Because why not, it's not like I'm writing fic or doing anything productive anyway, I decided to see if I could crate-train the dog. We got a crate when we got her and she seemed willing enough to go in the crate, so I went "okay, fine" and then basically didn't use it.

But the thing is, the dog is afraid of a great deal of things. And I think when we got her she was willing to do more things because all things were equally terrifying, and now she has narrowed it down to what things are actually scary (brooms, vacuums, the dishwasher, the printer, other dogs outside, etc.) but now she's decided that the crate is scary again. I don't know why. She gets in a crate to go in the car!

So here I am, carefully placing dog treats at the entrance to the crate so she will think of it as a fun place where she can lie down. Maybe it will work.

At least the dog is enjoying quarantine. All the people are home ALL THE TIME and not even leaving to get food!

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The dog is generally a very smart dog and wants to please us. So in addition to attempting to teach the dog actual useful commands -- like, I am currently working on getting her to wait for me while going down the stairs and not just barrel ahead of me -- we thought it would be nice to teach her some basic tricks. Like, say, "shake hands."

This has failed spectacularly.

It's not that she hasn't learned how to do "shake hands" on command. She definitely has. She will happily hold her paw out whenever you say it. The problem is that what I think she has learned is not "perform this behavior in response to a command" but "wow, humans really like this behavior." So she'll just be sitting there or standing there and no one's asked her to do anything but she'll be sitting -- or even standing -- and picking one paw up, because clearly this is what humans like! She's going to do this! Like, I go to take her leash off and she's standing there doing "shake hands." Aren't I pleased? Isn't this what I wanted?

Anyway. Yeah. Dogs, huh?

(Also she loves snow. Except for the part where the neighbors made a snowman which she thought was A Threat that needed to be barked at. Then when she got close enough to see that it wasn't a threat, she tried to eat it. Threats: EAT THEM.)

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We have had the dog for almost six months, and she has successfully learned her name and several important commands: sit, stay, occasionally "drop it," and... okay, a couple tricks.

She has also learned her very favorite word, "hungry." She gets so excited when anyone says it because she's going to get fed, right?

The problem is that I think she thinks every disyllabic word ending in [i] is "hungry."

She thinks "angry" means "hungry." She thinks " happy" means "hungry." There are probably more ridiculous ones that I am not thinking of now. But she definitely keeps jumping up and looking excited and then we have to stop and figure out what word we said that sounded like "hungry." [ETA: Lysimache adds that she has also responded to "lucky" and "agree."]

She wasn't supposed to learn that the important part of this word was [i]. That is not how this was supposed to work. Come on, dog.

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You know those heating pads that are basically sacks of rice that you put in the microwave?

When I put one of those in, the dog is 100% convinced that I am heating up Delicious Rice For Her.

(I think now she's figured out I'm not and she's just ignoring me.)

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This evening Lysimache and I were in the car, stopped at a red light, when we heard a horrible wailing noise of pain from somewhere nearby. We looked around, trying to figure out who was being hurt, because it was that kind of terrible noise. It was the car next to us, which had a husky in the back seat, sticking its head out the window and howling. As far as I can tell, the husky was extremely upset that the car it was in wasn't moving, because it stopped making noise when they started going again.

Dogs, man. I don't even know.

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We put Greta to sleep this morning.

She was a very, very good dog and we're going to miss her so much.

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Things I do not understand about dogs:

The dog's food and water are in the kitchen. After we moved somewhere with stairs, we started to keep a second bowl of water upstairs in the bedroom because why not. The dog has a clear preference for Upstairs Water. As far as I can determine, the water from the kitchen sink downstairs and the water from the bathroom sink upstairs are the same water. But the dog definitely likes Upstairs Water better.

Basically, dogs are weird.

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Internet! Internet! Today I saw another dog that was the same breed as our dog! This is very exciting because I have never seen another one of her before, I don't think. (This is Greta. She is an American Eskimo Dog.)

We were on the way home and I guess someone else who lives in town has one and was walking it and it looked just like her. Which was weird enough. And then it acted just like her. We were staring out the car window and squeeing and saying "Oh, it's an Eskie," and then some strangers walked by the dog and then it barked at them and then ran to them and tried to jump on them while wagging and barking. Which I would like to point out is a thing Greta did to the UPS delivery driver yesterday.

Is it that there's probably so few of them that they are all fairly close relatives and therefore look and act exactly the same? It was really kind of weird.

(Also, the list of things that the dog now incorrectly identifies as someone at the door includes "my phone, when I get email" and "the beginning of the Barenaked Ladies song Upside-Down." Sheesh.)

