Strange in a Stranger Land

So, am irritated with my mom. Monday had some tears about the whole thing. I do feel better now.

But i've been having SUCH weird scary dreams lately. Last night my toes kept falling off!


Ty was a sheep and I the shepherd in the Christmas Pageant rehearsal last night. Oh my goodness. He was terrible. I don't mean bad, I just mean running laps through the church & squealing & not sitting still and standing in front of the people talking and going "Yyyyyyah!!!!!!!"

It was actually hilarious and adorable. I knew if I held him still he'd cry & scream, which would be worse than him just being a happy kid. And, it's supposed to be FOR kids, and he had the time of his life. And, there's a line in the play "Let the sheep watch themselves."

So I did have mixed feelings about letting him run everywhere, but seemed like there wasn't any reason to try to 'make him behave.' Well okay I did try! And it didn't work! I could hold him still reading or drawing for 5 minutes at a time - then it was off and running.

Anyway it was ridiculously cute.

(If the link is an issue, endotoxin, let me know and I'll re-host it.)

( Gay Marriage Flow Chart )

"So you're saying that in this case, the polite thing to do is to fuck you in the a$$?"

Marvel at my restraint.

I did NOT say "What did you expect us to use? Pre-school toys?" when a client observed "That looks just like real dental equipment."

Heard back from the folks who adopted one of my fosters from early this year. (http://draggonlaady.livejournal.com/185822.html)

This is how she looked when she was here:




And this is her now:

I am.
The lovely Bruce made cookies of yum this morning (ginger chocolate cookies, as recommended by the esteemed neogrammarian).

And for breakfast, bacon and spiced meringue with Hollandaise over English muffins.

The man seriously tries to make up for the crap I get in the rest of life (like waking up with a headache that won't go away despite 3 doses of different drugs, and then having to go do a c-section on a goat first thing this morning...). I cannot believe how lucky I am to have tricked Bruce into thinking he's ahead by staying with me!


If you care on reference to the cookies, he made a double batch and substituted 1 oz of minced ginger for the ground ginger the recipe calls for.

About the suit for emotional damages brought by a couple whose dog was shot...
http://draggonlaady.livejournal.com/230454.html

Currently, animals are regarded in law as a special category of chattel. They're not like a table, you can't take an ax to them with no penalties, but they are also not regarded as equal to humans (even underage or mentally incapable and therefore have restricted liberties/rights). You can sue for financial loss (fair market value, expected production, bills accrued as a result of someone else's actions), but not for "loss of companionship".

If a court rules that you CAN collect "loss of companionship" suits on animals, it opens up a whole subscription of issues that most people don't think about when they call Fluffy "our baby."

Lots of good comments from folks on the original post. Here are mine:

I'll pose a few more questions for you on the euthanasia topic.

Assuming that it would still be acceptable to euthanize at all, would it only be acceptable in the same situation that is beginning to be accepted for humans? strictly in advanced, terminal disease? (which is supposedly an option in Washington now, but since every single hospital within a few hundred miles of here is Catholic run, and they've flat said "well, look. cute law. We don't care though, we will not offer that in any of our facilities." and so far nobody's thrown a fit about that, it's not REALLY available around here....sorry, tangent.) What about seriously injured or sick animals that could probably be saved, but the owners don't have the money, or the ability to take on the after care? Would it be illegal to euthanize in those situations? Would regarding animals as equal to humans require that the family bankrupt themselves saving the life of a dog they couldn't properly care for anyway, because it COULD be saved and therefore could no longer be put down? right now, it's legal to euthanize pretty much any animal. and while I think it is despicable to put away a cat because it's the wrong color, a person wouldn't go to jail for it. So where is the line of what's acceptable reason to euthanize if the animal is now a family member? who decides where that line is? can i euthanize a diabetic cat that could be treated, but who is so fractious that treatment poses a danger to the owner?

Will human health insurance companies now be required to offer veterinary coverage? there are several veterinary insurance companies now... do those get taken over by human companies? who pays for that? individuals with the pets, or does it become another job benefit that companies have to shoulders?

