8 posts tagged “pets”
It's hard to believe that we've had Molly for just over a year. She has been one of those animals that once we had her it was as though we had always had her. We commented as much to each other just weeks after getting her. I'm still not sure as to how any family could have given her up. The picture my mind conjures when imagining such people is of a cadre of sideshow attractions who revel in debauched acts. It's not a favorable picture.
Molly in many ways is the perfect dog. She's well-behaved, knows several commands, smart as a whip and easily controllable on the rare occasions when she steps out of line. The only thing about her behavior that I would like to change is her separation anxiety and the extreme excitement she experiences when we have visitors. We have casually tried to coax her to chill out when people come over but it's been clear for a long time that if we want to change this it's going to require quite a bit of work and some helpful volunteers. But even so, even with this essentially minuscule problem with her behavior, her only sin is that she loves too much. It's hard to punish someone for being so excited by your arrival home from a long day away.
Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to go on and on in a sappy endless litany about how my dog is more awesome than your dog. Just know that she is. So whenever you feel like ass, when nothing is going your way know that there's a dog out there, and she feels the deepest affection for you.
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I've long maintained that I like animals more than most people. With that in mind when I heard my brother had a new dog I was anxious to meet the new little furry York. Behold: SNOOK!
I have to write his name like that because I think if SNOOK! could, that's how he would say it. As is evident, SNOOK! is an English Bulldog. Let me be clear, I've wanted one of these dogs since I can remember wanting anything. I won't try to justify why I like them so much (perhaps too many cartoons as a kid). Just know, that this is my dog of choice, not to besmirch Molly and/or Murphy, they are awesome. But SNOOK! has a somewhat unfair and intangible
I'm quite convinced that's how SNOOK!'s inner monologue goes. So we wrestled and played in the driveway for a while and I got to know this little package of wonderment. He's about a year old and still pretty much in his puppy phase, only he's 65lbs. of puppy that likes to jump and tackle and chew on your face. He definitely was happy to have someone to play with. It was clear he had lots of energy and no one to help him expend it. That or, more likely, he had so much energy that he needed a veritable gaggle of playmates to actually wear him out. He was quite a little dynamo. As it turns out, he's not fixed and my sister-in-law has been approached by a bulldog breeder who wants to use SNOOK! as a stud. Which means in a short while there may little SNOOK!s and SNOOKETTE!s pouncing all over creation and eating it's face. The only problem is that I think if we get any more animals we may actually have to apply for some kind of permit from the city of Monroe.
More Photos of SNOOK!
In conclusion: WANT!
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First this:
moar funny pictures
I nearly rofled right in my new jeans.
Second, remind me later to tell you about my new best fwend in the whole wide world.
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A more succinct title might be: "Things I'm doing alongside playing Video Games," because this should in no way insinuate that I have stopped. At any rate, life can't completely stop just because I have a blinky new totem that I tend to bow and scrap in front of most of the day. So, in no particular hierarchy, here's a couple other things that I've been doing.
- Learning to play in Open Tunings - From this book. If you play guitar that might actually mean something to you. If not, just know that there are myriad ways to tune the strings on a guitar and each way requires a slightly different nuance to be able to use it. It's not something I ever really messed with but always wanted to. So now I am.
- Mourning the Death of Robert Jordan - My wife has already posted the news and I'm sure most people who follow the books have already heard about James Oliver Rigney Jr.'s passing. I knew his prognosis wasn't good and I knew his one year mortality rate was ridiculously high but I still held onto a fool's hope that he'd hang on long enough to finish the final book. Granted, there were a few lemons in the series but overall it remains one of my favorite book series and my #2 favorite setting (behind Middle-earth). Even so, I really genuinely enjoyed the last book. As I understand it, he dictated Memory of Light to his wife who will finish the book for him posthumously.
- Not Sleeping So Great - This is the second morning this weekend that I've been unable to fall asleep before 10am the following day. My inability to sleep like a normal human is well-documented. My mother tells stories of my exploits (at the tender age of two) staying awake in my crib until 3am four or five nights a week. She said she'd just sit up with me while I played the night away. She said she got basically no sleep until I got old enough that they didn't have to worry about me eating poison or trying to swallow a plastic bag if I was awake and alone. We have Lunesta samples but I don't like swilling them every day like a junkie (I don't take pills more often than I have to). The only upside is that with my job, I don't have to be up and at work by 9am like normal people. So if I need to crash out for a few hours during the afternoon following a sleepless night I can.
- Teaching, Quite a Bit - Also good news, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 to 40 students in my studio right now. That makes for decent walking around money. There are few things I'd rather be doing.
- Worrying About Which Step We're On - Apparently someone decided to write a book about all the scary stuff I've been silently thinking in my head for a few years now. I never really said anything because I didn't want to sound like a paranoid nut-job. I guess you're not really paranoid if everyone really is out to get you.
