Leprechaun Dogs

Since the Adorable Husband was on vacation with his family last week, the grass in the back yard has had a chance to reach African Grassland length -- I haven't seen any wildebeest yet but in another day or so I was going to start looking for them!

We left the weasels outside while he mowed -- and this is the result: the picture didn't quite do it justice (I think the digital camera is too smart and kept trying to re-adjust the obviously wrong greenish cast in the photo), but Berit's feet are Leprechaun Green up to the elbow. Rowan, too, but he wasn't so cooperative in getting a picture.

Not My Dog

Ok -- while this might look like one of our dogs, it's NOT.

But the photo made me laugh out loud.

Surreal Parenting

I try very hard not to compare raising kids to raising puppies, but sometimes the similarities are rather funny. I had a conversation at lunch today with a coworker that definitely slipped into the surreal...

They called from her daughter's daycare to say that she (about 3 1/2) had bitten another child in the class not once, but THREE times this week. The first two times were just sort of in the heat of the moment, but this last time showed some serious intent. Apparently, the little girl lunged at the other kid and just chomped on her.

It's not often that my experiences with the puppies -- who rove around the house with razor-sharp puppy teeth like land sharks, biting anything that happens to get in their way, or waiting until I walk past to lunge out and nip at my toes -- parallel so closely with the experiences of a mom with a feisty kid. I

We both got a good laugh about it, and agreed that the rules for raising kids and puppies aren't that different - don't pee in the house, don't bite anybody, don't chew on the window frames, pay attention!

Mystery Illness

The test back from Cornell University to determine if the little beastie have Canine Influenza has come back just as non-diagnostic as the previous tests. The definitely show that they've been exposed, but it's not conclusive proof that the "dog flu" is what made them so sick.

To be honest, I'm not so concerned with knowing what it was but I am very concerned to know that it is NOT distemper. Either way, the tests were in that gray area of "well, maybe, this has a number of different interpretations.." Gah. I want YES/NO. I'm not going to get it, of course, the tests aren't that simple.

The weasels seem to be improving a little bit every day, and are definitely running around more and eating better. We've been expanding their space in the house, so hopefully by the end of the week they can be sleeping out int he house (downstairs at least) and my office will no longer be Puppy Central. Yeah!

Future world leaders

A pageant contestant was asked why she thought so many americans (1/5) can't find the US on a world map. Her answer is...well, incomprehensible. She'll make a good politician, I think.

I personally believe that US Americans are unable to do so, because, uh, some...people out there in our nation don't have maps, and, uh, I believe that our 3education liie such as South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywere like, such as and ... I believe that they should, our education over here in the US should help the US, er, should help South Arica and should help the Iraq and the asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children...

Huh? Don't have maps?

Freaked out again

Talked to our vet today, who -- after asking how the puppies were and reassuring me that they seemed to be on the mend -- told me that the distemper test they sent off to the lab has come back positive. She explained that she expected that, since they were just vaccinated (three weeks ago) and the test is an antibody titre test.

The other vet in the office said that it shoudl be accurate 2 weeks after vaccination, and we were three weeks out, so I don't know what to think. I think I stopped breathing for a minute there.

However, since the little weasels have only ever had ONE symptom (horrible snot), it really is unlikely that they have anything more than a viral flu. At least, that's what everyone tells me!

So, we're going to test again in two weeks just ot confirm that the titre levels (or is it titer) have not gone up, indicating an actual infection. I'm wondering if they got sick as a result of the vaccine itself. It's an attenuated live vaccine, and they got sick just about a week after the shot. Who knows -- in the meantime, I will just quietly worry. Or maybe loudly worry.

The 1-10 Weasel Scale

Still no lab results, but the weasels are working their way back up to their normal crazed-weasel selves. Running around the yard, playing more, sleeping less.

And as evidence. I present:

Trust Issues?

A letter to Dear Prudence in Slate Magazine begins with:

My husband and I have separate bank accounts, with a joint account for bills. Since we make roughly the same amount of money, the bills are split 50/50 through the joint account, and the rest of our personal paychecks are for ourselves to spend as we wish.

The writer then goes on to say that she and her husband are trying to have a child, and that he is not pitching in money to help with fertility treatments and any medical expenses. She wants to know if it's reasonable to expect him to pay for procedures that are "her problem".

