Crazy-psycho religious nut

Crazy psycho religious nuts and normal jailed citizens. Something interesting seems to happen every day at the animal shelter.

First, religious nuts. When someone wants to adopt a young kitten, we have them foster it for a couple weeks first, to make sure it's not going to die on them. If it's healthy after two weeks, they bring it back to us, we finalize the adoption, then they can take the cat home.

So this guy brought in his kitten to finalize the adoption. He was a pudgy, middle-age guy with a butch haircut and worst of all, a truculent expression on his face. The first words out of his mouth after the poor girl (we'll call her Amber) at the front desk said hello was, "I ain't getting the cat microchipped."

That was somewhat of a non sequitur, but Amber said, "Excuse me?"

The man snapped again, "I ain't getting the cat microchipped, and I don't care what you say."

Amber was somewhat at a loss, but hesitantly pulled out the fostering agreement and pointed to a line in it. "But you agreed to get it microchipped, and you even signed right here that you would."

The man was adamant. "You can take the cat back, but you ain't putting a microchip in it."

Amber didn't know what to do next, since our director wasn't in (it was Saturday), and the man was very confrontational. I stepped in, "Why don't you want to get it microchipped?"

"Religious reasons," he said.

"Oh. What religion are you?" I asked.

"Mormon," he said. That happened to be my religion also, but I couldn't remember hearing any sermons about the evils of microchipping, or reading any scriptural verse warning against it.

"Exactly what religious tenet warns against microchipping?" I inquired.

For the first time he hesitated. "Well...I just have my own ideas about where microchips are heading."

I got the impression he thought we were going to tattoo a "666" on the cat's forehead, then have a dozen spy satellites tracking its every movement. How do you argue with religious belief, though, especially when it's a "personal" one and not even in line with the man's religion? "Um, I'm sorry, your religion doesn't actually believe that. Now, do you want a matching microchip in you, so our agents can know where to find you at all times?"

Amber and I huddled, and I suggested that she go ahead and do everything else, let the guy take the cat, then we could discuss what to do on Monday, when our director would be in. We had the guy's address and phone, so we could get the cat back if necessary. She agreed, and the guy left, happy in the knowledge that he had saved one more poor cat from the belly of the Beast.

Later than afternoon, I was sitting with our three inmates in the break room, eating lunch with them. I was telling them about the psycho guy, and bemoaned the fact that there were so few normal people around.

"Hey, I'm normal," one of them protested, hesitated, then added, "Well, except for being in jail," and he grinned.

Shelter events

Microchip your pets, people! Yesterday, we had a couple pugs brought into the animal shelter by the Animal Control Officers. We scanned them for microchips and found that they were chipped. We called the owner, who was shocked to hear from us. "They've been missing for six months!" she said.

Shortly after, another lady called. "I just lost my two pugs, have they been picked up?" The story wasn't too hard to figure out. The original owner had lost the pugs six months earlier. The second lady found them, and rather than bringing them to the shelter, had kept them. Only when they had escaped and been brought to us and scanned had we found the original owner.

Ironically, the ownership of the dogs is still not clearcut. Apparently, as long as the finder makes a "good effort" to find the original owner, they can keep the animals. Since the original owner put up flyers all over town looking for their dog, and the finder had never brought the animals to us (or even taken them to a vet's office to be scanned for microchips), I would personally say that the finder didn't make a good effort, but I'm not the judge.

Adding an additional problem to the mix, the original owner had already gotten another dog (dogs?) to replace the pugs, and now if she takes the pugs back, she'll have more dogs than her city allows her to have. I'm going to keep informed on what happens, and I'll post here if I find out.

(Later: we gave the pugs back to the original owner, and promised the newer owner we'd give her first dibs on the next small dog [pug, chihuahua, dachshund] we got in.)

As interesting as that situation is, it isn't the only one of its kind when it comes to microchips and pet ownership. We got another microchipped dog in, and the owner said something similar about it being missing for several months. While we were waiting for the owner to come in, another guy came in looking for the same dog. We told him it had a microchip that said the owner was someone else, and asked him how he had gotten the dog. He gave a name (we'll say it was "Mary") and said that Mary had given it to him. We told him we couldn't release the dog to him until we got the situation worked out, and he beat a suspiciously hasty retreat.

When the original owners came in, we told them that a "Mary" had apparently given the dog to the latest owner, and the original owners looked shocked. "Mary is our relative! We gave her the dog to babysit while we were on vacation, and she said it had ran off!"

Apparently Mary had some sort of grudge against the owners (or perhaps dog). And apparently the guy she had given the dog to was at least somewhat aware that all was not kosher in the way he received the dog. Last I heard, I think we just left the original owners to deal with Mary how they would.

Remember: collars can be lost...or deliberately removed! Microchips are like diamonds: forever. (Or if not forever, at least a step more permanent than collars.)

Only last small incident, not concerning microchips this time. We had an old lady come in yesterday, accompanied by her younger neighbor and her neighbor's daughter. They were looking for a dog for the old lady, who's old dog had died a week previous. (Interestingly, three separate neighbors had called asking about getting a dog for the old lady.) Anyway, they wanted to look at a chihuahua, and I was taking them to the "Get Acquainted" room so they could let it run around. As they went in, the old lady leaned toward me and said solemnly, "I'm a child."

I stared at her, not sure I had heard correctly, and if I had, wondering if it was some manifestation of the slight dementia that her neighbor had whispered to us the old lady had. I said, "Excuse me?" and the lady repeated, "I'm a child."

I still had a puzzled look on my face, and the old lady finally clarified by saying, "Before I married, my name was 'Child.'"

Oh! That's...nice. I gave a polite nod of still-puzzled understanding. The lady followed her neighbor into the room, and I shut the door behind them. I went to the front desk where I repeated the incident to our shelter mom, who laughed. "'Child' is the big name in her [small] town," she said. "If you're a Child, you're really someone. You were supposed to be impressed."

Oops. Oh well. I guess I've been working with animals too long, because as a general rule, I'm as impressed by names as a dog is.

Rather sleepness night

Last night was one of those restless nights where you seem to wake up every couple hours for no particular reason. Warning: studies have shown that hearing other people describe their dreams is the most boring thing in existence, so if you don't want to read a couple (very brief) descriptions, skip this post. I'll blog about some amusing animal shelter events next as an apology.

I remember having two dreams. The first, I was at someones house with a lot of relatives, it seemed to be a family reunion of some sort, when I noticed in passing that my Grandpa on my mom's side was there. That wouldn't be too remarkable, other than the fact that he passed away a few years ago. I seemed to be the first to realize that he was there, so I called out and went up to talk to him. I wish I could remember exactly his words, but they were simply along the lines of, "I hope *you* aren't doing anything to make me disappointed," then I woke up.

Now I do believe in "religious" dreams, but actually, I don't think this was one. Whether or not it was, though, it was a good question for me to ponder as I lay awake in bed.

Falling back asleep, I had a totally unrelated dream, and one with no real point to it at all, but an intriguing twist that I haven't seen in any of my dreams before. Child and I were in a big ol' house, where there seemed to be some sort of party going on. Suddenly, a couple guys charged in and started shooting all over the place with automatic weapons. Child and I raced upstairs to hide, and watched out the window as the Bad Guys loaded all sorts of boxes into some trucks. I got the impression this was a rival gang's headquarters, and they were robbing it.

They left, and all sorts of people showed up, including the police (and oddly enough, one of my ex-girlfriends). Still upstairs, I leaned out the window and called out that I could help the police since I was a witness, and that I had actually been in the same house a year earlier when the exact same event had happened then. I woke up about there, and realized that I had actually had the same dream a year earlier, and understood that that was what my dream-self had been referring to. Intriguing, no?

Anyway, enough dreams. On to a new post and some shelter news.

Entry Recieved...

Well, got an email from the WotF contest to say my entry has been received. Now, I just have to "allow 10 weeks after the close of the Contest quarter for judging to finalize." That means I should get the results by mid-September.

Honeymoon Events

On our honeymoon in Mexico, we stayed at a resort named "Canto del Sol." They had a great buffet that we hit up three or four times a day, a beach, swimming pool, and tennis courts. It was apparently in the "old" section of town, meaning that it was a little more authentic, and a little more difficult to find someone who spoke or understood English very well. Most of our taxi drivers spoke only Spanish, but all you needed there was the name of your destination.

