1992-2005

B

Our cat Bailey was diagnosed with cancer today.
She's seeing a specialist tomorrow.
I should be home.

From Here to Paternity

I'm all set! Bags are packed, leave is approved, camera battery's charged, bills are paid. I even bought only a half-gallon of milk yesterday. Lest MPW call me and say she's in labor and I have to complain that I have all this milk that'll go to waste.

It occurred to me the other night that my unborn child doesn't know what the moon is. I get to teach him! What it is, how far it is, what we did in 1969 to get there, who Frank Zappa's daughter is, why we get the term "lunatic" from it.

Also what chicken kiev is.

Oo! Police Squad!
Super Bowl Fifty, when he's 10!
Plus he'll probably get a video game player, so I can catch up on the last twenty years since my college roommate had "Super Mario Bros."

He sure better appreciate me. and my card tricks.

Dances with Mickee

I found a six-foot leash to use this afternoon, which I thought would be better for my back, but all the bending over I did still made it hurt. But I'm not stuck in a six-foot cage all day (mine's about thirty feet), so the time spent stooping and petting and walking was worth it. Brooke and Roy were adopted this week, and Mr. Keaton and Dagwood found owners this afternoon, so things were looking good. As usual, I asked the staff who they needed me to walk, who said pretty much anyone, but that Mickee wouldn't let me walk her ("She has Man issues.").
Zane was a happy little hound,
little Erma the terrier (as in Max &) was an adorable loaf of bread-sized lick machine, and Tiger the rott/chow mix with nary a tail was bouncy and licky (despite her mug shot).

I walked Bailey again, and Chester the lab gave me a nice pull around the grounds. Later, Puddin' the puppy lab mix chewed a small hole in the top of my ear. I pet some kitties. But then it was on to the gauntlet unintentionally thrown down at the start of my shift.
Every time I walked by Mickee, she'd bark like crazy, looking at me sideways. I said hello and always moved on to other kennels. After an hour and a half of walking back and forth in front of her with other dogs, I opened her door and knelt down. Tail between her legs, up against the back wall. I offered her a biscuit, and she inched towards me, but stepped back again. I slid the treat over to her on the floor, closed her door, and walked a couple other dogs.
One last try, I knelt down and opened her door again, not making eye contact, waiting. She tiptoed over the lower bar and put her chin in my hand, letting me clip the leash onto her collar. Ever so timidly, she slinked next to me out to the front, where I said to the girls, "Look who came out to see me." "MICKEEEEE!!!"
Very skittish, very jumpy around the tall guy following close behind her, I just let her dictate where she wanted to go or stand. Of course, this is when the big train crossing across the street decides to sound his horn. I took her to a less-noisy spot and just scratched her head and neck and shoulders, stopping to see what she'd do when I did. She would just look back at me, and, if only a barely noticeable millimeter at a time, stand a little closer.
I'm going to go back and see her this weekend. Try to get her out of her shell. (The website tells her story: she was adopted two years ago but ran away; was picked up this week with her original neuter sutures still in her; her microchip showed who that original owner was, but he didn't want her anymore.)
People, I think Confucius once said, suck.
I said goodbye to the kennel and apologized to the St. Bernard triplets for not getting to them, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves anyway...

Back to the Front

I've gone back to the doctor to get my back seen to yet again for the fifty-eighth time. I can't exercise at all without my foot going numb or my back pounding. Worst of all, the back of my leg is starting to get small shooting pains again. Used to be only when I rolled over or sit up, but now it's happening at random intervals and longer spans. Last night I was studying in bed and sneezed and my leg just seized up for ten seconds afterwards.
I got a referral to an off-base pain management clinic, whose earliest appointment was October 27th.
Let's hope the baby sticks to his due date of the 28th.

Representin' the Reagan Years

It was nice to be home on a three-day weekend without it being jam-packed with appointments and activities, but ostensibly I went home so we could go to an all-classes reunion for London Central High School, where my wife and I first met, oh, (!) twenty years ago. Unfortunately, it seems that you have to be retired to go to these things; we were the youngest ones there and the only ones representing any class past 1977 until another from class of 1988 showed up.
Still, it was nice to reminisce, and some folks brought yearbooks from the 60s and 70s that had young pictures of teachers that we knew ten, twenty years later.
I was just ticked off that there weren't a bunch of people from My Pregnant Wife's class so I could go:

"LOOK WHO SHE MARRIED! HA! IN YOUR FACE!"

