Done and done

I finished. I finished. That's all I can manage right now. I finished.

I'm going to take a little break now, I think. Maybe do a little victory dance, have a little drink. Or five.

Happy Thanksgiving, ya'll!

Nanowrimo Week 4 and life is good!

Well. Where to begin? For the first time, I'm ahead of the game, having spent my entire Sunday writing. I'm at 40K words one day ahead of schedule.

And how did I manage this? Especially when the day was rainy and gloomy, preventing me from dumping my rascally foster dog outside in the outdoor kennel?

DOZER BABYSAT.

Yes, folks, my dog-hating grumpy old dog BABYSAT the foster dog.

I kid you not. Dozer played with Titan and kept him entertained for hours. I didn't have to worry about a thing because Dozer kept Titan right by my feet and kept him engaged in real play, not table-chewing and blanket-ripping and carpet-soiling (which is not play even though it's sure fun for the puppy). And after all that play, Titan was so exhausted that he completely passed out! Poor Dozer, who was covered in drool by that time because he'd been letting Titan chew on his face nonstop for twenty minutes, also took a nap.

I was so happy I nearly cried. But no, I had no time to cry. I had to write! So I didn't let my faithful dog down, my poor dog who was enduring horrible torture for my sake--I wrote like crazy.

I really don't know why Dozer played with Titan so solidly, for so long. After I had finished writing for the day, Dozer resumed his I-hate-you-you-bastard attitude toward Titan.

My dog is so weird. But I love him.

nanowrimo week 3

Middle of week 3 or something like that, who knows, really. Will be at 30K words tonight if all goes well. My head is killing me and even though I know I'm speaking English, it just sounds like gobbledegook to me at this point.

Our foster puppy Titan, the blue heeler puppy from... not hell, but somewhere near it, I'm sure, got neutered yesterday. He was unfazed. By the time I got him home, the anesthetics were worn off and he was bouncing around like a maniac again. He cannot sit still for even a minute. He has had the honor--no, distinction is a better word--of chewing the first hole ever in our sofa. He then tried to sample the dining room table. Right now he is sitting between two Galileo Bones alternately chewing on one, then the other, then back to the first.

I say that the dog is crazy, but it's just because I feel stressed by this unexpected burden, on top of everything else I'm trying to do and everything else that is going on. I just am not in a place where I can handle this constant attention-sink. If I am watching him so he doesn't chew up the table, I can't write or make dinner or even walk off to rotate the laundry. But he's a very good dog that will make someone very happy... as long as they have the energy to keep up with him.

Mostly I am just furious with Byrd for bringing the dog home when I clearly told him "no." And when he brought it home, he swore up and down that he would be primarily responsible for taking care of it and finding it a new home. And after that, he promptly started working 16-hour shifts, night work, leaving him barely enough time to come home and collapse on the bed and get a little sleep before running off to work again. Yeeaah, sure, honey, let me know when you think your responsibility for the dog is going to kick in.

I love my husband, in part because of his soft Jello heart, but sometimes I just want to strangle him.

Nanowrimo Week 2

The good news is that I will hit 20K words tonight, which is right on schedule.

The bad news is that I have 30K words to go. And I'm sitting here writing this instead. And I spent all day yesterday posting updates to my StopBSL site. And though it's still in its wrapper, I can hear Fable II squeaking "play me," except that it is outshouted by the World of Warcraft WotLK expansion sitting on my dining table. (Yes, I'm a nerd, okay?)

Ok, gotta go get to 20K before dinner... or maybe I'll just write through dinner, cause from the looks of it I should start dinner now. Argh!

Also today I procrastinated by going grocery shopping (Byrd said something about an empty fridge—whatever, loser! Eating's for suckers!), and before walking out the door I set up the Mino to videotape Dozer's sleeping spot while I was gone . My gosh, I thought he would sleep the whole time, but 90% of the time he's not even on the dog bed. And he knew that camera was there... the first thing he did when I drove away was to press his nose against the camera lens. Oy. He's asked me for the video for his blog, not sure why, it's really boring.

Off to write some more...

NaNoWriMo!

So it's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This year I have no real job, so I'm going to take a stab at writing an entire novel in a month. I can't guarantee I'm going to succeed, but I'll give it a good solid go.

