Friday, July 23, 2004
The posting continues...
Friday... countdown to vacation: 45 hours. I suppose since I won't be at work after this afternoon, we could technically say that countdown to vacation is actually 7 hours.
Although I did not have lunch yesterday, I snacked with abandon. My boss, possibly the nicest boss ever, brought in a tray filled with various brownies/bars/tarts/sickeningly-sweet-edibles from a wedding he had been to on the weekend. Yes, it was several days old. I don't think that stuff degenerates, though, because it is mostly just plain sugar. He left this tray right in the "kitchen" (which is actually just a room that we put a table and chairs in, along with a fridge and a microwave. The absence of a sink may negate it's kitchen-ness, but it serves), and we were encouraged to eat this stuff. So I helped myself to SIX items. One was a butter-tart-lookin' thing that along with the raisins unfortunately contained not only contraband coconut, but chocolate chips. Chocolate chips in a butter tart? Yes, and I can say with some authority that although chocolate chips are good (nod to my father, here), they do not belong in a butter tart.
This site is dedicated to my NoodleDog, who (as I have said before) is an actual dog. He's a basset-lab cross. He looks like a lab (black), but the basset influence over his body shape is remarkable. He's like a lab low-rider - short! He has big basset feet, too. The NoodleDog is my pride and joy. I have signed him up for Agility Training with Tammy (a very patient and excellent teacher). We go on Wednesday evenings, and this past Wednesday was just the second class. He did very well at the "Weave Poles" - a kind of a slalom thing for dogs. Basically, the owner (that's me) runs up to the obstacle yelling "Go weave!! Go weave!!" and the dog is supposed to understand that this means you want him to go around the poles in succession, weaving in and out. The first time he had absolutely no idea what I wanted him to do, not recognizing the word weave (duh! Maybe because he had never heard it before?), so he barked at me (which he does a lot). Tammy The Teacher kind of directed him towards the weave pole obstacle entrance, but he did not get the idea until I told him "this side!". He understands "this side" because that is what I say when he goes around the wrong side of a tree when we're walking. So he got that trick fairly quickly, and did pretty well with it that night.
However, after the Weave poles, we moved on to the Teeter-totter. The NoodleDog hates the teeter-totter. It will be our undoing in any competition (ha! as if we'll ever get that far...), I'm sure. He approached it alright, kind of understood that he needed to go onto it because there were metal gates blocking either side, so he got onto it alright, too. When he got to the middle, though, and the teeter-totter slammed down to the other side, it freaked him out and he jumped off, probably vowing never to go near it again. So we had to force him to go back onto it again, because if a dog abandons any obstacle during the course, you have to wait for him to get it right before moving on. Three times, Tammy The Teacher and I had to coax him (each of us endlessly saying "good dog, good little man, you can do it!! Good boy!! Come on...") up the teeter-totter, each time taking longer than the last. He wouldn't even eat his treats while on the teeter-totter, which is completely abnormal behaviour for him (he'll usually eat anything anytime). He was such a spectacle that after he completed the teeter-totter run, the lady who was giving out treats to the good dogs who did the tricks properly gave him some anyway, probably feeling sorry for his pansy ass. He then identified her as a food source, and stared at her for the rest of the evening.
The NoodleDog's repertoire of things he can eat contains practically everything. The NoodleDog eats not only his food, and the cats' food, and sometimes MY food, but also wood (including twigs, branches, leaves, pinecones, chips, sawdust and paper), toys (stuffed toys' stuffing, the outsides of the stuffed toys & their tags, and tennis balls in their entirety), shoes (only the one time did he try to eat a very nice expensive pair of shoes I should not have bought for budgetary reasons, for which he was punished by an extended stay in his crate), socks (although I know of only one sock he actually ate, I am missing a number of socks), earrings, cat hair, my hair, and dead things he finds outside (much to my dismay). The exception to his list? Canned mandarin oranges. Spits 'em right out.