We had a lot of adventures on our honeymoon: horseback riding, swimming with dolphins, ocean kayaking, sand castles on the beach...Mexican taxi rides. Child was an expert cowgirl. Our guide for the horseback ride spoke only Spanish so there wasn't a whole lot of talking going on, but most of the ride was just through rivers and jungle anyway, so there wasn't a whole lot of commentary he could have given. "On your left, you'll notice another tree."

It contrasted sharply with the horseback riding Child and I did for our one year dating anniversary: there were no safety forms to sign here, no instructions, and since he couldn't really ask us whether we wanted to do it, our guide's technique to seeing if we wanted to gallop was to start doing it, of course causing our horses to follow suit, then look over his shoulder to see if we were enjoying it. (For the record, we did.) All in all, it was a ton of fun, and I got to practice my Clint Eastwood squint. Next time, I'm going to work on the "spitting-between-the-teeth."


The kayaking was also fun, and I got to brave the jellyfish we saw in the water to get the picture below.


We also got offered weed on the beach by some old guy with missing teeth but respectfully declined, despite his insistence that it would be good for us.

Oh, and the swimming with dolphins was a lot of fun too. We got to dance with them, get kissed by them, and ride them by holding on to their fins as they swam (all under careful supervision of their trainers, of course). Unfortunately we weren't allowed to bring our cameras, and because of my refusal to give in to what I consider scams (read: paying $17 for a single picture), we don't have a picture of it. :)

Writing Tips

And another thing: I wanted to start collecting writing tips (general ones, and those applicable to just the sci-fi/fantasy genre), and thought I might as well make it public.

This first set of tips is from K. D. Wentworth, coordinating judge for the Writers of the Future contest. They are the top five reasons she immediately rejects entries. (http://wotfblog.galaxypress.com/2007/07/ top-five-disqualification-points-during.html)

1. Poor spelling and copious grammatical errors

2. No sign that this is a science fiction or fantasy story by the end of the first page

3. Inability to tell what's going on by the end of the first page because the writer is withholding critical information from the reader in order to create suspense.

4. Overused tropes such as vampires, elves, witches, ghosts, trolls, dwarves and dragons, without an original take on the subject.

5. Massive information dumps at the very beginning of the story where the writer is telling the reader background information instead of working it into the story.

Looking through my old email for another list of tips a friend (Eric James Stone) sent me, I found that they were actually given by K. D. Wentworth as well, at a Writers of the Future workshop. Some are specific to WofF, others are very good tips no matter what you write. I was going to go through and highlight my favorites, but reading through the list, they are all just great tips, pet peeves, or problems I have myself. So I'll just mention one that made me laugh, and is really true: "Don't start with a character waking up. Or with amnesia. Or naked. Or being tortured. Or waking up naked with amnesia while being tortured."

1. Don't send inappropriate submissions. It's a contest for science fiction or fantasy, so don't send children's stories or poetry or murder mysteries. Sometimes up to 50% of WOTF slush is inappropriate.
2. Don't play games with the reader. Eight deadly words: “I can’t figure out what is going on.” If the reader can't tell what's going on, it's hard for the reader to get interested. This means (a) write clearly, and (b) don't withhold from the reader information that is apparent to the POV character.
3. Put a speculative fiction element on the first page. Something that makes it clear this is science fiction or fantasy.
4. Avoid overwritten beginnings. ("Frank's dual orbs of sight...," five adjectives in a row, etc.)
5. Avoid word pictures that force the reader to see everything.
6. Avoid characters in high school. (They can be high-school age, but don't have them actually in the school.)
7. Don't count on the title to get noticed (or as the only indication of speculative fiction element).
8. Don't start with a chunk of exposition. Prologues or things like fake newspaper stories can be a bad way to start.
9. Characterization is not what someone looks like. Do not have a character notice his or her appearance in a mirror.
10. Don't start with a character waking up. Or with amnesia. Or naked. Or being tortured. Or waking up naked with amnesia while being tortured. Such beginnings are done so often they are clichéd.
11. Avoid overworked themes such as the characters being Adam and Eve, or with a character floating in space being born at the end, or Noah's ark.
12. Don't use an unusual or weird POV character, such as the knife that will be a murder weapon. (She got a story in which the POV character was a dust bunny.)
13. Don't submit a story that exists just for a joke.
14. Avoid bad, over-the-top metaphors. "Words fell from his mouth like rancid spinach."
15. Avoid trite conventions of the genre: elves, vampires, werewolves. (Can be done later in career, but hard when starting out.) Originality is valued in the genre. An original idea can beat a better-written old idea.
16. Don't submit anything that has its origin in other media, or even hints at it. (No Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.)
17. Don't submit with bad formatting.
18. Don’t use overused words: “orbs,” “impossibly,” “smirked.” Don’t misuse words. (This is very subjective, of course, but she mentioned "impossibly" and "smirk" as ones she saw too much of.)
19. Don't have a story in which nothing happens in the first two pages.
20. Don't misspell, and if you do, not more than once per page.
21. Don't make your hero a nasty, obnoxious jerk. Villains as heroes/unlikable main characters/irredeemable jerks as protagonists fail to gain sympathy from the reader.
22. Eight more deadly words: “I don’t care what happens to these characters.”
23. No serial killers.
24. Don't fail to "land" the ending. (If a story is like a plane flight, the story doesn't end with the plane stopping in midair.)
25. Don't have a passive main character.
26. Don't use the wrong main character. Write from the POV of the character with the most to lose.
27. Don’t start with poetry you’ve written yourself. (It's OK to begin with a short quote from someone famous, maybe.)
28. Don’t use made-up words with extra apostrophes.
29. Don’t use made-up words that are unpronounceable or have no vowels.
30. Make sure the ending is prepared for in advance.
31. Don’t include a map or illustrations.
32. Don’t base it on a D&D campaign.
33. Don’t write in second person.
34. Don’t say “this is part 1″ or “continued” or “excerpt.” Don’t ever make the editor think the whole thing isn’t there.
35. Don’t put copyright notice on the manuscript.
36. Don’t go overboard on first sentence. We are supposed to believe it. ("After I fished Albert Einstein’s eyeball out of my martini...”) Sometimes the key is not to hook the reader, but to keep from pushing the reader out.

Writing Progress

I just remembered something that I wanted to start doing on my blog: posting occasional progress updates on my writing. More for myself than anything; no one else cares, but it's a good way for me to sort of mentally track how I'm doing.

So, currently:

One story submitted to the Writers of the Future contest (June 30, 2007). I think that's actually their "third quarter," and since the second quarter (Jan - Mar) finalists were posted on June 11, I guess I can expect to find out the results about mid-September.

I've submitted a couple stories in the past. One was an unpublished finalist and the other didn't do anything. The first I really liked, and the second I knew was a novel trying to be a short story, so it seems my instincts are fairly good. Unfortunately, they're telling me that my currently submitted story is also a longer story trying to be a short one, but we'll see. I tell myself not to expect anything, but I always hope. :)

I still have a novel on the back burner that I've set aside while I focus on trying to win this WotF contest, but maybe I should start diversifying a little and return to it. I also have several other short stories I need to get around to finishing. There's just so many projects I want to work on...

Back from the honeymoon...

I'm married to pretty much the best person in the whole world! Not only is she absolutely beautiful and brilliantly smart, but she is great to travel with. We entertained ourselves during the interminable airport waits and flights with some pirate dice and a deck o' cards, which was a lot of fun. The kid in the seat in front of me on the last flight home was also entertained, craning his head back to watch us play cards.

The trip to Puerto Vallarta was absolutely great, and Child and I came back still liking each other! We did everything from ocean kayaking to horseback riding to swimming with the dolphins, and we were offered weed on the beach but decided to pass on that. I'll try to post overviews of the various activities over the next couple days--we're finally getting Comcast installed at the new house (another story of itself) so I can finally blog when I spontanously think about it, instead of trying to remember to do it from work.

Whoo. It's been a while since I posted. Without having constant Internet at my new apartment, I can't casually post a blog entry when it flits across my mind. Then again, some might say that's a good thing...

First, because it sticks in my mind the most...

I have to say that Kayla planned the best one-year-dating anniversary ever. We went horseback riding up in the Stewart Falls area, and it was loads of fun. I got to imagine myself as Clint Eastwood, and I think my squinty eyes were superb, if I say so myself.

Also, my younger sister is finally married. I have to say I think she's nuts: he's working at an internship while she's in school at the moment, so she'll only see him half the week. I can't imagine not seeing Child for three or four days straight.

