A Wild Idea

I'm sitting in the sun in the backyard, doing my summer reading and thinking about pedagogy, so obviously I'm doing some heavy "in a perfect world" daydreaming.

People can't just go get married willy-nilly without a license. (In fact, many churches won't marry you unless you've taken a pre-marriage course together, called a Pre-Cana)
They can't just go driving down the street or motorcycling without some training and a license.
In Massachusetts, they can't get some of the better mortgage deals without a first-time-homebuyer lecture course.
They can't fly a plane without serious training and a license.

So why are birth certificates required by the state governments, but only as an afterthought? It is just as reckless to bring another person into the world when you are unprepared as any of the items listed above. Marriage and divorce clearly aren't basic human rights allowed without some paperwork and certification, so why is getting pregnant? Pregnancy only leads to two possible outcomes: baby in need of certification, or dead fetus, whether intentional or accidental. The government clearly has their foot in the door on the subject, but in a really sloppy, broken-ankle sort of way.

I'm still somewhat horrified at the story of the woman who uses abortions as her preferred form of birth control, and also by the woman in the very recent New York Times article who got one of her twin fetuses aborted because she knew she couldn't afford to raise both. And to be clear, I don't think abortion should be illegal in the slightest, but I think it is overused/abused as an option.

Happy Birthday, America

Terribleness

Things that affect me emotionally long after the incident has passed:

1. Leaving the ice cream on the kitchen counter having forgotten to scoop myself a bowl, first.

2. Shouting something obnoxious at someone far away because you think you know them, but you don't.

3. Oversimplification and/or bad analogies to the point of completely killing the original lesson. Really, nothing is that simple. Specialization is not just for ants.

4. When someone turns a corner and screams and brings their knee up to guard him/herself from my dog for the sole reason that she is a dog, causing the dog to bark in surprise/fear and look like she's trying to attack them.

Drawing Lines

I went to the pet store the other day to grab a refill on food and treats for Maisy, and since she's welcome in the store I always take her with me and let her pick out a new toy and play with all the other dogs and owners, like a nice puppymom. This usually makes trips to the store fairly chaotic and so when I accidentally buy an already open bag of cookies, I don't notice until I'm home.

When I saw the bag had been ripped open, I thought for a second and the "poison dog food from China" incident came to mind. And who knows what kind of psychos could be rolling through the pet store spraying cyanide on my baby's cookies. So I decided to take them back the next day to try to explain to the store that I wanted to exchange the bag of pre-opened dog treats.

Then I took my baby, who is actually a dog, for a long walk now that all the snow has melted and she tried to eat every piece of garbage we came across. After that I decided it would truly have to be a psycho to put something on dog treats that would be worse than she'd probably try to eat off the ground anyway. So I'm keeping them.

Bedtime at the Fex House

Somebody's all tucked in with her sock monkey and blankie.

Also, I decided it's ok for me to post just photos on the blog-blog instead of the photo-blog as a way for me to keep the photo-blog aesthetically focused. Because while this is totally adorbs, it is not a good photo.

Public Service Announcement: The Internet

Random, undirected clicking can lead to terrible, terrible discoveries.

First Lessons of 2011

1. Pick up the dog poop in the back yard BEFORE it starts snowing.

2. Never use sugar free Jell-O for jello shots.

3. Keep water:booze 1:1 in jello shots.

4. Make sure your gelatin is FULLY dissolved.

Happy New Year!

If your Dog is exhibiting odd behavior, there is almost always a good reason.

My first dog was a Newfoundland/Golden Retriever Mix named Sport. We adopted him when I was four years old. He was the SWEETEST and smartest dog I have ever known and everyone who ever knew him says the same. Best Dog Ever though he may have been, he definitely had his weaker moments - eating the garbage, getting stuck in the neighbor's beloved pear tree after chasing a squirrel up into it, chewing the legs on one particular kitchen chair, and one or two sneaky bad habits. My dad always left first for work and came home first, so he assumed that my mother put away the butter on the kitchen table before she left and she assumed that he put it away when he got home. We went through a lot of butter, and no one in the family was the wiser. One day my mom came home early and Sporty was STANDING on the kitchen table having just finished that day's stick. Admittedly this was after I stole a stick of butter myself when we first adopted him and hid behind the Lazy Boy in the living room sharing it with him. I guess I got him addicted. Not leaving food on the counter is easy enough to figure out as an owner of a young dog, but butter is a CONDIMENT and less obvious as a dog target.