Now if only there weren't so many millions of ways to procrastinate during the day...

Okay, I'm off to write. Really. Seriously. I am.

Oh, did I just hear the dryer buzz?

Pit Bull Awareness Day 2008

I recently joined a new meetup group, Love-a-Bull (http://www.meetup.com/love-a-bull/), and one of the first things I got to do with them was a Pit Bull Awareness Day event.

Alas, I did not take any pictures (forgot the camera), but I believe there are photos—or will be—on the meetup group site.

It was incredibly hot and our table was in the sun for the full three hours of the event—no shade, no clouds, and barely a whisper of a breeze. But it was very nice to be with a group of people who love pit bulls and support rescue and advocacy; it was also a nice change to have a public, local presence after so many years of impersonal Internet communications.

Even better, I managed to convince my husband to come help out. Despite his anxiety in public, he stuck it out and ended up being very helpful behind the scenes; he also took pride in being the donations box bodyguard.

I think this was the first time Byrd has really volunteered at an event like this, and he was somewhat taken aback by the loose structure and lack of strong, commanding leadership. He's used to being the boss, barking orders, and performing a set task in an organized manner. Of course, it usually doesn't work like that when you're dealing with a group of volunteers, and this particular event was laid back, social, casual, and inviting. Poor Byrd started to pester me for something to do after a while, and I had to reassure him that his mere presence was sufficient!

A lot of people don't realize that just showing up and being seen has a rhetorical meaning of its own. Physical presence means support, and the more visual support a group has, the more important and interesting it becomes. When we had a crowd of people at our table, it attracted even more people. Sometimes the easiest way to help a group and show support is just to be there!

Hell froze over

Byrd and I rarely agree on anything, and we have never seen eye to eye in terms of political parties. Usually our votes cancel each other out (which is fine with me, because honestly, our state always falls predictably and overwhelmingly into one political party, and my vote wasn't going to tip the scales).

So I was completely blown away when Byrd and I left the early voting place and Byrd admitted that he voted for the same guy I did, against what I would expect, considering his typical political leanings. This has NEVER happened in our ten years of being together.

Naturally, I was filled with joy, not because Byrd had "seen the light" or anything like that (in this election it's really hard to figure out where that light is, anyway), but because we actually agreed on something for once. But I knew I couldn't express that happiness because Byrd would misinterpret it.

In the end, I just patted Byrd on the arm and told him I was glad that we voted early and got it out of the way.

Please go vote. And may I suggest early voting if possible? Because I guarantee Election Day is going to be a nightmare. (P.S. If you are voting for state reps this year, please don't forget to find out your candidates' stances on BSL.)

Non-discriminatory blessings

A while back, I read an article about a church that was doing a blessing for the animals—sans pit bulls, which were prohibited due to the church's insurance carrier's regulations.

http://www.patriotledger.com/lifestyle/faith/x72908093/All-God-s-creatures-welcome-except-pit-bulls

This irked me because, simply put, such an excuse is basically a cop-out—a "safe" way to get away with discrimination against "undesirables."

But there's non-discriminatory insurance out there—I've found it—and it's not necessarily more expensive. You just have to make some phone calls.

Most places would have stuck with the lame excuse, but this church's decision really surprised me. They did the right thing, albeit a little late for the blessing. The next news article:

http://www.patriotledger.com/lifestyle/faith/x707108484/Weymouth-church-invites-dogs-to-worship
Weymouth church invites dogs to worship
By Stephanie Choate
The Patriot Ledger
Posted Oct 06, 2008 @ 05:49 AM

WEYMOUTH —
Kathleen Dolaher of Quincy takes her dogs everywhereshe goes, but Sunday she took them somewhere they had never been: church.

The Pilgrim Congregational Church in North Weymouth launched its weekly “Woof ’n’ Worship” services Sunday evening.

“I love it. My life revolves around making my dogs happy,” said Dolaher, sitting in a pew with her Labradoodle Rory and miniature Labradoodle Allie. “It makes me happy and it makes them better socialized and better dogs.”

The Rev. Rachel Bickford said the response has been wonderful, and people were excited to be able to take their dogs to church.

