Addendum to the Booksplosion

In the great list of books I've read to keep me from going crazy 2008 edition, I completely overlooked one: Marley and Me. Everyone should read this book. Part biography of a young family starting out, part memoir, part story of the world's worst dog, this book was so good I read it in one sitting. Even if you're not a dog lover, you will be extremely touched by this book. Grogan adeptly captures and relates how dog-owners feel about their 4-legged fur children. You'll laugh at Marley's exploits, you'll groan with embarrassment at some of his more public misdeeds, and you'll share the overwhelming grief that comes from having to say good-bye to a loved pet. But I think most importantly, Marley's story will have you fondly (and probably tearfully) recalling memories of those pets that have came and brought so much joy into your lives.

Dead By Dawn

more cat pictures

A Dog's Life

Roxy is very happy about the new kitties next door. Every time I go out on the balcony, Roxy just has to go to look at the neighbor's balcony to see if the kitties are outside. It's rather funny to watch her jump-bounce her way over there. [Bosco is pretty interested in the kitties too. He likes to sit, stare and meow at them. I took him out there to meet them, and contrary to what the shelter people told me, Bosco actually gets along with other cats.]

Kitties aside, Roxy has been pretty miserable today. It's been raining all day long, and she absolutely hates the rain. She won't walk in it, she won't go out in the balcony in it, she just doesn't want to have anything to do with it. She got all excited for her walk this afternoon, and then when she got downstairs and realized it was raining, she quickly peed and made a beeline for drier climes. Definately not the labador genes there. At least she got a new bed today.

Pet Emporium

Our next door neighbors got 2 new kitties this week. This is relevant because our 'balconies' are separated by a black psuedo-fence. The neighbors have put up plastic chicken wire to height of about 3 feet on the fence, so they can let their kitties outside without having to worry about the cats running away.

One of their new kitties likes to come over and visit us. Friday night, I caught her sitting on one of our deck chairs, staring in at our living room and meowing quietly -- twice. After giving her a bit of love (she likes to roll around on the ground at your feet), I gently returned her to her side of the fence.

Saturday, I saw my neighbors and told them about their kitty's adventures. However, kitty is very quick, and very sneaky and 2 times in less than 2o minutes had snuck back over to visit Bosco and Roxy. Kitty is now confined indoors.

This And That With AJ

Could you please not eat like a goblin? Roxy's been a happy girl lately. She's played a lot with her doggie friends, tried to bogart a puppy and got some nummy gravy on her food last night. Om, nom, nom, nom!

On being irrelevant: When I get old(er) and have completely lost any hip-ness or relevancy that I might have once possessed, I totally want to go on a racist tirade like Geraldine Ferraro. Besides, she looks like someone took a pure-bred Kimodo Dragon and tattooed eyebrows on it. Look at the good she does.

Voice-overs are cool: (This contains some NSFW language.)

Dogs Rule

I’ve discovered another reason why Roxy is the best dog ever. I was eating dinner and watching Firehouse Dog on HBO, basically just vegging out. Roxy was curled up next to me on the floor, most likely hoping for a scrap of potpie. The onscreen firehouse dog was running back and forth, yipping, barking, whining and having a grand old time. That’s when I noticed that Roxy was actually watching TV with me. Her doggie head was moving back and forth tracking the firehouse dog. Her ears pricked up at every onscreen doggie noise. How cool is that?

Kleen Howse, I haz it.

The house got a much needed cleaning. The laundry is done. Grocery shopping is complete. I don't know about you all, but my mental health gets a real boost from having a clean house, clean clothes and a full pantry.

The Major does well with the pantry part -- we're still working on the clean house part. He'll never be as compulsive as I am, but I'm hoping we can downgrade him from a Class 5 Hurricane to a tropical depression. Anything else is just wishful thinking.

Victory Is Mine!

I had a knit pair of slipper boots/mukluks in college that were my favorite things ever. I wore them everywhere, including on rounds. They even went to Mexico with me. Sadly, they died a rather violent death by dog mauling.

For the past 10 years or so, I've been looking for a new pair. I've scoured the internets, tried every variation in search engines and came up empty handed. I could have planned a trip back to OU to go to the store where I originally purchased these, but I'm not going to take a 7 hour trip (one way) just to buy a pair of $20 slipperboots.