We inherited a lot of antique furniture from my grandparents and one very tragic day Sporty tore through the seat cushion of an antique sofa, ripped all the stuffing out, and continued to try to tear through the bottom. My mom assumed this was your typical anxious bad dog left home alone behavior, and he was punished accordingly. The next day he did the EXACT same thing - or at least he tore through what sad repairs my mother was able to make. A quick look under the sofa showed that his favorite frisbee was stuck behind it. I had been telling him the afternoon before that I wanted him to go get his frisbee so that we could play with it outside. Being only six-ish years old, after he didn't find the frisbee in the first 30 seconds, I forgot I'd even asked the question. He did not. And after he got his frisbee, he never went near that sofa again.

Maisy has been licking the floor in front of my stove for the last few days, and today it because a bit of an obsession. I figured whatever I spilled there must have tasted REALLY good, and was a little surprised that it hadn't all been cleaned up by her, yet. I sat down on the floor to try to distract her and play with her but she pushed my hand away and then started CLAWING at my marble floor in front of the stove. Obviously, at this point an investigation must be made. One of her extra special Scooby Snacks was stuck just about an inch under the front of the stove.

Moral of the story? If you give your dog a command (take it, here eat this, go find that frisbee), make sure you follow through, because the dog may keep trying even if you don't. And keep your butter in the fridge with the other condiments.

FINALLY!

Restored my iPhoto library from my old hard drive and Boy, oh Boy am I glad I did, because all of my pictures from this year's trip to the cabin in Canada were on there -un-backed-up, and I don't know if I could go on with my life without this one.
Okay fine, this one is a little nicer. Happy?

Getting Corrected by an Eleven-year-old

"Do you like my spice rack?"

"I like your whole apartment!"

"Hey. It's a HOUSE, ok? I paid for it, it's a HOUUUUUUUUSE."

"it's a condo..."

Black Ops

"That is way too loud. People are trying to sleep. Where is the remote..."

[volume drops]

"NOW I CAN'T HEAR IT!"

"What do you mean you can't hear it?? It's guns and "ugh!""

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Cake!

I openly admit here to living under a rock, as far as news is concerned, but I knew about Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity this weekend in Washington D.C. on the National Mall. So I joined the other "six million" people who convened for really nothing other than to make fun of political media and see what kind of show had actually been planned by Stewart and Colbert. We were so far from the stage, speakers, and jumbotrons that most of what I got to enjoy came straight from the Rallygoers themselves, rather than the actual show (which I watched part of later on Tivo, and it was totally hilarious). I was literally sandwiched between my buddy Mike, a cop lounging on his motorcycle, and a dude in a banana suit holding a picket sign with hardly enough room for my lungs to expand to breathe, but as far as I know no one was trampled or groped beyond what is generally accepted in those circumstances. The crowd was happy, cooperative, and oddly calm and collected. Many were in costume. Occasionally someone would yell something funny, or point out a good sign that had migrated closer. And as promised by Stewart, whose target audience was people who want to come and show support for something but don't want to pay overtime to their babysitter, it ended promptly at 3, but took another hour for people to dislodge themselves from each other's limbs and actually get off the Mall.

If you look really hard, you can see Waldo hiding in a tree just to the right of the jumbotron. And that second photo IS a bunch of kids collapsing a handicap port-a-potty.





I hear that The Roots took the stage for a good half hour, and also a few of the Mythbusters did some experiments with the audience doing the Wave, but I missed that part because I was waiting in line to pay the fare for the Metro for an hour and 15 minutes. Also, when I finally gave into the food vendors and decided it was time for a hot dog, they had run out of buns, soda, and water, but were still charging the full $4 for a hot dog wrapped in paper. And the Official Merchandise tent had already been taken down by the time I could walk in full strides again, but I would rather get a pair of star-print pants like the ones Stephen Colbert wore with his leather jacket, anyway. All in all, a very good time.

A smattering of the best posters sighted. This post title would have been mine if I felt like making one.

Get Me a Free Shirt!

Hello readers, dearests!

A friend of mine and a friend of his have recently fired up a sweet t-shirt company based on their travels about the globe. They just unveiled their website, and it is phenomenal. Having been on one of those trips, the pictures on the site are not only familiar, I think I took one of them!

Have yourself a look-see, and if you like it enough, share it with your friends. As a show of support, this link will now also be featured permanently in the sidebar to your left. However, since I haven't updated the layout of this piece in, oh, two years, it may move in the near future now that I've resumed posting. I may even go back and delete old crappy posts. If you feel like sharing, tell me what your least favorite post is.

Backpacker Tees

Sighting: Idiot Future Hipster

Seen riding 1980's road bike probably inherited from mom because she can't afford her own fixie, yet, uphill on McGrath Highway in traffic wearing muffin-topped skinny jeans and stupid hat, and not riding through a red light at a three way intersection, with no oncoming traffic.

If I carried my phone on runs, I'd be able to show you.

