February 16, 2005 Designated Pooping Area Hey Christians! (And some Pagans, and others celebrating Easter this year.) Easter may be a happy time for children, but for rabbits, it can be dreadful. Before you bring a pet rabbit into your home at Easter, please consider these facts: Rabbits are NOT low-maintenance pets! They require as much work as a dog or cat. Rabbits can live 8 to 10 years, sometimes longer. The necessary spay or neuter can cost $100 or more, and rabbits require routine veterinary care. Rabbits aren't necessarily cuddly - they can become frightened when held. Pet rabbits cannot be set "free" - it's a death sentence. Consider giving a chocolate or stuffed toy rabbit instead. For more information, or to find out how to help stop people from making the nice but wrongheaded decision to give a live rabbit for Easter, go to MakeMineChocolate.org I thought today was going to be a day of rest, but instead it was very busy, though not in a bad way. It also involved a heck of a lot of poop. No, I'm not being nice and covering up the fact that I had to deal with a lot of shit today, in the mental sense. I'm talking about poop. Dog poop, more specifically. Kind of a gross subject, but it comes with the territory of owning two dogs. When the big snowstorm came (the one that dumped about three feet of snow on us), Chris and I snowblowed (snowblew?) out what we called the "designated pooping area" for the dogs. Since they both fell through the snow when they'd try to go out into the backyard, we had an area where they could mill around, do their business, and it made it easy for us to clean up after them (being in a contained area and all). All fine and good until the next snowstorm came, which required shoveling out the designated pooping area, which, to be blunt about it, moved a lot of poop from one place to another, hiding it under piles of snow. This happened a couple of times with the wacky weather we've been having of late. And now that we've had a good number of rainy and warm days, the snow is beginning to melt away... And the backyard is chock-full of poop. It was like an archaeological dig and Fear Factor combined into one, dealing with that. I had a shovel, and a bucket, and it took a lot of trips to get rid of all of it. I also had poop incidents involving Trooper (who, I fear, is starting to fail; the poor old guy), and Skottie (who got way too nervous at the vet's today). It was all just poop, poop, poop! Okay, if you haven't already run screaming to a less-poopy site by now, I'll change subjects. It was just so prevalent about the day, I was glad that I don't believe in omens, because that's a lot of poop to deal with. So other than all that, I was still pretty busy. As I mentioned above, Skottie had to go to the vet today because his ear infection hasn't cleared up. I didn't write down the appointment time, because I'd made it the day before, and ended up showing up a half-hour earlier than scheduled. Since it was a warm day today, and Skottie became a wingnut the second he saw the vet's office (who can blame him? Every time we take him there, he gets all sorts of painful treatments to his ears), I took him for a walk by the lake. Skottie is definitely not the dog he used to be. I used to be able to take him with me on a walk all the way around the lake (about 3 miles), but he got tired (pooped out? sorry.) pretty quickly. We had to make a couple of stops here and there. On one of our stops, two very beautiful young women walked over to me, leading their own dogs (puppies) on leashes and one of them said, "Is he friendly?" "He's very friendly," I said, "Even though he's very old. 11 years old." They giggled at my old dog, and then one of them said, "We haven't seen you around the lake before? Do you normally walk your dog here?" "No," I said, "Both my dogs are really too old to go for long walks anymore." "Oh, that's too bad," the other woman said. "It was nice meeting you, though." Hey, I still got it with the ladies. Too bad my town isn't chock-full of cute guys with dogs. Perhaps I need to think about an area outside of this particular suburb to buy my house. After the vet's, I got a quick bite to eat and checked work voicemail (I know, I said that I was going to stay away from work, but voicemail is different. It's pretty much required to at least check voicemail once a day, in case there's an emergency that the supervisors need to deal with), and found out that I had six messages(!) They were all from the employment agencies that I've been using to try and find new employees. I had called them to find out the availabilty of candidates, and they were getting back to me. It took me an hour to set things up, but I have two candidates ready to interview next Wednesday. I really like doing this type of work. I always liked interviewing when I was a manager at other jobs. I'm glad Dan gave Lara and me the responsibility of doing this work. I had to go into e-mail to send a status report on when people would be arriving, but I made sure not to get too involved in anything (luckily, there were no fires to put out). I just went in, posted my info, and logged out. It was then time to get the oil changed in my car. I thought it would be a long wait, so I brought my copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves with me. I think I'm a little in love with Lynne Truss. As someone who has to deal with proper punctuation all day long, I feel like joining her revolution to take it back from the hordes of people who don't have any use for it, or try to use it in the wrong way. Of course, I'm a big offender with punctuation rules. I like parentheses far too much, use elipses where they're