Wednesday, June 29, 2005

evening

Sore Throat

Ow.  But Moooo-ooooom, I don’t want to have a sore throat.  Sure, it could be my wild imagination, but it feels like when I had strep.  I knew I shouldn’t have touched the computer mice at Circuit City today.  I love my mouse and I don’t even want another one.  I shouldn’t have touched.  Why didn’t I use hand sanitizer?  I carry it around with me.  Why oh why didn’t I use it?  I thought about using it.  Or maybe this is to punish me for laughing at Melissa’s picture of her daughter, who started crying when she accidentally got wet in the pool, then wanted out.  I swear, it was good-natured laughing.  Nothing that deserved the curse of not being able to swallow.  Crud.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

late evening

Idiot of the Day - Mr. Jaws with Paws Enforcing Laws

I looked up his license plate frame, “Jaws with paws, enforcing laws”, but I couldn’t even find a website about it.  I found a crappy useless webring, but nothing with any real information.  I’m assuming it’s training for canine officers, but I can’t be positive.  Anyway, Mr. Black Corvette (I’m debating about posting his personalized plate, but maybe won’t, as I don’t want to get the vet’s office in trouble, because his nasty behavior isn’t their fault) was at the office to pick up his elderly German Shepherd (or some type of shepherd).  Just standing there, in the super crowded office, he already seem icky and impatient.  I think his dog must’ve been boarded, but I don’t know for how long.  When he got the dog, he yanked the lame (in the elderly sort of way) dog up by the collar.  The dog obviously needed tender loving care to leave the office, but to his/her credit s/he was walking slowly and doing okay.  Apparently when the dog got outside and stepped down the curb, it had trouble getting up.  Instead of being a prepared pet owner of a large elderly dog and buying a harness to help his dog ‘s hind end get up and assist him/her in walking, he tried to yank her from his/her collar.  As we all know, yanking our neck isn’t going to help us walk, especially if we weigh over 90lbs.

So, Mr. Wihiny Black Corvette proceeded to come back into the vet’s office to exclaim, “WhenI brought my dog in, s/he could walk.” So, did he seriously think the vet’s office (who has someone spend every night there) did something to make it so his really elderly dog not be able to walk?  They’re one of the most conscientious vet’s office we’ve ever encountered.  The front desk staff is always polite and competent, the vet techs always know what they’re doing and our vet is really great.  She’s very open-minded to whatever we need to try for our freaky pets, from shots to help our Oranda, Bob, to various medications to attempt to help our German Shepherd deal with the fear of fireworks and thunderstorms.  She’s also done several successful surgeries on our pets, so we trust her.  Anyway, there is NO way that the vet’s office could possibly be responsible for his dog having trouble walking.  In fact, we remember seeing him during a prior visit, yanking his poor old dog into yet a different sports car.  He wasn’t at all gentle, and I have so much trouble believing he was ever a Canine Officer, as he doesn’t really seem to care about his dog.  I wonder if the police department pays for the dog’s care.

The end result of his snottiness was that he carried his dog back into the vet’s office.  I’m sure it was to yell at them for his elderly dog’s inability to walk down the curb outside.  I don’t know how he expected to get his big dog into his Corvette—his black Corvette (I have no qualms about him being recognized for his bad behavior, as it’s not the first time we’ve seen it from him).  I’m not sure if I’m hoping the dog was put to sleep to ease the misery of living with this man or if they were able to convince him that he needed a harness to help his dog walk.  I’m not sure I want to know.

The bonus of the trip was that everyone else in the waiting room (and there were LOTS of people - it was nuts) was very patient and nice.  We also saw the most beautiful six month old Mastiff.  What a cool looking dog, but he was already huge.  He had a super sweet face though.  And his owner already had a ramp to help him get into his car.  He’s obviously going to be a caring owner for the rest of that dog’s life.  It was nice.

Okay, I’m posting the license plate number of the guy - he was a jerk on two separate occasions at the vet’s office, due to absolutely no fault of the offiice.  It horrifies me to think that he might be a K-9 officer with LVMPD.  Anyway, if you see a black Corvette with the NV plate Linc II, steer clear.  Seems like he could be a road rage guy.

