Same Story

So if you look at the below post that includes the story about Pooh and the snake, just insert "Mouse with foot caught in a Mousetrap dragging himself around and squeaking" whenever I wrote "snake", and you'll pretty much have the gist of what happened last night.

My trip to Jacksonville, FL

Johnson & Johnson owns a contact lens company named Vistakon. Their headquarters are located in Jacksonville, which is in the northeast corner of Florida. Vistakon paid for me and some fellow students to fly up there for three days of contact lens training and education. At first I was skeptical because I thought it would be a three-day commercial for Acuvue contact lenses, but that wasn't the case.
I flew in on Sunday afternoon, then for the next two days I attended training and seminars about contact lenses and new designs that are being developed from Vistakon and other companies. We fit real patients with new lenses and they seemed to like the comfort and vision they had with them in. They also brought lecturers in to educate us on improving our patient communication and gave us a tour of the manufacturing plant.
Johnson & Johnson and Vistakon are not hurting for money. The first night I was there I was given a $50 voucher for dinner at a Japanese hibachi steakhouse (I'm pleased to announce that I used $49.40 of it). Then the next night they paid for a fancy dinner at a beach-front restaurant. During the day I had access to all the food I could eat in their company cafeteria. The accommodations were very nice too.

A New One for Smokey Bones!

Smokey Bones caught a nice big rat and called us in early one morning to see it. (It was dead, by the way). She decided she had no more interest in it and let us know she would relinquish her prize for us to do with it what we would. Of course, that meant Steve immediately disposing of it. GROSS!

On a related note, last night (our anniversary) Pooh came around in the middle of the night. She started meowing every once in awhile as I could hear her pacing back and forth between our room and the next. It woke us both up and Steve said "Ignore her, she's just hungry." Well, she wouldn't be ignored. She started meowing Louder. "Are you sure she's hungry?" I asked sleepily after awhile. "Maybe there's something wrong." Meanwhile, she's meowing and meowing, and heading toward our room again. "Yeah, she just wants food." Steve said between mini-snores. And then Smokey was in our room, MEOWING! "Look, you guys, LOOK!" And so I looked, and she has this nice long little black snake (see previous post of our old friend) that she has laid at the foot of our bed. "She got a snake!" I hissed, and this produces the desired effect. "Hurry!" But Steve is already up and picks that snake right up (I could never do this--too many rattlesnake in the Chicken Coop nightmares) to throw him outside. "Thanks, Pooh, but we don't want you to keep catching this poor guy!" He tells Smokey, as the embattled snake writhes in a scared way. It kind of struck me as funny, actually--a Snake, afraid of US! So out he went and Smokey Bones didn't even look at him twice. She just wanted us to know what a good hunter she is.