Saintly Pets (and not so much)

John Scalzi saith:

I was late last week with the Weekend Assignment, so Mavarin dropped me a line with a suggested Weekend Assignment, because she's just helpful that way. I liked it enough that I've decided to rest my head this week, and just use hers instead:

(and quotes me:)

Weekend Assignment #188: What is the most unusual thing you've ever done with (or to) a family pet? Even if you've never taped breakfast meat onto fur, there's a good chance you and your fuzzy, feathery or scaly friend have done something out of the ordinary together at some point. What was it? Staging some fun (but humane) activity for this assignment works, too.

Extra credit: What's your most unusual picture of a family pet? May we see it?

Heh. Now that's he's actually gone and used the suggestion, I've got to come up with an answer for it. I'll admit that events related to Tuffy's cancerous tongue were on my mind when I thought of this, but I've talked that subject to death already. Besides, it's not exactly a fun thing we did together!

Still, having thought about this all evening, I've come up with the following:

1. Exhibit A: Gourami

In 1970 or 1971, our junior high had an environmental Science Fair. My contribution consisted of two small fish tanks. (I must have borrowed the second one, or used some other kind of container.) One was filled with clean, demineralized water, and a pearl gourami named Pearl. The other had high-phosphate detergent added to it. On a poster I explained that detergents and enzymes pollute the water, promote algae, and aren't good for the fish. In retrospect, I think this was kind of a lame project - I didn't give algae time to grow or anything, just made soapy, somewhat disgusting-looking water. The fish was just there to elicit sympathy for anything living in the polluted water. I specifically chose that gourami because it was one of the most aggressive fish in my ten gallon tank at home, and I didn't like it very much. But it didn't have a good time that day.

2. The canine two-alarmer

Princess Guinevere of Westcott Street, 1978

(and no, her legs weren't actually red)

When I was a senior in college, I lived in a rooming house on Westcott Street in Syracuse. The house initially belonged to my friend Bob, but that year he tried to sell it to another slumlord (as Bob often called himself). The sale never quite went through, and at one point a judge condemned the place in a fit of pique. It was Bob who gave me my first dog, Jenny, in the fall of 1978. He initially called her Princess, but I renamed her Princess Guinevere of Westcott Street, Jenny for short.

By March, 1979, two months before I got married, I was living in that one-room apartment with Jenny and a stray black Labrador puppy named Wayfarer, Wafer for short. One Sunday morning, the puppies started barking. I sleepily told them to be quiet, but they kept at it. That's when the guy across the hall, hearing me and the dogs, shouted, "Karen, get out! There's a fire!" I made a grab for my glasses, but knocked them on the floor and couldn't find them. I think I also broke something, and cut my foot on some glass. But I got shoes on, and my raincoat, and ran outside with the two dogs. I made no attempt to grab anything else. A nice firefighter went in and got me my glasses a few minutes later.

The puppies and I lived on the first floor in front, and the fire was on the second floor in back. There was little or no damage to my studio apartment, and I can't honestly say that Jenny and Wafer saved my life with their barking. But they would have, and I'm grateful. I eventually gave Wafer to the Humane Association, and she was promptly adopted.

3. Take Your Dog to Church Day.

Tuffy ducks the holy water, 2007.

Tuffy in church, 2006

Tuffy in the pew, 2005

John thinks it's unusual to take your dog to church one day a year, and I suppose it is. But it's not unheard of. St. Michael's & All Angels in Tucson is far from the only parish to celebrate the Feast of St. Francis with a blessing of the animals. What is unusual, I think, is that I try to photograph the event at the same time. Here are some Tuffy pictures from visiting church in three different years.

Extra Credit: Tuffy Cat!

Newly reedited photo of "Tuffy cat," 2005

Teletuffy, July 2007

I have pictures of Jenny in the snow, Jenny in the van, Noodle in a dog pen, on a couch and in John's arms. I have photos of Tuffy in church, with her surgery sites showing, looking deformed, chasing her tail, begging, running, out of focus, half out of frame, too close to the camera, and on and on. I even have two photos of her with a TV edited onto her side, sort of a cross between Bacon Cat and the Teletubbies. But I suppose the most unusual pet photos I have are two edits I did in 2005 to make Tuffy look like a cat. It wasn't entirely successful, even with tonight's reedit, but it amuses me.

