I Should Have Waited To Post This Until The 13th*

Apparently it's going to be a week of confessing stuff. Stay tuned, I've done a lot of stupid shit in my day. Probably in your day, too.

I officially decided not to adopt Maggie the Wonder Dog. Many of you are likely not at all surprised. I'm not too surprised either but I do feel sort of terrible about it, as can happen even with "right" decisions. It's me, not her. She's great and she'd have been a fine addition to the menagerie but I didn't want her. (That sounds approximately 1000 times worse than I mean it.) I want to want her but I don't and that's just not right.

There's a decent possibility she'll go to live with a family in the area who already has a dog. I think she'd like that. She seems to really like having another dog to take her cues from. There are a couple of other possibilities as well if that one doesn't work out. She'll land on her feet, that one.

Just wanted you to know.

*Apparently studies have shown that a plethora of break ups occur on the 13th so people don't have to shell out for VD celebrations with someone they can't stand.

Admissions Expert

So, I'm on the weight loss bandwagon again. Figure I just have to get that information out in the world.

NDP convinced me to be her weight loss buddy again. We weighed in for the first time last Thurs morning. 141. That's in pounds. So, 16 back from my original WW goal weight, which I reached, and 11 or 12 from the weight I felt was comfortable.

I haven't signed back up for WW so I'm kind of winging it on the points and whatnot (anyone who wants to just give away their sign in info for their online account just so I can calculate the points of stuff could surely expect some sort of gift from me). I made myself a points tracker which I keep in Google docs and I've started using that again.

I cooked all my food for the week, which should help some. I had Bobby with me all weekend which definitely helped a lot because I got more exercise this weekend than I did when I had my own dog. NDP and I will be walking each Thurs evening. I'll stop taking the bus from the train again. I just have to get back into all those little habits.

Just.

So, yeah, the blinding rage part of the weight loss process has set in at this point. It'll pass, I suppose. It  has to 'cause I'm not buying a whole new wardrobe.

Again.

Alt.Vue

I know it's ridiculous to ask you not to watch the Superbowl, or even the commercials. I know it'd be ineffective to ask people to stop watching CBS. I mean, CBS has Craig, among other things, so even I couldn't boycott. I can ask you, though, to check out some alternative viewing.

Alternative to what? Alternative to the pro-life bullshit being spewed by CBS/Tim Tebow/Tebow's mom.

Try Sean James and Al Joyner's pro-choice PSA. My favorite quote from it: "We celebrate families by supporting our mothers, by supporting our daughters, by trusting women." That's what we like to hear, gentlemen.

If you don't love those guys, how do you feel about Scott Fujita and the way he speaks for the pro-choice and LGBT rights movements? I don't even like football and now I'm rooting for the Saints so this guy will get more air time.

If you remain confused about why this is a big deal here are some highlights. CBS has in the past refused to air commercials they consider political in nature (i.e. from MoveOn and the like) stating a ban on political ads which protects their journalistic integrity. Apparently going full hard-on anti-choice isn't political. They also refused to accept a web ad from an LGBT dating site. Not sure what journalistic integrity rules that violated. So. You know. Have a good time watching the big game but if you get a chance to kick CBS in the 'nads, please don't waste it.

Grateful. Sorry.

Bobby is staying with me this weekend. I picked him up on Thursday night and I'll return him like an extremely energetic library book on Monday before I go to work. We've been chasing sticks and walking with friends and appeasing the mean cats and it has been good. Really good. I've been writing in my head all the regular little fun things we've been doing so you can hear what a great dog he is.

A few minutes ago he climbed up onto the couch, not way down at the other end but right in the middle so his nose is breathing humid, toasty doggie breath on my chilly piggies. I reached out my hand to his head and a voice in my head, the same one that told me her name was Emily, said, "Grateful."

I'm so glad he's here. I'm glad he's so good and that he loves me. More than that, though, I'm simply glad he's alive, here on earth. Maybe just because or maybe because he was here before, when Emily was alive. Regardless, it's nice to have a word for what I've been feeling this weekend.

I've been having a hard time loving dogs lately. All dogs. It's wonderful to have a dog here who does not acknowledge anything less than devotion.