Today, I finally found a site that sells them -- just as I remember them, leather soles and all. You know the first thing I did, after I got over the initial shock, was click on the "Buy These Bitches Now" button. I should have them in my greedy bootslipper loving hands in 3-5 business days. Pictures will be posted. Seriously. And maybe I'll even post the pictures of Roxy and Ginger that I was supposed to have posted months ago.

[If you doubt my love for these boots, there is at least one semi-regular commenter that has witnessed these boots in all their glory. They even went on rounds with me in said boots. I'll let you all figure out who s/he is.]

New Links

Ashamedly, I have to admit that I'm a big fan of the LOLcat meme that's been going around for the last 2 billion years.

I can haz cheezbergur? No, not yourz, kitteh.

But now I've discovered 2 new sites that make me happy:

Stuff On My Mutt (for the dog lovers) and
Stuff On My Cat (for those that love the pouncing hairball factories.)

Enjoy.

It's Official: The Bitch Is Mine

Shortly after the Major and I moved into Condoland, we decided it was finally time to get a dog. The idea was that since I 'picked' the cat, he would be the one that got to 'pick' the dog. (Anyone who's ever adopted an animal from a shelter knows that you don't choose the animal, the animal chooses you.) The Major's reasoning was that he wanted the dog to be primarily bonded to him, much like Bosco bonded to me.

But there was a flaw in his cunning plan: we adopted Roxy when the Major was better known as the Hobblenatrix. (This is a another story in and of itself, but the long and short is that he had a broken ankle.) For the first 2-3 months, I was the one that played with the dog, walked her, potty trained her, and taught her other commands. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened. Just come over to our house and watch what happens when we let Roxy out of her crate. She'll make a bee-line straight for me and ignore everyone else. Eventually, she'll notice the other people, greet them and play with them. Eventually.

Roxy declared her allegiance openly and officially last night. When I fell asleep last night, Roxy was sleeping in her crate and the Major was preparing to sleep in the guest bedroom. (He's not in the doghouse, he's sick and didn't want to spread the love.) Around 4 in the morning, I tried to roll over, but there was something pressing against the back of my head and shoulder. I thought it must be a pillow because I was only about 1 foot from the edge of the bed. I soon realized that it was Roxy. She had balled herself up as small as she could make herself and wedged herself between the edge of the bed and my head so she could be as close to me as possible. As I was processing this information, she gave me the "it's not time to get up yet Dad what are you doing" look. I slid over to the other side of the bed, and Roxy spread out a little bit -- just enough so that some part of her was still touching me. She could have slept on the empty half of the bed, or on the empty half of the bed with the Major in the guest bedroom. Instead, she decided she wanted to sleep more-or-less on top of my head. Sorry Majorica, this is Brandi -- the dog is mine.

Three-day, Free-day

It was a very busy, if not relaxing, holiday weekend chez Condo. All I really wanted was to spend some time doing absolutely nothing. Somehow, we were on the go all weekend long. I’m conflicted because I enjoyed everything we did, but I do wish that I would have had a bit more time to just chill and do nothing.

Saturday we spend the first part of the day giving the place a much needed cleaning. It was one of those thorough cleanings where you move furniture that you normally don’t move. Six hours and seven bags of trash later we were finished. We then called up some friends – including a friend we usually don’t to too much with – and headed to Micro Center so Le Major could browse all the techie stuff. Then it was off to a wonderful Japanese place for a nice dinner. Conversation and food flowed and all were happy.

Sunday was a little lazier. We took Roxy over to the park for a cookout with our next-door neighbors. We had a good time socializing and Roxy met some new dogs. Five hours in the sun was enough to tire Roxy and I out. I did catch part of an interesting documentary about what would happen if a super comet smashed into Earth. In case you’re wondering, just about everyone and everything dies.
Monday we went out to the National Air and Space Museum with our friend the ‘Malator. We saw many planes. I’m not all that into aviation, so the place lost appeal after awhile. The Major and The ‘Matalor had a great time though. We got back to the house, ordered pizza and watched TV that will rot your brain. Oh, and I did about 4 loads of laundry.

They're coming

I know I promised a few weeks back, that I'd post some pictures of the fur-childrens' slumber party. I was actually going to do it this week. That was until the Major galivanted off to Europe and the Middle East with the camera. (Did I mention I'm a lazy punk and I hadn't offloaded any of the pictures yet?) If it's any consolation, the Major hied off with the camera without taking the charger. And he discovered the battery is pretty much dead. So be patient my little treats, and I'll post pictures of the demonspawn when the camera gets back.

xoxo

Fuzz Overload

Watch this space for some pictures. We're dog sitting our friend Joy's Shih-tzu this weekend. Roxy and Ginger are great pals, so we're going to have to take pictures of the cute-overkill that's going to be going on at our place this weekend.