Thanks, John, for using my suggestion!

Karen

Competence and Confidence

You've probably seen The Sound of Music, yes? Annoyed by the "problem named Maria," the nuns send her to live with the Von Trapp family as a governess. As she walks to the Von Trapp estate, suitcase in hand, Julie Andrews as Maria sings "I Have Confidence," building herself up and showing herself that she isn't afraid. Then she reaches the forbidding gates of her destination, and falters for a moment: "Oh, help!"

A train at sunset: I think I can, I think I can...

We probably all feel like that sometimes. Myself, I'm in my fourth week at Famous Vehicle Dealer, struggling to learn arcane industry language and the equally arcane reports that use those terms. It's been difficult and kind of scary, and sometimes I've felt a bit stupid for not being able to understand both big picture and details on the basis of a series of brief explanations. I've had to tell myself that it's not reasonable to expect myself to learn an entire industry in a couple of weeks, working almost entirely on my own; that I'm both intelligent enough and dedicated enough to learn what I need to learn; and that my boss is both pleased with my efforts and willing to help. But today I puzzled through the rest of the procedure for putting together this big, complex report, with seven tabs' worth of info from four different sources, and successfully recreated it to match known data. So there! That will do wonders for my confidence: actual proof that I can do it after all.

Tuffy hopes to find leftover crumbs of dog biscuit.

And tonight Tuffy ate. In fact, she showed every sign of being ravenous. She won't eat her canned dog food, any flavor, but she had a couple of dog biscuits, and then John cooked up hamburger and eggs for her, and then she pestered me for lamb fat. This dog is just incredibly stubborn about eating something she's bored with! She used to like the canned food and her pieces of cheddar cheese, but she's had them often enough since the two operations that she won't touch them now. Months ago, she was bored with dog biscuits. She'd beg for one only to carry it outside and bury it. But she hasn't been eating hard food because of her tongue, so now it's a novelty again. Darn dog!

Not exactly Battersea: power station, Alvernon & Irvington

More power!

I happened to be stopped at the light at Alvernon and Irvington just before sunset tonight, and noticed that off to the right was (I assume) a power station. I thought it looked interesting, so here are a few photos. The train (same as the one above, but a day later) arrived just as the light turned green, and between the train moving and my car moving the shot I took of the locomotive was hopelessly blurry. But the power station was nice and station-ary.

I've decided to take it from the top and reedit Heirs of Mâvarin and then Mages of Mâvarin from the beginning, having lost momentum on my ongoing edit since the First Magnus debacle and Tuffy's diagnosis. (Did I mention this already? I can't remember.) Anyway, a couple of nights ago I was obsessing about a twenty (or so) word passage in Heirs. I had suddenly realized that a line of Fayubi's prophecy to Jamek didn't make much sense, and was interrupted by a line that was pretty maudlin. The prophecy was a one-word fix, but I'm still not happy with the sentence about Jamek's reaction. And then tonight I realized that the prophecy still doesn't make logical sense, this time for a different reason. Arrgh.

So there I was tonight, looking over page one of Heirs, and I noticed a bit that I probably wrote nearly twenty years ago - long after high school, but not exactly recently. It starts with Jord Baret saying, "You're crazy, Bil," which suddenly struck me as cliched, forced and too contemporary. Jord would disagree with Bil's relaxed attitude toward tengremen, but those aren't the right words to express that. After considering "Don't be ridiculous," and "You're wrong," and "Don't be stupid," all of which have exactly the same problems as "You're crazy," I ended up with him not insulting Bil at all, but simply stating why he believes Bil is wrong. Yes, better. Now I intend to go through the rest of the book to look for clunkers, fighting to notice every sentence rather than glossing over it because it's so familiar. There must be a reason why DAW thought the book wasn't "truly outstanding," in the words of the form letter, which said they take nothing less from new authors. Maybe the first reader was put off by that sentence, "You're crazy, Bil," Jord said, and other sentences here and there that my eyes slide right over.

Or maybe I'm just listening to my Inner Weasel, driving myself crazy with second-guessing of trivial details. How does that song go again? "I have confidence in sunshine, I have confidence in rain...!"

Karen

Grrr. Arrgh. Whimper. Wail. Sigh. Moan.

Good grief, what a yucky day!