The NoodleDog and I went on a date last night. I shamelessly use the NoodleDog as a "date activity". If you want to meet up with me, chances are I'm going to suggest we take the NoodleDog for a walk. I have two reasons for this: a) it is an unthreatening activity in public and is kind of fun and loosely time-limited, and b) it means I'll actually accomplish something and even if the date totally sucks I still get something done (walk the NoodleDog, which I have to do anyway). Hopefully that doesn't sound too... selfish? Fortunately, the guy I met (blind internet date alert!) has a dog of his own - a 3-month old border collie puppy. My main hope for the evening (aside from that the guy didn't turn out to be a jackass, which he didn't - he's actually very nice and I'd like to see him again) was that the NoodleDog did not eat the small puppy. Luckily, though, he did not try to eat the puppy, who was probably about the cutest little puppy you have ever seen. Really. He's three months old, a border collie with just a dash of regular collie thrown in, so he's exceedingly fluffy and cute, with a mainly black & white body, but with white, smoke grey, and the regular collie tawny colouring around his face. Basically everyone we ran into at the dog park commented on his cuteness. Plus, and I'm not sure if I'm the only one who gets this, his little tiny baby teeth were pretty cute, too. The NoodleDog's teeth are big now. When I first got him he was about five months old, and hadn't started teething, so he had little baby teeth, and they were pretty cute. His teeth now are just functional and not at all cute. Especially when he puts them on my arm - rotten dog. Eventually, I'm going to have to start brushing his teeth because pet dental care is frickin' expensive.
If you learn nothing else from this log, leave with the lesson that you need to brush your pet's teeth - cat, dog, whatever. My experience with cat dental care is that aside from being unholy expensive, the cat doesn't get to keep any of its damaged teeth. They do not make cat fillings. They do not indulge the bridge on a cat. There are no root canals for the kitties. If your cat has a cavity, the tooth comes out, and then you're left with an angry cat when you get home, and then a very sad cat after he forgets why his tooth is missing. I'll introduce you all to my many cats in later posts, but my first cat, Rumble, had his fangs removed on both sides which he took as a serious violation, and he has never really been the same since. Trauma! So brush your pets' teeth, I mean it.
While they will not make dental fillings and accessories for your pets, they will make them for wild birds. I caught a very interesting show one morning in which an organization had rescued a Bald Eagle who had had part of his beak shot off. Seriously! They put out a plea for help, and this dentist guy responded, and said he could probably fashion something for the poor eagle to rebuild his beak. He used dental cement stuff, and made a replacement part for the eagle's beak, and installed it on the poor guy. The first one fell off because it wasn't anchored right, but the second one stuck, and now the eagle can rip stuff up with his beak again. I thought that was an exceptionally cool story, and the eagle was pretty pleased afterwards, too.
The NoodleDog and I are going on vacation, as I mentioned yesterday, to visit The Mac, who lives in Indiana. The drive is being done in convoy fashion with my parents, who are taking their minivan. Someone foolishly asked why I don't just go with them, in their car, and after I finished laughing, I explained. My parents tend to argue a fair amount, which I cannot stand, but that is not the least of it. I just can't be in the same vehicle with them for an extended period. They don't really dig talking in the car. They will not tolerate my "horrible" music in the car (!), so I'd have to listen to their stuff, which I can totally stand, but come on, not for three days at a time. Also, hello, convertible. If I didn't drive it, what would be the point of paying all this money for it? This will all work out better because the NoodleDog, the Tiny Car and I will have a "support vehicle". Like the Hell's Angels. When those guys go on an extended trip, they take a support vehicle, so they can put all their stuff in it. Last time I visited The Mac, my Tiny Car's trunk was jammed full of stuff, and so was the passenger seat. This time, I have to bring the NoodleDog, all his stuff, and all my stuff, so it's really, really nice to know I will have room, even if that space is in another vehicle. Really, all I have to have with me are the snacks and tunes. The last time I went down there, as well, I suffered heatstroke because by the time I got to the Saskatchewan border, it was a million degrees out (ok, +38C, which is really, really hot), and I "forgot" I had air conditioning (hey, I had never had to use it before, ok?). The NoodleDog can't take the heat that well, so if it gets really hot, he can ride in the air-conditioned vehicle with my arctic-temperature-loving mother. See? This is fantastic. It also gives me an opportunity to use my two-way radios (which I bought for the Miata Club trips). I can chatter at them. I'm not sure what "handle" to give my father. The Mac and I were discussing it, and I totally forgot what we had selected. "Grumpy Pete" or "Prospector Pete" or "Prickly Pete", or something like that. Those handles should give you the idea that my father is a little... grumpy. ESPECIALLY about the NoodleDog.