Iron Chef: Spinach

There has been a new ingredient added to my list of foods to avoid at all costs: spinach.

Most of my triggers are usually chocolate + (fruit/vegetable). As long as I eat them within 48 hours of each other, it's an insta-migraine. The two notable exceptions to this equation are cranberries and alcohol; they're enough by themselves to send me running for the bed turning off all the lights in my path.

Some well-meaning people brought me breakfast Sunday morning, and it was quite tasty (even if it did have spinach in it). The spinach gremlins left me to my own devices all day yesterday, but they planned a blitzkrieg for 7:21 am Monday morning. I woke up (late) this morning to the sight of a pre-migraine aura dancing in my left eye. To top it all off, the last of Tropical Storm Barry decided at 7:25 while I was walking the dog to go from 'light mist' to 'torrential downpour.' Of course, the dog doesn't like to walk, much less, pee in the rain. Monday just isn't Monday with out something like this to start it off right.

For the record: spinach, cranberries, strawberries, any citrus fruit, chocolate, peanut butter and alcohol.

Kamakazi

I am very irritated at my upstairs neighbors. Last Thursday, I was out on the terrace having my before-bedtime-cigarrette. Roxy was roaming back and forth seeing if the neighbor's cat was out on her terrace so they could stare at each other through the fence. We were just quietly enjoying the cool evening.

Then I noticed Roxy jump back. A few seconds later I heard some water hit the concrete (and my dog). I walked out from under the roofed in section of our terrace and looked up. There were our neighbors on the 3rd floor -- trying to bomb Roxy with squirts from their bottles of water. They stared at me, I stared at them and said "NOT COOL!" They continued to stare at me, and never said a word. It was this weird lifeless stare, kind of like they weren't even alive or maybe they were possessed by zombies.

At any rate, I've been very leery about letting Roxy out on the terrace because I'm not sure if these buttheads are going to try to throw more water on her, or worse solid objects that could seriously hurt her. I've been debating telling property management about them; I'm relatively certain it's against our bylaws to throw anything off your balcony. However, I don't want this to devolve into some pissing match and have the upstairs neighbors on the 3rd floor retaliate. The dog would most likely bear the brunt of the retaliation, and I don't want her to get hurt.

Any ideas, because I'd like to be able to go out on my balcony-terrace and not have to worry about the idiots on the 3rd floor.

Choose Life

I ran across this site a few weeks ago, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. Every time I play with my dog, thoughts of what happened to that dog cross my mind. I've lost pets before, but never have they been forceably taken from this life.

What stuns me the most about what happened to Marbles is that Gee's first choice of action was to get a gun and blow the dog away. Not only killing, but in this case the gun she used was the equivalent of taking out an anthill with a nuclear bomb. Why didn't she fire the gun in the air to scare the dog off?

I've read every article and link at the site. One thing that is abudantly clear to me is that Gee's story is wildly inconsistant. The only fact that she consistantly states is that she shot the dog. Gee seems oblivious to the fact that she killed a living being, and she's stated that she would do it again. Death is not the only solution.

I don't know how Marbles came to be on Gee's property. Maybe part of the electric fence was broken. Even so, a pet owner shouldn't have to fear that their dog will get shot dead by their neighbors. My heart goes out to Marbles and her family. I know it's never easy to lose a pet, but to lose one in this manner seems unbearable.

Postscript:
I had a really hard time writing this entry. I wrote, edited, rewrote and removed entire passages. I finally decided to focus on 'killing as a means of first recourse.' I want to be charitable towards Gee as we'll never really know what happened. To that end I removed a lot of text about her behaviors (i.e.: why were her children playing outside apparently unattended? among other questions I had.)

My final thought on the matter is that dogs will continue to escape their yards and roam around. We can't really change that, they're dogs. We can build better fences and keep a closer eye on them, but there will always be that one time the dog gets free. To that end, we can change how we react to a strange, possibly threatening animal on our property. We can chose many other options that don't involve killing the animal.

I'll Take '1000' Alex

Alex: Remember each correct answer (in the form of a question) will contain the numerical value "One Thousand" Good luck, players!

AJ: I'd like 1000 for 400, Alex.

Alex: Blood work, X-rays, Medicine and other treatments.