I don't get this whole financial situation -- this ia married couple, and yet they have entirely separate finances, splitting the household bills like roommates. I could imagine that situation if all they really were was roommates, but married? Shouldn't married couples merge their finances as well as their furniture and cd collections when they get married? I find the whole idea of having "his" money, and "her" money and some generic pool of "bill money" to be absurd. It's even more absurd when the income levels are very different: if one partner makes minimum wage and the other a six-figure salary, is it fair that the executive is able to buy every toy s/he desires, while their partner can't even buy new jeans? I can't imagine one person saving for months to get a new cell phone when the other can pick up an iPhone on their way home, along with an iPod and new stereo system. what sort of resentment does that kind of situtation engender? I assume that household bills are split according to salary amounts, but what about things like vacation? Do you go through the phone bill and highlight each person's long distance?

Many years ago a worked with a woman who had two kids and had remarried to a man with no kids of his own. They had the whole "separate finances" thing going, and the new husband did not pay for naything having to do with the kids. That had to come from *her* money -- school clothes, christmas presents, medical bills, toys...they were her kids so she funded everything. He apparently paid half the utilities and rent, but otherwise, he spend his money on his own hobbies and toys. And she was okay with this arrangement! In fact, she thought it was quite reasonable and was surprised that it wasn't the way everyone else did it. She saw nothing wrong with her husband, the man she married and ostensibly loved, not investing anything into their financial life together beyond splitting the rent payment. I was horrified -- but she's not the only person I've talked to who has the same sort of arrnagement.

Maybe I'm naive -- it was never an issue between the Adorable Husband and I; when we got married, we quite literally didn't have a pot to piss in, so our finances were combined out of necessity: neither one of us could have managed on our own. We have joint checking, our investments are in joint accounts, we have the same credit cards. Meybe for couples who already have established themselves alone, merging everything is not such an easy process. But shouldn't it be the goal? Isn't part of marriage *trust*?

Snot Monster Update

I think we're on the road to reccovery -- less snot, less snorting, higher energy. Still no blood test results (I expect them today), but they definitely seem perkier. We even went for a short walk last night and it didn't wipe them out entirely. Yeah!

They still don't want to eat, but if they are feeling better, I can probably live with the Adorable Husband's view on things: when they're hungry, they'll eat.

I apparently should have been an Italian Grandmother -- 'Eat! Eat! You're too skinny!'

Theater on a Grand Scale

Washington Post Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Want to wear a t-shirt protesting Bush? Want to hear one of his speeches, but don't really support him with the blind fervor of the neo-con right? Well, the organizers of those events have some pretty detailed instructions on how to deal with you, a "potential protestor". S

A White House manual from 2002 has recently come to light. The secret document gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring potential protestors" from President Bush's public appearances around the country. And you thought that this sort of thing was covered under Free Speech, right? Nah, every single appearance by the president is carefully choreographed, carefully screened, and ever-so-carefully presented to the public.

The manual offers advance staffers and volunteers who help set up presidential events guidelines for assembling crowds. Those invited into a VIP section on or near the stage, for instance, must be " extremely supportive of the Administration," it says. While the Secret Service screens audiences only for possible threats, the manual says, volunteers should examine people before they reach security checkpoints and look out for signs. Make sure to look for "folded cloth signs," it advises. [...]

But that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."

So, dissent and the expression of opposition to the president must be carefully shielded from Bush. I've been searching the news sites and can't find reports of this sort of thing from previous presidents. Protest has always been part of our political system, protesters have always shown up at presidential speeches, and their opposing views have never been squelched like this. We didn't have "free speech zones" set up before -- only now, when the president is attempting to garner unprecedented power to himself and is so unpopular that even the die-hard base is starting to question things. Can't let him see that people don't love him. Can't let him see that not everyone thinks he is right and righteous.

So what to do when those pesky citizens want to express their opinions? Well, set up your own operatives to shout them down, wave supportive signs, and keep a weather eye out for anyone who might disagree. Apparently, the actual supporters aren't excited and vocal enough for the producers of these moments of grand theater. They have to place shills in the audience to make sure that the watching public thinks that there are active supporters. Bush only performs for Potemkin audiences.

To counter any demonstrators who do get in, advance teams are told to create "rally squads" of volunteers with large hand-held signs, placards or banners with "favorable messages." Squads should be placed in strategic locations and "at least one squad should be 'roaming' throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems," the manual says.

Advance teams are advised not to worry if protesters are not visible to the president or cameras: "If it is determined that the media will not see or hear them and that they pose no potential disruption to the event, they can be ignored. On the other hand, if the group is carrying signs, trying to shout down the President, or has the potential to cause some greater disruption to the event, action needs to be taken immediately to minimize the demonstrator's effect."

Theater. Grand theater, but requiring a level of disbelief that not many people can summon anymore. I'd rather see the latest Harry Potter movie. At least everyone there knows that it's fiction.

