Tag: dogs

Crankypantsing, News & Politics, Pets, Photography

The Mind Wobbles

Shelly

People, Part the First: If you make an appointment for a job interview, then fail to show up for it, and do not call or e-mail me, or in some way let me know that you need to reschedule, then please, do not call me three weeks later to find out if you are still in the running. Because, the answer is not only no, but hell, no. And please, if you do call me, for the love of all that is good in this world, do not spend ten minutes telling me how upset you are because this would have been the perfect job for you. And, yes, for those who keep track of these sorts of things, this is the very same person who could not follow directions.

People, Part the Second: Why do people feel the need to bring junk food buffets to work? One of my co-workers has a bottomless candy jar, which annoys the crap out of me. Not only is the candy sometimes difficult to resist (and resist it, I do!), but there is constant and annoying to-ing and fro-ing, as people hike back to her desk for treats. And then there are the umpty million parties each unit has throughout the year. Yesterday, it was just a random “Because it’s Thursday” carry-in. Someone decided to bring chips and pretzels, eclair-lets, cookies, and some other crap. The problem–for me–is that whenever anyone in this unit brings in food to share, it gets put on the table right behind my desk. I hate having people milling around behind me, talking and eating. I also hate having food I do not want to eat sitting right behind my desk, all the damned day long.

Weather: It finally cooled off last night, after several humid days in the 90sF. Clouds started to move in Wednesday night, at sunset.

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In the meantime, for those who are needing a mental break from the heat, I recommend listening to some of these audio clips from the 2005 Beargrease sleddog race. Great Yiping Sleddogs, Batman!

Pens: I picked up some neat-o Sarasa retractable gel pens last weekend. Office Depot had sets of 10 for US$9.99, plus a $5.00 rebate. I haven’t tried writing over acrylic paint or any weird surfaces, yet, but I’ve been using them in my Dada Journal and they do very nicely on magazine paper. They write smoothly without skipping, and they dry very quickly, so they don’t smear as much as some other gel inks. They’re also archival and acid-free. Oh, and the colors are yummy (including denim-y blue and deep wine red).

The Asswagon Report: Remember the quote from Rick Santorum, that serious action should be taken against the folks who did not evacuate from Katrina? According to an LA Times article, evacuees were not allowed to cross over into neighboring towns.

Three days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Gretna officers blocked the Mississippi River bridge that connects their city to New Orleans, exacerbating the sometimes troubled relationship with their neighbor. The blockade remained in place into the Labor Day weekend.

[…]

Gretna is not the only community that views New Orleans with distrust. Authorities in St. Bernard Parish, to the east, stacked cars to seal roads from the Crescent City. But Gretna’s decision has become the symbol of the ultimate act of a bad neighbor, gaining notoriety partly from an account in the Socialist Worker newspaper by two San Francisco emergency workers and labor leaders who were in a crowd turned back by Gretna police.

Fil-ums: I watched The Magdalene Sisters yesterday. The film was inspired by the documentary Sex in a Cold Climate, about the Magdalene asylums in Ireland. It’s hard to believe that the last Magdalene asylum closed only 9 years ago. The horrors the inmates endured seem impossible and distant, like something from Dickens’ worst nightmare.

Ch-ch-ch-Changes: I’ve been thinking about various life changes lately. First, I think I’m going to move. I blame it on the fact that we moved frequently when I was growing up. I start to get restless when I’ve been in one place for too long. I’m not planning on moving far, though; I definitely want to stay in the general Bloomington area.

This decision to up stakes has been percolating for a while, but it was suddenly moved up in the priority queue a couple of days ago. My landlady is going through a divorce, and I don’t want to get caught in the middle of their chaos if and when the shit hits the fan. I really don’t want to be involved in someone else’s circus.

Crankypantsing, Pets, Photography

Long Time No Blog

Shelly

Cars
Because life is never quite exciting enough, the MoonPie of Delight decided to die. Of course, she waited until after I’d spent $500 getting the oil pump and some damned seal replaced, before shuffling off this mortal coil. That’s how these things happen, I guess.

So now I’m car shopping, which is pretty damned funny. I know nothing whatsoever about cars, beyond “Oooh, pretty!” Somehow, that strikes me as an ass-backwards way to go about choosing a car, but what can I say? At this point, I’m leaning toward another hatchback or a small wagon (Ford Focus or Subaru Outback?), but Jeebus only knows what I’ll end up with when it’s all said and done. I know that it will not be a sedan or coupe. I need rear cargo space that will accommodate a medium-sized dog crate and/or art. Plus, I’m just not a sedan sorta person. A small SUV would be fine, but for the few occasions 4WD would actually be helpful, it hardly seems worth the expense. The extra clearance would definitely be good (the driveway is gravel and often in serious need of grading), but again, I’m not sure it’s worth the expense.