AJ: What is 'How much does it cost when you take your dog to the vet because she's been vomiting, peeing and diarrhea'ing all over your house for the last 12 hours?"

That's right. Yesterday morning Roxy blessed us all. She has spread her love all over the house and all over the various types of flooring. She's not particular. The carpet, ceramic tiles and hardwood have all been hit by her explosive rear end.

Our very on-point vet thinks that she's got a parasite of some stripe, so he's prescribed deworming medication and a broadband anti-parasite medicine for her. She doesn't like her medication, so I've had to resort to chasing her through the house with a pill coated in peanut butter on my finger, pinning her down, and smearing it on the roof of her mouth so she'll swallow it.

Honestly, I wasn't counting on having to pay 1000 dollars for this visit to the vet. But, I'd rather be safe than sorry. I'd never forgive myself if she ended up dead because I thought "oh, it's just a case of diarrhea, she'll get over it." I've seen her regular diarrhea and it's nothing like what was spread all over the house these past 24 hours. I'm happy to report she's on the mend and her energy levels and rambunctiousness have returned to almost normal.

Elevator

I am not a morning person. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Roxy, however, loves the morning. She's hyper and happy. She thinks it's time to play and she's ready to romp. Most mornings I watch her with affection and she makes me smile. This morning I was tired and really not in the mood for it. Especially when I was walking her. She wasn't doing anything wrong, per se -- I just wasn't in the mood to deal with a ballfull of doggie energy.

We got back on the elevator on the lower level of the parking garage after her walk. She was pacing all around the elevator sniffing things, and just checking the environment out. I told her to "sit," and she ignored me. So I raised my voice and told her to "sit" again.

At this point, the door opened on the second level of parking garage. Roxy is standing next to me safely penned against the wall. Looking at me and wagging her tail. Still not sitting. The blonde swamp donkey outside the elevator takes one look at us, lets out a sigh like really stuck up people do when they realize they're going to have to interact with the 'public,' makes a mean face at me and Roxy and says rather rudely "I'll just have to take the stairs." And stomps off.

I just stood there rather stunned. We were in the back corner of the elevator and there was plenty of room. Roxy was on a short leash so there was no way she could have interacted with this woman. And the only reason why I raised my voice at Roxy was because she was being fidgety and I wasn't in the mood for it. Yet she still chose to treat us like pariahs. And like we had completely imposed on her.

Shout Out!

Neil knows me really well. For Christmas this year he got me the boxed set of The Big O. It's an anime series that I've been eyeing for some time and heard really good things about. I haven't started watching it yet -- I'm kind of saving it to have something to do when I'm laid up in bed with nothing to do in mid-February.

So, belated, here's a great big shout out and thank you to Neil.

(And he's even coming over this evening to keep me and the animals company! It's great to have a neighbor like him.)

Im Grinchin' Your Xmaz an' Framin' teh Dawg

This is the story of a kitteh whose heart was 2 sizes too small.

Sunday morning the dog woke me up like she always does -- roughly around 7, hyper and ready to play. As I was getting ready to take her for her walk, I noticed there was some shredded ribbon in the doorway to the guest bedroom, i.e.: Roxy's playroom. I started to yell at the dog, but further investigation revealed a still nicely wrapped present, sans ribbon, laying in the middle of the dog's toys. There were no doggie teeth marks, no doggie slobber, just the present placed neatly in the middle of the dog's toys. And the shredded ribbon. And the cat is nowhere to be found.

This morning when I went to feed the dog, I found a mauled ornament in front of the cabinet where we store the dog's food. It used to be one of those ball ornaments, but now it was missing the top part where the cap for the hanger fits. I picked up the the ball part of the ornament, and threw it away. I hauled the dogfood over to Roxy's dish to feed her and that's when I noticed a trail of ornabitz leading from the cabinet to her food and water bowls. Before I yelled at the dog for savaging an ornament, I checked the main pieces of the now deceased ornament and noticed that once again there were no dog sized teeth marks. No dog drool. Just a thrashed ornament around the dog's stuff and the kitteh is again nowhere to be found.

Grinch kitteh must be grasping for straws here. Destroying things around the house and then trying to frame the dog. Did I mention that I sprayed the greater tree area with no-scratch to keep kurious kats away? Did I mention that the cat likes to roll around and attempt to shred the no-scratched tree skirt? I have a masochistic, evil, mafia-esque, frame the dog cat on my hands.