not necessary and over-use commas. I am proud that I know the difference between its and it's, their, they're and there, and where a semicolon should be used. If it seems like I'm taking a long time to read such a short book, that's only because I'm savoring every minute of it. It's like a great meal; I want to savor every morsel. I think I have about another half-hour of reading to go, and then I can share it with Laurie and Dana at work (for whom The Chicago Manual of Style is a personal Bible). The Jiffy Lube guy told me I needed to have my radiator flushed out, so I agreed to that. I also asked him to replace my windshield wipers, since rainy drives turn into Impressionist paintings in my car lately. He told me it would take an extra fifteen minutes or so to get everything done, but I was happy to have the time to just sit and read my book. It went by far too quickly for my liking. I do my best reading when there's nothing else to do, but at least I'm getting into the habit of reading again. For far too long, TV has been my sole source of entertainment, and that's just plain wrong for a writer. I went home, logged in to check my bank balance, answered a bunch of e-mails that had been sitting in my in-box for more than a day (I hate it when I let things slide for longer than that), and to ask for permission to use an image I found on the web for the site I'm creating. On my bank balance, I found out that my state tax refund had been deposited into my account. Like I said, it's not a great deal of money, but it's enough for something to spend on myself, so I thought about it for about a half-second and then headed to Staple's. The picture of the bunny card at the top of this page? That was taken with my brand-new, 5.1 megapixel digital camera! I went with Sony, because that's what Laurie recommended to me, and what we use at work. It connects directly to the computer, takes short movies, and is small enough to take anywhere (like...Cancun! or possibly Johannesburg! [Dan formally announced that possible opening at yesterday's meeting, so I can talk about it here]). I'm terrible about capturing moments on film, but if I have the instant gratification of digital photography, I think I'll document my life more often. I plan on taking pictures at Little Susan's birthday party, for instance, just to get everyone together on film. I got home, eagerly unwrapped my new present to myself, and discovered that the batteries had to be charged for at least six hours before I could use it. I cursed at the fact that the A/C adapter wasn't included with the camera itself, just a battery charger, but it'll be fine. I'm not a photographer, I can buy the adapter when I need to, and just keep an extra set of charged batteries with me whenever I go out to snap photos. It will probably mean a bunch more self-indulgent photos of myself, and I apologize in advance for that. I'm fascinated with the difference I see between what's in the mirror and what comes out on film. Or maybe I'm just a narcissist, though I don't have a heck of a lot to work with, on that front. The movie feature is utterly cool. I already have an idea for a film that can be made entirely out of short clips that fit on the camera, which would make sense using the camera. (If you include the tools you're using to make something as part of that thing, I think that's a great way to create something new.) So now, I have a new mattress, a new computer on its way, and a new digital camera. I think I'm done spending money now, since I did all this without touching a penny of my bonus, just my taxes. (The rest of the mattress will have to be paid for out of salary checks, but that's okay because it's a house expense.) Okay, I lied. I went to the bookstore and bought Old Man's War by John Scalzi. I met John at JournalCon1 years ago, and he's always been my inspiration when it comes to trying my best as a writer. He makes a good living as a writer, and shows that it's not impossible to get a novel published these days. So I now own two books by John Scalzi, one by Pamela Ribon, two by Wil Wheaton and one by James Lileks, all of whom I discovered (as writers) through the internet. I think that's pretty cool, and pretty encouraging for a writer trying to make it himself. As far as my own "publishing" goes, I'll be binding handmade books of my short stories "Elephant", "Shoe Tree" and "Balloon Girl" from the now-defunct Stoplight Stories. Two of those pieces have been performed more than once as monologues or short plays ("Elephant" has been performed by no fewer than six high school girls for auditions, which is really cool to me), and the third is just so short and so silly that I wouldn't think of trying to publish it through a traditional market. The rest of my stories are now being polished so that they can go out to magazines and online publications in the proper manner. Now that I have the updated version of Writer's Market, I know where to send what type of story. Finally, I had reason to look through some of my archives today, and I ran across this entry. Five years ago, I started a journey of self-recovery that didn't always go as planned, but I think I'm closer to the doppleganger I tried to describe there than I've ever been. It's taking some folks in my life by surprise; delighting some (my cousin Beth, Laurie, Mom and the brothers), and worrying others. It worried me for awhile, but I'm starting to remember this guy. He's not who has been walking around this planet through the very beginning of the 21st century, and he's a wild departure from the person a lot of people think they know well. He is, however, someone I haven't seen in a long time. He's me.