But speaking of marriages, mine is coming up as well. This Saturday. 4 1/2 days (I'm sure Child could give you the hours). I've already been living in our new apartment, and Child's been slowly moving her stuff in as well. Curiously, one of the more difficult things to become accustomed to at the moment is sharing stuff. I've spent so many years carefully keeping my stuff separate from roommates' stuff that I have to catch myself just before asking Child if a particular game is "mine" or "hers". Oh, right. They're both of ours now.

It'll be interesting being married. I'll have to make a lot of changes, especially since I'm used to doing things by myself (programming, writing, and reading aren't by nature "group" activities). Fortunately, I also enjoy doing things that are much more fun with two (hiking, camping, Frisbee), and even the former activities are more fun if Child is sitting somewhere nearby.

Hmm. Now that I actually got around to blogging, I forgot half the things I wanted to talk about. Oh well, if they're important, I'll remember them...

Sometimes, you bite off more than you can chew. When this happens, sometimes your bite can chew back.

It was a close battle, but Goober won, even though the grasshopper was about three times the size of the crickets he usually eats.



We also put a small frog in his water dish, and he tried to eat that also, but his tongue wouldn't stick to it.

Last night a group of us decided to hike the Y (a giant "Y" painted on the side of the mountain).



On the way up, we started noticing ring-sized neon green and blue boxes along the way. Curiousity finally got the best of us and we opened them. Each box would have the answer to the previous riddle, as well as a new riddle. Halfway up, we finally met some people who informed us that the boxes were part of a church activity, and the first letter of each answer spelled out the name of a "kidnapper," who turned out to have kidnapped a couple watermelons. It was a fun activity, even though we weren't even part of the group. :)

Killdeer are birds that have an interesting habit of building their nests on the ground. Note in the following picture how well the eggs blend in.


If a predator (or photographer) starts getting close to the nest, the Killdeer will start making a rucus and pretend to have a broken wing, leading the predator away from the nest.

Well, four hours later...

Did you know that if you really put your mind to it, you can think of plenty of things to do in an exam room while you're waiting for the doctor?

1. Blow up a latex glove and play volleyball
2. Play "Pirate's Dice" (requires the Pirate's Dice game)
3. Invent new wheelchair tricks
4. Draw face on inflated latex glove. Write "Release Me!" on the back.
5. Take comment card, write "Help! We have been stranded in a deserted exam room for three days now. Have built small fire to keep warm. No food or water, living off of isopropyl alcohol" and hide inside wheelchair's removable handle grip.
6. Attach inflated latex glove to 16" cotten swab, wave like a flag as you cruise hallways in wheelchair.

These things will last you about 20 minutes. For the rest of the 3 hours and 40 minutes, you're on your own.

Ah, the joys of modern technology...tempered, of course, by the fact that it's in the hospital emergency room that I'm enjoying it.

I have my laptop and I'm feeding off the ER's guest wireless while Child and I wait for the verdict on her injured foot. We were playing Ultimate Frisbee at a nerd-club (Quark) social when Child and some guy went up for the Frisbee at the same time. Child came down with it, but her foot was unhappy with the position it found itself in, and made the fact known with large, shooting pains.

So now Child's mom is reading a "Health" (what else?) magazine, Child is devising new excuses to take the bag of ice off her foot, and I'm sitting here wondering what you need a 16" cotton swab for.

I probably don't want to know.

Yesterday, we had an amusing incident happen. I was passing by the front desk when I heard Pat talking with a woman who had come in with her (30 year old) son to claim her dog. Pat was looking over the paperwork, saying, "Let me see if I got this right...Hmm, not sure I have this right...I work in the back, so I'm not too familiar with the paperwork...Julieann! Come see if I did this right..."

Listening, I was confused, since Pat knew exactly how to do the paperwork. She asked Julieann several times if she had done it right, each time involving her leaving the front desk, going to the back room where Julieann was entering stuff in the computer, then coming back to the desk. It was taking a lot of time, and by this time I was wondering what was going on. On the third or fourth time, Julieann came back with her to the front desk, then suggested, "Maybe they want to microchip their dog."

Pat's eyes lit up. "Do you want to microchip your dog?" she asked the woman. "It's only $10 if you do it right now." The woman agreed, and Julieann and I took the dog to our medical room to microchip it. After we shut the door behind us, Julieann finally explained Pat's strange behavior. Apparently, the son was wanted by the police, and Pat was trying to stall until they showed up. I'm assuming that when the police brought the woman's dog in, they mentioned to Pat that the son was wanted, and when Pat saw him come in with his mother, she phoned the police.

Juliann and I took our time microchipping the dog until we finally saw Pat rush by the door. We figured the police must have showed up, and finished the microchipping. Sure enough, a police officer and a detective had showed up. We handed the dog over to the mom while they took the son aside, and eventually the whole group moved outside and eventually left.

Well, I played "real" laser tag for the first time yesterday. It was a lot of fun! Our team won, but it helped that 2 of the 3 people on the other team were wearing grey shirts that glowed white under the blacklight in the arean. It was actually pretty close for a while--I remember glancing at the score-board ten minutes or so into the half-hour game and noting that the red team was ahead by a couple points. In the end, though, we ended up 15 points ahead.

Also, my latest short story (Working title: "Mockingbird") is almost done. A few more revisions, more agonizing over the beginning, reviews from a few trusted friends, then I'll send it off to Writers of the Future. I've been a finalist once, but as they say, close only counts in horsehoes and hand grenades. Once I'm done with this story, I have another one in mind ("Lost in Space"), and I still need to go back and finish up "Big Honkin' Ship" at some point. (Note that none of the titles are the real titles, which have not been decided yet.)

Yesterday, a rancher brought us "a passel o' cats," 18 to be exact. He had trapped them using a clever contraption involving chicken wire, bait food, and a long string that he used to trip a gate. I'm not sure how, but he had managed to get them all inside a giant plywood box that he had nailed shut. It took two of us to carry the crate inside, and as we tilted it on end to fit it through the door, we could hear 324 claws scrabbling around inside. Not a happy sound.

I and one of the other workers, Mark, took the crate into our "Cat Intake" room. Shutting the door, we pried out the nails holding the crate shut. I think we were both expecting the crate to spontaneiously explode, sending cats flying around the room like a shotgun full of bouncy-balls, but as the last nail was removed, the crate stayed ominously silent.

I opened the lid a crack, and saw 36 glowing eyes staring at me. Apparently they were just waiting for a sign that freedom was imminent, because they chose that moment to make their break for it.

Cats of all colors and sizes went zinging around the room, scrabbling up the walls, bouncing off the door, and ricocheting off the ceiling. Wielding our cloth pinchers, we tried to snag them mid-flight, but there were just too many! They were everywhere! All seemed lost! We were about to beat a desperate retreat when we noticed a curious phenomenon: we already had opened a few of the cages in the rooms, and the cats apparently saw them as safe places, foxholes so to speak, from which to launch new attacks. Quickly, we started slamming the full cages shut and opening new ones, which the still-loose cats also mistook for safe zones, climbing up the walls to get to them. Moments later, all the cats were ensconced in cages, and the battle was won.

Child and I went canoeing today, along with my cousin and three of my siblings. It was a lot of fun--I borrowed the van and trailer from my parents, we loaded the canoes, and drove several miles up the Canyon. There's a lot of construction on the Canyon road right now, which made things a little interesting, and we had to slid the two canoes down a steep, 30 foot gravel embankment to the railroad tracks below. From there, it was a short bushwhack to the river, and we managed to board the canoes without tipping over.

The trip down was a lot of fun, although about five minutes from the end we hit a reef and capsized. The scurvy dogs serving before the mast abandoned ship despite my threats of taking the cat o' nine tails to them, and one floated downstream while the other struck for the far shore. Eventually I got the canoe righted and dragged to shore, and eventually resumed our trip with the one able-bodied seaman who returned. The mutinous first mate who floated downstream protested that she had been recovering one of the lost sweeps, so she was spared a keel-hauling. That, and I'm getting married to her in a month and a half...

At the animal shelter we have a "shelter dog," a Golden Retreiver that we decided to keep for ourselves. His name is Rufus, and he's a great dog, still a little young (read: excitable at times), but very quick to learn and very friendly. He would play "fetch" for hours if you let him, and loves everyone.

Rufus was intrigued by a rabbit we got in. The rabbit was mildly interested in him in return, and not at all afraid.