In This Case, It Is

I'm doing something sort of ridiculous tomorrow.

I've heard it's great and I've heard it's shite. I've heard I should see it in regular 3-D, I've heard it doesn't matter. I figure, though, that this is one of those cases where bigger really is better.

I'm seeing Avatar at 10:30 tomorrow morning in IMAX 3-D.

I've tried to go at least once before but it was sold out. It has continued to be sold out in IMAX at times when I thought I might check it out. Finally Pony Express and I decided that we'd just go counterintuitive. I bought tickets today while I was up there for class. I'll get up earlier than I would to go to work, get fortified against the wind, cold and snow (could be a dusting, could be almost a foot, hard to tell), throw sticks for the Bobster for 45 minutes to an hour then return him to his own home and take about an hour's subway ride up to the biggest, fanciest IMAX theatre we've got.

Even if I hate the movie it will have been one hell of a little Saturday morning adventure.

Dust Up Your Dust Covers

Have you been following the corporate dust-up between Amazon and Macmillan? It's like high noon out there in cyberspace, except the duellers have seriously bad aim and keep killing bystanders instead.

The overview is that Macmillan (and presumably other publishers as well) feel that e-books should be priced on a scale similar to the way a hardcover and a paperback are - not because of what they're made of but based on when they come out. You pay more to get it hot off the internet press, as it were. Since Amazon made the Kindle and it's currently the most popular e-reader they stand firm about keeping e-books at one price, $9.99 (even though some e-books are already price both above and below that), since they want people to spend their extra dough on a Kindle and keep buying books for it. So, shortly after the announcement of the iPad (coincidence?) and which publishers would be working with Apple on that (Macmillan is in the middle of the graphic on all the photos) Amazon pulled all of their Macmillan titles from the cyber shelves. They didn't announce it or explain it they just disappeared (reminiscent of AmazonFail so many months ago) on a Friday afternoon. By Monday it became clear that the disappearance was deliberate, the debate raged and eventually Amazon said that it would put Macmillan titles back on the shelves. So far, 5 days after that announcement of reinstatement, no Macmillan titles are available directly from Amazon.

Don't take my word for it. Take Scalzi's or Rob's or any other person in the publishing industry who has a link to Macmillan or Amazon. It's an interesting debate if you're literarily or economically minded.

However, the people who are actually being hurt by this are authors. Sales are down for many of them and many of them don't have Kristine Scalzi doing their finances so in already troubled financial times this is a steel toed kick to the livelihood. That is why I'm writing. Are you looking for something to read? Want to buy a book this week? Think about buying a Macmillan title (many, many imprints are under the Macmillan umbrella) and buying it from someone other than Amazon. How about Powell's? Or someone from IndieBound? Could be fun and it sure would help a writer out.

NWW: Imagine Me

I don't have a profile picture on Twitter. I think I need a new one for Facebook and Aaryn hates the one I'm using at the Colony. I have too many choices so I need help narrowing them down. Check out the Flickr set of me for inspiration and let me know what photos you think best represent me, please. Thanks!

Flash (not) Gordon

The flash class was great. Overwhelming but fantastic. I learned at least 10 things from it.

1. This photo does not have "catch lights" in the eyes. Had I known more about flash I could have had them.

2. The pop-up flash on the fancy pants cameras is not the devil. You may use it more than you use a big flash.

3. You can increase or decrease the power of the flash's output.

4. You might do #3 in order to match the light coming from other directions in your photo. So for instance there's decent light coming from the right in this photo but I could have matched (or slightly undercut) that light and brightened the whole thing up a little. Just to get the shot to the level it's at now I did a fair amount of post-processing. With a little flash knowledge I wouldn't have had to mess with it so much.

5. Figuring out how to use flash subtly and to your advantage is mostly a matter of testing. There's trial and there is error. You know how much I hate trial and error, right?

6. My camera won't do a few of the cooler things Switzer taught us. It's just too old. Some of those things are less cool than, oh, necessary. Like not having the camera dictate your highest or lowest shutter speeds in some flash situations.