To sum this up with nice things - the vet’s office is always a happy place for us, even though it costs us a fortune with all of our pet tests and surgeries.  It feels like a home away from home and Dr. Gorman should be very happy with her staff.  They’re always polite to us, even when they’re swamped.  Oh, and welcome back Julie and Terri.  It’s nice to see old employees return.  That must say something for the working environment there.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

evening

I’m A Meme Killer

Oooh, I’m “it”.  I volunteered to be meme’d by Canadian Expat, so I guess I should follow through, huh?  And by the way, Expat, do you have a first name?  It’s hard to talk about you behind your back in our house by calling you “Canadian Expat Chick”.

1. Number of books I own:

We own zillions of books.  Fiction, pet care, cookbooks, how-to books, chick lit, humor, computer, medicine, children’s, weird stuff we hide (heh)...you name the genre, we’ve probably got a book that fits.

2. Last book I bought:

My Friend Leonard by James Frey Okay, I actually bought it a couple of months ago, after I read A Million Little Pieces, but it didn’t get delivered until yesterday.  I started reading it last night.  There’s something about his writing, as unconventional as it is, that makes me want to keep reading.  I guess it’s like reading a really raw blog.

3. Last book I read:

You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers - I was completely and totally underwhelmed.  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is much better.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:

1.  Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin - I read this when I was a kid.  I think it was the first time I’d even thought about racism.  I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and at the time, it was pretty much all white.  In my elementary school, I remember two black kids - Jo-Nathan (not until I just wrote that out did I realize it was a weird spelling of Jonathan.  Maybe it was spelled Joe-Nathan.  That would make sense.) and Damon, my big elementary school crush.  He promised to “love [me] forever, if that was okay with [me].” Aw, he was such a sweet boy.  I hope he grew up to be a nice adult.  Anyway, Black Like Me was eye-opening to me.  As far as I knew, both Damon and Joe-Nathan were treated fine in school, but I’m guessing things might have been different from their point of view.

2.  Harriet the Spy by Lousie Fitzhugh - loved, loved, loved this book.  I read it so much that the edges of the pages got frayed. 

3.  Replay by Ken Grimwood - what a great fantasy book.  Read it!  I promise you’ll love it.  If you don’t, I’ll give you five bucks.  (This offer valid to only my few readers whose names or country of origin I know)

4.  The Childcraft books from World Book Encyclopedia - They were full of fascinating tidbits like how the hot dog bun was invented (some guy sold hot dogs from a stand and he had to give gloves to people so they could hold the hot, uh, dog, while they ate.  People often walked off with the gloves, so he talked to his brother the baker.  They thought of making bread “gloves”, so no one would steal his gloves anymore...or something like that.  It’s been close to thirty years since I’ve looked at one of those books) and how hamburgers were named.  Hey Dad, if you’re reading, do you know what happened to those books in the move?

5.  Hmmm, I can’t think of a fifth book at the moment.

5. Tag five more:

And this, this is where I become the meme killer.  I don’t know if I have anyone to tag.  Volunteers, feel free to step up.

Friday, June 24, 2005

late at night

The Latest in Flippy’s Delicious Food Finds

Your taste-o-meter may vary, but um, I don’t care.  Starting off my tastyquest is the Banana Boat smoothie (made with chocolate ice-cream) from Smoothie King.  All of their smoothies are tasty (except the nasty blackberry one), but the Banana Boat smoothie is fabulous.  If you like chocolate covered bananas, you’ll love this.  Speaking of chocolate covered bananas, Von’s now has chocolate covered frozen bananas.  They’re really good and remind me of happy family times at Balboa Island.  If only they were covered with peanuts, they’d be perfect.  Okay, even more perfect would be if I was eating one while staying beachfront on Balboa Island.  Okay, off the bananawagon, we’ve found some fabulous cookies from the Philippines - Dewberry Blueberry Cream cookies. 

I’ve also rediscovered an old favorite - Popnots, you know, the half-popped popcorn kernels.  They come in more flavors now.  The jalapeno cheddar is a particular favorite.  Oh yeah, and one more thing, Dark Chocolate Nestle’s Crunch.  It’s for a limited time, but maybe if everyone realizes how good they are, they’ll keep them.  They’re even better than the dark chocolate M&Ms.