They got along for a short while, until the rabbit decided to try an experiment and see if breaking into a run would trigger an instinctive chase-reaction from Rufus. The experiment was a total success, much to the rabbit's surprise, and it was spared a potentially-traumatizing conclusion by me tackling Rufus as he ran past the third time.

Today, a dog made it through the euthanasia chamber without dying. His three companions did, but he didn't. I think the CO tank was almost empty, and there just wasn't enough gas to kill them all. He was obviously sick, with drool dripping from his mouth, but he was sitting up and very much alive. It reminded of an almost identical case that I saw in the news a year or so ago, about a dog back East that made it through the chamber alive. Someone at the shelter rushed it to a vet, they fixed it up, and adopted it.

Ours wasn't such a happy ending. We didn't have the money before to save its life, and we didn't have the money after. We put it in the smaller cat euthanasia chamber and ran it through again. It's in a much happier place now.

But whose fault was this really? It wasn't our lack of funding or time or space--the problem started long before the dog got to our shelter. I want be accusatory and say it's the fault of owners who don't properly care for their animals, who don't get them spayed or neutered, or let them run loose, but I try to be understanding. Sometimes little Bobby opens the door and Tiger slips out, or the meter reader leaves the gate open and Spot escapes. One way or another, animals end up at the shelter.

But here's where I can make a difference. I think a lot of animals at the shelter go unclaimed simply because people don't know where to look for them, or even that the shelter exists. Our jurisdiction covers a dozen cities and towns, and 30 miles of highway. I can see how someone at one end of our jurisdiction might not know to travel to the other end to find their missing pet. The problem is that other than listing ourselves in obvious places like the Yellow Pages, we don't have the money for extensive advertising.

The trick, in my mind? Free advertising. Take advantage of newspapers and local tv stations. Create a story that is newsworthy, and they'll cover it. My idea? Collect a number of collars equal to the number of animals we euthanize every year. Last year, that was about 3000. That's a big pile of collars. Dump them somewhere public, get some attention, and reporters will flock to the story like flies. Explain the situation, the story gets out, and now a lot more people know that their animals end up at the shelter, and where the shelter is.

But why stop there? Take that carload of collars and go to other shelters in the state. Start a website. Get other groups to do it in other states. Make it a big deal. Get on CNN.

But you have to start somewhere. Earlier this evening, I emailed a handful of different pet supply companies, asking who I would talk to about donating collars for an awareness program. If I don't get any success there, I'll go in person to the local PetSmart and other stores. Failing that, I'll just start saving collars from the shelter. Hey, we get plenty.

While I'm working/waiting on that, my next step will be to start thinking about a website design. Somewhere that I could get word out about the program, get support, and possibly PayPal donations to help buy collars. It might move a little slowly since I have other important things going on in my life at the moment (e.g. getting married), but I'll keep it moving forward.

Yesterday, we had two dogs come in to the animal shelter. They were Newfoundland mixes. They weighed 225 pounds. Each.

They were huge. I could have ridden on them, easily. The funny thing was that in the kennel next to them was a miniature poodle, probably 10, 15 pounds max. It was an amusing dichotomy.

Only in Utah: I was on a bench just inside the door at Walmart, waiting for a prescription to be filled, when a guy walks in carrying a shirt. "Returning that?" the Walmart door-watcher said, reaching for her "return stickers," but the guy shook his head. "I forgot to pay for it, so I came back," he said.

Do you think you'd see that in your hometown?

Texas

Last Wednesday, Child and I went to Texas, to escort her grandmother down to Corpus Christi to see an old friend who was in the hosiptal. After we dropped her off there, Child and I drove up to New Braunfels, northeast of San Antonio, to visit her other set of grandparents.

They had recently bought a house on the Guadalupe river, and we stayed there for several days. One of the highlights was going inner-tubing on the Comal river. At one of the parks in New Braunfels, they had a "tube-chute," which was a narrow, curving channel that the water was forced through, making and exciting ride for inner-tubers. You could float all the way down the river, and get out at several stops before you left the city.



It also seemed a popular destination for beer-drinking inner-tubers, which just seems a bad idea to me. Granted, the river wasn't exactly white-water, but mixing drunkeness and water just doesn't seem smart. A couple police evidently thought the same, and were posted at the bottom of the chute checking for underage drinkers.


On Sunday, we left New Braunfels and went through San Antonio to Castroville, where my grandparents on my dad's side live. We visited with them for a couple hours, as well as some other relatives who live right by them. That was a fun visit, since I haven't seen them for about five years.

After that, we drove back to Corpus. On Monday, Child and I visited the beach on Padre Island, where the water wasn't nearly as cold as I thought it would be. I'm not a huge fan of the ocean--it's cold, salty, and wet--but the visit was actually enjoyable, to my surprise. It helped that Child was there. :)


We flew home this (Tuesday) morning.

Engagement

Wow. Got some serious catching-up to do.

First things first, I'm engaged, as of three weeks ago or so. The wedding's on July 6, reception on July 7.

To propose, I had an evening planned out. I started by taking Child three roses, and told her the best part of each day was seeing her.

We went and played some Frisbee Golf, then I gave her three more roses and told her the funnest (yes, not a word) part of each day was playing games with her. After that, we went out to eat, then I gave her three more roses. We were meeting a couple of her friends up the canyon for a bonfire that evening, so I told her we just had time to do a geocache.

(Geocaching is using a GPS unit to find a cache or treasure that someone else has hidden and posted the coordinates of on the internet.) Previously, I had hidden my own geocache up the canyon, near the park where we were meeting her friends for the bonfire.

I told Child I had already programmed the GPS coordinates in, and gave her the GPS unit to follow. We hiked up in the mountains for a few minutes, and eventually found the cache (a peanut butter jar). When she opened it, there were a collection of easter eggs, all with little slips of paper inside. On the top of the cache, there was a note that said, "You know how this works. You must choose something to take, and leave something in return." (In most geocaches, there are a handful of little trinkets, and you can take one of them and leave a trinket in exchange.)

Each of the little slips of paper had things like, "Move to Alaska," or "Become a progessional puppy-killer," things I knew she didn't like. She figured out pretty quick at that point that it was my cache, and said, "But I don't want to choose any of them." I told her I had another option, and pulled a final egg from my pocket with the ring inside.

The thing she had to leave in return was her answer, and she said Yes. :) I love Child...

I just had to post a short exchange from a Sherlock Holmes story I was reading a little while ago. The story is "A Scandal in Bohemia," where the King of Bohemia, or Crown Prince at the time of hisindiscretion, is relating to Sherlock Holmes how he might be blackmailed by a lady he had contact with previous. At first, Sherlock Holmes is doubtful that the King need worry:

Sherlock Holmes: "I fail to follow your Majesty. If this young person should produce her letters for blackmailing or other purposes, how is she to prove their authenticity?"

King of Bohemia: "There is the writing."

SH: "Pooh, pooh! Forgery."

KB: "My private note-paper."

SH: "Stolen."

KB: "My own seal."

SH: "Imitated."

KB: "My photograph."

SH: "Bought."

KB: "We were both in the photograph."

SH: "Oh, dear!"

Ha ha! Just a classic exchange.

On a less anti-reporter-rant, I saw an interesting dichotomy at the animal shelter yesterday. A police officer from one city brought in a dog, a a brown hound. Opening the cage in the back of his pickup truck, the officer snapped his fingers and the dog jumped down. Without a leash, the dog calmly followed the officer into our intake room and stepped into a cage that the officer held open for him. Job done.

An hour later, another officer from a different city brought in a dog. This dog, a labrador retreiver, had been pepper-sprayed, tasered, and was dragged howling and fighting into the intake room with a choke pole around its neck and one of the taser barbs still embedded in its skni. Its mouth was bleeding from trying to chew the metal cable, and I wouldn't doubt that it had lost a couple teeth. Because of the pepper spray, I had to hose it off (through the bars of its cage), spraying it in the face for almost ten minutes with a mix of shampoo and water. When the pepper spray got wet, it became so strong that the other dogs in our intake room started sneezing, and we had to move them out.

So it was quite a contrast, and the question is this: what kind of dog are we? Are we dragged kicking and screaming and tasered through life, or do we accept the situation and make the best of it? Both dogs ended up reunited with their owner in the end, but I can guarentee that one dog was happier than the other, and had a much more pleasant experience.

Okay, I was going to blog today anyway, but after an email I got this morning, I'm going to blog twice.

