You never know. The discussions of gin-based drinks may have brought some in.

Interrogative whiskey tango foxtrot DESIG Ginger, over.

I'll print out the description and pass it around. Maybe someone will know someone that is qualified and interested in a change of venue. Tom Bodett moved from up here to your neck of the woods, it could happen again...

16 beds - it's dainty. HHC, other outreach, sounds nice.

Are y'all all right up there, incidentally? Heard on NPR this morning that there were bad storms in NH. I don't know exactly where you live but NH isn't very big, so I worried.

There were, but we're okay. The National Weather Service was (last I heard) trying to figure out if it was a downburst or a real-live tornado we had.

The heaviest storms were south of me, on the other side of some mountains. All we had here was heavy rain.

The major storms in New Hampshire yesterday were from Ossipee (home of a really good barbecue restaurant) to Deerfield, by way of Alton. (The time Miss Teresa visited and saw a moose (and thereby saw our hospital) we went back south by way of the road that pretty much followed the heaviest storm-damage area this time around.)

Ah, New Hampshire -- I feel cooler already.

It's a minus because moose will do a lot more damage to a car that runs into them than a deer would. And moose are not inclined to get out the way of anything; they are stubborn.

[insert mental image of moose sniffing a cat]

My only concern is, do I address this moose as Mr. or Ms. Moose? Dr. Moose? The Very Right Reverend Moose? Chief Moose? (OK, I stole that last one from our previous police chief.)

Like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. (Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep? Wherever it wants to.) With the added wrinkle that 800 pounds is small for a moose.

That's right, we share an ex-police chief. Chief Moose spent a couple of years here before he bailed on what has to be one of the most insular and uncontrollable forces in the country. And then he got the DC sniper on his watch there. That was hard on him, we could see it in the news film.

Yes, moose can be very stubborn, not to say kinky. Call him "Bull" Moose.

Why settle for a mental image?

Also, some crow-cat love.

Meanwhile, in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota...

I really LIKE the idea of needing to watch for moose on the highway. We used to see them here in MN all the time, but in the last 10 - 15 years the population has dropped over 90%, possibly due to climate change. Haven't seen one in more than a decade...

Jim, do you think they would trade eight years at Detox for having any of the REAL qualifications needed for the job?

[pedant]The snipers were in the DC area, but only one person in DC was actually a victim. It might be more apropos to label them the DC area snipers. [/pedant]

Those sniper shootings occurred near where I live, shop and work. It was not a fun time for anyone, and it's a shame they all got so focused on the "white van" so early -- the DC shooting was the only one in which the witness actually described the car. Chief Moose did a stand-up job of leading Montgomery County police efforts in this hunt, and was a good man in a tough place to be.

This is the first time I have ever seen highway flares get extinguished by rain. It was that heavy.

I thought Moose was a really good cop and a good chief from what I could see here; as I said, he came up against a really dysfunctional police culture here, and I don't envy him the experience.

Is he really back on patrol? That hardly seems fair or sensible; he was a good commander, and they're hard to find.

Even in days of thousands of moosies here, we very rarely saw one this far south. She probably had no chance. Weeks later I saw a picture of her car... A tiny coupe... She REALLY never had a chance.

Please untangle? Did the moose do something to her, or did she fall over in surprise, thereby gaining a concussion from New England's stony soil?

Re: moose - I've never seen one. My mom kept saying we would when she lived in Canada, but none ever materialized while I was there. (But we did see law-abiding Canadian deer, crossing at a crosswalk marked with a "Deer Crossing" sign. That was pretty fantastic.)