7. The coolest thing he taught us would cost me around $2,000 to accomplish (and that's if I didn't upgrade the camera).

8. That cool thing is buying a few flashes like the one I have and at least one that's fancier than that (it has the ability to become a "commander"). You can then sort of gang them together wirelessly to fire when you hit the shutter button. So, for instance, if you were taking photos at a party with pretty ambient light you could hide a few of these babies around the joint. When you took photos you'd be amping up the light enough that your pictures come out nicely.

9. There's a fair amount of physics involved in flash photography. I never took physics. If they'd given me a camera maybe I'd have been more inclined. (Doubtful)

10. I was absolutely correct to take any class this particular instructor offers. He speaks a language I understand and he knows better than I what I need to know.

Next time we're out you don't mind if I take your picture a few hundred times, do you?

She's Aces In My Book

So it turns out that I might be talked out about the dog issue. I'm so confused and broken over it that I'm spinning in very painful circles. So confused that I turned to the Tarot last night. Usually that helps to focus me, which I like. I favor the 3 card layout which gives you one card each for the past, present and future of your question. My go to sites for interpretation are Learn Tarot and for shorter, more humorous insight, Hollywood Tarot.

My first draw regarding the question of Maggie was this:

10 of Wands - Learn Tarot's interpretations is this. Which makes sense to me in that the end of a dog's life is tough and you make sacrifices and you do a lot of work to make that part easier. I also used my doggie responsibilities to hide out from other things at which I was afraid to fail. Hollywood Tarot calls this one a Kevin Costner.

7 of Pentacles - I absolutely see how my time now, this dogless time, is a time of reflecting and waiting and assessing the work before and the work that is to come. Whether the work to come is dog work or other, neglected work is, OF COURSE, unclear. We get in trouble when we go to Hollywood, though, because I don't get how the Woody Allen-ness works with what I read over at Learn Tarot.

Six of Wands - Here's where I fall down, interpreting the outlook for the future. Will my triumph and acclaim come from the things I am now starting to catch up on since I'm not hiding behind the dog? Or will it come in the love and loyalty of having this new dog? Or does it not matter either way, I'm just going to triumph no matter what I do? I sure hope it doesn't mean I'm going to die on the crapper after eating a peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwich.

So then I just ran off in another direction because the answer wasn't clear to me. I did another draw on the Hollywood Tarot site itself and got this:

Justice

10 of Pentacles (What if I am saving this dog out of not so altruistic motives?)

The Charioteer (For the love of Purina, if I knew where I was going with all this would I be tarot reading about it?)

At which point I decided just to shuffle and draw one card to help me decide what to do in the moment. That moment being the one where my brain was spinning and my heart was sauteed and I needed some sleep.

Four of Swords (or The Artist Formerly Known as Prince)

So I went to bed.

Advice I Have Gotten About Dogs And Homes

I felt better with a dog in the house.

You'll know.

Don't get it unless you're sure.

It's OK if you're not ready.

Take your time, don't let anyone rush you.

Take pictures.

It'll be fine. Don't worry.

Lone

I went to my Camera Flash Made Easy class today. It was a long day for the brain and I didn't get a ton of sleep last night but it was fun. As predicted a learned a whole lot but really I just need to practice a bunch. More on that later. After I've fired my flash in your face about 160 times.

I had to scurry home, though, to grab keys and pick up the Maggie Dog for her overnight here. There were missteps and foolishness and my sweet Aunt Fanny it's cold out there. Not the sort of night where it's OK to screw up an address and go 3 long blocks out of one's way.

She didn't want to come with me. She tried to hide upstairs and I don't know these people and wasn't sure if anyone was home so there I was standing foolishly in the foyer not wanting to poke around the house, trying to decide how to convince her to come to me. She'd come just within tongue's reach to get a treat but she wouldn't descend the stairs completely. I finally tricked her. I rattled her food dish until she came into the kitchen, gave her a treat then grabbed her collar and leashed her up.

She was much better on the street. Well, better and worse. She was more of a puller when she wanted to sniff something but she was calm enough to make eye contact with me if I called her name and she accepted treats and love on the street.

The pet food store was closed which is really too bad since I don't have any food for her. I have some treats and I've got rice and I'm thawing some chicken. I'm pissed they were closed, I was sure they were open until 8! Tomorrow morning will have to include a trip to the pet food store, if not for food at least for treats.