For some reason, Grumpy Pete, or "The Grumpaw" as I refer to him for the NoodleDog's sake, does not like the NoodleDog. How someone could not even like the NoodleDog, I cannot understand. The NnoodleDog is a happy dog. He loves everyone. He likes to lick (which although disgusting is not at all fatal), he likes to play, he likes everyone to be happy. He's fairly cute, too, and lovable. He has cute brown eyes, and he'll tilt his head in the cutest way as if to say "look at me - I'm so lovable! Love me!". But The Grumpaw doesn't really like him at all. I think the NoodleDog makes him nervous. The Grumpaw accepted the cats fairly well (even though he grumbled the whole time about all of them), but the cats are quiet, move more softly, are subtle, and tend less to jump on you. The NoodleDog is not in the least subtle. He's unpredictable, occasionally loud, and I have to remark that dogs are stiffer than cats. Cats are remouldable, kind of, like you can move them around and they resist less. Dogs are just stiff, and it's not that they don't want to be moved around, they just don't move that way. Anyway, even with those differences, the NoodleDog is pretty damn cute and a fairly nice dog, and if the Grumpaw would just talk to him like a regular dog (i.e say "Noodledog, sit!" rather than "hey, dog, you there, sit. Sitsitsit, go and siddown, wouldya sit?"), things would go much more smoothly.
As you can imagine, I'm thinking this vacation is gonna be pretty interesting. I'm sure I'll have lots of stories to post when I get back.
Until then!!
Although I did not have lunch yesterday, I snacked with abandon. My boss, possibly the nicest boss ever, brought in a tray filled with various brownies/bars/tarts/sickeningly-sweet-edibles from a wedding he had been to on the weekend. Yes, it was several days old. I don't think that stuff degenerates, though, because it is mostly just plain sugar. He left this tray right in the "kitchen" (which is actually just a room that we put a table and chairs in, along with a fridge and a microwave. The absence of a sink may negate it's kitchen-ness, but it serves), and we were encouraged to eat this stuff. So I helped myself to SIX items. One was a butter-tart-lookin' thing that along with the raisins unfortunately contained not only contraband coconut, but chocolate chips. Chocolate chips in a butter tart? Yes, and I can say with some authority that although chocolate chips are good (nod to my father, here), they do not belong in a butter tart.
This site is dedicated to my NoodleDog, who (as I have said before) is an actual dog. He's a basset-lab cross. He looks like a lab (black), but the basset influence over his body shape is remarkable. He's like a lab low-rider - short! He has big basset feet, too. The NoodleDog is my pride and joy. I have signed him up for Agility Training with Tammy (a very patient and excellent teacher). We go on Wednesday evenings, and this past Wednesday was just the second class. He did very well at the "Weave Poles" - a kind of a slalom thing for dogs. Basically, the owner (that's me) runs up to the obstacle yelling "Go weave!! Go weave!!" and the dog is supposed to understand that this means you want him to go around the poles in succession, weaving in and out. The first time he had absolutely no idea what I wanted him to do, not recognizing the word weave (duh! Maybe because he had never heard it before?), so he barked at me (which he does a lot). Tammy The Teacher kind of directed him towards the weave pole obstacle entrance, but he did not get the idea until I told him "this side!". He understands "this side" because that is what I say when he goes around the wrong side of a tree when we're walking. So he got that trick fairly quickly, and did pretty well with it that night.