First, I was stressed out because I thought it was my predecessor's last day, and I wasn't anywhere near ready to take over the job on my own. I'm still not. It turns out she's there tomorrow, but I have no great hopes that we're going to get any serious training in; history suggests otherwise (Say no more - I can say no more). I'll manage, though. Whatever I can't puzzle out on my own, I'll get explanations for from someone else.

Tuffy shows off her good side.

Then, of course, there was the phone call this morning from Tuffy's surgeon. I know you folks are waiting for details, but there's only so much I can tell you at this point. Dr. K. said that they got all of the cancer but a little bit at the back of the tongue, but that's enough to grow back if left untreated. Dr. K. has to examine the tongue before she'll be able to recommend what to do next. I'm very much afraid that Tuffy is headed for a third operation. As expensive as it is, an operation would be both cheaper for us and easier on the dog than the alternatives. To say that John and I are seriously bummed is both obvious and true.

Meanwhile, Dr. K. had no words of wisdom to offer on the lack of eating, unless something went wrong with the stitches. But she's not bleeding, and there's no evidence of pain or lethargy. She just doesn't want anything but meat loaf or sausage or possibly hamburger. Even high-end canned dog food doesn't interest her - and this is a dog who would reluctantly eat dry food if we added a little canned stuff to it.

I really wasn't expecting the long-awaited pathology report on Tuffy to be bad news. Now I don't know what to think, but it can't be good. There's only bad or worse. And we've a week to get through before she gets in to see Dr. K. and the oncologist.

And if all that wasn't enough crappiness for the day, there was also this. AOL, in their infinite cluelessness, has laid off Joe Loong, better known as Journals Editor Joe.

Y'know, I really thought I was through being angry with AOL. Annoyed at times, yes, bemused by their short-sightedness, definitely; but not angry. But I was angry today. Here is a guy that the AOL J-Land community - that extended family of past and present AOL bloggers - saw as their friend and advocate. If there was a glitch or an upgrade, or a glitch in an upgrade, Joe would tell us what was happening and why, and when it would most likely be resolved. If there was a new feature, he'd explain how to use it. If an individual had a problem with a blog, Joe would try to solve it. And on top of all this, he kept us informed and amused with tales of online foolishness, thoughts on the business, ethics and philosophy of blogging, the weather in DC, and the current page on his Hello Kitty calendar. Much as I appreciate John Scalzi's work as our Blogfather, Editor Joe was the real go-to guy for journalers, the guy who was always there for us, the human presence that made interactions with AOL almost infinitely better than they would be otherwise. Even when the banner ads tore us apart and split us asunder, Joe was patient and helpful as always, never judging someone harshly on the basis of where they blogged or their level of expertise with HTML and such.

For AOL to lay off such an individual is not merely unfair or foolish. It's highly destructive to what's left of the AOL-J community, and equally destructive to whatever tattered shreds of goodwill remain between the company and the journalers. Already people are asking who will help them when problems arise, now that the one person who was always there for them has been shown the door. I'm sure some of the other corporate bloggers at AOL are fine folks, and maybe a few of them even survived today's layoff. But we knew Joe. We knew he cared, and would help if he possibly could. It's hard not to see this as another slap in the face from AOL. No, that's not quite it. For someone to slap your face means that they care about you - negatively, perhaps, but at least they're paying attention. Whoever put Joe on the list of layoffs clearly has no idea what an asset Joe was to the company, because he or she has no idea that Joe's constituency has any value. Journals.aol.com is just another generator of pages on which ads can appear, profitable insofar as they're fed by consumer-generated content, but perhaps more trouble than they're worth based on what happened two years ago. A "suit" who thinks of AOL Journals in such terms is certain to undervalue Joe's huge contribution to keeping J-Land alive. With his endless helpfulness and enthusiasm, Joe made it possible for people to overcome their dismay about the ads, and stay with AOL while people like me jumped ship.

He and John Scalzi even made it possible for those of us who left to retain some ties with J-Land, and even a smidge of loyalty toward a company that wrote us off. Do you know when I finally converted my paid AOL account to a free one? Tonight. It's taken me two years to get on the cable modem and a wireless LAN, work out how to save my email, and change my billing plan to the one marked $0.00. I'd be lying if I said my making the change today was in direct response to Joe's departure, but it's true that were it not for Joe and John, I would have found a way to drop my paid account a long time ago, whether I had the high speed connection or not.

