Spare Trousers

I thought all the laughing commentary about 'wear dark pants' when you use Alli, the new diet-drug, was just that -- commentary. But no! The site itself actually warns you about something they are calling "treatment effects" (which the rest of the world call side-effects, I guess, except that these are pretty much guaranteed to happen. )

This is the same stuff as Xenical, and is supposed to prevent you from absorbing fat from the food you eat. But, eat just a smidge too much of the forbidden fat and...well, the warnings aren't pretty. Anal leakage? Eeeuuu.

So I checked the website for Alli (myalli.com)- here are some of the lovely side effects (which, while rather disgusting, aren't dangerous at all):

gas with oily spotting

loose stools

more frequent stools that may be hard to control

And yes, their suggestions actually do say, "wear dark pants". I bet Marketing is having fits.

You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work

You may not usually get gassy, but it's a possibility when you take alli. The bathroom is really the best place to go when that happens

Methinks that this is not going to leap off the shelves, with warnings like that! Although, you know? It might work -- albeit in a completely different way than they intended.

I think that Alli works more like electric-shock treatment -- you know how they convinced rats not to eat by zapping them every time they touched the food? If it's so absolutely awful and possibly grossly embarassing to eat even a middling-fat mean (say nothing of high-fat), you will eventually avoid them automatically -- negative reinforcement works really, really well. Alfredo sauce? Cheese? Big mac? Well, be prepared to change your underpants (after an extended period of IBS-like symptoms. From someone who has weekly attacks of The Claw (serious intestinal distress!), it definitely makes me think seriously about what I eat.

It might actually work, if viewed like that -- not as a "I can eat anythign I want because I won't absorb fat!", but instead as "oh, shit, that's high fat and I'm waring white pants" -- it's quite possible that Alli will be very successful in helping people lose weight and keep it off. It will definitely change people's behavior, which is the only way that you can ever keep the weight off.

There goes more important info

I often joke that my bizarre ability to remember weird facts and trivia means that these little bits of data replace something important in my memory. Remember every wine bottle size? Whoops! There goes your memories of second grade!

The weird thing I learned yesterday? Bowling Shoes are sold as right-handed and left-handed pairs, since the soles of the shoes are different. You have a 'sliding shoe' and a 'braking shoe'. The sliding shoe is on the foot opposite your 'handed-ness', so you can do that little flourishy follow-through you see in professional bowling. If you're serious about it (like my Dad was), you might have interchangeable pads on the soles to handle different lane conditions.

Rental shoes, of course, are the same for both feet, with a composite sole that is neither grippy nor slippery.
[image from bestbowling.com]

Forget we ever said anything

From the Center for American Progress:

Conservatives who are now fully embracing the filibuster as a tool to thwart passage of Iraq redeployment bills are the very same lawmakers who were calling for the "nuclear option" in 2005. At the time, Republicans held 55 seats in the Senate and were constantly voicing anger over the "obstructionism" of Democrats, who objected to the confirmation of a few right-wing judicial nominees. In 2005, the majority called for upending the practice of filibustering judicial appointments.

Now, those same senators -- who are currently in the minority -- have been constantly deploying the threat of a filibuster. Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) previously said the filibuster was "bad for the institution. It's wrong. It's not supportable under the Constitution. And if they insist on persisting with these filibusters, I'm perfectly prepared to blow the place up. No problem."

Now, Lott, along with Kyl, are using the filibuster to provide political cover for President Bush and prevent passage of legislation that retains the majority support of Americans.

So it's only bad if the "other people" do it. Judges are only "activist judges" when they disagree with what you want them to do, policies are only wrong if they aren't your policies, behavior is only criminal or immoral if the other guys do it.

I know that both sides (all sides?) do this sort of thing. My astonishment here is that the republicans made such a huge deal about how the filibuster was baaaaad, and how it was obstructing the workings of the government, and how we simply shouldn't tolerate those damned democrats trying to frustrate Bush's grand plan.

Now? They are more than happy to use exactly the same tactics, do exactly the same things they accused the democrats of...but now it's a gooooood thing, and they're protecting us. Seriously, shouldn't their heads explode from the hypocrisy?

