http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/dog-cries-when-soldier-returns-home

(Nicked from Ze Frank's FB page)

Nothing like waking up and knowing you have to sit down and do a school project. I didn't really miss those days, and here I am again.

Yay for winter.

(Nicked from my realtor's newsletter)

Are you preparing to go skiing or missing the thrills of skiing right now? Have you always wanted to go skiing but can't get to the slopes? If you answered 'yes' to either of these questions, the following exercises are for you. They'll bring the sensations of a ski vacation into your life, wherever you are:

1. Buy a new pair of gloves and immediately throw one away.
2. Drive slowly for five hours, anywhere, as long as it's in a snowstorm and you're following an 18-wheeler.
3. Visit your local butcher and pay $30 to sit in the walk-in freezer for half an hour. Afterward, burn two $50 bills to warm up.
4. Wear glasses with glue smeared on the lenses.
5. Place a small but angular pebble in each of your shoes, line them with crushed ice, and then tighten a C-clamp around your toes.
6. Secure one of your ankles to a bedpost and ask a friend to run into you at high speed.
7. Throw away a $100 bill - now.
8. Fill a blender with ice, hit the pulse button and let the spray blast your face. Leave the ice on your face until it melts and let it drip into your clothes.
9. Dress up in as many clothes as you can and then take them off because you have to go to the bathroom.
10. Slam your thumb in a car door. Don't go to see a doctor.

Sheesh....

www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-10/29/tiny-banner-ads-attached-to-flies-generate-buzz.aspx


(Nicked from Mr. Stammberger on FB)

Leo's lump was not cancerous, the vet tells me, but a granuloma. Wikipedia tells me that these can be caused by 'cat scratch fever,' among other things. How appropriate. Good news, although if we'd known that going in, we wouldn't have had so much cat removed. (Right now, the little devil is playing with an ice cube. What a goof.)

He's biting at the self-dissolving sutures now and it looks like he's starting to pull them out. Five days after surgery is a little early to be removing them, I'm thinking. Maybe I can trim the excess thread so it's harder for him to get teeth on them (maybe not when he's in a playful mood, though. I don't need cat scratch fever). (I was able to clip a thread with some nail clippers, but then he caught my hand with four paws and his teeth - definitely not the right time!)

I'm so glad the little porker doesn't have cancer!

This shows two of the three shaved spots (front leg and back, and there's another spot under his chin on his neck). He's eating and sleeping today. I'm giving him antibiotic liquid twice a day (bubblegum flavored!). But I'm traveling this weekend. But Bob and Joyce will take good care of him. He'll probably be climbing the walls by the time I'm back on Sunday night. :)

I got knocked sideways today. My stripey kitty has a lump on his side. We thought it was from a recent attack by one of the black short-haired cats we have (we have two and they both hate the stripey cat. They don't growl or posture; they just attack silently. We try to keep them separate but with winter coming, it will be much harder).


So we thought the lump was an abscess. I was all set to come up with some kluged barriers in our house so the stripey cat could have run of the upstairs in the winter. But the lump isn't free-moving, which is bad, so the vet scheduled him to have the lump excised first thing tomorrow morning and sent to UC Davis for biopsy (the lump, not the kitty).

It just didn't cross my mind that my 3.5 year old kitty could have cancer. He is such a sweet boy.

Shit.

Joyce, Bob and I have been debating on and off the merits of chocolate-covered bacon. They thought it would suck, although individually those are great things. I thought it might be great. So finally, yesterday morning, Bob made bacon and covered it in melted chocolate chips.

1. There was too much chocolate. I think a thin layer would probably be better. (I had to scrape some off.)
2. The chocolate over-powered the bacon.
3. The bacon wasn't crispy enough to really shine.

Still, though, it was definitely edible. Not delicious, but not bad.

We had a (brief) snow last weekend that left snow on the mountains and are going through our first rain/wind storm. I woke up today to the sound of thunder and we might have more this evening. Fall is definitely here!

Yesterday, Bob and I hiked up to Timpanogos Cave and took the tour. The hike to the cave is 1.5 miles on a paved trail with a 1,065 foot elevation gain. It  was good exercise (not difficult for us because we hike relatively often, but it still felt like a workout). Then we completed the Alpine Loop drive. It turned out we'd actually done nearly all of it previously; it runs up American Fork Canyon and meets up with the road through Sundance and Provo Canyon. We hiked in American Fork Canyon two winters ago, and we've been up to Sundance many times.

The trees were gorgeous in the area around Sundance! Red, orange, yellow, light green, dark green, pink, deep red. Just incredible. Some of them were glowing. Some of the aspens didn't look great; wondering if we're going to lose all of ours in the Wasatch mountains.

Today I finally finished the Harry Potter series. Man, that woman can write. Those were great books. I also read a Stephanie Plum novel (fun, not deep, no character development ever) and vacuumed some. I think that's about all I will manage today, except maybe finishing a knitted cap that doesn't fit me. They're beautiful and two small (I've now nearly completed two of them). Need to find some appreciative folks with smaller heads.

I guess its time has come. And don't call it 'multi-level marketing.'

On two different airplanes today,  I was invited to join a team marketing a glutathione supplement and a prepaid legal plan. They didn't want me to buy the product, they wanted me to join the team (for a minimal startup fee).

I've been approached in airports before, but today they were batting 1000...

Eight years ago, I was starting my drive to work though the mountains and I heard unbelievable news on my radio. I immediately called Dave and woke him up to turn on the news. Hardly any useful work was done that day, as we all saw unforgettable images on the television and talked about that impossible thing that had just happened. 

Seven years ago, not to the day, my own life exploded and collapsed. I have no recollection at all of that first anniversary of 9/11,  because my own personal 9/11 had eclipsed that awful anniversary.

Today I'm remembering those events and personalizing the terrorist attacks. It felt to me at the time that the terrorist attacks marked a downturn in my own life. The last three months of 2001 and first 8 months of 2002 were filled with disquiet and unease for me (easy to say now, from this vantage point, but I still remember feeling it that spring and summer). Dave was out of a job and trying to make a new career for himself. The country was fighting a war it didn't know where to direct with a not-elected, green president at the helm. I just felt kind of icky, and like I needed to hold things together for everyone else. Then the bottom fell out of that effort on August 28, 2002.

Today, I feel like I'm in transition, like I've actually entered it rather than approaching it or thinking about it. But I still don't know from what to what. And I don't know how much help I need. There are things I can control and things over which I have no control, and trying to control the latter is madness. But it's not always easy to tell which is which, at least from the inside. There are ways I want my life to be, but I don't have complete control over some of the elements that need to be in place. I still struggle with how much to accept what is and how much to try to effect change.

The space station just flew by overhead, at exactly the time someone at work told me it would.

Nicked from pharyngula :

news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8231000/8231553.stm

I got to dance to Mike Sikorsky last night. He called C1 at Penny Young's house. We had *almost* two squares; would been nice if maybe 3 more people were there.

I'm not sure I'd ever danced to him before. He has a wonderful voice (reminded me a bit of Dave Wilson's). He helped us a lot, and kept calling us out when we got ourselves asymmetric. It was all sight-called, too. I enjoyed it, and I think the other dancers found it sufficiently challenging.

Lots of fun!

My next kitty pi:



This will get much, much bigger, then I'll felt it and shape it.

Folks didn't get the refuse "in":




(And what about the third hand?)