- Contemplating Starting a Band - Since I ditched my last gig, I've been relaxing and enjoying my liberated six hours a week that used to be tied up in a fruitless pursuit of something so intangible, it changed every week. Don't ask. Anyway, since then I've decided I either want all of the control on a creative project or none of it. i.e. Either tell me what the hell you want me to play and cut me a check; or play it like daddy says. Anyway, if I start a band, it'll probably be a blues band. They're easy to put together, low pressure and have a good shelf life. We'll see if I actually get off my tuckus and do it.
- Walking Dogs - Gratuitous cute doggy pics to follow:
- Washing Dogs - See previous entry:
- Listening to R. L. Burnside - This one was so important I decided to save it for last. I recently discovered a new bluesman I really really like. The Blues has been a genre of music that I keep returning to no matter how far or long I stray from it. I got into it around the same time I got into Hendrix and the Counterculture music of the 60s. Since then I've been peeling back the layers of virtually every kind of popular music looking for blues roots. I could probably write a dissertation on the subject (but someone probably already has). Any-dang-way,
this guy plays a style of blues I was not familiar with until very recently. All my blues experience before this was the standard Delta Blues of Robert Johnson and Skip James or the electric blues revival stuff like Elmore James and Muddy Waters. It turns out there's a whole subgenre of blues music that sprang up right near my backyard. North Mississippi Hill Country Blues is a wholly separate beast with it's own sound. It's hard to explain but it isn't as reliant on the 12 bar blues progression like the Delta Blues. It's more static harmonically. Burnside's music showcases this and I've just really been drawn to this stuff. The fact that it evolved only a couple of hours away from my hometown also excites me. It gives me a more solid connection to this music. Acoustic Blues is my favorite kind and I found an entire album of Burnside recording his 'hits' acoustically with little-to-no accompaniment. By the sound of his voice it was toward the end of his career. His guitar work is hypnotic and rhythmically complicated, percussive even. Check it:
Awesome. I wanna play like that. Hence, the new book on open tunings.
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p.s. Incidentally, who know how to associate a picture in the embedded audio, it looks lame with just the speaker.
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Our murderous fish have (for now) redacted their reign of terror on the local avian population. Apparently, with all this extra time they've been passing the time in a more, shall we say, intimate fashion. Now we have something like eight little baby fish swimming around our already too small pond. I haven't gotten a clear count because several of them are black and it's hard to pick them out against the black plastic side of the pond. The others are starting to develop colorations ranging from whitish orange (fingering Cuddy as one of the horizontal tangoliers) to a couple of pretty ones who are black with orange spots. I tried to take a few pictures of them but (as we've seen) I suck and was unable to snap anything that didn't look better than the photos of the monster in loch Ness. I'll try again some feeding time, that's when they are most highly visible.
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Something akin to this greeted us this morning on our street so if I want to work, I'm walking. A forced day off would be nice though.
As previously mentioned, we got another dog. We spent the entire weekend going to area humane societies. We'd far rather do a dog rescue than buy from a breeder. It's cheaper, it saves an animal from a bad situation, and you (most often) get a very appreciative animal; so for us it was a no brainer.
First we looked at Emily. Let's get one thing straight, Emily might be the cutest dogs ever hatched on planet earth.
See?
But we were nervous about getting a puppy. Sweet as she was Emily was just a little too rambunctious to hang out with Murphy (which was the whole reason we were getting a second dog, I mean, it had nothing to do with the fact that we're complete suckers who are just a few fur protests away from signing on with PETA and becoming envrionmental terrorists... nothing like that.) Still, Emily didn't make the decision easy on us.
p.s. We are also cat-sitting for Redfemme's two kitties. If you're keeping score at home, that brings the grand total to 2 Dogs, 3 Fish, and 5(!) cats. Mercy!
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The three fish were here when we moved in. We inherited an outdoor water garden with the house. I've been learning quite a bit about the subject in the last month. Our friend Katrina named them after three characters from House, M.D. The pictures aren't great. It turns out it's kind of hard to photograph camera shy fish in water. I was later told we have a UV filter for the camer which will make it easier. On the next sunny day (ha!) I'll take some more pictures and see if I can't do better.
Murphy is Rebecca's child from a previous relationship. He has lived with her parents for nigh on five years. He's an Italian Greyhound. Once we got the house ready for occupation they brought him over and he's been here ever since. He's adjusting well. He doesn't mind the cats too much. They're the ones getting the short end of the deal. Murphy's pretty needy and it's easy to ignore the cats while he's around. All in all, he's a great dog and we're stoked to have a pet who is genuinely happy when we return home. The cats just look up from their bed on the freshly washed clothes like, "Oh good, the Can Opener is home."
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