I've concluded that, despite being a deeply nervous dog, she's actually quite brave. She continues to be interested in places and things even when she's frightened. She continues to stand her ground when the cats act foolish, while remaining properly wary of them.

The cats are a problem. They're a huge problem. As long as we all sit quite still they manage to keep quiet but as soon as anyone moves there's a lot of bushy tails and throaty growls and the occasional outright attack. I was trying to pet them as they stared at the dog while puffed out to thrice their size. That helped a bit, I thought, but then the dog went off to get a sip of water and they attacked her. She had to be rescued and I yelled. Nothing like a firmly mixed message I suppose.

I have to play this experiment out to the fullest extent. I have to try to sleep in my own bed instead of chickening out and sleeping on the couch. Tomorrow I have to get up off the couch and do the things that need doing around the place so everyone has to move about the place and pass near each other and not have it end in a blood bath. We'll also go out for a couple of longish walks to give everyone a break but co-habitation is key.

This whole process of deciding about a new dog is even harder than I thought it might be. In some ways helping Emily to die was easier because I asked for clarity and I knew her so well and I knew she was declining so I could make a fully informed decision. There are many more variables to this one. Not the least of which is that this particular dog really needs one human being on whom she can rely and when that happens I have no doubt that she will seemingly transform. In truth she'll simply finally be able to be her real self because she won't have to worry about everyone else so much. I'm pretty sure that self will be pretty darned cool but the more I get to know her the more I also think that she'll be fairly strong willed and not a little sneaky. Spoiled by my old dog I gave Maggie a half a large biscuit then brought the other half into the living room. I set it on the coffee table while I wrenched my shoes off and she, without even looking to me for confirmation, sniffed the second half once, tilted her head for the right angle and snarfed that fucker right down. She's smart. She knows what's for dogs and that she's a dog so she has a right to it.

She's not a lap dog despite being a great lap size. She'll get close but not really in your lap. She stood next to the couch for a long while so I could scritch her, which she loved. It also inspired me to consider testing my new showerhead, which I chose specifically for ease of dog washing.

Making this decision feels very lonely. I think that's part of why I'm feeling the need to share the process pretty extensively here. What in the name of Steve Jobs would I have done in the time before blogging? I know that making this sort of decision with someone else presents its own challenges. I know that I am capable of taking Maggie in and giving her the kind of life she needs. I also know that with her issues and with the cats' issues that project would be a long, intricate and perhaps all-consuming one for a while. Maybe a long while. My cats are stubborn.

I don't need to decide anything tonight. I just need to press on with the experiment. Tomorrow night, when Maggie is safely back on a bed in her current home, it'll be time to think on it some more.

Watch Me Bowl!

I did not take pictures at my birthday. I was too busy bowling and eating cake. Miflohny took some pictures and graciously agreed to let me post them. She never posts her photos to the internet, she sends them out by e-mail or gives hard copies always. In light of this I want to reiterate the common sense rule that you should not steal these photos. It's bad manners, it's borderline illegal and it will result in my being disallowed from publishing her photos ever again (my death, though unlikely, might also be a consequence of greed) so do not do it. Thanks.

 

This is the cake that Pony Express made me. We were working in very low light so you can't distinguish all the little details of its glory but you can see the majesty of it and the cool candles. I cannot stress enough how delicious this cake was. Three layers of chocolate cake and two different kinds of frosting, every morsel of it homemade. May you all be so lucky at your next celebration.

  

My parents didn't teach me to bowl. In fact I'm not sure I've ever been bowling with my parents. I was taught to bowl by a family friend whose wife worked on artistic projects with my parents. While they all worked on their thing we bowled. This birthday party bowling party was the first time I had the opportunity to pass along my ridiculous love of the activity to another generation. I got to help Little Seal shakily shove his first ball down the lane and I agreed to the detrimental 4th string of bowling because Alita was having so much fun we could not bear to cut it short. Getting to watch them enjoy it together, without my adult interference, was, as they say, icing on the cake.