“People are really struggling in everyday life, and the animals that we have are something that give us joy every day,” the Rev. Bickford said.

The Rev. Bickford said she came up with the idea for the Woof ’n’ Worship while reading her Bible at home.

“One of (the Psalms) talks about letting all living things praise the Lord. My dogs were at my feet, and I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for everyone to get together.”

All dogs were welcome, as long as they were leashed, even pit bulls. At first, the church’s insurance policy wouldn’t allow the reputedly aggressive breed, but the church was able to pay a little extra to allow them.

The Rev. Bickford said she wasn’t worried about unruly dogs or excessive chaos, and was glad the church was able to include all breeds.

“One thing I know about dog lovers is we’re all good people, and we know our dogs, so I trust them,” she said.

Sara Diem of Weymouth went to the service so her Bernese mountain dog, Chloe, could be blessed.

“I was excited to bring her here. She’s having a couple little health issues these days, so I just thought she could use the extra help,” she said.

Stephanie Choate may be reached at schoate@ledger.com.

Spoiled by freelancing

Okay, I admit it--freelancing has ruined the way I think about work.

I have a temporary "real job." I'm filling in for one of my old bosses while she's away on vacation. Not even for a full day, but only about 6 hours per day, and not even doing anything except checking email and bidding on the occasional job... yet I'm feeling increasingly antsy and impatient to get back home.

Back to laundry, dishes, vacuuming and dusting. Back to teaching the dog random new tricks. Back to writing, blogging, my websites, my volunteer work. Back to looking at properties with my mom, cooking for my husband, finding random yet amusing Internet sites, running boring errands, shopping for time-saving gadgets that I'll only use once, and plotting new and interesting ways to harass my husband.

I have so much to do, and work just gets in the way!

The way to a man's heart

Out of love for my husband (and probably guilt, too, due to the fact that I don't work a full 40 and I only pay three small bills), I prepared his lunch this evening.

I've been thinking of buying a large bento box (the Mr. Bento lunchbox, to be specific) for him to take to work. It's basically an insulated lunchbox with smaller boxes piled inside. You heat up or cool down the outer shell in the morning, and it stays that way until lunchtime--so Byrd, who drives his truck to various job sites all day, doesn't have to have a microwave to enjoy warm food in the winter. Each box can be filled to the brim with a different sort of food, such as rice, soup, sandwich, fruits, and so on. Or the boxes can be divvied into courses, like breakfast course, lunch course, and snack course.

And then there's always the food-as-art aspect of bento that has always attracted me. As a slowly reforming finicky eater, I've always loved bento's exciting shapes and colors (click to see some samples of bento). Oh, what's this thing? I don't know, but it's shaped like a bunny, so I'll eat it. And I wonder what this brown octopus-shaped item is? Ha ha, it's sausage. I usually hate sausage but THIS looks like a cute little OCTOPUS!! Yum!

Anyway, I don't have the bento box yet, so this evening I packed my husband's lunch in a variety of small Tupperware-type plastic boxes and crammed them delicately into his ice chest.

One of the items I made was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut... well... it was supposed to be in the shape of a heart, to show him how much I loved him.

Byrd walked in while I was eating all the leftover crust, stared at the misshapen sandwich, stared at me, then cautiously asked me how I was feeling and whether I would like to lie down for a while.

I suppose sometimes it's easier just to say "I love you honey."

Got me a new car

I heard back from the insurance company. Though I already sort of assumed it, they confirmed that my poor old CR-V was totalled. No idea yet how much I'll actually get for it. It was old, sure, but it was still in great condition. I don't think I'll get to see it one last time, but I'd sure like to. I'll probably call tomorrow and see if I can find out where it is and whether I can go see it. There are a handful of personal effects I'd really like to collect from its moldy remains if possible.


Days of car shopping later (yuck) and I've finally decided to get another CR-V to replace the one Ike ate. Except this CR-V will be 2008 and will have leather seats and a sunroof. Nice, huh?

Of course, being new and fancy, it's expensive, and the insurance settlement from my old 2001 CR-V will only cover a small portion. So it's back to car payments for us, and poor Byrd's dream of getting his very own brand new Toyota Tacoma is deferred once again.

