Ding Dong, the witch is dead, the witch is dead... ;-)

Back to normal

After a week of mother-in-law in town, we’re back alone, back to normal, and back to sex! No, not really. Too damned tired for that right now. Which, I guess is back to normal! Yay!

Sleepy because: bad news

Miles isn’t doing hot. Luckily he has made it long enough to see everyone he knew from the old days that he’s going to get to see before he goes; I think the time draws near, unfortunately. 

He’s been sleeping in my room for the last three weeks. We started this because the pups were just all over the guy trying to take care of him and basically just caring so much that it was an annoyance to poor ol’ Miles. Sleeping behind a closed door with his daddy had been a nice, peaceful break. However, that seemed to stop a few nights ago, as he’s now too uncomfortable to make it through much of the night actually sleeping.

Instead, most of our nights together consist of him dragging his self around and panting loudly, and us (me especially) sitting up to make sure he’s doing “OK”  — as OK as a cancer-stricken 13y/o dog with a broken him can be — and doesn’t need to go out to use the bathroom. And I mean it, too — this is most of our night. I felt bad, but at some point this morning I had to kick him out of the room, because I needed more than 45 minutes of consecutive sleep, dammit.

I put his bed out in the hallway corner, let him out to pee, and when I eventually got up two hours later, where did I find him? Outside still.

And I’ll mention too that he didn’t eat this morning. I poured him some food, he just laid down and looked away instead. Miles, okay? Miles doesn’t turn down food. This is obviously serious business.

Quick movie update

While mom-in-law was here, we watched something called National Geographic: Extreme, which was supposed to be Hi-Def heaven, following around extreme sportsmen (and women!) into the wilds of our planet, thrill seeking. Let me save you the trouble: it sucked. The music was corny 90% of the time, I didn’t care to hear voiceovers from the lame as though they were great wisdom sources or something, and I can only watch a snowboarder carve a mountain path so many times before I a) can’t tell the difference between the cutscenes, and b) just don’t care anymore.

Also watched The International last night. Stars Clive Owen. How was it? Well, I had thought that perhaps it would be a suspenseful movie full of suspense ‘n’ stuff, what with the look on Clive Owen’s face on the trailers and such. Little did I know beforehand that Clive Owen always looks like that, apparently. It, too, sucked, and actually sucked much harder, because it was a) longer, and b) I still didn’t care anymore.

I didn’t bother giving either of these movies their own blog, because? Well, they don’t deserve it. They’re both b-rate entertainment that isn’t bad enough to warrant their own narrative nor were they good enough to deserve praise. They are b-rate mediocrity and proud to be.

Battlestar Galactica Finale

I watched this and just wanted to let you know I did. I have an opinion on it and plan to share, but for now just wanted to say: I can’t wait for Lost to come out on disc so I can continue watching. Love these types of shows, Lost especially. 

OK, Peace out.

Reason #2,104,501 Why Apple is teh Awesome

Not only did Apple repair and return my computer in under 48 hours (time since they received it), but they also did me some awesome favors.

I sent it in for a broken optical drive, right? Yeah, that’s right, now I remember. Apple however, thought that a broken optical drive was therea culpa, and took it upon themselves to do some other stuff for me as well.

I got it back with a new screen & bezel. Nothing broken! I sent it in with a rather clean, scratch-free screen. They claimed there were a few small blemishes, so they replaced it — free of charge.

They also replaced cables. … I have no idea which cables. I’ve never seen cables. But they replaced them — free of charge.

Oh and that’s right, the optical drive; don’t forget that one boys! Check. Oh, and — free of charge.

So. Sent in for a busted optical drive. Sent home with the requisite repairs as well as a new screen, bezel, and cables.

Apple’s teh Awesome, you see.

Reason #2,104,498 Why Apple is teh Awesome

You may recall that about a week ago I was online complaining about a broken optical drive? Yeah, that. May seem like an odd time to to give a reason to LIKE Apple computers, right?

Hey, hardware failures happen. And on an oft-ported laptop where the only moving mechanical part is the optical drive, I can’t really fault them too much. And you may have noticed that I’m back online, no? That’s because of the wonderful experience that is AppleCare, y’all. I called on Thursday (week 0). They had a box on my door the next morning. I had to work so I wasn’t able to ship it out until Monday. Monday it gets shipped out, Wednesday afternoon I have Fed Ex at my door delivering me a box, apologizing for being late.