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I have recently discovered the awesomeness that is the iTunes Genius feature, in which it extrapolates a playlist of your music based on one song you give it. I know, I know, I am years late. Nonetheless, I gave it "Friday I'm In Love" by the Cure and got a totally awesome playlist result, which I am sharing because I like it just that much.

( I don't care if Monday's black...Collapse )

You must agree, that is an awesome playlist, yes?

Also, yesterday lysimache brought home someone's child's art project, a foot-high papier-mâché zebra with stripes in pink, purple, blue, and turquoise. It's very cute. The dog has been *barking* at it. WTF.

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The dog has just vomited on my legs, my feet, the couch cover, the couch itself, a pillow, and the floor.

That takes talent, I guess. But mostly: ewwww.

Of course, now the dog is insisting she is hungry again. Sigh.

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Snagged from antigone921:

- Anyone who looks at this entry please post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LiveJournal.
- Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper
- Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!

( My wallpaper...Collapse )

Also -- because I am fundamentally incapable of posting about just one thing at a time -- I wish to note that the linguaphiles "is your name Ben?" thread yesterday was the most hilarious thing I have participated in in recent memory, and I was sad when the (probably very embarrassed) OP deleted it.

But the maintainer saved screencaps. All is not lost! I'm there on page 2 with Old English, which was the only language I knew (or rather, could piece together quickly) that hadn't been done yet. By the time it occurred to me to come back with Middle English, which I could probably also figure out (I like the word "yclept," don't you?) the post was gone.

(And no one actually answered the OP's question. Heh.)

Last night we went out to dinner, came home, and went out again to Blockbuster.

Do other people's dogs eat dirt/fluff to induce vomiting because they're upset you left them?

(The dog barfed last night and again just now to wake me up, all over the bed. I can't imagine how she still has anything in her stomach, but the last time she did this (when we went out to see a play and she ate the kitchen garbage and all the dog fur on the floor) it lasted about three days.)

I am mildly annoyed. Jen likes watching Project Runway and Shear Genius, and usually I don't care so much, but tonight on Shear Genius they ( did spoilery things.Collapse )

So there's my petty complaint.

So I was watching tonight's Jeopardy, as is my wont, and the Final Jeopardy category was announced as Playwrights. Now, my family (and possibly other people's, too, but no one has told me about it) has a custom whereby one is supposed to register one's Final Jeopardy guess as soon as the category is revealed. You are free to change your guess once you hear the actual question, of course, but if it turns out you were right from the beginning, well, you win and are super awesome.

The way this works these days at my house is that lysimache and I each try to be the first to yell our starting guesses (because, you know, there might be one really obvious guess), and then whoever feels like it attributes an answer to the dog. Naturally, the dog usually guesses things related to the dog, because her guesses ought to be realistic. Animals? Dogs. Authors? Jack London. Artists? Whoever the guy was who painted the picture of dogs playing poker. As you might suspect, the dog pretty much never wins.

So tonight it was playwrights. Jen guessed Ibsen, I guessed Tennessee Williams, and then nobody could think of anything dog-related, so Jen made the dog guess Shaw, because it is her belief that Shaw is always the answer for Playwrights, just like Authors is always going to be something about Charles Dickens' stupid unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood.

And then they put the actual question up, and, whaddaya know, playwright with a phonetic alphabet! Easy easy easy! Of course it's Shaw. And, voila, the dog wins. I'm not sure she understood why we were praising her, but she did wag her tail a lot. (And this of course means that the dog is smarter than two of the other contestants. Heh.)

So, yes, here I am visiting my parents and borrowing my mother's laptop. (My hand keeps hurting whenever I make particular typing movements or grabbing, and it has for a few days and it's really kind of freaking me out, because, dude, I need that hand. Anyway.)

Okay, in chronological order since the last time I posted. Hmm. I saw The Golden Compass a few days ago, because lysimache had a free ticket for Enchanted and I decided I'd rather see some daemons. I actually liked it a fair amount, and I thought it was a really good adaptation of the book (I was a bit surprised by all the people around me claiming the book was SOOO MUCH BETTER OMG, but maybe one is required to to prove one has read the book), though there was a lot more Eeeevil Church than I remembered. And Lyra is kind of bratty. I still can't figure out how that works universe-wise with your daemon sort of determining your employment opportunities, though -- if you weren't lucky enough to get a wolf-daemon at puberty, you can't be a soldier? How sad. And I didn't see any of the gay characters. You know, the people with same-sex daemons that Phillip Pullman says he doesn't know what that means.