Patent Pending

On the way home from the airport, it occurred to me that My Robust Pregnant Wife had been in the car for over an hour and a half, and it had been raining all day, and her bladder is now the size of a styrofoam packing peanut, so I asked if she wanted to stop at Taco Bell and use the restroom.
"No, I'm fine."
"Would you like a taco?" Pregnant women are also hungry a lot. She frowned.
It occurred to me that she's a vegetarian. I added:
"A veggie taco?"
And then, inspiration:
"A veggico?" (Pronounced "ve-hi-co" as in Mehico.) A Mehico veggico. Let's-a-go!

Two english chaps in unflattering clothing clink glasses: "Brilliant!"

Bored? Hate nice breath?

Hmmm.... what to do this weekend... what to do...

http://www.sauerkrautfestival.com/

Dayton Garlic Festival

A purr too far

Today was hard. Dogs were good; Roy's gone, but Brooke and Bailey aren't. I walked Gretel, who could go all day on her back having her belly rubbed, and ten minutes later, she was adopted. I walked another poodle (Mr. Nichols) so small that none of the collars fit him, so I put the loop of the leash handle around his neck and led him around on it holding it backwards. He was the size of a shoe.
But the cats, oh, the cats. Not that there's a ton of them like in the summer, but I walked into one room in the back where I think a lot of them get overlooked, and they when they heard me petting one, they all just started mewing and rubbing their bodies up against their cage bars, just itching for a scritch. I just didn't have enough hands. I'd pet two, three if two were together, but have two others batting me on the arm or the head or whatever they could reach.
On an unrelated note, some dude in Massachusetts won the Ig Nobel prize for his invention: prosthetic dog testicles, so that the male dog can still pretend. So I know what we're getting Griffin for Christmas. Only with his I'll put in a rubber squeaker.

The New Academic Quarter: An Assessment

Now that I've had each of my four classes, I can report on how I feel about the subjects to be covered this term:

Kill me now.

No no kidding don't it'll hurt you'll feel bad after it's all good.
Two of the instructors seem to be excited about the subjects they're teaching, the last talks too fast (but only reading his slides) to get a word in edgewise, and the last has the personality of a half-eaten bowl of pudding. I have a term paper to do in each class, and the lack of math this quarter just means there's more to read.
The one good thing is that I have a different group of people in most of my classes -- last term there were pretty much the same twenty of us in all four classes. Since we got to pick our own schedules this time, we're better mixed. In my information warfare class, there's a Navy guy, two civilians, some captains, and three enlisted troops.
I just have to meet with all the instructors to tell them I'll be leaving for two weeks at some point later this month.
Maybe I'll try for three.

The Daniel in the Dell

I took my last weekend before classes resume to go visit old chums from college who have lived in Indiana their whole lives, which is a concept both foreign and interesting to me.
South through Cincinnati, right at Louisville, down 64 to Evansville. My friends there have a six-year-old girl, so I got to practice parenting at dinner:
"I'll give you a hundred dollars if you drink the whole bowl of salsa."
She passed.
"I'm going to be a daddy soon; can I change your diaper later?"
"...I'm SIX!"
"...so, what, you change your own?"
I also saw my friend's parents, who I hadn't seen in over ten years. Her mom made me pumpkin pies. Just like old times.
Evansville to Bloomington has no major highways, so I drove through the same winding country roads from fifteen years ago, post-harvest corn stalks dying on either side as far as you could see, which wasn't very much what with the Soviet Helicopter-sized farm equipment driving in front of me.
A quick lunch with a friend there, I then took a couple hours to walk around my old dorm and the college campus. It's still beautiful as all git out.
An hour drive east to Columbus (still IN, not OH) for dinner with another friend who is two days pregnanter than My Lovely Very Pregnant Wife, and then up to Indianapolis for my last visit. It's odd, in a transitive unsmelly-nomad life like mine, to have known these girls for over seventeen years now. It's just nice to be within a couple hours' drive of them for a change.