LATE!1!!!!!1!!elevenTY!! Can you believe that?

Apple, I love you.

Now send me a new 17” MacBook Pro. Stat. :-)

Indiana Jones and the Search for a Better Plot

I like the Indiana Jones adventures from yesteryear myself. Actually I even own the box DVD set. You know, the pretty one with all the artwork and everything? That one. Got it for X-mas about 3 years ago, it was a good gift if even in Full Screen instead of Widescreen.

BUT THIS, the newest one — Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — I was wholly unprepared for. The amount of suck was so stupendous, that I just shook my head in disbelief for the entire 3 hours it took to completely rape my mind of logic & consistency. It was like a bad, bad Saturday morning cartoon, but without the redeeming qualities such as commercials or entertainment or, hell, both.

I’m not sure I have the room to list everything that is wrong with the film here, but I’m gonna try, so bear with me:

• Everything

Whew! Wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it through that to the end! And thank you, dear reader, for sticking it through, seeing it take shape and evolve into something bigger than you and me; bigger than the sum of its parts.

That was funny, right? Good. OK now to actually bore you with some of the examples that stand out in my mind. Yeah, sorry ‘bout, kinda misled you there.

Let’s start with the corny way they introduce him. Dumb. We get it. It’s a f*cking INDIANA JONES MOVIE YOU F*CKTARDS, we knew who it was in the car, we saw the hat, the overdrawn overdramatic scene was F*CKING ANNOYING to anyone who’s even old enough to remember reruns of the series on TV.

Then there’s the next scene. Dumb. Because if the thing is magnetized so much that throwing gun powder in the air causes it to float, then BY GOLLY, other metal things will be just as susceptible — like, ALL the metal nails in ALL the boxes in the damned warehouse, or maybe all the metal in all the guns? Yeah.

And did we see him survive a catastrophic ATOMIC BOMB by putting himself inside of a refrigerator? And somehow HIS REFRIGERATOR was the ONLY thing that managed to fly out of ground zero.

The CGI was atrocious throughout. I can’t figure out why it is that a 15-year-old movie — Jurassic Park — is still the standard-bearer for special effects in movies. Just ridiculous.

And slightly connected to that thought: freaking monkeys?!!? Were they serious? I was supposed to buy that scene? Ladies & Gentlemen, Boys & Girls, if you didn’t know what a Dues Ex Machina was before today? Now you do.

The whole movie felt like a train wreck that was happening at high-speed. It never slowed down enough to really try and have a plot, which I guess is good in a sense for them seeing as how they didn’t really have one, just sort of had a bunch of Dues Ex Machinas strung together with a bullwhip for posterity. And have I mentioned Sh!t Lebarf?

Yeah. He’s there. So, uh, if you haven’t yet, obviously don’t bother. Just read this intsead, yeah? If you have already? I’m sorry. I’ll see you at the meetings, guys.

The Little House of Horrors

Next week, two horrors will visit themselves upon me: Mother-in-law will be in town, and I will also be without my computer.

Mother-in-law visits

This is actually the lesser of the two horrors wrought upon me. I mean, mother-in-law is mother-in-law, but as far as they go, mine ain’t that bad. It does put a kibosh on certain husbandly duties I might have wanted to subject the wife to (“you know what to do, baby”). But hey, at least it comes with the bonus of a few more days off.

A FEW MORE DAYS OFF?!!?!?!

Yes, I know, I have had a lot of vacation recently. I’ve earned it, leave me alone. And hell, I won’t even begin to tell you about how I actually had to come in a day early from my last vacation and I’m getting shorted two days on top of it all. Yup, I could have had TWO MORE days off had things not gone awry at work recently, necessitating my hurried return – they just can’t do without me. But like I said, mother-in-law comes to town, I get a handful of more days off. Yay me.

The trouble for me really comes in when I have to go without my porn machine – er, computer.

My Computer goes in for repair

So remember how I had mentioned a few days ago that my soon-to-be-awesome Snow Leopard installation didn’t quite end up awesome after all? Yeah, that. Well the local techs are out of town until the 28^th, which means that my fastest road to Snow Leopard is actually to have my computer mailed out for repair.