***

Next! For New Year's Eve we went to the most lesbianerrific concert ever. Erin McKeown and Melissa Ferrick played full sets, with Alix Olson opening. It doesn't get dykier than that (though there were, like, a couple guys there). Alix Olson's poetry is mostly a little bit too earnestly political for me, but her stories that weren't poetry were quite entertaining, like how she told us she had carpal tunnel ("Is it work related, they asked. Yep. I'm a lesbian.")

Both Melissa and Erin used most of the same band that they had when we saw them touring together last time, which included their ridiculously hot keyboard player. Woohoo. Plus they came and played during each other's sets -- Melissa on trumpet, Erin on guitar.

I think the audience was there more for Melissa than for Erin, which is sad, because Erin is really good. Her set was pretty much the same as it was when we saw her a couple months ago, but isn't "Blackbirds" always fun? She even brought out a burlesque dancer during "Rhode Island Is Famous For You" who produced many of the items mentioned in the song (peaches, glue, pencils) from her progressively scantier and scantier clothing, and then danced about so as to twirl the tassels on her pasties in time with the music. Yeah. I, uh, have no idea if the song was any good.

Melissa Ferrick played almost entirely songs from her new album, which I thought was an odd set choice given that the audience was die-hard fans -- with, of course, the exceptions of "Everything I Need" (yay! Our Song!), "Anything Anywhere," and of course "Drive" and "Welcome to My Life." At the end all of their special guest stars came out and they all played "Ring of Fire." Accompanied, of course, by the same dancer, whose outfit was now red flowy things. W00t. It looked like the band was kind of distracted too.

So it was generally awesome fun, and I think more musicians should consider touring with lesbian burlesque performers. Because yes.

***

And then yesterday, I flew out to San Francisco to see my family. Jen is totally awesome and drove me to the airport in the snow at great inconvenience to herself. Because she wuvs me. It was very nice of her and I think on the way back I ought to take the airport shuttle home. I'm here until the 12th if anyone wants to see me. I finally got in at, like, 11:15 pm, and then the luggage carousel jammed and I didn't get my bags until midnight. Kind of annoying.

Today I gave my family their leftover Christmas presents -- Hairspray and High School Musical for my brother, Eric Clapton DVD for my dad, and a book about the 1919 Boston molasses flood for my mother. I got a fold-up umbrella that won't unfold all the way and won't fold back up, and a pair of very cute handmade ceramic mugs with dragons (the handle is the neck on one, the tail on the other). Then we went to look at TVs (my brother's is broken), and to see if there's anywhere to play with the Asus eee PC in a store (not that we could find). At the video game store I splurged on the first Phoenix Wright game for Jen's DS (she says I can play it when she's not using it, which is very nice of her) and Digital Devil Saga for my PS2 (for $40). I don't usually buy the disc-only games, but this game (with box, anyway) goes for like $80 used on Ebay, and really the box isn't worth $40 to me. So that ought to be a fun game, and if it isn't I'm sure I can make the money back on Ebay, right? And it's not like I actually need the manual to play it. (Yes, I am in need of reassurance.)

And then I went to my dad's. He just got a rescued dog two weeks ago from the shelter, another rat terrier named Pia. And when I opened the door, Pia ran out. My dad took off after her, and I couldn't see where they went, and he had left his phone at home, so my brother and I spent about an hour tromping about the nearby streets asking if anyone had seen her, and me being all "oh crap I lost my dad's new dog." Turns out the dog got all the way to the beach -- maybe a mile, mile and a half -- before my dad and one of the neighbors caught up with her. This is apparently the second time the dog has done this. Poor dog's probably upset, I guess. I don't know.

Future plans for my visit include, apparently, a trip to a Moroccan restaurant. There will be bellydancers. w00t.

(I wish my parents would stop complaining about money. I know, they didn't tell me about it when I was a kid, but now I worry every time my dad tells me how he has no work. Sigh.)

Also, now all the freeway exits are numbered. What gives?

In the car today, that Feist song came on the radio, and I commented as to how I thought a feist was a kind of dog, because I remembered the scene in the first Robin Hobb book where Fitz has to save the feist.

And, lo, dictionary.com says "Chiefly South Midland and Southern U.S. a small mongrel dog, esp. one that is ill-tempered; cur; mutt."

But the best part is the etymology:

[Origin: 1760–70; cf. (from 16th cent.) fisting hound, fisting cur, as contemptuous epithets for any kind of dog (prp. of fist to break wind, late ME; cf. OE fisting breaking wind, MLG vīst, G Fist fart).]