Anyway, the result is that I’m superdamned cranky. I don’t like being carless.

Dogs
On the bright side, I found myself a little virtual dog therapy. Check out this little guy. Have you ever seen anything like those ears? I didn’t think so! I really recommend looking at the video, too, if you’re on broadband. I know I said male Boxer*, but I’m smitten. Unfortunately, he’s the right dog at the wrong time. Damn, is he ever gorgeous, though! Hopefully, someone will adopt him soon, so he can stop tormenting me.

On the homefront, Harriet is still being a sissypants about going out into the yard by herself. She’s desperately in need of another dog to hold her paw and egg her on. I don’t mind going out with her, but for some reason, she says it’s not the same as chasing bunnies with another dog, thankyouverymuch. She’s enjoying getting all the attention for her very own self, though. Boxers are not lap dogs, but evidently no one ever told her that. I spent yesterday evening, sitting on the couch, trying to balance my book on top of her. It’s a Very Good Thing she’s cute.

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Arting
In other news, I’ve not been in any sort of mood to do any arting. I’ve been re-reading the first five Harry Potter books, instead. I finished the fifth one Monday and–finally!–started on the new one yesterday. If I can tear myself away from it, I’m going to spend tonight and tomorrow catching up on other people’s art.

Movies
In movie news, I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory over the weekend. It was everything I’d hoped it would be–much creepier than Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. I’m a huge Tim Burton fan, though, so it would’ve had to’ve been pretty dreadful for me not to have enjoyed it.

I’ve also been working my way through a stack of Netflix: The League of Gentlemen, seasons 2-3 (brilliant, of course), Dogville (a wonderful Lars von Trier oddity), and the rest of Wonderfalls (I can’t recommend it enough). Another little film was recommended in one of “my” dog groups: The Miracle of the White Stallions. It’s a typical mid-’60s Disney film, but I thought it was well worth watching. It’s set in WWII Austria, so the Disnification of the war, Nazis, Americans, etc. is interesting. Plus, pretty horsies!

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* The master plan was to eventually end up with a female Sibe and a male Boxer. Since Harriet is such a fearsome bitch where other girldogs are concerned, the next dog will have to be a boy. Since the boy half of the eventual duo was to be a Boxer, that meant that the next dog was to be a Boxer boy. That’s what I get for making plans, right? Becaue, now I’m seriously rethinking them. A male Sibe-female Boxer combo can’t be too bad, can it? Those Boxer girls are such pains in the arse when it comes to bossypantsing, though, so I dunno. A female Sibe would, I think, be much easier to live with. I could go around in circles like this for days on end.**

** This should give you some idea why car hunting is making my brain explodiate.

Pets, Photography

Elliott (March 1994-July 29, 2005)

Shelly

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Late Thursday night, I lost my heart dog. I got Elliott as a puppy, eleven years ago. Eleven is a nice, respectable age for a dog, but it’s not enough

From the start, he was my constant shadow, always underfoot and alert to my every movement. He was a dream puppy–reliably housebroken from day one and thoroughly trustworthy. With one exception, he never touched anything that wasn’t his. (In his defense, the chair he ate was later eaten by two other dogs. Obviously, it deserved it.)

Elliott had a wicked sense of humor, something that won’t surprise anyone who has lived with Chowy dogs. They’re deeply, but quietly, funny. Elliott’s Pit Bull half meant that he was also silly, gregarious, and big-hearted. He was glad to do anything I asked of him, and more. Bomb-proof, nothing fazed him.

If I could design the perfect dog right this minute, it would be Elliott. I wouldn’t have changed a thing about him.

When Elliott was five, I decided it was time to add a second dog to our home. When I got Harriet, Elliott was ecstatic. He wanted desperately to play with her, but she was Not Interested. It took her about 24 hours to warm up to him, but when she did, they became good friends.

As playmates, they were well matched. Elliott taught Harriet how to play chase games and she taught him how to box. Hardly a day went by without riotous games of bitey-face. He let her boss him around (that’s what girldogs do best and Elliott was happy to let her exercise her bitchy prerogative). She let him take care of alerting to strange noises and intruders (watch dog duty is not her Thing). Despite occasional disagreements and the odd fight, they were deeply bonded to each other.

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I don’t know how dogs perceive death, but I know that Harriet’s at loose ends. She was terribly bossy toward Elliott, but she always took her cues from him. If he decided that a noise outside wasn’t worth worrying about, she believed him. It’ll be interesting to see how she adapts to not having Elliott to hold her paw.