Massive Panic

So there's this THING I've been doing at work, for the last, I don't know, about 18 months. And I've been laying the groundwork for it very heavily in the last few months (hiring the appropriate contractors, ordering processing resources, cleaning, pushing around little pieces of paper on a scale model I cut out trying to make sure we have space for it in the lab, fighting off the people telling me to get my crates housing fragile components which are blocking egress out of the hallway, pushing the schedule back because of UL compliance failure, etc) and it was all supposed to come to fruition YESTERDAY. The company engineers were supposed to come out from California, and do the "installation" of the equipment that we ordered over 8 months ago, and arrived over 2 months ago. I'm not sure what you'd call what I've been doing for the last 18 months, but it wasn't "installation," apparently. I did one final mopping of the cleanroom on Sunday to get ready for it.

And they didn't show. I called at 9:30am EST to ask when we were getting started and they -being in California- woke up, answered the phone, and told me "I'm not scheduled." Apparently the customer service team and the technical support team don't talk. I sat at my desk shaking for two hours before I finally got a callback from my friend at customer service. They're coming next Monday, instead. Promise. Which is not bad, but I was freaked out enough that I started writing a blog post about it, my first in months. The boss is out of town all week, and it would have been ideal to have this finished by the time he got back. I'm still dreading his angry email asking what I did to make the wheels come off the bus.

This company is supposed to be renowned for their post-purchase service and attentiveness. I'm not saying I'm disappointed, yet, but they have until next Wednesday to redeem themselves. They're also used to selling to better staffed labs, or industrial manufacturing plants where people actually know what they're doing with semiconductor processing equipment, not some poor recent college grad whose never even seen one of these things before. (me)

As an aside, it seems that level of stress is great for my insulin's efficacy. I woke up around 6am today with blood sugar values in the 20's.

Congratulations To Me

For the following things:

My longest streak of not posting, ever. (80+ days) Its been a hectic summer.

Quitting twitter. (I may deactivate my facebook account here soon, as well.)

FINISHING that 100 mile bike ride, and raising the entire $3000!! (plus an extra $100) If you wanted to donate, but forgot - never fear! I'll be riding again next year. Hopefully I can beat this year's time of 9 hours and 40 minutes.

Read me! Read me! Raising Funds

Hi internet, its me. What have you been up to lately? I just signed up for a 100+ mile bike ride through Vermont with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Yes: 100+ miles. I'm pretty excited. It'll be my first opportunity to meet other diabetics who've nailed down this lifestyle way better than I have, and who (clearly) aren't afraid of exercise! Even as great as it'll be just for me to go and have the experience, I'm equally as excited at the prospect of raising my goal of over $3000 towards finding a cure for this silly disease. I feel terrible knowing that I'm going to be passing the gene onto my kids and grandkids, and I can't even imagine what it would have been like to go through this as a young kid. I let facebook know what I'm up to, as well - I know you guys are good friends - and I'm hoping that together, we can rally the troops and their wallets and rack up that sum in short order. You can donate online (link below) or send me an email for mailing information if you'd rather not use a credit card. And! its tax deductible. Think about it.

Ride to Cure Diabetes

Thanks, internet.
Love, Allie

I love this puppy

Nothing is happier than a dog rolling in the grass on a sunny day. I like to pretend she's beatboxing to the song. Which is by Owl City, btw.

A Chapter from The History of Allie

So for a little less than a year of my life, I lived in Washington, D.C. I was 7 or 8 years old, and it was the middle of the summer. We ran around going to fireworks for the fourth of July, did fun sightseeing things, and me and my sister followed my dad and his buddies walking around to bars. I'm sure it was adorable.

One night on a walk home to the garden house where we lived I found a checkbook in the street. This checkbook made me think I was Sherlock Freakin' Holmes. I opened the book, discovered the checks had a name and an address on them!! And mailed it, with a letter, back to that address. I also looked at the date of the last check written and it wasn't very long ago! Less than a month! So surely this person must be missing his checks! It was an address in some nearby state, so I figured maybe he was a work commuter, or came here on a short visit. I prayed that the address was still good (as I know now, my checks still have my address from two whole years ago on them, its obnoxious to update that, so it was good of me to worry) and that no one stole the checkbook out of the mail. I thought to myself "What a good thing that an honest person like me found those checks!"

Apparently the owner of the checkbook felt the same way. He sent me back a care package containing a book on Marines, a sticker, some brochures, and a story about how he works to bust foreign citizens who are smuggling drugs into the USA - "the scum of the earth!" - and a little ego boost about how honest, smart, and clever I was for such a young girl!

I think he wanted to subtly convince me to join the Marines someday. Sadly, he failed. I really wish I knew were that letter was. I think I might know. I'll look for it next time I go visit my boxes of childhood goodies.

Hijacked: Baby Pix

I was too busy playing with the pupkin to take very many pictures of her, so here are a few of my favorites, taken by my mama. Thanks, mama.