The first blog is a rant about print media. A month or two ago I received the "Utah Animal Control Officer's Volunteer of the Year" award, for volunteer work I did at an animal shelter. The director at the animal shelter mentioned it to a couple reporters, and a couple stories in various papers came out about me. The email I received was from one of the reporters, pointing me to online links to the stories.

The problem I had is nothing new, but it is this: the reporters totally and completely made things up. Nothing serious, you understand, but enough to make me go, "Huh? Where the heck did you get THAT from?"

Example 1 from the Deseret Morning News: "...making the rounds with his earphones in, Hardin is at peace."

Sounds nice, yes, but one problem: I have never worn earphones there. And, oh wait, I never wear earphones anywhere. I don't own earphones. Worse part? I think it's patently rude to wear earphones in a work environment where you need to communicate with other people. Grrr.


Example 2 from BYU News Net. Opening line: "BYU student Ben Hardin was acknowledged recently for his work in veterinary work..."

Veterinary work? Where did that come from? I hose down cages. Help people adopt dogs. Pull cats out of the ceiling. I'm not fixing broken legs or neutering dogs on the front desk. This isn't as bad as example 1 since a lazy reporter might extrapolate veterinary work from an animal shelter, but it is still incorrect and shows that the reporter did a terrible job reporting. And it's still the opening sentence of the article.


Example 3, same source: "[Hardin] said he saw the job opportunity online and called asking for an application."

No, I didn't. I didn't see any job opportunity online, I didn't call for an application, and I certainly didn't say that I did. It doesn't even make sense. Why would I apply for a job when I only wanted to be a volunteer, and repeatedly turned down job offers after I started volunteering? The reporter can't claim she didn't know this, because three paragraphs before, the article says: "[The shelter director] would love to hire him, but [Hardin] won't take a job."

But who knows. Maybe the reporter is just trying to make me look good. After all, she also extrapolated a yearly tradition for my last nine years of college of working with the Special Olympics, from my comment that I helped out one year. Maybe I shouldn't complain. But I'm going to anyway.

A couple months ago I won a citronella animal repellant. Like pepper spray to animals, but harmless to humans. Just this morning I got around to reading the front of the package:

Ideal for Joggers, Cyclists, Families, and Nuisance Animals

I was fine up until that last one. Is this ideal to use ON joggers, cyclists, families and nuisance animals? "Honey, grab the citronella pepper spray! We got joggers digging through the trash again!" Or maybe, "Dear, that cyclist just growled at me. Better get the citronella spray ready."

An even scarier interpretation is that it's ideal to by used BY joggers, cyclists, families, and nuisance animals. Just picture armies of squirrels armed with citronella spray. Now that's a frightening thought.

I guess it wouldn't be so bad since it doesn't really affect humans, but you better not leave your dog chained in the backyard. You'd have raccoons macing your dog then carting his food off while your dog staggers in circles swearing up a storm and clutching at his nose.

Well, it's been busy, and it will keep being busy. Last weekend Child and I went to Las Vegas. We stayed at her aunt and uncle's house in Henderson, and let me tell you, I didn't want to come home. Going down, we passed through several snow flurries in Utah, but in Nevada, the temperature was 65 - 70 degrees in the afternoon.

While down there, we rode the three rides atop the Stratosphere. The rides themselves weren't anything particularly amazing...but put them up at 1100 ft, and now you're talking. The seatbelt on your seat becomes much more fascinating when there's 1100 feet of nothing between the soles of your feet and the traffic below.

Well, the geocaching trip was a nice little stroll in the nearby hills, but we were unuccessful finding the cache. The directions told you right up front that the coordinates weren't exact and you had to hunt for it, but we failed miserably. Granted, we were a little short of time (foiled by a haircut appointment!) but next time...the next geocache won't know what hit it!

As I was sitting alone in the laundry room last night watching my clothes spin in the dryer, I reflected that there is nothing more lonely than sitting alone in a laundry room on Valentine's Day watching your clothes spin in the dryer.

Fortunately, it was only until Child got off work, then she came over and we made dinner together and read a love story ("Max and Me and the Time Machine"). Can I just say that I love Child? She is the most amazing thing ever. And it's not just because she brought me pizza and chocolate and a balloon for lunch (I didn't eat the balloon). :) She's going to Disneyland this weekend while I go canyoneering, and I'm going to miss her...

While leaving the flower store yesterday, I saw a guy carrying two bundles of flowers. "A real player, huh?" I commented. "TWO girlfriends!"

Turns out he was just picking up one for his dad to give to his mom. Sigh. Sometimes our heros fall so fast...

"The problem with red roses is that they...can imply committment or love."

Child pointed this out to me in the local school newspaper. That can be a real problem, alright. Heaven forbid you might actually INTEND roses to imply committment or love! (Things like that are the reason she no longer reads the school newspaper.)

On a different note, we are going to attempt geocaching for the first time. We printed a few spots off geocaching.com, and I'll post how it goes later...

Now that I finally got around to blogging, I can't think of what I wanted to blog about. I've gotta start scratching reminders on my arm with a pen so I can remember.

Of course, classes has started...my last semester! (Although I still have a couple semesters' worth of thesis writing left...) I'm unofficially taking a writing class, with Brandon Sanderson as the teacher (of Elantris and Mystborn fame, neither of which I have read). It looks like it'll be a great class though, and I'm excited for an outside motivation to write.

When Brandon divided the class into groups, one of the groups he titled the "Uber" group. Since I consider myself a halfway decent writer and am looking for some quality critiquing, I attached myself to that group. The four people in our group (including a student editor of a school magazine) exchanged email addresses, so we could send each other the usernames for a LiveJournal account we were required to set up for the class.

The email from one of my fellow students had no capitalization, he used "you're" when he should have used "your," and he actually used the word "guys's." Aiee. I can see we have a long semester ahead of us...

Curses. I know I had something to in particular to blog about...wait! I just remembered!

Snow Camping

Over the weekend, I went on a snowshoeing/snowcaving trip. Now, I won't blame everything that happened on Bob (names have been changed), but let me tell you the story. As Patrick McManus would have put it, "in terms of misery, it was very fine."

We were supposed to leave around three PM on Friday, which would put us at the trailhead with just enough light to see where we were going. 3:00 rolled around, 3:30, 4:00...still no Bob. Finally, about 4:15, he calls me. "Sorry I'm late, I just finished a school project. I'll be home in 10 minutes...then I'll start packing."

I head over to his place and we finally leave. He left his sleeping bag in Idaho so he's just taking a couple army blankets, and he has no food. Rather than lose even more time stopping at the store, I tell him I have enough for both of us (I do--better safe than sorry on a snow-camping trip).

I've already told people back home what trailhead we'd be starting from, but by the time we get to the general area, it's snowing, and too dark to see anything. We drive back and forth several times, and finally give up, settling on the first pull-off we can find that doesn't say "no camping." Strapping snowshoes to our feet, we start hiking.

The hike was actually very pleasant. We were bundled up warm, and the exertion kept us warm as well. Our plan was to hike for a while, then find a good place sheltered from the wind in the trees, and dig a snowcave. We quickly realized we had a problem: there were no trees. At least, there were no trees as far as we could see, which was admittedly not far, with the blowing snow and darkness.

We kept hiking, and eventually spotted a dark patch on the hillside we were hiking beside. Leaving the trail, we started uphill, sinking knee deep in fresh, powdery snow (WITH snowshoes on*).

By the time we reached the hilltop and started down the other side, we were tired enough that we stopped at the first likely-looking patch of trees and threw our packs down. We then went immediately to our next problem: the snow was so fine and powdery that a half-hour of digging with our snowshoes produced a pile of snow that barely would have made a decent snowcave for a midget, and that only if he was missing the lower half of his body.

Abandoning that idea, we decided to make a lean-to, leaning sticks against fallen tree that was several feet off the ground. Once we had a nice framework of sticks, we laid a tarp I had brought over the top, then started covering it with snow for insulation. It took another 45 minutes to do that, but when it was completed, it was high enough to not-quite sit upright in, rickety enough that a cooling sprinkle of snow would rain down anytime we moved, and it had a gaping front door to allow any cold that got in to easily escape.

We both slid into our sleeping accoutrements, me more or less on top of Bob due to the small dimensions and bowl-shape floor plan, and I cooked us up some Cup O' Soups. After, I snacked on a few cheese crackers, while Bob disappeared completely under his blanket in an attempt to get warm.

"I'm getting cracker crumbs in my sleeping bag," I observed casually.

"Ha ha! The wolves will go for you," he laughed.