 

Right here is a picture of my form. I've got decent follow through. It involves a relatively deep lunge and some specific work by that back foot. So what you're seeing up there is how I broke my butt. Still twinging weeks later. Totally worth it.

The rest of Miflohny's photos of the event are over at Flickr if you want to peruse our blurrily ecstatic birthday hootenanny.

History

Something odd happened to me a few weeks ago so I wrote it down and planned to share it with you. Forgot all about it until now.

Sitting in the window of a busy coffee shop on the Upper West Side. I saw a small, curly-coated, black dog streaking at top speed up the center of the north bound lanes of Broadway. I gasped but couldn't do anything. Not true. I could have abandoned my two bags and coat and run out after it. I might have caught up in time to see it flattened by an unwitting delivery truck. Or I might have run aimlessly around for long, cold minutes seeing nothing at all. I'm not very fast. Certainly not as fast as an armful of highly motivated pooch.

I waited, fingers crossed, breath held, tears standing in my eyes for the inevitable human pursuit. In the brief flash as he passed I saw a collar and blue tags shine against his coat.

No one came.

No swift-heeled child, no panicked senior citizen, no lithe young man or angry mother. No one at all.

There are, I suppose, plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations. The dog might already have changed directions so his pursuers were off on the wrong heading. Perhaps he'd escaped unnoticed from a sidewalk tethering or mishandled apartment door. Just maybe he does this all the time and is known to wriggle home safe by nightfall.

I can't shake, though, the deathly feeling of a complete lack of pursuit. It's no secret that I would have followed my dog, distraught, to the ends of the earth. I was fortunate in that she held the reciprocal conviction so we were rarely far removed from each other. I know plenty of dogs who, love for their people undiminished, are easily distracted and prone to adventure. And I know without a doubt that their people - terrified, furious, shocked - would be pelting down the street, unstoppable in their search if this misfortune befell their family.

Oh Little Dog Lost, you broke my heart. Come home safe.

And soon.

In Other Words

I wasn't going to keep talking about the State of the Union but then I read this Anil Dash entry which weaves together that speech with the other big announcement in the media yesterday and I realized that I should talk about it as much as I had room for. Fortunately this is the internet and there's enough room for almost everything. Start there.

Then you could hit my friend Melanie's post over at The Colony about the two Os - O'Brien and Obama.

On a similar but somewhat weirder note (via Feministing) is basketball player Paul Shirley's in depth exploration of why we shouldn't care about Haitians and their problems. It got him fired from his columnist gig at ESPN which might speak well of ESPN. Then again maybe they were just spinning.

John Scalzi's piece about the SotU is so far my favorite and you should absolutely read it. (Short, easy to read, funny.) Quotes include, "[N]ote to wingers on both sides: expressing the opinion that Obama is not in fact moderate-lefty in the current US political spectrum, but is instead whatever thing you hate the most, is an IQ test in itself. Try not to fail it." and "Obama’s real problem is that in Congress, his allies are incompetent cowards and his adversaries are smug dicks."

If you can't stand any more about this mess we're in then I'll throw you a bone (heh). Go over and see what sort of a mess Aaryn got herself into the other day.

OK, that's it. You kids have fun stormin' the castle!

Never Before

I've probably admitted before that I've never watched a full political speech before so that's not new. On the other hand I probably haven't told you why. I have an anxiety problem. It's not diagnosed, it's not medicated, it's not debilitating but it is pervasive. It was its worst when I was a teenager and probably right around the time that most of you out there were first being exposed to politics and were asked to connect to the process. Triggers include but are not limited to nuclear power, nuclear war, otehr kinds of war and marriage. (Kidding.) (But about what?) Nuclear war and nuclear power were big deals in my teen years and they're just coming around on the guitar now, aren't they?

Is that an excuse not to have watched a full State of the Union until I turned 41? Could I not have worked out some coping mechanisms (lord knows I have plenty) and toughed it out since it's the adult thing to do? Yeah, probably. But I didn't and now you know why.

So I've got no practice talking about the hour and 10 minutes I just watched. The only thing I know for sure is that the minute he endorsed nuclear power my heart started to beat faster and I had to take a little walk around the room putting some things away while I kept listening. My head knows that nuclear energy is clean and safe and smart when handled correctly but my heart told my head to go fuck itself.

