ah-CHOO!! Ah-CHOO!!

MOJO: RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF!

Mojo took off running for the front door and I hightailed it after him. The living room was dark, which meant I didn’t see the piano bench until I plowed into it.

BONNIE: (unprintable)

I cornered our bulldog by the front door and then herded him back to his crate. We were halfway there, Mojo grumbling and growling all the way, when…

NEIGHBOR: Ah-CHOO!! Ah-CHOO!! Ah-CHOO!!

MOJO: RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF! RUFF!

Let’s just say that wasn’t one of our better nights.

And next time, Hubby, it’s your turn to put Mojo in his crate.

It doesn’t show it on the weather forecast, but sometime during the night the temperature dropped… and then it RAINED!

And yes, yes—that was BONNIE out there in the cul-de-sac this morning, running up and down the asphalt, dancing and singing in her pyjamas…

BONNIE: I’m SING-ing in the RAIN… I’m SING-ing in the RAIN! What a GLOR-ious FEELING! I’m HAP-py a-GAIN!

Yesterday I spent the day at a swim meet, where the pool was so hot, the staff tossed huge ice blocks into the water. (They melted almost immediately.)

And yesterday my mother called to tell me how she stayed inside her northern California apartment all day with the air conditioner cranking, and the inside temperature never got below 95 degrees F.

Still, we were cooler in comparison to what other California counties faced, but you can imagine how excited we Californians are now that the heat wave is officially over.

And after my little cul-de-sac jig, I had to come and peek again at a link I received from Mr. Grouchypants earlier this week, about this abundance of cuteness, this CORNUCOPIA of winsome baby love known as Katie, and her little Pound Puppy Mojo…

… ah. It does a heart good.

So today’s Super Sabado is a RELIEVED and happy Super Sabado. The end of this heat wave is nothing short of miraculous! As we sip our frosty margaritas let us peek into my blogroll and and see what other miracles await us… (Read the rest of “Super Sabado: Finally, some relief!”)

“We” being Bonnie Calhoun and Bonnie Wren, Blogger Breakers Extraordinaire.

As we’ve bumbled through template fixing, we did something that messed everything up, because Blogger definitely hasn’t been the same since we started.

And since I’m in a confessional state of mind, let’s talk about Google. I haven’t been able to access my Google mail, Google News or Google specialized searches since last night. I’d like to blame that one on Bonnie C., but I probably had something to do with it, too.

And it’s hot. And muggy. 87% humidity today, and I know, I know, IT’S NOT PHOENIX. Because if it were, I’d spontaneously ignite. Seeing as how it’s only San Diego heat and humidity and all, I’m remaining in a liquid state.

And it’s not… even… August.

First, allow me to say that this is totally safe for work, despite those iffy little terms “nudist” and “trampolining” up there in the title. (And if I get banned in Ohio again, I guess I’ll know why.)

There are ten moves you can put our flabby little hippie through, including the “Tornado” and the “YMCA” (my favorite).

Here’s the “Lobster,” which may be in questionable taste, but hey! It’s 25 points!

Amazingly enough, that fig leaf doesn’t even flap in the breeze. It remains safely affixed even through the “Hedgehog.”

Push your keyboard buttons correctly and your hippie is carried up into Heaven, where he can bounce in the clouds. But get a little careless, and he’s flat on the ground with a little hippie cry.

And it’s such an easy game, too! See?

Via Digg.

I don’t ever remember a coastal north county San Diego summer being so consistently hot and muggy as this one has been. Sure, there are always two or three weeks in August that are tough, but the rest of the year is temperate in comparison to places like like Dallas, or St. Louis, or Boston, or even Fresno.

So for the most part, we scorn air conditioning. We sneer at A/C. We spit upon air conditioning! “Ptt! Ptt! Pttooi!”

Yeah. Well.

We heaped all that scorn BEFORE we stood in the furnace blast of what might become San Diego’s warmest July on record. And as I write this from a cushy chair in my local Barnes and Noble, I do repent and say, God Bless Air Conditioning.

So. Do you think this store’s Starbucks will make us up some Margarita-flavored Frappuccinos if we ask nicely? Because I’m not moving from this cushy chair. See, it’s right under the main vent. (Read the rest of “Super Sabado: It’s hot, hot, hot!”)

@lpha’s Photostream

SQUIRT: Whoa, what’s that?

BONNIE: It’s a picture I’m using for this week’s Random Flickr Blogging. I need a funny caption. How about, “By far, the most popular speaker today was the guy who talked about his experience with steroids.”

SQUIRT: Uh, I don’t know, Mom. I don’t think that’s funny at all.

BONNIE: Really? How about, “Years of living close to the nuclear power plant had finally taken its toll on Fifi.”

SQUIRT: Mom! Give it up!

BONNIE: Let’s see you try. Pick a picture.

SQUIRT: Okay.

WARNING! SQUEAMISH PEOPLE CLOSE THEIR EYES RIGHT NOW!

sashforlife@rogers .com’s photostream

SQUIRT: “And after this demonstration, there will be a free lunch.”

BONNIE: Gross! Bleah!

Kevin V’s photostream

BONNIE: Here’s a good one. How about, “He dreamed he was eating Triscuits, and woke up to find his mattress gone (and a draft he never noticed before).”

SQUIRT: (sighs heavily) No-o-o, Mom. (shakes head) He’s in the middle of the street! More like, “That was some crazy party, man!” or “How you can tell it’s Friday night on campus.”

