Will you be taking suggestions for the munchees?

You know Dick Cheney still has a Secret Service detail, right?

A blog post by a guy whose dog went blind: [link]

It's really amazing. In far less time than you'd ever guess, she adapted-- far, far better than I ever realized would be possible. I made the usual mistake of anthropomorphizing the animal I live with. Her brain just works differently than ours do: I'm told when they go blind, dogs just think something along the lines of "It's nighttime always now. Huh. How about that." and they get on with it. Plus, they're much less avid readers than us, and, of course, their primary sense is smell, so they're in a much better position to give up sight than, say, me.

Virginia learned how to navigate the yard and the house. She checks for open doors with her snout, she uses her ears far more than before it seems-- you can 'remote control' her through unfamiliar territory by clapping or yelling, and she'll make a straight vector to the recognized sound source. Plus, she got rid of her phobia of men who fit some mold from her past, because, apparently, the nose gives everyone a fair shake.

I knew she's really adapted when I saw her chasing squirrels. And doing a surprisingly good job of it. I made a little diagram here showing a bit of how I think she does it: the nose gives a general radar-like image of squirrel locations; the ears, each pivoting independently, are triangulating rapid movement and locations with some advanced unconscious dog-math; she has a good map of the yard in her brain, and I think she gets more information from her paws about the surface she's on, which must help pinpoint where she is in her mind's map.

A friend's dog has recently gone blind, and she does all of that. According to my friend's research, dogs have very good spatial memory, so their house is all laid out for her still in her mind.

My previous dog went blind towards the end of her life, and my current dog is now deaf (progressively with age, not congenitally).

I don't think the blind dog ever even noticed or cared; with the deaf one, it's hard to get his attention or wake him up, and we take care not to startle him, but once we have his attention he's fine. I worry much more about the deafness, if he ever got out of the yard unattended, or if some disaster happened inside the house.

This is how bad of a day today is... I am in the living room and can see my trash can. I just went and yelled at a middle school aged kid to take the GIANT bag of trash that he dumped into our trash can out.

He looked at me plaintively and said, "But ours is full."

My reply was "I'm sorry."

I don't know why other than I hate when people fuck with our trash -- including those who dig around in the recycling.

I should have also yelled "GET OFF MY LAWN" and shook my cane.

That sucks.

"But ours is full."

Well OK then.

Our work dumpster often gets filled by empty beer bottles of the neighbors. So we pay extra to get then taken away. We could put a lock on it, but then we'd have to pay extra for the garbage people to handle a dumpster with a lock on it.

Panda cake! [link]

You know how I love the re-using and the reduction of stuff, but given my current situation and all that I've read. I strongly encourage anyone who gets ANYTHING from freecycle or craigslist or anywhere used to do one of the following depending on the item:

have it HOT stream cleaned
run it in a HOT dryer for an hour
wash it in a HOT cycle and the dry it in a HOT dryer until it is dry and then for 20 more min.
seal it in something airtight and plastic for 12-18 months.

Say, do you suppose I could temporarily be like a komodo dragon, where I could bite someone and just wait a few days for the bacteria in my mouth to cause the person to die of infection?

I bring you komodo dragon news: turns out it's venom after all. Scientists from the University of Melbourne have this year reported that they've found large venom glands in their lower jaw. [link] The venom prevents blood clotting and dilates blood vessels, causing blood pressure to plummet. This makes them one of the largest venomous creatures ever.

This is how bad of a day today is... I am in the living room and can see my trash can. I just went and yelled at a middle school aged kid to take the GIANT bag of trash that he dumped into our trash can out.

Oh, I hate that. At my last apartment, one of the other apartments did that to me all tht time. I wound up with overflowing bins, and all sorts of crap in the recycling bin. So happy I don't have to deal with it anymore.

"But ours is full."

Might want to figure out how to reduce the amount of trash you're producing. We do fill our container up every week, but it's about three of the kitchen-sized garbage bags worth of trash in it. I'm always amazed at how much we manage to recycle. We have one container for cardboard, one for newspapers and paper and one for glass, cans and plastic.