Don’t worry, warranty and free of cost.

It’s actually not as bad as that sentence might make it out to sound. I have Apple, remember. I call, we decide that yes indeed, the optical drive is kaput, and they overnight – YES, OVERNIGHT – an empty box – YES, an empty box – for me to pack my computer into. Monday, I will send it back out – yeah overnight, how’d you guess? – and I expect it should be back by Thursday.

But MAN, this will suck. This is probably my last blog update until I get it back. Yes, I know that the internets continue on without my laptop, and I could even – GASP! – get online from someone else’s. But it’s just not the same… Which means that for the better part of a week, I’ll be unable to keep tabs on how cool I am on my Facebook or my myspace or what, you know? And f*ck, actually check email? Online? Without a client? Yeah right. Hope no one sends nothing important between now and then.

And what the hell am I doing for porn? Man, this week is going to seriously suck. No hanky, no computer (no porn), and no porn.

Wake me in October.

Snow Leopard Update Hitch: it's just not fair!

It’s just not fair, I tell you. I went and spent the money – GOOD MONEY, I TELL YOU – to purchase the new upgraded Mac OS X Operating System, “Snow Leopard.” Wanted to install it on my machine, because I hear it’s supercharged and makes thousands of julian fries and if you order now they’ll throw in a SECOND SET ABSOLUTELY FREE just pay shipping & handling.

Instead, what happens? It turns out that my optical drive has taken a sh!t. I can’t install the damned update onto my computer, so instead we installed it onto The Girl’s computer. Dammit that’s right,  SHE’S got the new cat on her computer, whilst I rot away with the old smelly kitty on mine. 

I had suspected the drive might be bad a long while ago. I was trying to burn a DVD of some pics and movies for an old friend and my computer would not verify the disk, EVER, no matter how many attempts, kept saying the disc was bad. Apparently, EVERY SINGLE DISC IN THE PACK was faulty. Who would have guessed, right? Then when I went to install Snow Leopard, it spit the disk out in the middle of the install. Not once, twice. And a third & fourth attempt just resulted in the computer not even recognizing there was a disk even inserted. It was craziness.

Now, I will have to send it in to be repaired and be without for a couple of days. Why? Because the only certified techs local are on vacation until the 28^th. That’s 11 days from now. I cannot, repeat cannot stand by while the missus has a better standard configuration than I, for a week & a half. It’s just unconscionable.   

Ding! Ding! Round TWO: Hunter & Chase Square Off

Apparently they went at it again. I say apparently because no one was home; we were both at work but when we got back and sat down to eat some brownies & ice cream, after I got the lights turned on I glanced down and saw SKIN on Hunter’s forearm. You’re not supposed to see Labrador skin, so I knew something was up.

Payback’s a bitch, ain’t that right Hunter? You chewed up Chase’s arm, and now he’s returned the favor.

I’m kind of pissed and saddened and confused all at the same time. They're good dogs they really are, and it’s not like they’re walking around the house snarling and growling and biting. It happens are rare occasions – two rare occasions inside of two weeks here now – that they get up in arms over some particular thing. They’re brothers, they’re dogs, it happens, right?

But the problem is that we’re talking about 90lb dogs that are built like tanks, and rather equally matched. Since no one was home to break it up this time, Hunter got more good lashes upon him than Chase had before. Here’s some of the carnage:

That’s just the front side, there’s two more on the back side as well, though they are pretty tame in comparison. We're not making any Vet appointments yet. Chase seemed to heal rather well from his wounds with just our care, and though Hunter's are bigger, it's mostly "bigger" as in "longer." which may in fact prove to make them easier to keep clean. We'll see, but the Vet's # is in the address book on my computer for a reason: we'll make that call if it looks like he's getting a bit infected.

The larger problem is, what if this continues? The way I look at it, they're brothers and brothers get into tiffs over things sometimes. They're not overtly aggressive or anything as I said earlier, but I don't want them to hurt each other. I don't want to even have to consider separating the two, and having to decide which one to keep. I don't want to, they love & need each other. You should see how they act when you take one and leave the other, it's pitiful, it really is.