It's a BOX!

We have probably bought about a zillion dollars worth of puppy toys. Stuffy toys, chewie toys, toys that beep, toys that sqeak, in an attempt to keep the puppies from chewing us, the furniture, and the house.

And what do they love playing with?

An empty water bottle.

Fill it with puppy kibble and it's the Bestest Toy Ever! The chew it (and it crinkles and makes a great amount of noise) and sometimes, food flings out the open end. Woot!

It kept them amused for almost an hour today. Considering that they have the attention span of a budgie, I'm impressed!

On the way to Harvard

We took the Weasels to Puppy Kindergarten class today -- basically playtime and a Q&A session with a great dog trainer at Bolder Dog Training. We worked with Gigi ten years ago with Rukh and we decided that her guidance was at least partially responsible for the fact that he was the Best. Dog. Ever.

So we arrived at class with both puppies, with the full knowledge that we might not be able to bring them both to the same class -- one of the major concerns with raising siblings is that they become Siamese Twins, they can't do anything without the other one and focus on each other to the exclusion of everyone else, including the humans in the family. So, we talked to Gigi ahead of time to figure out how to handle it. We tried both at the same time...and it was a rousing success. With eight other dogs at the class (including a Spinone, a breed I'd never heard of before) and a couple of labs and retrievers, there was so much to see and smell that the Weasels barely noticed that they were there together. Most of the other puppies are older than they are, so they are about the same size (Rowan is about 19.2 pounds, Berit 17). Give us another few weeks and they'll be bigger than all the other puppies, but for now, they get pretty well mauled by the 14-week old chocolate lab puppy, and can't just thunder about intimidating smaller dogs.

When we brought them home, they slept for almost SIX hours. We obviously overstimulated their teeny little brains.

Imposter Student

This is not a new story. Earlier this year, a student at Stanford University -- who had attended classes for nearly a whole year and lived in two different dorsm -- was discovered to be a complete fraud. She had not been accepted to attend Stanford (indeed, she had applied and been rejected), but she showed up anyways and managed to scam her way into dorm rooms, meals, classes, study groups, and the campus life in general.

Azia Kim was like any other Stanford freshman. She graduated from one of California’s most competitive high schools last June, moved into the dorms during New Student Orientation, talked about upcoming tests and spent her free time with friends.

Kim, an 18-year-old from Orange County who graduated from Fullerton’s Troy High School, lived in Kimball throughout fall and winter quarter. She lived in Okada, the Asian-American theme dorm, until Monday night, when University staff finally caught onto her ruse.

The "roommates" with whom she shared a room (which she entered by climbing in through the window, since she had no keys) are saying they feel 'betrayed' and 'freaked out' because the school allowed this to happen.

It's not like Kim was dangerous -- she never threatened anyone, she never seemed to be outwardly odd; she just attended a school she had been rejected from and apparently built an extremely complicated lie to make it work. I can understand them feeling betrayed, but feeling unsafe or scared seems a bit over the top to me. Although, if one "imposter" can make it through almost a whole year without anyone really suspecting, how many others are out there who are doing it better and getting away with it? Kim did not seem to have any malicious intent, but I'm sure others could. Quite a few people are very concerned that this is a serious security breach (read the comment son the article, they're quite interesting).

Obviously this girl has some serious problems -- some have suggested that she did this because of unreasonable pressure at home to attent a prestigous school, others that she had a burning desire to attend Stanford despite her lack of credentials. I think she deserves sympathy more than condemnation -- and some serious counselling to discover why she did this. Whether she's a pathological liar or simply desperate remains to be seen.

Puppy Zooms

Well, the weasels are actually quite a bit calmer during the day. They've figured out that I sit at my desk and make weird clacking noises on the computer, and pretty much ignore them except for carefully timed potty breaks. Of course, Berit has taken to standing up with her paws draped over the top of the Puppy Prison and staring at me underneath my monitor. It's at once pathetic and adorable. She doesn't understand 'off' yet, so we're working on not chewing on the myriad cables on the back side of my desk.