Just a few days ago, I wrote about the dwindling of the old AOL-J community, as people get bored with blogging or fed up with AOL or both, and wander off elsewhere. There are more blogs out there now than any of us could read in a lifetime, but we've lost our personal connection with most of them. The ones branded AOL represent a small, often disregarded backwater of the blogosphere, with few new screen names and a distinct tendency for old ones to migrate to other platforms. We've gained a lot since AOL Journals were first launched - more choices, more versatility, slideshows and video and other widgets, gizmos and gimcracks. But we've lost a lot, too. We're lost the joy and enthusiasm that came with the novelty of this fun new means of expression. We've lost online friends, who dropped out, moved on, even died in some cases. And now we've lost Joe - not as a person and fellow blogger, but as our cheerleader, ombudsman, tutor and advocate. That's probably not the greatest loss we've had as a group. But aside from the people who have actually died, it's got to be right up there.

I've read a number of comments today that asked where Joe can be found, outside the confines of AOL. Not to worry - I've already added his personal blog to my sidebar. Here's the link:

Dumb Things I Have Done Lately

All the best, Joe!

Karen

About Tuffy

The veterinary surgeon finally heard from the pathologist about Tuffy's carcinoma. They didn't get it all.

Formerly Invisible Photos for the Invisible Photo Shoot

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Picture someone or something in the act of lounging about or slacking off. Naps, loitering, general loafing -- it all works. Show yourself, show friends, show pets. All this shoot needs is to have them not doing much at all.

You know what's coming, right? For all the usual reasons, here's Tuffy:


She's not so much lounging as posing for me, while "maintaining a state of catlike readiness" in case gobs of meatloaf suddenly appear between my fingers. That's currently all she wants to eat - no dog food, no cheese, no dog biscuits. As I've mentioned before, she's always been a fussy eater, so we're trying not to worry. Nevertheless, we worry.


This shot is from February, the same session as the photo on my sidebar.


Here's a surprise: I actually have a few shots for this shoot that have human beings in them, and no Tuffy! Here are my friends Kevin and Eva, this past Sunday afternoon:



And here's 102-year-old Eva with her daughter's dog, Shady:


And here's why I may just post this Monday Photo Shoot without any photos in it:


Good grief! First Carly gives me a heads up that all of Scalzi's Monday entries have disappeared from By the Way, including the Monday Photo shoot entry. For one awful moment I thought AOL was punishing Scalzi for breaking the Unwritten Rule or something. But no: everyone's Monday AOL-J entries are gone from their blogs. Any smugness I may have felt about this as a Blogger user (very little, actually) evaporated when I tried to upload the photos. I need to go to bed anyway, so I'm gonna try one more time, and then post without pictures if it doesn't work - and try again in the morning.

Hey, it worked this time! Good enough. Good night!

Rooting for Turnips

My recent spate of entries that mention root vegetables (pumpkins, rutabagas and turnips)* isn't quite done. A British reader of this blog, Alan, writes:

Your reference to swedes and turnips reminded me of when I was young. At Halloween children would hollow out turnips, carve a face on them (or get a parent to) and carry them around with a lighted candle within. I can still smell the singed turnip tops, when I think about it. Nowadays children carry pumpkins around, and dress up in fancy dress like their American cousins. A mixture of the fact that Pumpkins are easier to get, people have more disposable money, and the commercialism of Halloween means kids wouldn‘t put up with a turnip anymore. Those were simpler times.

*I appear to be wrong about pumpkins being a root vegetable. Drat.

All this was news to me, but in a later email, Alan helpfully provided corroboration in the form of the following links:

A couple of links, first a brief and not very good introduction to it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/features/halloween/traditions.shtml

Someone having a go at carving:
http://www.irelandlogue.com/history/turnip-carving.html

This one has some photos, the practice seems to have been common throughout Europe:
http://www.andreagrant.org/zuerich/turnip.html

Well, long story short, it's true! Not only that, but our friend the rutabaga (swede) is also considered Jack O'Lantern material.