Could you still sell animals? Wouldn't this put pet stores out of business, because you can't sell family members? I suppose shelters would be re-styled as orphanages... but what about aggressive/unadoptable animals?

And would this be limited to dogs and cats? what about other fairly common indoor pets? what about outdoor pets? is the pony a companion animal? what about the emu? who decides? who draws those lines?

They won't let me neuter children, so I won't have any :P

Several weeks from now I'll have a very simple site to make available to a small group of people. It won't have either the look or functionality that I've described yet, it'll just be a skeleton to knock around.

Reply here, or email me at ivolucien (over at gmail.com) if kicking around a simple website (login, basic profile, etc.) sounds like fun. This is a month or so out, so it'll be after the holidays by at least a couple weeks.

Free access to the small number of (eventual) pay features for those who pitch in now (and send me email addresses...) ^_^

Mixed breed dogs are difficult to ID. Is it a boxer mix or an American Bulldog? Is that a Rottweiler mix or just a really blocky Labrador? Phoo. Though I have to say that unless the people in this study here were given no scaling clues, I don't see how anybody could mistake a Shih Tzu for an Old English Sheepdog.

http://www.denverpost.com/portal/news/ci_14005785?_loopback=1

Alrighty; so it's pretty apparent that my non-profit is not in the running really. That said, I'd like any of you still voting for me (and thank you muchly for your efforts!) to consider switching. My cousin's uncle-in-law also runs a rescue, which is several above mine in the rankings for Washington, so from here out, I'll be voting for OldDog Haven in Arlington, WA or Palouse Humane Society in Moscow, ID.

Thanks all, and maybe if we take the votes that were enough to get me to the bottom of the top ten and add them into those other groups, we can bump them up :)

it's hard to get along with someone when everyone else you know doesn't trust that person.

I am tired of defending her.
I'm still trying to close my ears to what everyone else thinks, but it gets to you.

Anyway, today I promise to TRY to be neutral and let her words & actions speak for themselves, and to continue to give the benefit of doubt. We still don't have to be best friends, but I don't want to mistrust her just because of what I hear. I made a wrong conclusion yesterday (I think).

And, she should probably take steps so that everyone else might start trusting her too.

Thought I'd share my Good Housekeeping tip.

If you, like me, can't find anything to display your christmas (or birthday or anniversary or valentine's cards) on besides the fridge, here is what I did at the old house and have resorted to again:

Take a long length of ribbon, yarn, string, etc. Wrap it around the top of a doorframe letting the ends dangle equally along the sides of the door.

Attach cards with clothespins.

It's cheap!

I've had some valuable suggestions regarding social sites to check out over the last couple months, like FetLife, Ravelry and BlackBoxRepublic. Do you have any suggestions for sites I should check out so I can imita... flatter them with features inspired by their innovation? ^_^

Ancillary to that, if you're of the programmerly persuasion, do you have suggestions of any open source feature libraries? I'm thinking of larger features, in the sense of blog, forum, gallery or rich text editor implementations. I've committed to a php framework for this site, but I wouldn't rule out using another language for particularly excellent and flexible feature sets.

<waves cheerfully>

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/12/10/Pet-pig-ears-and-beef-hooves-are-recalled/UPI-85921260470611/

Pet chews this time.

Must... Stop... Obsessing...

I end up spending too much time understanding the guts of the tech that I'm using. It is *much* faster to look up a function, write the bit of code, then immediately move on. I find myself, a few times a day, going down documentation and search paths in order to understand the how and why of things that aren't worth that level of time. It would help if I could learn to better appreciate the flow of rapid coding over the intrigue of unfamiliar tech.

On the other hand, part of why I enjoy programming is the challenge of understanding this bizarre programming cruft. It's not that I spend extreme amounts of time on it, just more than is ideal.

Any suggestions on ways to appreciate the fast flow of doing, over the digging deep? How do you help maintain a 'roll' when you find yourself on one?

Things you hear the receptionist say...

"No, boys don't go into heat. Yes, that's his penis. Yes, that's normal. If you leave it alone for about half an hour, it will go back into the sheath."