Still, taking them outside is a bit exciting -- they take off into the yard at full speed and run around with the Puppy Zooms for half an hour, then collapse in unconscious heaps and sleep for two hours or so.

Are you on your meds?

In Newmarket (a small city near Toronto) a woman called 911 to report that elephants were eating her trees at about 3am on Thursday morning.

The massive pachyderms, named Bunny and Suzy, had escaped from a circus at about 3 a.m. in Newmarket, a town of 75,000 people located 45 kilometres of Toronto.

The animals, performing at the Ray Twinney Complex with the Garden Bros. Circus, strolled the streets near Yonge Street and Davis Drive, munching on trees, shrubs and flowers.

I can only imagine the 911 call.

911 operator: "Um, elephants?"

Caller: "Yes. You know, big, gray, long trunk? In my yard."

911: "Are you sure?"

Caller: "I've been able to identify them since I was four years old. Definitely an elephant."

911: "Ma'am? Have you been drinking?"

Puppy Jungle Gym

The Weasels have discovered that it's FUN! to race around the dining room table and hide underneath it. It's even better than the Ottoman Fort!

Seriously, they should be blurry in these pictures -- they were racing around at top speed, barking madly.

If you repeat it often enough...

President Bush, defending his troop surge in Iraq, insisted Thursday that the insurgents attacking US troops in Iraq "are the same ones who attacked us on Sept. 11."

Bush was speaking at a White House press conference on the same day an interim progress report on his troop surge in Iraq was released. Asked for proof of the connection between insurgents in Iraq and the 9/11 hijackers, Bush said both had pledged their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

"The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq are the ones who attacked us on Sept. 11," Bush said. [Rawstory]

Well, that will just reinforce the 50%+ of people who think that Saddam Hussein/Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Link them enough verbally -- even if you don't explicitly say that they were responsible--and people believe it. Of course, now we have Bush actually saying it explicitly, I guess.

Recent intelligence reports have concluded that al-Quaida has actually rebuilt their organization (if you can call it that) to levels that have not been seen since 9/11. THey have been able to rebuild despite six years of war.

How can this be viewed by Americans as anything other than proof positive of the utter failure of the Bush administration's foreign policy?

Improbable Cows

Did you know there's a breed of cows in Scotland that look rather like Oreo cookies? Belted Galloway cows are solid colored cows with a thick stripe around their middles. How on earth is that a consistent genetic trait?

The cows are part of the Galloway breed group, which has solid white, solid black and this -- the stripe-in-the-middle version that has been popular since the turn of the 19th century. They're raised as beef cattle, it seems -- but more often they are kept for the head-turning sight of a field full of oreo stripes.

Strange!

Oklahoma links
Homestead.org
Wikipedia

Fear Imprinting

Some time between eight and ten weeks, puppies go through a fear-imprint period,(also here) where they can really develop bizarre fears of things, people, or situations if they are scared or hurt. You have to be very careful that they aren't frightened or traumatized during this period.

I've been telling everyone this -- be gentle, don't frighten them, be careful that new things are introduced slowly, that sort of thing.

And then I managed to shut Rowan's head in the back door. It's didn't slam or anything, but it definitely swung shut on his head. I took them out at 3am to pee and then on the way back in, he darted into the doorway when I was shutting the door.

He's fine, but I feel like an idiot!

"Smart Puppy" food

I'm a worrywart, and the Adorable Husband is finding it very, very amusing.

Iams now markets its puppy food as "Smart Puppy" food, since it contains something called DHA that enhances brain development. It's some form of natural fish oil for "optimal brain development and a smart, trainable puppy".

They note that:

A recent study from The Iams Company indicates that puppies nourished with enhanced (high) levels of DHA were significantly smarter, more trainable than typical-DHA (low-DHA) nourished puppies. (3).

Sounds like a good plan. But this was for Iams -- we feed Eukanuba (also by the Iams company). I had the Husband reduced to hysterical laughter at dinner (to the point where other people were staring at us) by wondering out loud if we "were feeding the Smart Puppy food? What if we weren't?"

"Oh, no, " he said, absolutely deadpan, "we're probably feeding the Stupid Puppy food and they'll be developmentally delayed or something!"