I glanced out at the dark night. It was doubtful there were wolves in our immediate vicinity...but you never knew. Carefully, I crushed a couple crackers between my finger and sprinkled them quietly onto Bob's blanket.

As it turned out, the wolves didn't have time to find us. Ears tuned to any unusual noise, I woke about 2:3o in the morning to hear Bob's voice, "Are you awake?"

"I am now," I muttered.

"Good, because I'm freezing. Let's go home," he said.

Since he had the car keys and was already climbing out of the shelter, it was a persuasive argument. Besides, now that I was awake, I knew it'd take me forever to fall back asleep, especially since the foot warmers that Child had sent with me had lost their heat.
We packed up, tore down our snow shelter to retrieve my tarp (a quick tap with the foot sent it crashing down), and hit the trail at 3 AM. We got back to the car about 4:30, and were relaxing with hot chocolate in Bob's house at 6 AM.

In retrospect, the trip was good. Not only was it a fine, character-building misery, but it reminded me why I only went snow camping once a year. It takes me that long to forget why I swear every year I'll never do it again. But of course, next year I'll have forgotten, and will set off on yet another adventure. And maybe next time we'll actually stay long enough for the wolves to show up...

No Mexico today.

Instead, I'll tell you how I almost died.

We had a boxer (dog) that was leaving a little streak of blood every time his wagging tail would hit the wall. I tried to look at it but he wouldn't sit still long enough for me to hold his tail, much less inspect it. "I know," I thought. "I'll take him outside to run around, and after he gets his energy out, he'll sit still so I can look at his tail."

Little did I know this would lead perilously close to my demise.

Once we reached the fenced-in backyard, I shut the gate and let him off the leash. Then, I hung the leash around my own neck, as I normally do. "Hmm," I thought. "It's getting cold. I should zip up my coat." The next thing I knew, I was strangling, and I quickly realized what happened. The boxer, excited to be outside, saw the dangling end of the leash and decided to play "Tug-of-war"!

This was a "noose" collar and it quickly tightened. "Stop!" I tried to shout, but it came out more like "Squrglmf!" Delighted at my frantic antics, the boxer really got into the game, tugging for all he was worth. Anytime I tried to move towards him to get some slack in the leash, he would back off, pulling as hard as he could. It was all I could do to keep a couple fingers' worth of gap between the rope and my trachea.

Everything started to go dim (being under my coat, the taut leash was making the coat ride up over my face). Finally, when the boxer let go briefly to get a better grip, and I jerked the leash free. Air! Precious air! The boxer leaped for the leash again and I quickly took it off. The moral of the story: dogs are stupid.

No, okay, I'm sure there's a better moral, but until I figure it out, I'm just going to avoid wearing leashes around my neck.

So I promised Padre Jaime's house.


It was about the size of a mobile home, but without all the luxuriousness and ameneties, such as a bathroom door, and heat. There were eight of us, and seven beds. You do the math, then take a wild guess who slept on the park bench in the hall. I had an overwhelming urge to use newspapers as blankets, but since Tijuana was nowhere NEAR as warm as Mexico should have been, I abandoned the humorously appropriate covering for a more practical cloth one.

Since there was no shower and Child mentioned in passing that I smelled like a "sweating pig eating garlic and sunbathing on a hot day in a garbage dump," (not her exact words, but the essence of her statement) I had my hair washed over the sink with a pan of lukewarm water heated on the propane-powered stove. The only trick was keeping an eye on the bucket under the sink and emptying it before the leaky pipes caused it to overflow.

Our whole trip wasn't ALL such decadent high-living and comfort, but once we moved into an abandoned hospital, I at least got to upgrade my sleeping arrangements from the park bench to a box-spring mattress. Not only that, but most of the bathrooms had doors. The one bathroom that didn't led to the unfortunate but amusing incident of mom getting locked into one of the bedrooms.

Since the bathroom had no door, the plan was to simply lock the door of the room containing the bathroom. As soon became apparent, the handle mechanism on the bedroom door was faulty, and the door refused to open to let her out.

This was no sheetboard and aluminum foil door, it was a stern, heavy-duty wood door that knew its business and was evidently built to withstand determined Mexican banditos with a desperate need to use "el bano." Even the doorknob proved intransigent, and we had at least a half-dozen highly trained people working over it.


It wouldn't have been so bad but it was after we had gotten "home" from a long day of heavy work, and everyone was tired. The bedroom of her imprisonment was the one I had stolen my box-spring bed from so we couldn't just leave mom alone to spend the night there, even if she had let us. Fortunately, if circumstances turned out that she had to spend an extended period of time in the room, she had a baththroom, like, right there.

Complicating things, we were on the second story of the hospital, with a low neighboring shed blocking access to anything beneath the window in her room. Putting our heads together (a tired and hungry mom can produce remarkable levels of inspiration), we came up with the idea of tying a hammer to the end of an extension cord, then swinging it from a neighboring room's window to mom's window. The hammer, combined with a screw bit slipped under the door, allowed her to pound out the pins of the door's hinges. A final shoulder check from dad sent the door flying in (and causing the previously-removed and discarded doorknob to become amusingly embedded in the door when it landed on the floor).

Tune in next time for...roads and dogs.

After Christmas and a week in Tijuana, Mexico, I'm going to try getting slowly caught up in my blog.

First things first, today. I went in to the animal shelter for the first time since getting home from Mexico--they have new hours. 9 - 6 every day, instead of their funky 11-7 M & Th, 9:30-5:30 Tu, W, & F schedule.

Our donkey had her feet trimmed, which was interesting to watch. Her hooves were so overgrown that she was starting to walk way back on her heels, which had to be uncomfortable. It'll still take her a while to start walking normally again, but she will eventually. We get animals into the shelter in about every condition, but these were the worst feet I've seen.

On a funnier note, we were having a BBQ lunch to celebrate one of the inmates being released, and we were talking about pets we had and have. The inmate in question was already in a good mood because of his imminent release, and the general mood at the table was jovial, so the stage was set for one of the ladies reminiscing to be mis-interpreted. She started talking.

"I had a little chihuahua once. I lived in an apartment with no yard or fence, so I usually kept it inside." She took a bite of potato salad. "I decided to take it out for a walk one day, but when I walked outside, the wind was so strong..."

She couldn't finish. The whole table burst into laughter at the immediate mental image we each got of a chihuahua bouncing down the road in a strong breeze, with the inmate practically falling off his chair he was laughing so hard.

Course, it turned out that she had been about to say that the wind was so strong her chihuahua got scared and ran off and got hit by a car, but it was too late, our own mental completion of her story was just too funny and we chose to go with that. For the rest of the day, whenever this lady was doing something or looking for something, the inmate would suggest, "Maybe the wind blew it away," then crack up laughing again.

The shelter director also called me into his office right before I left. Turns out he wants me to attend some conference down in the southern part of the state, somewhere around January 17 or 18. Something to do with animal control and shelter management. Sounds intrigiuing.

Mexico
So my plan is/was to slowly put up reminisces of Mexico as I have time, but we'll see how good my memory is. First off, we (me, Child, my family, and a few other random people) went down to Mexico as a part of "Charities Anywhere" to work on various service projects: digging trenches, pouring cement, and lots of dry-walling.

The one incident that comes to mind first was attending New Year's Mass in a small Catholic church. A lot of our service had been directed by the local Catholic Padre, since he knew who needed help, so we thought it would be nice if we attended one of his services on Sunday. It was a tiny, quaint church, decked out with Christmas lights and various statues and pictures, with the large double doors open to the cool night air the entire service.

The opening song was Jingle Bells (in Spanish of course), which I thought was rather funny. It's not what I usually consider a church hymn, but they had a guitar player leading the way and belting it out. During the service, a cat wandered through, enjoying the warmth, and a dog took up a position under one of the pews. It really was a lot of fun. I wish OUR church had dogs walking through it...

The Gully

The Gully was one of the poorest area I've ever seen. The houses were built out of scraps of plywood, pallets, and pieces of billboard, with old tires doing everything from serving as stairs to shoring up the almost vertical hillside.

The Trench de Muerte

When we weren't working in the gully, we were working on one of Padre Jaime's projects, in this case, digging a trench (de muerte) for power lines. It was back-breaking work with picks and shovels. It was hard, especially when we started getting close to the required three-foot depth. Hard to lift the dirt out, hard to get leverage to dig any dirt up. And I don't think the soil had seen any rain in years.