Right now they're laying together, licking each other's ears. These are not dogs that hate one another. But when their play escalates and someone takes it personal, the above happens. I'm hoping now that each of them has felt the aftereffects of that, perhaps they'll rather back down and use their words as opposed to their teeth. Because I love the little f*ckers dearly and want to have one standing on each side of me. I'm selfish like that.

EDIT TO ADD: around lunch time, found some matted bloody hair on Chase's neck. Turns out, Hunter got a tooth into him this time, too. It's cleaned up and antibiotic'd now, but dammit, now we have to keep on eye on two dogs. Well, actually four. Miles is still Cancer-stricken though I'm starting to wonder (more on that later), Zoey has a rash on her leg, Hunter has lacerations to his right front forearm and Chase – recovering from punctures to his arm – is now also nursing a puncture on his neck.

Quick, someone call Animal Control, holy f*ck.

Canoe Excursions

On my vacation last week, one thing we went and did was rent a canoe.

We didn’t canoe with it. We just put it on the truck and drove around so people would think we were cool. IT worked.

OK, lying. Not about the canoe part or the “we’re so cool” part – we most definitely are (not) – but just the part about doing nothing but driving around. We canoed!

We had not ever done anything like it before, and didn’t quite know where to start, so a rental seemed like a good idea as any. We have been looking/thinking of some sort of boat for our adventures for a while now, but without a real house and real place to store it, we didn’t want to bother. Now that the house & storage are settled and we were on vacation, why NOT go and see if we can drown ourselves and a dog or three in the middle of a large body of water?

Turns out it was only one dog that got to go along, as our planned and only available day for the excursion was a day or so after Hunter put two holes in his brother defending Miles from that which needed not be defended. But that’s in the past now and brothers forgive. BUT, it did mean that Chase was not allowed to go and swim in potentially unclean waters with gaping wounds on his leg. I mean if it was just some surface wound? No problem! But these things were freakin’ down to the muscle OK? I could pull the skin and see darkness, and I could just envision him going swimming and his leg filling up with water and sinking.

Yes, I envisioned this. No one said I was a prophet. Ahem.

Worked out for the best actually. We rented a 15’ canoe and we had visions of us and at least two dogs paddling out along the lagoons, easy-going, moving fast in the right direction, the dogs jumping out and swimming and crawling back in and everyone having a Gay Ol’ Time, as the Flintstone’s Introduction singer might say. You know, pretty much like every Dawson’s Creek commercial ever. Visions are fun, right?

INSTEAD, it went more like this: we couldn’t paddle the damned boat straight to save our lives. I went left, she went right, the boat drifted off into a tailspin like in Top Gun but without the Star Power & turbines & jets and all that stuff & Goose lived in this version (he could swim. He’s a Goose for dog’s sake), it was a blast. We brought a dog. This might prove to be the Achilles' Heel in our vision overall, that we could do this with not just one, but two 85lb dogs. We hadn’t made it 5 feet from shore before we almost toppled over. Go ahead, ask me why there’s no galleries of the event in question up on the web. Answer? After almost drowning 5 feet from shore, I made the decision that perhaps the cameras – expensive little buggers that they are, filled with delicate precision electronics and being all wimpy around water, the wimpy electronic bastards – should stay in a dry, parking-spot-ridden truck whilst we attempt mass, slow suicide by water.

I’d like to say that eventually, we righted each situation, but we were only successful in one: we did eventually learn to paddle straight. Not fast, no! But straight, yes. The dog situation, however, did not go according to plan for more than 3 minutes at a time.

The canoe was made of some sort of plastic though I tell you I thought a few times maybe it was Play-Doh and we weren’t going to toppple over so much as fall the f*ck through the boat bottom. You could feel the water moving below your feet on the hull (is the canoe a hull?), and this didn’t sit well with our four-legged boat tipper, Hunter. He eventually got more used to it than initially, but he never quite said to himself or us “hey this craft is sound and trustworthy,” though he did get comfortable enough to start testing the limits of the boat by seeing just how far he could rock the boat over to one side by poking his body to that side and sticking his head out beyond to taste the water or stare down ducks flying by. How close to tipping? I was paddling and my elbows were getting wet. I kissed a fish.