Apparently my expression set him off into gales of laughter. Well, I worry about these things! What if they aren't smart? I still think they aren't eating enough food and are too skinny, and he laughs at me about that, too.

Yup, Still Cute

Another quiet night -- the Adorable Husband was at work until 12:30 am and let them out when he got home, then again before he left for work. No problems!



No, of course I'm not chewing the carpet....I'm...ah, testing it for colorfastness!

All Puppy, All the Time

Our first vet visit was a success -- the puppies were absolute angels, slept peacefully the whole time, never once showing the clear and undeniable signs they have at home that they are possessed.....

Berit weighs in at 14.2 pound and Rowan is 16 and a bit. They're a little skinny, but that's probably a side effect of the heat and stress, and our vet isn't worried at all. She also suggested that we bring them into the office, oh, three or four times a week just to be weighed. Just in case. So they could all coo and snorfle the beasties. All in all, it was a grand outing.

Flickr Account

Since new parents tend to take hundreds (if not thousands -- thanks to digital cameras) of photos...I started up a Flickr account for puppy pictures.

www.flickr.com/photos/phoukaco/

Crazed Weasels

Well, the beasties have "settled in" -- or at least, they have come out of their little fuzzy shells and revealed themselves for what they really are: crazed, rabid weasels. They've grasped the concept of "outside", and when we herd the crew into the backyard, they start galumphing around with wild-eyed abandon. Poor Uulaq is just trying to keep up!

I missed by a millisecond catching the puppy flinging himself off the steps like superman. They're pretty fearless little beasties. Thjs is Rowan (the boy -- now clearly identified by his blue collar!)


Perhaps a more flattering angle? They both seem fascinated by the ottoman and use it as a "fort" in the living room. Luckily, they haven't realized that they fit under the couch as well. That might make finding them a bit difficult. It's a great game: hide underneath the fort, then dart out to gnaw on the ankles of any creature that passes, before retreating again like a turtle.
One of the few moments where they're not running around like crazed weasels.

Lovely Berit (you know, the Adorable Husband picked the colors for the collars. I thought we should have purple and yellow, or something, but these are temporary, at best, so the obvious choices of blue and pink were made.)

And Rowan.

Uulaq

We were 99% sure that Uulaq would love the puppies. She has always loved puppies, and she's been so lonely lately that we hoped she'd think the little creatures were there entirely for her.

Well, she does love the puppies, and other than their annoying habit of pouncing on her tail and biting it, they seem to like her, too. She's a bit nervous--she still isn't quite sure how to deal with them, but she's been very gentle and awfully tolerant of the Crazed Weasel Twins.

If they get out of line, she snarks at them. The puppies, though, were raised with three adult dogs and they know to just "stop, drop, and roll" when a big dog tells them to knock it off. If they push it too far, Uulaq will growl and they just flop down and roll over and look up at her adoringly. Like us, Uulaq is a pushover and in seconds, they are back to chasing her tail and chewing on her ears.

Every time they cry, she runs in to see what's wrong, and they actually do seem to be happier when she's around.

Score!

A Rose by any other Name

A bit of confusion on the naming front. So, we liked the name Berit (me from a novel, Mark because it apparently has Scandinavian roots). We originally called the little boy puppy Berit. I still think that it's a boy's name, but I've been disabused of that notion by several sources, the least of which is that every Berit my family knows is a girl.

So - since we have had less than 24 hours to try to stick a name to each of the beasts, we realized that the Adorable Husband and I both like the names Berit and Rowan but we had each assigned them to opposite dogs. In the end, we've decided that the girl is Berit and the boy is Rowan. Now all we need to do is convince them. The way to get a puppy to recognize its name is to say their name until they make eye contact, then stuff a puppy treat in their face. A bit harder with two puppies, but I figure with enough puppy treats, we can convince them of anything.

We even bought a blue collar and a pink collar, since from any distance, it's impossible to tell them apart!

Deceptively cute

They're finally sleeping. I could take pictures. This is the little girl (probably Failte or Rowan or....)


And here's Berit:

And puppy feet.


I am the source of all things good and wonderful....


Except the biscuit the little beastie found!