So, it's a derogatory term for a dog because... farting. Ahahahaha.

***

The LJ cerebral_palsy community today linked to this article, which seeks to reassure parents whose children have just been diagnosed with CP that most kids with it are just as happy as non-CP kids, except in areas of their life that their disability directly impacts (like, say, physical well-being).

The problem I have with this is that 40% of the kids surveyed were unable to answer the survey because of the severity of their CP . Um.

Would that make you, the prospective parent of a kid with CP, happy about your child's quality of life? I wouldn't be. Gee, your kid might be happy, or they might be completely unable to tell you if they are, and you have a 60-40 chance. Plus, as far as I know, they often can't tell how severe it's going to be when they make the initial diagnosis -- like, they told my parents that I was going to have all kinds of horrible things wrong with me and learning disabilities and I'd be short, and pretty much none of that happened. So I'm not sure how reassuring the information is if you don't know whether it applies to you.

Yeah, yeah, nobody on my friendslist cares about cerebral palsy, I know.

Today I had pork buns for breakfast. I have never actually had pork buns before in my life, but they were pretty yummy.

After breakfast, I got to go with my family to the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum in SF. It was totally my favorite museum when I was a kid; we were members and we went to it so much, and afterward brought bread to throw to the ducks in the lake. It's still pretty fun. I couldn't find the giant bubbles or the plants that curl up when you touch them, but I did get to try the Shadow Box (whose walls are photosensitive; they shine a bright light and your shadow is temporarily printed on the wall), and the magnetic sand, and the beach ball floating in midair, and so on. Whee. I think my favorite of the new (well, new to me) exhibits was one where you could use various props to add in sound effects to a radio play; naturally, I added in bizarrely out-of-place sounds.

My dad's dog is, it seems, scared of people wearing hats. My dad put on a hat and she ran away.

The news here is very upset about how cold it is going to get. They keep repeating that the lows are going to be 20, though of course that applies to inland, where I am not. Maybe I should have brought my winter coat after all.

Still need to write stupid paper. Blarg. At least linguaphiles helped out; I should reply to the comments. And revise the stupid paper.

Yesterday was either the best day ever or the worst day ever for the dog, and I'm not sure which one.

We have a deck, and the door to the deck is basically window. The dog likes to sit next to the door and look out on the deck. Occasionally she likes to go out on the deck. We also have a tree next to the deck, in which lives a squirrel. You probably see where this is going.

So yesterday there was a squirrel on the deck, and the dog finally noticed it (Predator Vision: if it stands still, I don't see it.) and demanded to be let out. (She believes that her presence on the deck apparently should not affect whether there is squirrel.) Then the squirrel went away, and the dog came back in.

Then there were two squirrels. Bark bark, said the dog from inside. The squirrels went away.

Then! There was, not one, not two, but three! Three squirrels on the deck! Sadly, it took the dog a while to notice the squirrels, who I believe were having squirrel sex on the deck, but when she did she started making piteous whimpering noises at the squirrels and at us. Pleeeease? Can't she have a squirrel?

Sigh. It is so sad to be the dog.

So the dog started announcing she was sick at about 6 am this morning. She threw up about 20 minutes ago and is continuing to make warning barfy noises, albeit at a lesser frequency. Currently she is sitting on my feet and trying to pretend like she is a Good Dog who should be allowed to go outside because she's certainly not thinking of pulling up grass. Shyeah right.

I don't have to teach until 1, so I wasn't gonna leave for a few hours anyway, but still, couldn't the dog at least have picked a day when we'd all gotten some sleep first? No, I guess not.

New icon! This is Olga from the movie Night Watch. She's a fairly good magician who broke a few laws and consequently spent many years as an owl. She's also kickass and pretty. So there.

I don't have that much to report. I made lysimache a DVD of her two vids, which was fun; I want my vids on DVD. But alas, I don't have them on this computer in any format other than RM -- I think I have them on a CD somewhere at my mother's. I want to make vids. Pout.

Today I watched some Fullmetal Alchemist. jmtorres sent me it months ago and I've only now gotten around to watching it. Ed! Al! Alchemy! Whooo! (I know it makes me a bad anime fan, but I wish I had the dubbed versions, because then I could look away from the screen.)

Also, my dad has apparently gotten a puppy, and judging by the picture messages my brother has been sending me, it is very very cute. It's a rat terrier. (Which is apparently the breed the RCA dog was.) No, they don't have a rat problem -- my dad just likes the breed.

Anyway. I should clean the house.