Murder by Deer

As a country vet I did a lot of traveling, but I had never actually been to Justin's house. He shared his lane with a single neighbor, Carl, who was also in his mid-80s and living by himself. As a matter of fact, Justin and Carl were a lot alike, except that Carl was a widower and Justin had never married.

As far as I knew, Justin only had two hobbies: hating Carl, and feeding deer. As a relative newcomer to the area (9 years this spring), I only knew about the first from small-town gossip. Something about Carl stealing Justin's beau while Justin was off in WWII. The second hobby, I had witnessed myself. On at least three of the handful of wintery occasions I had visited his neighbor's small farm, I had seen Justin with his pickup truck pulled off the road, tossing bales of hay to the ground. I couldn't guess why; most farmers, even retired ones like Justin, hated deer for the damage they did to their crops.

Two days ago, however, Carl passed away. I heard about it while I was in the hardware store, stomping snow off my boots and trying to warm my hands by rubbing them together. Nancy, her head deep in a circle of people clustered around the cashier's desk, glanced up at the jingle of the bell over the door. "Doc V, you hear the news?"

I didn't think it had to do with the new calf I had just delivered, so I shook my head.

"Carl died," Nancy said. "Got in a car wreck up by his house. The sheriff just got back a few minutes ago."

I stared at her. Carl, dead? As old as he was, I had expected him to die in his sleep, not to go like this. "What happened?" I asked.

"He went off the road up by his house and hit a tree," said Nancy, shaking her head. The cluster of people around her repeated the gesture, and I noticed Justin's face among them. He looked slightly less dismayed by the tragedy than the others, and a sudden thought struck me.

"Any idea why he went off the road?" I asked, and Nancy shook her head again.

"Sheriff says maybe he swerved to miss a deer," she said. "Then with the roads all slick, he couldn't get control back."

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, and there's nothing I could go to the sheriff with. But for the first time since I had met him, I saw Justin smile.

Utah Community Credit Union and Customer Service

Even more important than the number of problems a particular company gives you is the speed and convenience with which they solve those problems. Think about it--if you had a company that you only had one problem with, but it took two months, a dozen phone calls, and the sacrifice of a goat to fix the problem, how would that compare with a company that gave you five problems but solved each one with a two-minute phone call?

Let's consider three companies:

Comcast, T-Mobile, and Utah Community Credit Union (UCCU)

Comcast: caused me lots of problems trying to get installed (do they want my money or not?!). Each time, I had to call and spend 15 minutes on the phone trying to explain the problem, then having to hear that the earliest they can schedule help is a week away. Three weeks later, the problem is fixed, but I have to make another serious of incredibly frustrating phone calls to get the billing fixed now. Customer satisfaction: non-existent.

T-Mobile: charged me a $30 fee, apparently a legitimate fee that the service rep forget to tell me about. Took one phone call, required a transfer to a supervisor, who then promised to call the service rep to double-check I was telling the truth. Supervisor couldn't contact the service rep, so went ahead and refunded the money. Great, but had the potential to turn nasty if the supervisor had actually contacted the service rep, and the service rep got scared he'd get in trouble and claimed he had told me about it. Anyway, problem solved. Customer satisfaction: good.

UCCU: charged us a late fee on a car-loan payment because the teller deposited the money in our checking account instead of loan account. Required a couple phone calls, and we had to do some digging in our transactions to find the day and error, but there was no need to transfer us to a supervisor, the first guy on the phone we talked to accepted our explanation and refunded the service food. Customer satisfaction: very good.

Gimp and the Libgimpui DLL

Note to self, since I know this is going to come up again and I won't remember the solution: after installing Gimp, while starting the program, if lots of "missing entry points in the libgimpui dll" errors start popping up, then uninstall, erase the old folders in Program Files, make sure the dll is gone from windows/system32, then reinstall Gimp but using a different folder name than the default given.

You're doin' it wrong IV

Thanks to my beautiful wife, Child, for this one!

Wives and toilet seats

I think I'm the only person whose wife reminds him to leave the toilet lid up. (Not the seat, just the lid.)

Why? Because Child's cat is too finicky to drink from her water dish, choosing instead the "giant water bowl."

Comcast...DE MUERTE!!!

So if I attempted to chronicle all my dealings with Comcast in the last month, attempting to set up internet at Child's and I's new home, this blog post would be several pages long. Instead, let me just comment on the latest call.