What is wrong with people?

I am surprised, nay -- horrified -- that most people simply don't read. A recent poll noted that:

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year - half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.

How? How can these people survive? How can it be considered "normal" not to read books? (Or to read only FOUR in a year? Four? In a good week, I'll read at least that.

I am deeply, deeply suspicious of people who do not read. Oh, I understand that kids at home, busy jobs, etc, mean tha tyou don't have a lot of time to delve into that paperback novel sitting on the coffee table, but not to read at all? How is that possible?

I'm a serious bibliophile -- the Adorable Husband jokes that he can't leave me alone in the car without reading material, or I'll pull up the floormats looking for a new label I haven't read yet. I don't go anywhere without a book, just in case. Life has gotten busier lately, but I still read through a few books a week -- from fiction to reference books to whatever.

The internet, iPods, video games, and television bear the brunt of the blame for no reading, but that's really a crock, if you ask me. The most common reason? "Not enough time". Well, I'm sorry, I don't buy that. I fyou want to read, there's always time you can eke out from your day (I mean, really, you never go to the bathroom?) I think it's simply that many people don't want to have to expend any effort at all to be entertained. Reading a novel requires that you commit to the story, that you immerse yourself in the flow of the words and rev up your imagination; reading non-fiction requires that you at least engage your brain to process things. So many people want to sit back, passively, and just be amused by whatever. At least some poeple try to "explain away" the bizarre results by claiming that people do read, of course, they just read stuff on the internet, like news sites and other stuff. Maybe, but that doesn't replace reading a BOOK (whether physical or virtual). Reading a paragraph summary of the news isn't even reading -- that's the equivealent of reading the headlines scrolling across the bottom of the CNN screen.

It's rather frightening, actually, and I will freely admit to judging people who do not read as stupid, uninformed, and uninterested. If you can't be bothered to invest time in a good book, how am I to believe that you spend any time at all trying to educate yourself? It's not a fair assessment, I'll also admit; but if you simply cannot fit reading into your schedule, at least express regret about the loss! Those people who shrug and laugh and say they simply aren't interested in reading, or "it just makes me sleepy", as one respondent said...well, I don't even know what to say. I'm just flabbergasted.

Tare Weight

Ok, so we took the puppies into the vet on Saturday to draw blood for a distemper test and canine influenza test, since they were not really any better. We weighed them -- and had a Huge Freakout about the weasels losing 2-3 pounds since they had been in the previous Wednesday. I freaked, the vet freaked, even the unflappable Adorable Husband was a little freaked.

I spent the weekend in absolute terror that they had distemper. Couldn't sleep, totally anxious, convinced that they had this horrible disease that is 80% fatal in puppies.

Took them in this morning (for my mental wellbeing check) and weighed them....34 and 35 pounds. Huh. That would mean that they had gained five pounds since Saturday. While I suppose it's possible, probably not.

We puzzle over this a second, when I remember that Laura, the vet tech who was in on Saturday, made a comment about taking off the rubber pad on the scale to clean it.

The rubber pad that weights just about... 3 pounds.

She didn't re-zero the scale.

The whole office got a huge laugh out of this -- even me, after I managed to blurt out, 'Not funny! I totally freaked the hell out that they had lost all that weight! Not funny at all!" She's not going to hear the end of this for a long time. (I love her to bits, so I'm not really mad, but I'm seriously going to kick her butt!)

Whew. Less snot today, no wheezing, much more energy. Things are looking better!

Your Papers, Please

From CNN:

"Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act."

This barely noticed change to the original "Patriot Act" will require that every citizen report to a DMV with proof of identity, birth certificate, proof of SSN, photo id, proof of residency, etc, and get an official "Real ID" which will be required for any "Federal purposes", including getting in an airplane, using public parks, opening a bank account etc. It was originally dropped as legislation, but passed when it was attached to a military funding bill in 2005. This version wasn't even debated, just back-doored into the process because no one wants to vote against funding for the troops. Niiice.

I don't know about you, but I don't trust the government to keep the records it has safe, and I have no faith whatsoever that they can keep this sort of centralized information database intact and safe. The almost unnoticeable mention that the card will "use common machine-readable technology" means that they can track information about the card, about the user, and about its use. And the law itself is vague enough that the dept of Homeland Security (gah, I hate that name) still hasn't really defined what sorts of things can be included -- prints, bio-data, RFID tracking? They have said they can include these things, but haven't decided...yet. And who else will be using this sort of information?

I find this Readl ID to be a serious breach of privacy. I already have all these identifications. I have a passport. I shouldn't have to prove that I have the right to interstate travel within the US, or to provide my identification papers in order to go about my daily business.