However, after the Weave poles, we moved on to the Teeter-totter. The NoodleDog hates the teeter-totter. It will be our undoing in any competition (ha! as if we'll ever get that far...), I'm sure. He approached it alright, kind of understood that he needed to go onto it because there were metal gates blocking either side, so he got onto it alright, too. When he got to the middle, though, and the teeter-totter slammed down to the other side, it freaked him out and he jumped off, probably vowing never to go near it again. So we had to force him to go back onto it again, because if a dog abandons any obstacle during the course, you have to wait for him to get it right before moving on. Three times, Tammy The Teacher and I had to coax him (each of us endlessly saying "good dog, good little man, you can do it!! Good boy!! Come on...") up the teeter-totter, each time taking longer than the last. He wouldn't even eat his treats while on the teeter-totter, which is completely abnormal behaviour for him (he'll usually eat anything anytime). He was such a spectacle that after he completed the teeter-totter run, the lady who was giving out treats to the good dogs who did the tricks properly gave him some anyway, probably feeling sorry for his pansy ass. He then identified her as a food source, and stared at her for the rest of the evening.
The NoodleDog's repertoire of things he can eat contains practically everything. The NoodleDog eats not only his food, and the cats' food, and sometimes MY food, but also wood (including twigs, branches, leaves, pinecones, chips, sawdust and paper), toys (stuffed toys' stuffing, the outsides of the stuffed toys & their tags, and tennis balls in their entirety), shoes (only the one time did he try to eat a very nice expensive pair of shoes I should not have bought for budgetary reasons, for which he was punished by an extended stay in his crate), socks (although I know of only one sock he actually ate, I am missing a number of socks), earrings, cat hair, my hair, and dead things he finds outside (much to my dismay). The exception to his list? Canned mandarin oranges. Spits 'em right out.
The NoodleDog and I went on a date last night. I shamelessly use the NoodleDog as a "date activity". If you want to meet up with me, chances are I'm going to suggest we take the NoodleDog for a walk. I have two reasons for this: a) it is an unthreatening activity in public and is kind of fun and loosely time-limited, and b) it means I'll actually accomplish something and even if the date totally sucks I still get something done (walk the NoodleDog, which I have to do anyway). Hopefully that doesn't sound too... selfish? Fortunately, the guy I met (blind internet date alert!) has a dog of his own - a 3-month old border collie puppy. My main hope for the evening (aside from that the guy didn't turn out to be a jackass, which he didn't - he's actually very nice and I'd like to see him again) was that the NoodleDog did not eat the small puppy. Luckily, though, he did not try to eat the puppy, who was probably about the cutest little puppy you have ever seen. Really. He's three months old, a border collie with just a dash of regular collie thrown in, so he's exceedingly fluffy and cute, with a mainly black & white body, but with white, smoke grey, and the regular collie tawny colouring around his face. Basically everyone we ran into at the dog park commented on his cuteness. Plus, and I'm not sure if I'm the only one who gets this, his little tiny baby teeth were pretty cute, too. The NoodleDog's teeth are big now. When I first got him he was about five months old, and hadn't started teething, so he had little baby teeth, and they were pretty cute. His teeth now are just functional and not at all cute. Especially when he puts them on my arm - rotten dog. Eventually, I'm going to have to start brushing his teeth because pet dental care is frickin' expensive.
If you learn nothing else from this log, leave with the lesson that you need to brush your pet's teeth - cat, dog, whatever. My experience with cat dental care is that aside from being unholy expensive, the cat doesn't get to keep any of its damaged teeth. They do not make cat fillings. They do not indulge the bridge on a cat. There are no root canals for the kitties. If your cat has a cavity, the tooth comes out, and then you're left with an angry cat when you get home, and then a very sad cat after he forgets why his tooth is missing. I'll introduce you all to my many cats in later posts, but my first cat, Rumble, had his fangs removed on both sides which he took as a serious violation, and he has never really been the same since. Trauma! So brush your pets' teeth, I mean it.