Wow, this entry is so well-written, it makes my head spin. 

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

evening

Don’t Pee In The Amazon!

Last night, Leigh-Ann and I watched a show on Animal Planet called “Eaten Alive”.  It was pretty much terrifying.  It was a whole show about parasites invading people’s bodies, eating their brains, entering their penis (The candirú is attracted to urine, so will swim up the source, if you know what I mean...and it won’t come out), swim under their skin, swim through their colons, some of which are a couple of feet long.  People are pooping these long worms out.  Imagine the horror.  It made me not want to leave my couch.  Well, not that that’s usually a huge problem anyway, but still…

We’ve also been watching Morgan Spurlock’s 30 Days show on FX.  The first episode had Morgan and his fiancee trying to make it by working minimum wage jobs.  It sure makes me appreciate not having to live like that, and wanting to help others who do.  I can’t even imagine the hours, the worrying (okay, I can imagine the worrying - as an independent contractor, I worry about being cheated by companies who go out of business.  We’ve lost many thousands of dollars in the past few years that way), the toll it takes on a relationship.  The first episode was really eye-opening, so we watched tonight’s episode about a guy in his thirties who wanted to get his in-shape body back.  He was put on a program of human growth hormone, testosterone and dozens of herbal supplements.  In addition, he was to change his eating habits and work out with a (hot!) trainer.  I enjoyed the possibility of how this episode could’ve worked, but the shrewish behavior of the guy’s wife ruined it for me.  Even before he started having liver problems, she was getting on his case for spending too much time with the (hot!) trainer.  Too much time?  It was a maximum thirty day project, lady!  Hmmm, wonder if trainer Heather’s perfect body had anything to do with Shrew-y’s behavior.  So, this episode didn’t do much for me.  I would’ve preferred they vetted the subject and his family better.  Next week though, a Christian man is spending 30 days as a Muslim.  Should be interesting.  Of course, not as interesting to me as a future episode with a Christian ex-Marine living with a gay family in San Francisco.  I miss San Francisco, so I always look forward to seeing it on tv.  Plus, I heard the guy loosens up and starts to have a good time.

Okay, moving on to books - You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers.  I have to admit, I wasn’t overly impressed by this one.  I felt like it needed lots of editing to tighten up the story, which ambled aimlessly, often and with great feeling.  I don’t doubt that Dave Eggers is a terrific writer, but I don’t feel this was a terrific book.  Looking at the Amazon reviews, it looks like more people disagree than agree with me, but there are enough who saw the book exactly as how I saw it.  Pretentiously boring.  I thought it was a great story idea, but I was disappointed with the follow-through.

A book I finished last night.  Or to be more accurate, somewhere after three this morning, and then Eli woke us up with her thunderstorm fears.  There was a little lightning and some rumbling, but it wasn’t terrible.  Just terrible enough to require Leigh-Ann leave and sleep on the couch so Eli could be next to her.  We drugged Eli with our first vet-approved dosages of Xanax, but it still doesn’t work that well.  We’ve tried just about everything.  Next, doggie pheromones.  Anyway, I digress.  I read Dry by Augusten Burroughs.  I completely enjoyed the quick read of advertising career, horrible alcoholism, subsequent recovery, subsequent falling off the wagon, then back to recovery.  I appreciate that throughout, he remained an excellent storyteller, yet I was horrified by the hundreds of Dewar’s bottles in his apartment, booze smell oozing through his pores when he went to his advertising job.  Blech.  I guess everyone has to be pretty thankful that Augusten’s childhood didn’t turn him into a deranged serial killer or something.  That was one screwed up family.  So, yeah, I liked Dry a lot and I’m going to order the rest of Augusten Burrough’s books that I haven’t read yet - Sellevision & Magical Thinking.

You know, I think this entry was a bit ambitious for a day of practically no sleep.  Let me know the millions of mistakes I’ve made by morning.  I eagerly await your critiques.  Naw, probably not eagerly.  But I hate leaving out or misspelling words.