Tune in next time for...Padre Jaime's house

Yesterday was a busy day at the animal shelter. Mondays are always busy, just because we have animals building up over the weekend and everyone comes to reclaim them on Monday, but there were a lot of adoptions as well. I think the Christmas season makes a lot of people want to adopt a pet as a sort of "Christmas present."

Just make sure your wife/husband/other recipient WANTS a cat or dog (or white rat, or goat, or pig, or gerbil) around the house. They're not like most other presents that you can toss in the back of the closet or return if you don't want them. And a toaster is a toaster, but a lot of people only like a certain color or type of dog or cat, and the gift-giver might not know which. For example, I really like heelers, but I don't like shi tzus. "But they're both smaller dogs!" someone might say. Yeah, well, heelers are cute and shi tzus aren't.

I learned an interesting lesson yesterday as well. We had a giant husky come in, and they're usually very confident dogs. However, as I walked this one to the front desk to get a collar for him, then to his cage, he would every now and then flatten himself on the floor, stubbornly refusing to move. Dogs do this frequently when they're nervous , but there's a lot of dogs to take care of and we don't always have time to nicely persuade them to move. It took some impatient tugging on the leash to get this husky to move, but I finally got him to his cage. I stepped him through the door, but it wasn't until he turned around and ran into the cage door that I had just shut that I realized he was blind.

His eyes looked perfectly normal, but as I jerked my hand towards his face, stopping an inch short, he didn't even blink or flinch. (And his owners came in that afternoon to pick him up and confirmed it.) Well, that explained the nervousness and flattening himself on the floor while I was walking him--he had no idea where he was going, or if he was about to hit something.

I said it was a lesson to me, and the lesson was this: sometimes people may frusterate you (refusing to move, pulling the wrong way on the leash, etc.) and it MAY just be out of contrariness, but sometimes they may have a legitimate reason (like the blind dog). Sometimes you just don't know the reason, so don't be too quick to judge.

It's 2 AM and I'm wondering what I'm doing posting to my blog, but after you've been staying up to 2 or 3 AM for several days, what's another 20 minutes? At least I'll sleep in my bed tonight, unlike last night--rather than go home at 3 AM only to come back for a 9:30 AM class, I used my backpack as a pillow, threw my coat over me, and slept under the desk in my research lab. I slept through the janitor emptying the trash, the network guy resetting a switch in our lab, and my advisor coming through, waking up 5 minutes before class started.

Why the late hours? Today was the last day of Fall semester, meaning that final projects were due, and I slid my last one under my teacher's door ten minutes ago. Now, I just have my two finals to take; one Monday, and one Tuesday. After that, I'm free for the Christmas break!

Desperate to get away from school for a few hours, I went by the animal shelter, where I got pressed into giving vaccination shots to a group (covey? conglomeration? herd?) of cats. These were the cats that were getting moved from "strays" to "adoption," and we had to bring them up to date on their health records. I've given a shot once or twice before, but this was my first time doing it en masse. And I only shot myself once while doing it.

We also had an interesting conversation about decapitation. Two police officers from different towns stopped by at the same time, both dropping off stray dogs; and they, the shelter director (an ex-cop), and the shelter supervisor (an otherwise no-nonsense lady with a soft spot for cats) starting discussing procedures when an animal was brought in that had attacked someone. Animals that attack humans have to be checked for rabies, and since they're scheduled for euthanasia anyway, you can do two things.

One, you can keep them for 10 days, watching for signs of rabies, then have a vet come by to check them before euthanizing them. Two, you can immediately euthanize them, cut off their head, and send it to the state lab for the brain to be analyzed for rabies. It's a trade-off: in the first method, you have to use up resources taking care of a dog that will be euthanized anyway; in the second, you have to...well, cut off their head. It's not a job for everyone.

The shelter director was saying that he was always willing to do the job (decapitation) himself, he never forced one of the shelter employees to do it if they were unwilling. He was going on about how hard it was, and how few people had the ability to do it, and the shelter supervisor was laughing because she and I had decapitated a cat only a few days earlier.

"Are you squeamish?" she had asked me, walking past.

Be careful how you answer that question. Next thing I knew, I was hold a dead, stiff cat (it had been in the cooler) while she wielded a giant pair of pruning shears. It was surprisingly clean and simple, one snip and it was done, and there was no blood since the cat was a cool 42 degrees.

Well, enough about decapitation. Back on the school note, I left a program running on my work computer that is supposedly trying to figure out a good equation for guessing movie ratings. Netflix is offering a million dollar prize to anyone who can develop a program that recommends movies better than theirs, and I chose that problem as my semester-project in my machine learning class.

I don't have any expectations of winning, or even coming close--and the final report of the project was the one I already turned in--but the problem is intriguing and I want to leave my program running a few days longer, to see how it fares. We'll see. If I get around to it, I'll try to post a high-level description of my approach. Not that it's interesting to anyone but me, but hey! it's my blog!

Yesterday Child and I went to a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert. It was amazing--hearing them on CD is great, but hearing them live, with the lasers, and lights, and sound system, is just awesome. Of course, at times I was more interested in analyzing the patterns the smoke made in the lasers, or how the lasers had been carefully aimed to only hit the ceiling or the balcony floor, but that's just me.

Sitting in my car in the parking lot, waiting for them to open the doors, Child and I were watching people go by. Surprisingly, there were quite a few "old" people (I put "old" in quotes because now that I'm a quarter-century old, I'm almost in that category). There was one older couple all dressed up in formal attire, and me and Child started wondering what type of orchestra they thought they were going to see. We could picture them looking at the crowds as they walked inside, and the wife saying to the husband, "My goodness, dear, isn't it wonderful to see so many young people taking an interest in the arts? But they really must work on dressing properly to attend an orchestra."

Then when the guy got on stage at the beginning and screamed, "Are you ready to rock, Salt Lake?!" the old couple would look at each other, the beginnings of doubt in their eyes, screaming "young folk" surrounding them, lasers starting to flash, and the husband would whisper to the wife, "Maybe it's interpretive."

On our way there, we stopped at Burger King so I could get some food, and Child could get a hamburger without meat. (I gave the Burger King employee who gave us our food permission to mock Child after we left.) As we were pulling out of the parking lot, I was scanning the heavy traffic, waiting for a break so I could dash into it, when all of a sudden this thing stabs me in the side of the face.

Child claims she was trying to feed me the french fry, but I think she was trying to kill us. Regardless, she found my sudden reaction mildy amusing, laughing all the way to the Events Center, although I deny all claims that I gave a manly shout. She's just lucky I didn't slam down the accelerator and swerve in front of a semi or something.

Plus, she was killed that night in the online game of Werewolf we were both participating in, so....ha.

My birthday was yesterday, and it was awesome. First, Child made me crepes for breakfast, and they were delicious. Not only that, but there were enough that I was able to eat the leftovers for lunch.

After breakfast, I went to a writing meeting, and it was hilarious. One story had the two characters named "Grey Gull" and "Scuttling Crab", and one girl (who, in her defense, read the story early in morning while still half-asleep), though it was a story about a crab and a sea gull. It made her comments a little surrealistic, but we finally figured the misconception out.

After the writing meeting, I went to the animal shelter. It was fun, as usual, especially since I've been there so long that I'm pretty much just another employee. We had a guy come in to get his dog, which had been maced and picked up by a police officer. The guy held out his hand for his dog to sniff and said, "Hey Chance, it's me! Chance? Don't you know me?" His dog showed no recognition, but I pointed out that after being maced, his dog might take a day or two to get his smell back. (Reminds me of a short story I read once, where a man was assasinated--killed by his two dobermans when he got back from vacation, after someone injected him with a drug that changed his smell.)

I also confirmed what I've always guessed: I hate washing cat dishes. I normally only deal with the dogs, but since one of the inmate workers had gotten "rolled up" ("with handcuffs and everything!" another inmate told me) the previous day, they were a little short on dishwashers. Let me tell you, washing food dishes is bad enough, but 70-odd litterboxes are worse. :)

We also have a record-high three pregnant dogs. The shelter manager mentioned that she had been thinking of taking one of them home before we found out it was pregnant, and I told that if she did, she'd end up with 8 or 9 guard dogs instead of just one. Anyway, we're going to have a heck of a lot of puppies really soon...