Another area for concern is how well I’ll be able to deal with her activity level. Walks and play time aren’t an issue, but there are games that dogs play with each other that humans just can’t participate in. I went outside with Harriet this afternoon, at their regular “dog play” time. She stood on the deck and looked at me like “Now what?” Even when she was just mooching around, eating grass, she was always accompanied by Elliott. She doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with herself without him.

At some point, I’m sure I’ll get another dog–a male Boxer, if all goes according to plan. It’ll be a while, though. For now, I’m just trying to get used to having a one-dog household. It’s a little surreal. Elliott took up a huge amount of psychological space. He was always glued to my side, so that, even when he was resting quietly, I was always aware of his presence.

Goodbye to the bestest dog ever. I miss you like crazy.

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Crankypantsing, Meta, News & Politics, Pets, Photography

Nitpickings and Ramblings

Shelly

Have I mentioned that if it’s not one thing, it’s ten others? Yes! Yes, I believe I have.

I keep finding pesky little issues with the website. Most of them stem from having used my host’s silly web FTP to upload files. Life would’ve been grand if I could’ve used a proper FTP client to do the uploading, but, obviously, that would’ve been far, far too easy. I think there are approximately eleventy-hundred separate files, so when loading them five (yes, *5*) at a time, it’s not surprising that a few went AWOL. I keep a close eye on my error reports and fix problems as I find them, but if y’all run across files that seem to be missing, just let me know and I’ll fix them ASAP. So far, it’s mostly been large images that have gone walkabout, but I also ran across a couple of links that were, um, pointing with their middle fingers. I dunno how that happened, as I used relative URLs for internal links. Another issue has been file names changing case when uploaded. What’s weird is that they changed from lower to upper case. Hmmm. Usually, it’s the other way around.

Anyway, that’s a rambly way of saying that I’m continuing to tidy things up around the edges. Which, you may have guessed, is the story of my life.

No art today. I’ve been driving myself to tears with this Color Erratica round robin. Someone dropped out, causing a log jam of books, so a bunch of us are scrambling to get caught up and get the group back on track. I took a break from it last night, though, and sat on my ass and did N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Well, not exactly nothing. I watched some–you guessed it!–really bad TeeVee. I’ll spare you the details, as there really aren’t any.

The unholy hot weather continues. “They” say we’ll get a break from it tomorrow. I’ll believe it when I see it. In the meantime, because Freshman orientation is over and the wee kiddies and their parents have left the building, and because the heat index has been in the triple digits, and because we supposedly need to conserve energy, The Powers That Be have declared that our building will be having periodic chilled water outages. Yep. When it gets super hot, they turn off our AC. Of course, this is an eleven story building with no windows above the third floor, so it’s not like we need AC or anything. M’kay. All that means that here are about a zillion fans going full-blast, so A) it’s impossible to hear yourself think and B) I really have to question whether there is, in fact, any sort of energy savings at all.

Le sigh. If I ran the world, things would be very, very different. Not better, mind you, just, well, different. For example, we might have year-round snow:

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And, finally, for those of you who care, the House of Representatives re-upped the Patriot Act. (A pdf of the full text of the Patriot Act can be found here.)

Pets, Photography

Fog and Dogs

Shelly

I took these about a month ago, when we were having a spate of drizzly, misty weather. After it cleared up, we had nearly a month without useful precipitation. Hurricane Dennis came to Indiana this week, breaking the dry spell. It’s been a lovely, soaking rain over several days–exactly what we needed. It’s not been as picturesque as the pictures below, though, so I’m using them instead.

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Elliott is our dog-in-fog model. The grass was too wet for Princess Harriet to put her delicate little feetses in.

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And, because I can, here’s the obligatory dogblogging. Have I mentioned that Harriet is not (not!) a fan of air conditioning? Well, if I didn’t, she’s not a fan of AC. When it cools down in the living room, she scrunches up into a little ball and moans and groans and sighs until I take pity on her sad little self and cover her up with a binkey. If I’m a meanypants and ignore her, she goes to the bedroom, where there’s no AC, and roots around on the bed until she’s got the bedding wadded to perfection. I use it as an excuse not to make my bed in the mornings, because she’s only going to mess it up. I just pull the covers up and wait until bedtime to make the bed. A) I’m lazy and B) I choose my battles.

It’s a good thing she’s cute.

