The post Some Reservations appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.

My assumption is that this feature is designed to make it safer and easier to find your footing, and perhaps slippers, as you awaken in a dark room, before you turn the room lights on. Or perhaps, to help you find your way to the bathroom in the middle of that night without waking up others in the room.

I still haven’t decided how I feel about it. A nice touch, or too much?

The post A Night Light For Your Feet appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.

Quick, before I have to go outside today, a weather question. My weather app is reporting “ice pellets” in the region.

Is this just hail, albeit a more descriptive term, or is an ice pellet somehow different? If so, how should I prepare?

Product inspiration! In today’s era of a million connected appliances, how about a small dresser-top “ecosystem emulator”? Instead of reading, hearing, or even looking at the weather, you can open a door on this device, stick your hand in, and actually experience the temperature, wind conditions, and precipitation that is happening in real life outside your window?

The post Ice Pellets Falling appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.

When traveling the highways of America for the holidays, my early, tired, pre-coffee brain really struggled to understand the directions here.

The post Please Do Not Serve Yourself from This Self-Serve Coffee Maker appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of the launch of this little site. We’re so grateful to all the many people over the years who’ve read our quirkiness, commented on our posts, shared links to our site, or have otherwise told people about us.

We are indebted to our current writers and those who’ve written for us previously. We have greatly enjoyed your quirky musings. We thank you for putting yourself into your work and for sharing that work with us here.

While we are publishing at a less frequent rate than we have in the past, we are still thrilled to have a place where we can share our unique observations. Thanks for hanging with us this past decade.

Yet, we’re most thankful for you, our readers.

The post We’re 10 Years Old Today! appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.

Yes, I know the soap bottle is pretty empty in the picture. If you think this means that I have stood in front of this product daily, for months, before noticing and reading this label, you are correct.

What caught my eye and tickled my brain were the questions raised by the dual asterisks on the word “hands**”.

What might be implied by those little punctuation marks?

Do I want to investigate the label to find out, or shall I luxuriate in the query?

The post Hands need some explaining appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.

During our post-NYE clean up at home, this sturdy glass took a topple. It fell from this upright position over onto the granite counter in the picture.

Happily, the glass survived intact.

However, as I was washing it and putting it away (likely not to stir until next New Year’s Eve), I find myself questioning whether the fall might have introduced some small, barely perceptible crack. Would this glass now shatter in my hands as I washed it, or the next time I poured sparkling wine into it? I couldn’t help but wonder.

Thinking this, the next question in my mind was, when the glass fell and did not break, why did this show of durability actually introduce doubt in my mind about its future, rather than confidence about its strength?

And with that, we at chickenmonkeydog want to wish you all a very happy and quirky 2018!

The post Survivor appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.

Dear Abby,

Across America, ice machines in hotels make very flimsy, lightweight, and small pieces of ice. Why? I prepare more substantial cubes for my end of the day cocktail.

Could it be because the machines need to crank out volumes of ice in short turnaround times? Something else?

– On the Road Again and Confused in Connecticut 

The post Hotel Ice appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.

The sky was clear and bright, with only a few low hanging, hazy clouds on the horizon. On a walking across town on an early Sunday morning, I strolling across an overpass.

There. On two wires directly above the highway below, a dense line of black birds gathered. All were sitting directly above the driving lanes below. Not over the shoulder. Or over the entrance ramps. In fact, no birds were flying or sitting anywhere except directly above the lanes of that highway.

A-ha! At last, I have the evidence to prove that birds are deliberately targeting our shiny, metallic horseless carriages.

The post Evidence of the Conspiracy appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.

Let the curved games begin.

May all flat field based activities soon have a curved version invented.

The post Curved Air appeared first on chickenmonkeydog.