I decided to pay extra for leather seats because of what I call the Dog Fur Factor. Dozer's fur would NOT come out of the cloth seats in my old CR-V, no matter what we did. The fur embedded itself into the cloth and resisted vacuuming and shampooing. Of course, when one opened the windows, the fur would then come loose and blow around in the car, getting into one's eyes and mouth and open drink cups so on. It was really quite awful. I'm desperately hoping leather will be easier to clean and maintain.

Where is my car?

Somewhere in this parking lot near the cruise terminal in Galveston, that's where...

When we left, all the cars were parked in tidy rows. My car was parked in the lower row, toward the left end. It's a green car.

Insert one hurricane.

The car is clearly still there. I'm just not sure whether it is still in any shape to drive. News reports indicate it's probably a goner.

A week off

Hooray, starting tomorrow Byrd and I are cruise-bound. We'll drive to Galveston, board a cruise ship, and get outta Dodge until next weekend.

This is our first real vacation in a very long time, so I'm pretty excited. Hurricane Ike and whatever all else, I could care less about that. As long as I'm away. With my husband. Having an adventure.

Poor Dozer is a wreck. I thought he was sick this morning. He was droopy, lethargic, and just plain depressed-looking. When we came home from last-minute trip shopping, he didn't even rush to greet us as he usually does. But then I realized how anxiously he's been eyeballing our rapidly filling suitcases. He definitely knows what's going on. I feel bad for him but I know he'll be fine with my mom.

So--back in a week. Au revoir!

My dog looks old

I never thought I'd say it, but Dozer is finally starting to show his age. Just a little, and really just because I gave him a bath today.

His droopy face and sagging skin, the slight jut of his joints, and even his thinning fur--when he's wet and pouting, it makes these signs even more obvious. Usually, his fluffy white fur and his chipper demeanor covers up the old, but at bathtime, he's neither fluffy nor chipper. For the first time in his life, I told him he looked like a "grumpy old man."

It made me a little sad because it reminded me of how Felanie looked when she was getting advanced in age. Dozer is a big dog like Felanie was, so his lifespan is naturally shorter than that of smaller dogs.

But he has fewer problems--fewer tumors, no real joint problems, not a bit overweight, and a much more energetic style of living--so perhaps it's too soon for me to be getting all depressed about losing another dog.

The Chicken and the Vacation

Two exciting events are unfolding around here that are (finally) unrelated to dogs in any way...

Chicken

First, we have a new member of the household, a little baby chicken. I've always planned to have chickens someday, but things rarely go as planned around here, especially when we have a reputation in the neighborhood as "the people who rescue strange animals." None of our neighbors have forgotten the beautiful and hilarious Pekin ducks we used to have, and so when this new barnyard fowl somehow ended up in the neighbor's yard (we have two different chicken flocks that roam our neighborhood, which is a strange sight since we're in a well-established neighborhood), they happily handed it over to us, knowing we would know how to care for it.

So after some preparations, the chick is now settled into Dozer's old dog run, and it seems to be doing really well. It's scratched up, maybe from a cat or a car, which would explain why it was alone when it was found, but otherwise happy and healthy and perky. It loves Byrd and it even follows Dozer around; we can't help but remember our lively duck Fred when he was a little bitty baby. I wonder if this is a boy or a girl? We won't know until it starts to crow--or lay eggs!

We're going to get at least one, maybe two, more chickens as soon as is feasible. Those two will be planned and carefully picked; I've found a breeder of the type of chicken that I want, that lays the type of eggs that I want, so there won't be any Mystery surrounding them. Plus, the breeder has some chicks that are the same approximate age as our Mystery Chick, so they aren't like day olds, which require indoor care for quite a while.

I thought a chicken blog would be interesting so I can record pictures and events as the chick grows up... and we find out whether it's a boy or a girl, and what it will look like... so it's at http://achicken.wordpress.com

Vacation

And that brings us to the next thing: our vacation! Yes, a real live vacation. Byrd and I haven't been on a vacation for... well, eight years or so, if you don't count our honeymoon (a two-day excursion to San Antonio, not much of a trip). We're going on a cruise in the Caribbean, which should be entertaining considering all the hurricanes down there right now. But we are leaving on next Sunday and won't be back for a week. I'm really looking forward to it!