Quite a few states have already passed legislation that states they will not comply with the RealID legislation. Luckily, Colorado is one of them. Other states have embraced this big-brother national identity system whole heartedly. Maybe it's a good thing we've identified them now.

The whole idea is a mess. It creates a national identity card (which the citizens have strongly opposed), imposes huge fiscal and bureaucratic costs on states, ups the risk of identify theft (because of a centralized database), while doing absolutely nothing to "prevent terrorism"...it's primary stated purpose. Apparently, terrorists will be too stupid to adopt the technology of the RealID, or fake the documents needed to get one of their own. .

Yeah. Right. There is an (admittedly strongly anti-id) FAQ here, if you want an overview

Total Relaxation

Happy Happy!

I am feeling quite content and happy today -- we headed up into Longmont to search out food and decided on a new Italian restaurant that the Adorable Husband had just heard of. We stopped in front, realized that it was more of a bar than a restaurant and the music blaring out was so loud neither of us wanted to go in.

So we wandered up the street and found Pinocchio's -- a little Italian bistro with red-checked tablecloths. When we sat down, the menu suddenly looked really familiar! Wait a minute...this looks just like the menu from our favorite little Italian place in Lafayette...which CLOSED abruptly a few years ago.

Yes! The same chef who ran the Sweet Tomato (where we practically lived while doing our kitchen renovation) is the owner! We were so glad that the other restaurant was just not attractive to us, or we'd never have discovered Pinocchio's.

This simple discovery has made me very, very happy today.

Everything is Secret

The Republican National Committee said it will not abide by a subpoena and turn over documents to a Congressional committee investigating the firings of at least eight US attorneys last year because the RNC is waiting to see if the White House will assert executive privilege over RNC documents at the center of the controversy, according to an outside law firm retained by the RNC.

Let me get this straight. The RNC, a political organization, is waiting to see if the president is going to claim executive privilege over their documents? Just how, exactly, is that supposed to work? It's stretching quite a bit to say that the entire RNC is "the kings man", and in a position where the president could claim that they are an advisor of such importance that they need protection. I suppose they're going to argue that since the president might have seen the documents, or that they might have been seen by someone else the president has declared "off limits" that they can refuse to provide them. Must be nice.

JK Rowling would be proud. Once again, Bush is trying to make the narrow accepted definition of executive privilege do double-duty as is personal Secret Keeper. He seems to think he can just decide that information that might make him look bad is simply unavailable to anyone else, for whatever reason he wants, for as long as he wants.

The day a political party gets executive privilege, the whole concept of "democracy" gets set by the wayside.

2 on the Weasel Scale

We still don't know what's wrong with the puppies, except that they have some sort of respiratory infection (viral or bacterial, we aren't sure, since the antibiotics don't seem to have had much effect.

They are not their normal perky little selves. Maybe a 2 on the 1-10 scale of Weasel-ness.

Poor puppers. They don't feel well at all. The vet office is calling twice a day to check on them.

Still more mucus

The weasels are still sick today, even after three doses of major antibiotics. Much more mucus and snorfling and they really just look like they feel horrible.

I woke the Adorable Husband up last night to make him look at a tissue of puppy snot. Lovely man that he is, he dutifully got up and assured me that it was perfectly fine and that no, it wasn't a sign of something horrible.

If they are still sick tomorrow, we're back to the vet. Sigh.

No Constitution

From one of the posters on TableTalk, where I often hang out -- the gentleman put this much more clearly than I ever could:

If you accept the logic that the government can do in secret what it is expressly prohibited from doing by the constitution, and BECAUSE it is secret neither the actions themselves nor the decisions to do them can ever be challenged, then you no longer have a constitution.

Yes.

Welsh Signage

I ran across this comment in a ScienceBlog regarding the change in US road signs to a new font called 'clearview', which purports to make the signs more readable. Hey, I'm all for more readable signs, but one of the commenters on the blog had this to say, which made me snort with laughter in a very unlady-like fashion.

The problem is there is no consistency as to where on the signs the two languages are placed. Sometimes the English is on top and the Welsh on bottom, sometimes it's the other way around, and sometimes (albeit rarer, as far as I can recall) they are side-by-side (and, I assume, which one is on the left probably varies?). That makes navigating in Wales a real treat, especially since the spelling in either language isn't always agreed--the map says Bygtih (I just made that up) whilst one sign says Buthr/Yobithge/10miles and the next sign says Bezoug/Bigyth/12miles, and when you finally get to the place (3 miles later), the "Welcome to..." sign says Oythiryg. All pronounced "Neigh".