Later that evening, Child blindfolded me and drove me to a top-secret location, where she had set up an amazing dinner complete with candle, christmas lights, and of course mistletoe. There was lasagna, breadsticks, and especially hot chocolate, which was good since it was an outside dinner (she warned me ahead of time to dress veeeeerrrryyyy warm). She also got me the Serenity movie and the Firefly series, which I love, and gave me a massage (she gives amazing massages!). I think my favorite present, though, was the letter she wrote to me.

So it turned out to be the best birthday ever, and I still get cherry cream pie tonight at my family's house!

So this morning I walked out to my car to find a new ventiliation system had been installed during the night. A small neat hole had been punched in the back side window, evidently to let in a tiny burglar. My case of CDs that had been sitting in the back seat of the car were gone, leaving me nothing to play in my CD player, but the thief thoughtfully took the CD player from my dash as well, saving me from that dilemma.

Turns out I wasn't the only one. While I was filling out a police report, a maintainence man from my apartment complex stopped by and told the cop that another car had its trunk open, and it looked like its CD player had been stolen as well. Not only that, but another renter stopped by and mentioned that his car had been broken into the exact same way about a month earlier, same parking lot, and his friend's car as well (although they hadn't filed police reports). Sounds like the apartment complex needs more lighting at the back end of the parking lot.

Ironic Note 1: that morning at breakfast, I had been reading an article in a church magazine titled "Adversity." Like I've said before, God has a sense of humor.

Ironic Note 2: this afternoon, our apartment got a note from the management asking for quotes for a marketing campaign. Mine would probably be: "Tired of all your material possessions? Need some change in your life? Want to get your car broken into on a regular basis? Try Stadium Terrace Apartments! Our motto: if your car isn't stolen, your laundry will be!"

Last night, Child and I attended a school concert comprised of student compositions. The first student conductor got up and I thought we were about to start, but it was just silent. Five minutes later, one of the violinists finally plucked a string. Another five minutes passed, then a flute played a quavering note, followed by a three or four more minutes of silence, then a single chime.

I suddenly realized, to my horror, that this was an "interpretive" song. It was probably called something like, "My Interpretation of a Glacier Moving Through Peanut Butter," or so I judged from the speed the song moved. Approximately 500 years passed but the song finally ended, and the next one began. Unfortunately, it was exactly the same, except the glacier was moving through molasses instead of peanut butter. I sunk deeper into my seat. This might take a while.

Some of the other songs were slightly more active (the way a slug is slightly more active than pond scum) but they were all still "interpretive," which is a musicology term meaning "no melody, no beat, and no point." Random drum beats mixed with shrilling flutes, arbitrary chimes, and wayward oboe notes. Child and I agreed that half the songs were probably being made up on the spot, by composition students that had forgotten the final was that evening ("Wait, that's tonight? Dude, I've got, like, nothing ready. Guess I'll do something 'interpretive.' Should I set the metronome for 'slug' or 'pond scum'?")

The faster songs still had no distinguishable melody, and had names like, "My Interpretation of the Three Violins, a Flute, and Two Cymbals Falling Off a Moving Car, part 1 of 10," "My Interpretation of an Oboe, a Timpani, and Four Xylaphones Falling Off a Moving Bus, part 1 of 15," and "My Interpretation of a Bus and a Car Carrying Six Bongo Drums, Four Cellos, and Five Trumpets Colliding."

My favorite, though, was "A Rabid Chipmunk Loose Inside a Viola." It also had no melody, but it was amusing watching the intense look of complete seriousness on the musician's face; he obviously knew that his teacher was looking for any sign that he was making it up as he went and was desparately repeating to himself, keep a straight face, keep a straight face.

Oh, and at the end, we all got a balloon, and got to go down to the stage and wander through the instruments while the musicians played, so we could "feel the sound of the music in our fingertips." I felt like Kronk, in Emperor's New Groove. "Ooh, I'm feelin' it." I also felt like taking a Music Composition class, so I could show the other students a thing or two. ("Look! I'm playing two consecutive notes on the same instrument! Yes, it's possible!")

I guess it wasn't all bad though, there was one half-way decent part...wait, no, that was the ice cream I had afterwards. At least Child didn't attempt to strangle me as we left the concert, so that's another plus.

A few things to report, starting with last night.

Sleep Deprivation
Somewhere in the early morning hours, I was woken by siumultaneous shouting, swearing, blaring music, and flashing lights from the other bedroom in my apartment. Having spent an all-nighter the previous night, I only woke up enough to hear mixed in the crazed shouts something about "keep me awake, will you?!" then I fell back asleep.

In the morning, I asked the guy who had been doing the shouting what had happened. He explained that over the past couple months, his roommate had kept him awake with constant snoring, middle-of-the-night phone calls, and things like that. I guess he had woken up three times last night from the snoring, and had finally gone crazy. He had grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen and charged into his room, turning on the music, flashing the lights, and swearing up a storm.

Probably scared his poor roommate to death, and I guess his roommate didn't snore that night--because he didn't dare go back to sleep.

Still, there's probably better approaches to take. Heck, I've slept on a sofa for an entire semester in a different apartment for the same reason (snoring roommate).

Sleep Deprivation II
To celebrate NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), my writing group decided to pull an all-nighter writing activity. We met at Child's house and fueled by sugar-highs, started writing. It took me all night to do a single chapter, but it was the first chapter in my novel and one I had put off writing forever, so it was great to finally get it out. Granted, it'll need a lot of polishing, but at least it seemed brilliant at 4 AM in the morning.

(Child's blog post)

Canyoneering
Last weekend I want canyoneering down in the Robber's Roost area of southern Utah. The canyon was called Little Blue John, made famous by a hiker back in 2003 who got his arm caught under a boulder while hiking alone, and had to cut if off to free himself.

I'm not sure if it's possible for canyons to be Jonahs, but we almost had another accident happen on our trip. We started hiking Saturday morning, reaching the first drop about 10 AM. It was a 25 foot cliff, but because it was a narrow slot and had a slight slope to it, it was probably down-climbable. However, we had a brand-new canyoneer with us, along with an older guy who didn't like down-climbing, so we decided to rig it for a rapel.

We made an anchor out of a pile of stones, wrapping webbing around to attach our ropes to. (Webbing is the material used in seat belts and vehicle tow ropes.) The rocks were sharp sandstone boulders, and somewhere underneath our anchor, the webbing had been mostly cut through. I was the first one on rapel, starting down a sloping ledge that led to the main drop. Right when I reached the drop, the webbing broke.

I started falling, and instictively stretched out my arms. Miraculously, I caught the sides of the crack and stopped myself about 10 feet down the drop. I got a few scrapes on one of my arms, but if it had been any other rapel (like the two 70-foot drops we did later that day), it could have easily been deadly.

Something like that accident is fortunately VERY rare in canyoneering. The group of guys I go with are very safe, and we take all precautions to stay out of trouble. Still, accidents do happen.

Most of us in the group are religious, and the rest don't object to a prayer before we start a canyon, so we've made it habit. The ironic part is that I always joke that we should stop praying, because then nothing bad ever happens and we have no stories to tell when we get home. Now I firmly believe that the Lord has a sense of humor and some might think this incident proves that, but I think he was also making a point. I guess that's one joke I'll stop making.

I think the "busy holiday season" has officially started...you know, the one that doesn't end until the second or so week of January? Yesterday was Halloween, tonight is a surprise B-Day party for a member of my writing group (being thrown by another member of the writing group of the opposite gender), this weekend is a canyoneering trip, then football games, tests, Thanksgiving, birthday, Christmas, Mexico, and finally school starting again!

Oh, and my sister is in town with my new nephew while her husband is in Italy giving a presentation on Search and Rescue at a conference. I left my camera up at my family's house, but I'll try to post some pictures later.

So an amusing incident happened yesterday to which I was tangentially related. There were three important facts that contributed to the confusion:

• One of my roommates works with Child's sister
• I'm moving to a different apartment in my complex today
• Child failed to mention the move to her mom

The incident happened something like this. Her mom stopped by their work to say Hi, and according to Child, the conversation went something like this:

Mom: "Oh, so you live with Ben?"
Roommate: "Not for long!"
Mom's thought process: "Premise: Daughter's boyfriend is moving. Premise: Boyfriend hasn't mentioned this event to me. Premise: Daughter hasn't said anything about it to me either. Conclusion: my daughter and her boyfriend are about to elope."

I'm not exactly sure what her next few actions were, but I'm assuming they had to do with calling her daughter and asking a few searching questions. Anyway, the confusion was finally resolved, and I'm sure Child's mother will unhandcuff her from her house in a few days (j/k :).