Dozer is going to stay here at home, and my mom is going to move in and take care of him and the chicken while we're away. So this next week I've actually got to do a lot of work. Not just packing, but also shopping and cleaning and writing care instructions and labeling cabinets and light switches and so forth, so Mom will know where everything is. The bad thing is that while we are on the cruise, we probably won't have any cell phone reception and we definitely won't have Internet access, so once we're gone, we're really gone for the whole week.

Poor Dozer, this will be the first time we have both left the house for such an extended period of time. I'm so glad Mom will be here with him, but she is not a dog person at all, and Dozer really needs to have a confident leader to tell him what to do or else he just falls to pieces. I sure hope things go okay or else I might not have a dog sitter anymore for future vacations.

Lye Burn

And as a side note, I did a really stupid thing considering I'm about to go on a cruise and I'll be wearing shorts and a swimsuit almost the whole time--I managed to get a nasty lye burn on both my knees! We just laid some concrete (for our fence--pictures and such to come at a later date), and I was helping to "finish" it by scrubbing it with water and a big stone thing. Well, after kneeling on the concrete for nearly an hour, I realized that the pain in my knees wasn't actually from kneeling on a hard surface--it was a burning feeling... and sure enough, when I pulled up my jeans (which were soaking wet and covered with concrete), my knees were red and blistered. Now I can only hope these oozing blisters will heal up in five days. :( Well, I guess the good thing is that it got me out of the rest of the job because I had to go shower straightaway!

Convenient technology

My fancy new laptop, a brand spanking new Dell Studio and the first brand spanking new computer I've ever had (except for the Apple IIc, about fifteen years ago or so), has a fingerprint reader.

Yes, a fingerprint reader.

As I placed the order online, which involves customizing the computer so that the price is almost always doubled by the time one comes out the other side, I thought, "What the heck am I going to do with that? It's not like I work for the FBI." I briefly considered removing it and saving $50.

Then I decided that I would like, for once, to be the first person in my group to have an interesting new gadget. I mean, my "new" cell phone looks a lot like the first phone I ever got (or rather, my husband forced me to get)--back in 1999. It doesn't take pictures or play songs or any of that stuff. It doesn't even flip open; it's a candybar style. I only just bought an MP3 player this year. Yes, I do have a ten-year-old printer and an eight-year-old scanner. And my digital camera, at seven years old, is just barely younger than Dozer. I often feel like I'm stuck in the early 2000s.

Anyway, back to the fancy new laptop with the fingerprint scanner. As it turns out, the fingerprint scanner not only locks unauthorized users out of my computer, but it also acts as a password vault for any and everything that asks for a login and password.

Oh my oh my.

Needless to say, I have happily set up the fingerprint scanner to log me in to just about everything I sign in to. It's so convenient to just swipe my finger across the scanner and ta da! I'm logged in to my blog, to my credit card account, to my Yahoo! groups...

The horrific side effect is that I now have absolutely no idea how to log in without the fingerprint scanner.

This is a real problem when I go up to my office to work on my desktop. User id and password? I don't remember anymore!

Sometimes I think the convenient solutions offered by technology only lead to new and different inconveniences.

When Cranes Attack

Yet another crane collapse. I had no idea these things were so dangerous, but it seems like everywhere I look, there's another deadly crane attack in the news.

Ever since that excessive news coverage about the New York crane collapses, I've been noticing more headlines with the word "crane" and I just feel compelled to click on it and read the horrible article. Heck, if you do a search for "crane collapse" in Google you get, like, a zillion results.

My psychologist keeps muttering something about "confirmation bias," but we'll see who has the last laugh when that crane falls down on top of his fancy downtown condo.

Enough is enough! These cranes are killing us. Ban them now!

An "Aha" Moment

Let me make this clear: I'm a writer, not a coder. Not a designer. Nevertheless, yesterday I eagerly pressed F12 to launch a simulation of the new StopBSL.com website, anticipating a few minor bugs, but nothing major.

The sidebars were too wide. The body, containing the text, was too narrow. I scratched my head.

So I launched the site in Firefox and Netscape. Now it looked great. I scratched my head again.

I combed through the Dreamweaver code. Misplaced tag? Wrong table width somewhere? But it looked fine.