Keeping a 15’ canoe made of Play-Doh from becoming a 15’ submarine made of Play-Doh with the helpful assistance of a dog proved more difficult than I had imagined. One dog was trouble enough, two dogs might be a stretch even with a more solid canoe, and THREE dogs is a crowd & a half on there. Dogs jumping out and swimming and making it back in the boat whilst we all smile and laugh and throw sticks and fish and other things that happen on the front of canoe brochures? Fat chance. There’ll be no mid-lake picnics with this setup, methinks.

Not sold on the canoe idea. Not sold at all. The people at the shop said something about some floaties you can put on the sides to stabilize the canoe against dogs and general tippiness, but as of now?

Not sold on the canoe idea. Not quite yet.

On the plus-side, I did get laid on the beach in the middle of the day. That's pretty cool, right? Sweet. Hey, maybe a canoe ISN'T A BAD IDEA AFTER ALL.

Movie: I love you, Man

We didn’t expect too much from it as we had heard not-so-glamorous things about the flick, so we went into the viewing maybe a few notches dialed back from “whoa this movie will be the best movie EVUR!>!11.11!!!” which is probably a good thing for any movie. But I’d like to imagine that indeed, the movie is still good on its own accord even without the low expectations.

It’s simple. It’s got a theme, it sticks to it all the way throughout, and the characters are true to form. What I liked about it and why I think it was a successful movie, was that the characters didn’t step out of form and the story didn’t reach into the unlikely to pull out an ending. What I mean is, have you seen Dan in Real Life? It’s a decent movie, but the ending was hollow and that had a definite impact on how I viewed the whole movie. After all, the journey’s as important as the destination, no? So when we got to the end and it was cheap, it sort of made me question everything we’d already watched thus far.

Not so with this movie though, it was more like Wedding Crashers. You know the characters – or at least get to know them – and they grow along the story in measured and realistic ways.

Of note: I just realized I cannot be funny in a post about a movie I like. I can’t do it. If it SUCKS BALLS then I can totally pull off humor, but as it stands, when I like a film and make a post, it’s always warm & fuzzy. Huh.

Computer-as-internet-appliance

I’m not sure if it’s a generational divide, or more of a personality thing, but I have had this scenario happen to me multiple times: I’m at work on my lunch break, and I crack open my laptop and do something (keyword photos, write something, put in my work schedule, etc), and the young ladies I work with – I do specify young here – ask if I have an internet connection. No, I do not. 

And they stare at me flabbergasted. How in the world do I find a use for a computer without the internet?

It’s part of the larger problem, I think. I’ve labeled these recent generations “The MTV Generation.” They grew up watching the ‘reality’ shows on MTV (That’s MUSIC Television, where they don’t play music on the Television), and they think that that defines life. If you’re not having a whole bunch of drama & back-stabbing, it’s not really living; you’re not “hip,” you’re not “in” and you’re not popular. The computer-as-appliance-for-the-internet is an extension of this meme. The computer is not used to compute or work on anything for that matter, it’s used as a tool to check their Facebook updates (the lady last night so much as said to me “how do you check your Facebook?” You know, because it’s MY faceBOOK, I have a BOOK of FACE or something). It’s not like I don’t use the internet or anything – obviously – but I can find uses for a computer outside of facing my checkbook or whatever it is the cool kids are doing these days.

For the record, my Store Manager had made changes to my schedule for the next three-weeks’ time, and I was inputting those changes into my calendar. Yes, I do indeed use the computer for tasks other than making sure I’m still cool (I’m not) and popular (never was). Kids these days. They ought to try it.

Hairless & better for it? Who'd have thought

One thing that has mesmerized me for some time has been the apparent almost backwards design of us humans. It always has seemed to me that we’re extremely weak, and in most respects not worthy of our place atop the food pyramid.

Don’t misunderstand me, I a) still think that’s mostly true, and b) recognize the importance of our higher-level thought, though more on that later. Anyway. Moving on:

One such thing that got me started on it was body hair. First it was the observation that our hair patterns are basically backwards from the rest of the animal kingdom and natural selection. Really, bear with me here, OK? Think about it, or hell, turn your dog or cat over on its back and pull up on its arms. What do you notice? That’s right, a significant density difference in hair in their armpits; animals have LESS hair in their armpits. We, however, have more. Why is that? Talk about a backwards design, huh? I mean, it’s warm & moist there, and what’s more – and probably the main reason other animals have tended to shed hair from that region – it’s a major friction location. If you’re going to get rid of hairs that might just interlock from somewhere on your body, the armpit is probably a good choice.