While they will not make dental fillings and accessories for your pets, they will make them for wild birds. I caught a very interesting show one morning in which an organization had rescued a Bald Eagle who had had part of his beak shot off. Seriously! They put out a plea for help, and this dentist guy responded, and said he could probably fashion something for the poor eagle to rebuild his beak. He used dental cement stuff, and made a replacement part for the eagle's beak, and installed it on the poor guy. The first one fell off because it wasn't anchored right, but the second one stuck, and now the eagle can rip stuff up with his beak again. I thought that was an exceptionally cool story, and the eagle was pretty pleased afterwards, too.
The NoodleDog and I are going on vacation, as I mentioned yesterday, to visit The Mac, who lives in Indiana. The drive is being done in convoy fashion with my parents, who are taking their minivan. Someone foolishly asked why I don't just go with them, in their car, and after I finished laughing, I explained. My parents tend to argue a fair amount, which I cannot stand, but that is not the least of it. I just can't be in the same vehicle with them for an extended period. They don't really dig talking in the car. They will not tolerate my "horrible" music in the car (!), so I'd have to listen to their stuff, which I can totally stand, but come on, not for three days at a time. Also, hello, convertible. If I didn't drive it, what would be the point of paying all this money for it? This will all work out better because the NoodleDog, the Tiny Car and I will have a "support vehicle". Like the Hell's Angels. When those guys go on an extended trip, they take a support vehicle, so they can put all their stuff in it. Last time I visited The Mac, my Tiny Car's trunk was jammed full of stuff, and so was the passenger seat. This time, I have to bring the NoodleDog, all his stuff, and all my stuff, so it's really, really nice to know I will have room, even if that space is in another vehicle. Really, all I have to have with me are the snacks and tunes. The last time I went down there, as well, I suffered heatstroke because by the time I got to the Saskatchewan border, it was a million degrees out (ok, +38C, which is really, really hot), and I "forgot" I had air conditioning (hey, I had never had to use it before, ok?). The NoodleDog can't take the heat that well, so if it gets really hot, he can ride in the air-conditioned vehicle with my arctic-temperature-loving mother. See? This is fantastic. It also gives me an opportunity to use my two-way radios (which I bought for the Miata Club trips). I can chatter at them. I'm not sure what "handle" to give my father. The Mac and I were discussing it, and I totally forgot what we had selected. "Grumpy Pete" or "Prospector Pete" or "Prickly Pete", or something like that. Those handles should give you the idea that my father is a little... grumpy. ESPECIALLY about the NoodleDog.
For some reason, Grumpy Pete, or "The Grumpaw" as I refer to him for the NoodleDog's sake, does not like the NoodleDog. How someone could not even like the NoodleDog, I cannot understand. The NnoodleDog is a happy dog. He loves everyone. He likes to lick (which although disgusting is not at all fatal), he likes to play, he likes everyone to be happy. He's fairly cute, too, and lovable. He has cute brown eyes, and he'll tilt his head in the cutest way as if to say "look at me - I'm so lovable! Love me!". But The Grumpaw doesn't really like him at all. I think the NoodleDog makes him nervous. The Grumpaw accepted the cats fairly well (even though he grumbled the whole time about all of them), but the cats are quiet, move more softly, are subtle, and tend less to jump on you. The NoodleDog is not in the least subtle. He's unpredictable, occasionally loud, and I have to remark that dogs are stiffer than cats. Cats are remouldable, kind of, like you can move them around and they resist less. Dogs are just stiff, and it's not that they don't want to be moved around, they just don't move that way. Anyway, even with those differences, the NoodleDog is pretty damn cute and a fairly nice dog, and if the Grumpaw would just talk to him like a regular dog (i.e say "Noodledog, sit!" rather than "hey, dog, you there, sit. Sitsitsit, go and siddown, wouldya sit?"), things would go much more smoothly.
As you can imagine, I'm thinking this vacation is gonna be pretty interesting. I'm sure I'll have lots of stories to post when I get back.
Until then!!