I launched the site in Explorer again. The columns were still all wonky. I stared. (Explorer has a reputation for needing "special treatment" in page code, but since it's the most common browser, no site designer in their right mind would ignore problems that show up in Explorer.)

I fiddled in Dreamweaver, scooting tables and boxes around, inserting spacers. Relaunch. This time, if anything, the columns were even more messed up. I started to curse.

Figuring I had a corrupt chunk of code somewhere screwing the whole thing up, I rebuilt the template from scratch. An hour later, I relaunched.

Now the text was smashed into such a narrow space that it was virtually unreadable, while the rest of the page was a sea of white. I threw a book against the wall before digging into the code yet again.

Four hours later, I had dug myself into a pit so deep that I was in a very dark place indeed. The site design was a wreck.

"Why the hell can't this be as easy as my blogs?" I shrieked.

And that's when I had an "aha" moment.

Blogs: easy to write, easy to update, easy to expand, and no design skills required.

I spent today populating the new blog-site with the text from the ruined site. Want a sneak peek? http://stopbsl.wordpress.com/

No, no, don't change your bookmarks and links. When I'm ready, I'll just redirect the StopBSL.com servers to point to the WordPress site. So when you visit http://www.stopbsl.com/, you'll see the blog-site at that address.

Heck yeah I'm a genius.

/dance

Depressing

You know what's depressing? BSL. You know what's more depressing? Writing about BSL for six hours a day, five days in a row. You know what's even more depressing? When your life is so consumed by writing about BSL that you really have to struggle to talk about anything else.

Which is why I've avoided writing in my blog. Cause it's pointless, really. There's nothing to talk about except BSL, and BSL sucks, and it's depressing.

It's depressing to read the ignorant, hateful public comments after every negative news article (and after the positive ones, too, as if there is just no way some people can believe that there's anything good about pit bulls).

It's depressing that our politicians are doing absolutely no research before mouthing off about "ticking time bombs" and "never hearing about Labs attacking people." I don't have a team of people working for me, yet I've heard of Labs attacking people.

It's depressing that everyone ignores all the experts saying BSL doesn't work, all the countless scientific studies indicating BSL doesn't work, all the organizations saying they are against BSL. For some reason, a handful of disgruntled, fearful, selfish individuals' opinions count more than logic, science, and equality.

It's depressing that all these people getting severely bitten by non-pit bulls don't say anything. You know, like "Hey, um, what does this BSL do for me?" In fact I even read a comment by a guy that was attacked by a non-pit bull who was like "Ban pit bulls!" I could not even begin to understand where his hatred of pit bulls was coming from, or why he didn't seem interested in doing anything about, you know, the dog that actually attacked him. WTF?

I'm so ready to be done with this so I can get back to enjoying my life for as long as I can before the depressing reality of January sets in. Because in January the Texas legislative session starts up and you can bet we'll be seeing... BSL.

Ugh.

Eight pages down...

So much for one page a day. I've finished about eight pages of the new Stop BSL site since swearing an oath a few weeks ago to get the dang thing done. And while I'm pleased with the way it is coming out, I'm not pleased with how long it is taking me to research and write the new material.

The Internet nowadays is both a blessing and a curse. I can find pretty much any information I want... but the hard part is finding the source. Sites cite sites cite sites, but nobody seems to be able to identify the original source for the material. I've found dozens of sites using a particular statistic that doesn't seem to actually come from anywhere. It just appeared one day, and has been in play ever since.

And that doesn't fly for me. I've done the whole college thing, written my fair share of research papers, and been dealing with dog-related information for just under a decade now. I've seen my fair share of made-up "facts" and twisted statistics; I'm happy to trash anything that doesn't have backup documentation to go with it, even if it seemingly supports my argument.

Not that the Internet is entirely to blame. I've found some astonishingly bad "facts" in books, too, which makes my trips to the public library that much more time-consuming (and pointless, especially since I can find the same bad information if I stay home and get online).

And danged if all that trashing and sifting and weeding and selecting and searching doesn't take an ungodly amount of time. But what can I do? I'm picky about what I publish.

Some days I wish I was dealing with an easier subject. I know a lot about ducks...