...Unless you’re human. Then it would seem that the best place to lose body hair would be from the large, flat, exposed regions of your body, where you’re probably most likely to have a need for hair, to protect your fragile skin and to retain body heat. Yes I know that sentence contradicts itself, PAY ATTENTION, MAN!! That’s my point – we evolved backwards, we lost hair from the portions of the body that needed it most, but retained it where it is most bothersome & problematic.

It always seemed to me that we’d be better off with a layer of fur ourselves, and that the reasoning used above was a good proof that we are indeed oddballs in the great Darwinian race. And watching my dogs go swimming in ice-cold waters that I’d need a wetsuit and a sauna to even attempt a dip into.

Until recently. There was a reason I came across awhile back that has sat in the back of my head. It sat back there so long in fact, that I forgot to write anything about it. And then yesterday, with the puncture wound story about the boys, I added reason #2 to the list of reasons our hairless body design may actually be more beneficial than not.

Reason #1 was ticks. We go out hiking a lot. And by “hiking” I don’t mean wimpy Southern California Hiking where you walk a concreted path, passing women pushing baby strollers, oh no! I mean up in the mountains, hiking down to the rivers below, with the dogs on the lookout for mountain lions (editor’s note: ha, I initially wrote “mountain loins”) and elk twice as tall as we are. We’re f*cking out there, man, we’re f*cking out there. Know what else is out there? Ticks! Damn! How’d you guess? Oh wait I said that earlier didn’t I? Sh!t. So much for the element of surprise.

The dogs have Frontline Plus. And thank god, because searching through their mounds of hair to try and find these tiny little creatures is a royal pain in the ass. So much so, that we just rely on Frontline working well, and in a few days anything that’s still alive is big enough to see easily and pull off. As for us though, we don’t have Frontline, and we don’t need it either. We just strip down, inspect each other for ticks, get all turned on and then have sex (was it good for you?). It’s easy because with the exception of our scalps, we’re pretty hairless and anything that doesn’t belong is quickly spotted. No dear, that belongs there. Trust me.

Reason #2 was the puncture wound suffered by Chase. We didn’t see it at first, it sat unattended for 30 minutes, and it would have been longer had he not sat against a white door and left a red stain; we just couldn’t see any wounds through the thick layer of hair. And once it was discovered, the first thing we did was grab some scissors and trim all the hair away, to keep it clean and easily flushable. 

What if I was wounded? Hell I’ve been wounded enough in my life, I know how easy it is to clean up after a spill or a puncture or a whatever. Wash rinse repeat. Having hair would definitely complicate matters for me. 

And suddenly, I see a great logic behind our hairless evolvement. It’s not that we’re bare and for the worse necessarily, we’re masters of our environment and when we need a fur coat, we make one and put it on. When we need to get to the skin, it’s right there, plain as day. We have the best of both worlds the way we are. And now I can’t look at the dogs and think “they’re better than we are,” I can only think “why then, do we still have hair in our armpits,”and for some of us, maybe “and why one or two in the crack (you know where I refer to)?” 

And on parting, a warning: take special precautions to avoid the dreaded mountain loin. They’re deadly :-)

Chase & Hunter square off

Not a day after we had company over, telling stories about how kind our two youngest pups were to each other even though they were brothers and both “ball-ified” – meaning of course, that they both have nuts – and that they hadn’t really ever had much of a serious tussle, they go and have a serious tussle.

Over Miles. Specifically, over who gets to be Miles caretaker. Right now Hunter has assumed this role and will not relinquish it. He follows Miles around and licks his wounds and just generally guards him from anything that might be a danger, or in this case, even his own brother, Chase. Chase wanted to come and say ‘Hi’ and Hunter was ready to lay the law down, that he is indeed in charge and visitation hours are not currently open, thankyouverymuch.

If you’re reading this and you know where I live: caution, do not ever jump into my yard. These guys are freakin’ crazy, man, you don’t want to be the source of their ire. Trust me.