Background: due to circumstances, for the first three weeks of our "service," the internet didn't work. Each time I called and talked with a Comcast representative, I was given a "confirmation code" that they said I could use after the service finally worked to make sure I wasn't billed for downtime. In addition, one of the techs that came out to the house gave me a $20 discount for the trouble we've been going through.

So I finally received the first bill: $8.14.

$27.95 for the bill, minus the $20 credit the technician gave me, plus $0.19 tax. Makes sense. But no credits for the three weeks I was without internet--fair enough, I'm supposed to call up and cite my "confirmation codes."

I call Comcast and try to talk to billing. I run through the automated message and get to a prompt that asks for the last four digits of my account number, which I don't have handy.

I hang up and call back, this time aiming for an operator. I find one and he checks my name and phone number, then asks for my account number as well. I tell him I don't have it handy, so he asks for the exact amount of my last payment. Well, for starters, I haven't made ANY payments yet (except for whatever they charged when I signed up over the phone a month ago), and I wouldn't remember the amount off the top of my head anyway. I verbally spar with him for a few moments, asking if there's any other way to verify myself, but he remains adamant. No account number, no help. I hang up.

I call back again. Instead of asking the new operator for help with my bill, I ask her for my account number. She gives it to me. Ah, the joys of large corporations. Since this lady was helpful in giving me my account number, I decide to stick with her. So, over the next 19 minutes, I try time and time again to explain my situation, everything that's happened, everything that SHOULD happen. Finally, FINALLY, she tells me that all the additional changes/credits, whatever, should appear on my next bill. "As a matter of fact, it should be negative," she says.

I asked her three different times, in three different ways, to confirm that my next bill will be negative (i.e. Comcast should have credited me) and each time she confirmed it.

We'll see. I have more faith in Osama bin Laden converting to Christianity than in Comcast getting something right.

Letters to the Editor: Dead Birds

I forgot to post this "letter to the editor" earlier, but it's pretty self-explanatory. I submitted it about two weeks ago, and it was published on August 9th.

Might I also point out that while I am known to misspell words on occasion, the only misspelling in the letter below is in the title (where casualities should be casualties), and that was put in by the newspaper. ;)

The reason I remembered it today was because the officer I wrote it for came to the shelter today where I had clipped a copy of it.

Bird casualities

This letter to the editor is actually on behalf of a friend of mine, a Provo police officer. He told me they frequently get calls from people on BYU campus asking them to take care of a dead bird. For starters, as my friend pointed out, BYU not only has its own police, but it also has a maintenance crew for each building. Not only that, but he assured me there was no law against people picking up the bird themselves (using gloves, a trash bag or something similar) and simply throwing it away.

I understand "911" has fewer numbers than "422-2222" (BYU Police) or "422-INFO" (BYU Info for maintenance phone numbers), but as college-educated people I'm sure we can handle the extra digits.

Not only that, but since we're at a school run by a religion that emphasizes self-reliance, I am confident we can even learn to handle a dead bird ourselves (I suggest "Handling Dead Birds 101," "Coping with Death 230" and the whole "Turning Wal-Mart Bags Into Makeshift Shrouds" course series).

Call Provo police for emergencies such as your roommate's meth lab, but BYU police or maintenance should be able to handle a dead bird.

You're doin' it wrong III

Thanks to Alan Atherton for the inspiration for this one.

Oh, the usual...I got peed on...

It's been a long day: a praying mantis tried to assault a shelter employee, a policeman beat it back with his baton, and a dog peed on my leg.

Alright, it's not really as exciting as it sounds. I was in the kitchen eating some inmate-grown corn when there was a sudden burst of shrieking from the hallway. I went to investigate and found two of the girls that work at the shelter trying to alternately catch a praying mantis and fleeing in terror when it would fly at them. Once it landed in one of the girl's hair and the girl ran shrieking down the hall.

At the same time, an ACO came in bringing a squirrel. He heard the noise and came to investigate, then caught the mantis himself once he realized what they were doing. The girls were trying to catch it to feed our chameleon, so the officer tossed it in the cage, but it landed out of sight of the chameleon. Next thing I know, the ACO whips out his beat-stick (billy club? baton?) and starts poking the mantis, trying to get it to move. It doesn't work, so the ACO sticks a piece of tape on the end of his baton and picks the mantis up with it.