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Burritodog

Crankypantsing, Pets, Photography

Letters to Esther Updates Forthcoming

Shelly

I have what may prove to be a really boring photo project planned for tomorrow. But! Because of the nature of the project, I should have time to finally (!) work on Letters to Esther. I’ve been neglecting it dreadfully and figured that if I voiced my plans out loud (um, in writing), I wouldn’t be able to back out of them.

In other, tangentially related news, I’m nearly finished with the art website. The package I bought had a ridiculous amount of space (five (5!!!) gigs), so I’ll have more than enough room to host Letters to Esther and its future, related art projects there, too. This has been an interesting project for me. The two halves of my brain just do not play well together, so the constant to-ing and fro-ing has been a challenge–a fun challenge, though.

Hmmm… What else…

  • The wind and storms have finally died down (thanks a lot, Arlene!), so we should have blue skies and warm-but-not-ungodly-hot temps for the next few days.
  • I kept forgetting to take my camera with me, so I missed my chance to take a picture of The Bust o’ Darth Vader perched atop the Burger King building. At one point, he was about 1/3 deflated, so he was half reclined, wielding–like a cop holding a billy club in one hand and thwacking it against the other–a similarly deflated light saber. In all, it was the worst Viagra ad, EVAR!1!! Alas, Mr. Vader was gone when I drove by this morning.
  • I had to stop at three–three!–Bigfoot/Circle K/BP/Macs (lord knows what they’ll be called next week) before I found one with a working pepsisodapopcoke fountain machine. And, no, I couldn’t just stop for a cold, caffeinated, carbonated beverage at any of the other 250 gas stations between my house and my workplace, because none of those other places has my favorite brand of crack–Go Ape Energy Drink. It’s red, it’s ubercaffeinated, it’s tart, it’s slightly bitter, and it’s fizzy. In short, it’s divine ambrosia.
  • Summer teevee sucks so badly that I’m counting the days until Big Brother starts. Yes, I know how sad and pathetic that is.
  • I’m sick to death of cataloging COR Opinions. Title o’ the Day: Opinion on the proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the quality of bathing water. Riveting stuff.
  • The last book for a round robin I’m participating in went AWOL. Hopefully it’ll turn up soon, but it should’ve been here three weeks ago. Mail out day was yesterday, so now its absence is cutting into the next person’s work time. There’s nothing I can do about it, though I can’t help but feel bad that someone’s book might have gotten terminally lost in the post. At this point, I’m just hoping the next one gets here before the its mail-out date.

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  • It was finally cool enough last night for some spectacular biteyface action. I was enjoying the show too much to go get the camera, so I didn’t get any pictures. It was really, really good, though–lots and lots of zooming, vaulting, rolling, and dragging each other around by the face. Oh, and the faux snarling and growling. Mustn’t forget that. It sounded like a pack of rabid hyenas had landed in my yard. And, afterward, I had two flat dogs with lolling, slab-o-ham tongues who were more than happy to go to bed early.
  • Speaking of dogs, Harriet has discovered that, if she brings me a mouthful of looong grass, I’ll tear each blade into small pieces and hand feed it to her. She’s not spoiled or anything. My excuse for obliging her is that there is nothing, and I mean n-o-t-h-i-n-g, cuter than a Boxer dog smack-smack-smacking her lips while eating itty bitty pieces of grass.

I think that’s about everything. As you can see, I live a most exciting life!

Pets

Lemons!

Shelly

There have been lots of discussions in the dog groups about weird things our dogs will eat. Sunday night, I tried grapefruit. Both dogs said, “More, pleaseandthanks!” While I was at Babbs this morning, I picked up some lemons, with the intention of seeing what they’d make of them. Elliott ate a few pieces, but was less than thrilled (he’ll eat anything I give him). Harriet is a little more picky, but will give most things a try. Surprisingly, she really seems to like lemons. Altogether, she ate about a quarter of a lemon, peel and all.

Art, Bookarts, Pets, Photography

The Blustery Day

Shelly

It’s cold and snowy and windy today. The weather is supposed to clear up this afternoon, but in the meantime, it’s snowing sideways (30mph wind gusts) and the roads are icy. Yuck.

In arting news, I started on a new book last night. It’s an itty bitty (3/4″ x 7/8″) alphabet book, made out of left-over Cartiera Magnani paper (I just can’t stand to throw any of it away). Lord only knows how I’m going to manage to bind something that small, but I’m sure it’ll be an interesting experience. I’ll post pictures as I finish them.

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Oh, and yesterday was Elliott’s 11th birthday. That photo was taken earlier this winter. Harriet, ever the fashion plate, is modelling the latest in Metal-wear for dogs. Elliott, bless his little heart, is standing all penguin-footed. That’s my silly dork!