As Alan says, however, the pumpkin is rapidly taking over from the turnip in UK Halloween celebrations. Some of this is the influence of American culture, but as several articles point out, pumpkins are also naturally hollow, a lot easier to carve, better illuminated when the candle is lit inside, and smell better than burning turnip. Also, one can bake and eat the pumpkin seeds, and even make pumpkin pie. Much as I like rutabagas, I must admit that I like the taste of "pumpkin anything" about 1000% better.

Back to Alan for the last word on this:

I was talking to my Dad about them. He is 82. He mentioned that when he was young, before the war, he was a member of a group of kids who used to pinch turnips from farmers fields to carve them.

I live in the North-East of England. We called them Narkys here.

I know Pumpkins are easier to carve and look better, but I miss the old traditions. They are dying out so quickly. Eventually the world will be one homogeneous mass. You touched on it when you mentioned Route 66 and everywhere now having a Denny’s.

You never know, I might carve a turnip this Halloween.

Alan.

This is a good reminder to me, about several things. One is that an American such as myself can watch a lot of BBC and ITV television shows, read British novels, go to England and hack around by tube and by train, and still there will always be large pockets of British culture of which the American knows nothing. And really, that's a good thing. It means that that's always more to learn, and that there is still plenty that is unique to one country or another. Two, it tells us that despite this, it is all too easy for regional differences to fade, subsumed by mass media-driven culture. And three, it suggests to me that I should revive my Holiday Trivia postings of a few years back, and do a Halloween round of questions.

So I will.

Karen

Wandering the Vortex

After my weekly dose of adequate sleep, I spent this afternoon and evening wandering through a series of playgrounds, most of them electronic. In retrospect, my collected experiences of the day seem someone haphazard and disconnected, like the Doctor's travels with the randomiser enabled. But heck, I've had fun! My Magical Mystery Tour has taken in the following sights:

• I've researched Harlan Ellison's connection with the 1950s paperback publisher Regency Books, only to discover that Harlan is more interested in spinning wild, "surreal" tales about his life than in setting out the facts. (He has claimed on dust jacket bios to be a "sightless Mennonite mendicant," a the vigilante hero of the barrio called "El Fiera de Batata ("The Wild Beast of the Sweet Potato"), and a retired school bus driver with a perfect driving record, among other fantasy personae.) Nearly as giggleworthy was a compilation of nonexistent story titles by Arland Hellisunk.
• I've had yam bisque at Sweet Tomatoes, and could have sworn I tasted rutabaga in it. This led me to wonder whether I could sustain an entry (or part of one) called Turnip Anything? Good pun, anyway.
  
• I've watched bits of the TV adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, and discovered that I hardly dislike it at all any more. It is utterly unfaithful to the book, often corny or clumsy, and relies heavily on pointless, uncanonical scenes and unnecessary special effects; but there are some neat explorations in their version of this story and these characters.
• I went looking for citations to add to the Murray Gold article on Wikipedia, and found a) a website on the history of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a bio of the Doctor Who composer on his management's website, and a somewhat embarrassing fan site, whose originator apparently considers Gold as cute as he is talented.
• Back in the live world, specifically Safeway, I photographed Cliff's successful stacking of some of a customer's purchases. While there, I took a call from Eva, my 102-year-old friend. Hooray! She's well enough to go to church!
  
• I've helped John fuss with some video files in an odd format his Mac doesn't like - or tried to. The Vaio doesn't like them, either.
• I've put the First Doctor DVDs in chronological order. So far, I've watched the first four stories, including Marco Polo, which doesn't exist. Well, sort of. It's one of the missing serials, but I watched a reconstruction, consisting of the original soundtrack of the show and a series of colorized photos from it. Someone had also persuaded guest star Mark Eden to reprise his role as Polo, in a framing device of the aged Polo reminiscing about his literally unbelievable encounter with the Doctor and his friends decades before.
  
• I've made a second attempt to read an older Doctor Who book called The Face of the Enemy by David A McIntee. The Doctor appears in about two pages of the book, which in theory features UNIT, Ian and Barbara as well as the Master. I'm curious to see how Ian and Barbara are portrayed, nearly a decade after their initial travels with the Doctor, but I'm having trouble getting deep enough into the book for them to appear at all. So far, it's mostly a police procedural!
• I've discovered how much Tuffy likes meatloaf. She likes it a lot.
  

And having done all these things, I'm going to bed now. Good night!