On an unrelated note, a dog peed on my leg. Oh well, part of the job.


A less fun side of the job is the disease we get occasionally. Right now the shelter is abnormally empty, we have pans of bleach everywhere to sanitize our shoe-soles, and there's practically armed guards patrolling the halls to make sure no one touches any of the animals. It started when a dog became sick, but it was an internal disease and we couldn't tell until it died suddenly. Since visitors (and even a couple shelter workers--we won't name names) can't seem to get the concept of "germs" through their head, the dog had been petted, then the people went on to pet half the other dogs in the place without sanitizing their hands between dogs.

The first dog died, as did a couple others that were adopted out. The decision was made to clean house, so we euthanized anything that looked in the least bit sick, or who's time was up. So the shelter is spookily quiet, no one is allowed to adopt a dog for a while until we're sure everything is safe, and we're keeping a close eye out for any more sick dogs.

The happy (sad?) thing is that in a week, we'll be back to full capacity. So many dogs...

You're doin' it wrong II

You're doin' it wrong.

This is the first post in my upcoming "You're doin' it wrong" series of pictures. I'd welcome other suggestions.

Raptors!!!

Today we got a Cooper's hawk at the animal shelter. The man from the raptor rescue who came and got it said it was actually still young, as large as it was. He said it probably had just left its nest.



Also, if your dog gets loose, make sure it's friendly, especially towards any cop that might pick it up. Today wasn't the first time a cop brought in a dog and told me he was going to give the owner a ticket because the dog played hard to get. Technically they can give a ticket to every single owner whose dog is loose, since there's a leash law, but they normally don't bother, unless, as I said, the dog causes them problems.

Your babies are ugly! All of them! ...except two.

Today was the third week Child and I attended our "married student" church, where 70% of the people have a baby under a year old and 60% of them are expecting in the next two months. 1% (Child and I) have neither a baby nor are expecting.

As you might guess, this has caused some problems, mostly for Child, who feels (fairly enough) that she is somewhat of an outsider and that nothing relates to her. Our sacrament meeting was composed of ten or so short talks, assigned by the bishop and given by the church members, illustrating faith. Most of them had something to do with childbirth.

"My wife was in labor for thirty pain-filled hours but we had faith..."
"I had these various complications with the pregnancy but thanks to faith..."
"My wife had horrible nausea and cramps for the last eight months of her pregnancy but with faith..."

I'm setting next to Child cringing. At the end, Child leans over to me and says scowls, "We're never having children."

Curses! I'm having a hard enough time convincing her she wants a baby.

Then we split up for our guy/girl classes. Afterwards, I reported that us guys learned about reverence. Child grumpily said she had learned about how to teach your children to be reverent.

She also handed me a schedule of activities for the women she had gotten. I was pleased, because the previous week she had complained that the only activities were for women with babies. "Hey, you like swimming, you can go to the swimming group!" I suggested.

She pointed to the description. "Come enjoy the shade and company while you watch your children swim..."

"How about the walking group?" I suggested.

"Join us as we push strollers around the neighborhood..."

"The cooking group?"

"Want to make your own baby food? Come learn how..."

Poor Child. I feel for her, I really do.

There was one bright note: our meeting time will be moved from 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM in two weeks. It won't solve any of the underlying problems, but at least Child won't have to face them on too-little sleep. :)

Starting a new short story

Alright, I've had three short story ideas bouncing around in my head, but all of them seem to have difficulties. In addition, I'm starting to get motivated to return to my novel and start over with it.

However, I've finally decided to give short stories one more shot. I've picked the least-problematic one of the three, and here I go. We'll see how it turns out...

The Mac-Cat

Child and I watched a movie last night. We left briefly to find some food, and came back to find Acouchi apparently intrigued by the rolling credits. Perhaps she had a friend playing an extra in the movie, and was looking for the name.

A seven-woman show

At the animal shelter, there are eight employees. One is the director. He's a guy. The other seven are women.

I feel sorry for him sometimes. Usually everyone gets along well, but when differences arise, as they are bound to with that skewed of an employee gender-makeup, then he's the one who has to solve the problems. He spent all this morning (seriously, like two hours!) talking with two of the women about some issue, which started with a misplaced soda can, I believe.

Oh well, that's part of being the director.

On an unrelated note, here's a picture of the fawn we got in at the shelter a little while ago.

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