Did the President of the US make fun of people who don't believe in climate change (and therefore science)? I think he did. That felt chancy. Felt kind of good, too.

This speech cemented something I've thought for a while. I like that Obama doesn't please one side or the other completely. Of course he wrapped up his comments by reminding everyone that he never said the change would be easy nor that he could do it alone. I can't be the only person who remembers him saying that in other speeches both before and after his election. I mean, I didn't even watch all of them! If you honestly thought that Obama would significantly change the world in a year or less then you have even less experience of this world than I do. If you'll pardon my saying so, that's sad because I am a poor example.

His ideas struck me as FDRish, which I suppose is either wonderful or horrible depending on your perspective. I don't know a whole lot about FDR but he gave my grandfather a job and so far my family all still has our heads above water, even if just barely on some days, so I'm partial to him and his crazy New Deal. Plus, he made the Federal Theater possible and that makes my heart ache with joy and loss.

I'm sort of even listening to the Republican response but it's making my stomach clench. This man's demeanor feels combative and it's setting off all my anxious bells. After a speech that took both sides specifically to task for partisanship this slick little man is calling out Democrats specifically. Shouldn't that be offensive and poor politics to everyone? I live in New York State, our state legislature stopped functioning entirely this summer due to partisanship, I don't take that shit lightly. And neither should you, wherever you live. Earlier he said that government needed to be reduced and now he's saying that government "close to the people" is best. I can see where he's going with both of those but if you put them next to each other they seem wildly contradictory. And then he quoted "the scriptures." Well, sir, I hate that even more than I hate Obama's "God Bless the United States of America" bullshit. At the very least be more specific, which scriptures? Each religion has their own. Now I wish I hadn't watched, I may not sleep and I'm definitely going to cry.

Really, though, I started to write this to say something related but entirely different. I went through my reader a few months ago and swept out blogs I was reading out of obligation adn not enjoyment. A few of those were blogs where the author's political views were a. drowning my enjoyment of the other things they wrote and b. were clearly not going to change. Since then I've gotten myself on Twitter and the other day one of the authors I'd decided not to read started following me. That was weird on a number of levels since I don't think she ever read my blog but it prompted me to click over to her and read through some of the recent entries.

During the last Presidential election this writer clarified a bunch of things for me about conservative views. I remember her responding to something about government charity. I'm not sure how charity was defined during that conversation. She strongly advocated that the government not be responsible for this sort of thing that private funds should be used or at least that citizens should be allowed to choose how much they give to people who need assistance and that government should not, in essence, force us to give. The implication was that anyone who deserved to be saved (whoever that is) would be helped with this system and there would be less waste. It was a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of discussion.

This week in going back to her space I discovered that her husband has lost his job and they may be facing foreclosure. I'm considering reading her regularly again because she may swiftly be facing the need for the sort of help of which she is skeptical. She's smart, skilled, motivated, strong and absolutely sure in her convictions so I feel as though she could be about to teach a big lesson about whether her plans will work. I want to know if she'll use government or private assistance and how she'll resolve this dip in circumstances. It's surely a dip, she'll be back on track soon, I have no doubt. But going back just to see how she resolves this misfortune feels like stopping to watch someone in trouble on the side of the road, it's rude and creepy and no help at all. I'll be thinking of her, though, because she's ground level, everyday America right now and she has a golden opportunity to explore the solutions all our political and media air bags are huffing and puffing about now.

I suspect they've got a lot to learn from her.

NWW: Then What Is?

If this isn't proof that I need that flash class then I just don't know what is.

(Music Boy after being extremely well-behaved during a marathon dinner with me, his dad and our long lost friend. You get your own mini photo session for your pig after something like that if that's what you want.)

NWW: St. Elsewhere

see more Epic Fails

I've got more images going on over at the Colony.

Also, please cross your fingers for me this evening. I spent most of last night working away to marry the Colony's Twitter feed (very sparse now, I know, I'm not going to tweet it up until I've solved this marriage) and Facebook page and it seemed to be going really well but it doesn't work. Going to have to try again this evening (*waves of dread*) so I can use all the good vibing you've got.