Chase got the worst of it. He’s actually maybe an inch taller than his brother, and his Muscles bulge a little more than his bro’s as well, but this is not to imply he’s bigger. His muscle mass is more concentrated at the high-end of the bone, so it sticks out further. Hunter is more solid from tip to toe, and apparently, made of steel. I got them separated after they took to each other, maybe 5 seconds after it began, and Chase started with a little limp in his front left elbow. I figured it was sore from either being landed on, or maybe that’s where my kick landed that pushed them apart, I don’t know. But when we went inside and he sat against our white door in the kitchen, lo and behold there was a stain of red on it; Hunter had managed to get ahold of his brother’s arm and put two punctures in it, outside and in.

Good ones, too. We spent a good 30 minutes clipping, cleaning, and filling with antibiotic ointment:

Chase is big and strong, but it seems that his brother is definitely the ruffian of the two. Not a scratch. Well that’s a lie, he did have a scratch on the inside of his ear, but so minor that it could have been a fruit fly bite or something. 

So what have we learned here, Chase? You’re big bad and black, but for the sake of everyone including yourself, stay out of your brother’s way. There’s going to be a hierarchy, and it would seem that you’re going to have to be OK with being #2. Maybe #1.5. Or find some freakin' kryptonite or something.

Arts Alive: the tale of why I avoid large crowds

It’s not that I don’t enjoy going out for a night on the town, and it’s not that I don’t enjoy good company. I guess it’s just my nature, that I don’t particularly like large gatherings. Why? Take a look at this guy:

To be clear, we were not out at a “The Dark Knight Fan Club Meeting.” We were not out at a “Long live Heath Ledger” memorial group. It was Arts Alive night, a once-monthly get-together in Old Towne, when most of the businesses host walkthroughs and offer snacks, and everyone comes out to enjoy the atmosphere & festivities.

AND, apparently, wear ‘disturbed clown’ make up to showcase the fact they haven’t been hugged enough yet. So here you have it, the reason why I don’t like large get-togethers: people acting like absolute idiots and attention whores, putting so much time & effort into appearances & act, that is supposed to somehow show that they don’t care what anyone thinks… yet they spent more prep time for the event than anyone else and bothered to make sure they showed up so you could see them and they could let you KNOW they don’t care man.

I like crowds that are small enough to weed out the stupidity; I like crowds sized right, so that everyone is being themselves and sharing in the experience, not making such an effort so prove they’re not making any effort.

I’ve been here two years, and this is really the first time that my schedule has lined up to allow me to go to one of these things. How was it? Some of the art was kind of cool, and Old Towne is pretty neat in its own right. In fact I took a good bunch of pictures while there. But I don’t need 3,000 other people there to enjoy it, maybe just a handful of friends. So if I don’t get out there for another two years? That’s fine. I’ve got a new house to chill at anyway. 

The Unfortunate End of Miles' Reign

Well, I was wrong about Miles, though we’re not happy about this. I thought that perhaps his hip had slipped out of joint in his old age. A trip to the vet later (oh, and $300 out-of-pocket), and we have a diagnosis: Osteosarcoma. Bone cancer. 

The acute swelling on the hip? Because his hip had shattered, basically exploded from the inside out. As if there’s another way to explode, eh? But you feel me. 

And it explains so much too. I mean, there’s the reason why he slowed down so fast, right? It wasn’t just rapid onset of age, it was cancer destroying his bones, pushing his normal bones apart, replacing it with weak, non-organized bony tissue. A real mess.

It doesn’t look like he’s going ot make it much further. He’s closing in on 13, but that’s not until November and honestly I’m not sure that we’re going to make it out of the next week before he has to go down for the count, even though things are looking better this evening.

The Vet gave us some medications, one was a pain reliever/anti-inflammatory, and the other was an opiate-based pain reliever/sedative. This morning he was sleeping outside under a truck, and wouldn’t eat. I pouted (okay, cried) a bit, as it seemed that he was going to have to say goodbye soon – real soon. But just in case, I pulled the pain reliever/sedative out of the routine – it had a 12-hour effective window – and it seems that it’s helping him to feel more like the Miles of old, albeit with a bum leg.

SO. It would seem that Miles is going to be spending the remainder of his days limping about on 3 legs in pain, and generally living a sh!tty existence, so he can enjoy a few of those moments around the food bowl. And, so it would also seem that if you know the Miles personally, if you have some final loving words to lay at his feet, now might be the time.

Now or never, yo’s.