BONNIE: You’re scaring me.

gerb’s photostream

SQUIRT: Oh, sick! “Dude! That was some sneeze!”

Pictorial’s photostream

BONNIE: Ah, this is so sweet. How about, “Brad and Angelina put rumors to rest once and for all when they celebrated their 50th anniversary.”

SQUIRT: (rolls eyes)

australiaspring06′s photostream

SQUIRT: Heh! “Coffee and Ritalin: a dangerous mix.” No, wait! “He’s like, the new James Bond!” Heh, heh! “I like my Ritalin shaken, not stirred!”

You know how it is when you do a little research on a subject and then all of a sudden all your friends see you as an expert?

It happens to me all the time—why, I don’t know. Just one of those amusing little foibles of human nature, I guess.

BONNIE: Yup. (examines fingernails) I just installed two PLUGINS on my WEBSITE.

CARPOOL MOM: You have a website?

BONNIE: (nonchalantly) Oh, it’s nothing. Really.

CARPOOL MOM: That reminds me! Did you see Oprah today?

BONNIE: Um, no. But I did take a look at her website’s SOURCE CODE and did you know she actually uses TABLES for FORMATTING? Ha! I don’t know who her designer is, but—

CARPOOL MOM: (frowning) I don’t remember Oprah doing any shows on designer table coverings.

Yes, I have quite a geeky reputation amongst my friends. And I get tons of requests to help people with their websites, too. TONS.

BONNIE: Let me do your website for you! Please, please, please?

FRIEND: I, uh, oh, I don’t know…

BONNIE: But I’m ever so cheap! In fact, I’m free! A free website! Just for you!

FRIEND: Uh…

Being a webmaster is an important responsibility, as you might imagine, especially if you’re doing it for a friend. So I frequently check my friend’s site just to make sure all is hunky dory. And on Monday morning—yowza!

Her site was trashed. Completely unreadable. She had been hacked!

Of course, I handled this crisis as calmly and authoritatively as any level-headed webmaster would.

BONNIE: (running around the living room, arms flapping) We were hacked! We were HACKED! WE… WERE… HACKED!

I searched through all the files and in a few of them found strange snippets of code that did not belong—code I’d never seen before—with phrases like “ERROR_REPORTING” and “base64_encode”.

And when I finally figured out how to translate all this base64_encode stuff, I discovered it contained a URL! A URL that pointed to… A ROMANIAN WEBSITE.

BONNIE: (running around the living room, arms flapping) We were hacked by ROMANIANS! We were HACKED BY ROMANIANS! WE WERE… HACKED… BY ROMANIANS!

What the Romanians wanted, I don’t know, but they really messed up the site. And how they got into the files in the first place, I don’t know, either, but it took me some time to find all the little bits of code they added. At one point I just gave up and uploaded one of my backups. Now the site loads perfectly.

And of course, all my friends are dying to hear about this online adventure.

BONNIE: (sniffs modestly) Yup. Spent most the day cleaning up some website files. HACKERS, you know.

SWIM TEAM MOM: Huh?

BONNIE: It was nothing, really. Just one of my websites. Got HACKED. By ROMANIANS.

SWIM TEAM MOM: Romanians? Say, didn’t Nadia Comaneci marry an American gymnast?

Yup. That foible of human nature thing—you gotta love it.

No time to procrastinate today as a result of some interesting events I will tell you about later this week (unless I put it off, in which case I will tell you about it NEXT week).

Anyway, when it was time to get down to some serious time-wasting, I turned to this puzzle.

Don’t ask me what it’s about. I don’t understand it, except somehow I’m supposed to get all these little RayRay guys standing instead of doing those little RayRay hover squats.

There must be a trick of some sort, some way to figure out what patterns they stand in… but I couldn’t make it out except for once—a total accident the little RayRay guys celebrated by showing me their bellies and running away.

You smarties out there explain the strategy to me, because I’m giving up and going to bed.

Meet Loki, Mojo’s buddy.

Our next-door neighbors adopted Loki from the Helen Woodward Animal Center a few months ago. He was pretty shy at first but he’s warmed up nicely since then. In fact, just to show everybody how comfortable he’s become, he ate an entire upholstered chair in his family’s living room.

That’s nothing, though, in comparison to Clara Dog across the street. Clara Dog chews up carpeting, dry wall and vinyl sheet flooring—but only if it’s attached to a house.

(Mojo’s looking pretty tidy in comparison now, isn’t he?)

Loki and Mojo have dug several holes under the fence in order to spend more time together—but honestly? Mojo just TELLS Loki he’s digging. Really, he doesn’t even PRETEND to dig. He just supervises while Loki does all the work.

When Loki finally busts through, the doggie games begin. The two of them party in a big way until 1) Loki gets tired and squeezes back under the fence, or 2) one of Loki’s humans comes looking for him.

Mojo always tries to squeeze through the holes, too, but can never fit all the way—his head makes it but his shoulders form a nice little fence plug.

You might think, well, that’s one hole-in-the-fence problem solved, except you’d probably be forgetting the Bulldog Butt that’s left hanging out on our side of the fence. Not very feng shui, if you know what I mean.

And as much as our neighbors like Mojo, apparently his head sticking out on their side of the fence is a bit disconcerting—kind of like one of those wildlife trophies you mount on the wall, only lower and still licking.

Now all the holes are blocked off with cinder blocks and chicken wire (only on their side—who needs all that stuff when you’ve got your very own Bulldog Fence Plug?) and we just schedule doggie play dates like the one we had today.