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.

Pictures, and Excuses

So this blog pretty much sucks for 1st quarter 2010 (having just filed my tax returns) but I fully intend to fix that, starting tomorrow (so that I just can claim April fools and not write again until May, really).

I've been exceptionally busy at work, and cleaning up puppy poop, and trying not to let my A1c creep back up from the multiple pounds of chocolate I can't stop eating every week. Admittedly, I'm a lot better at World of Warcraft. I know, I know - shoot myself in the face. My twitter, facebook, blahblah, and other internet outlets have also petered out. That diabetes daily photo posting lasted about 3 days. So I'm going to pick back up here, first and foremost, concurrently with attempting to develop a regular workout routine. So I'll keep you posted on how that's going. I still haven't run any damn half marathons. I'm going to train Maisy to be my running partner. We went on two 3+mile runs that went pretty well, actually. About two weeks ago. So it's very much a work in progress.

I also am slowly building an arsenal of dinner recipes I can actually make besides Seebacher's Famous Marinara Sauce and pasta, and I can share the good ones if anyone's interested. I made one terrible awful potroast last week that was really, really bad, so I won't share that.

And just because these are horribly, horribly overdue (not to mention the fact that I haven't had time to take any decent pictures):
Everyone loves a Theme Party!!



My dress and shoes were TO DIE FOR, unfortunately I am a total noob at the art of taking photos of oneself.

Jiminy Christmas

My first post in three freaking months may as well be a horrible one. Its too long for twitter...

So I'm walking through the main lobby at MIT, and I hear footprints that make me think of Gwen, and maybe she's sneaking up on me to jump on my back or something, but obviously Gwen isn't here, and I can't think of any small children who would know me in all of Greater Boston. So I think to myself "It must be a small asian lady in a hurry..."

Does that make me racist?

Incidentally, it WAS a tiny child.

Maisy, Meet your Uncle Max

Look at that sliiiiiime on the eeeeears!!!! Grooooooooss!
They had such a blast together, running, chasing, drooling, stealing food, etc. that Max was sad to leave after the Holidays were over. Probably for the better, since they're just impossible to leash at the same time and at one point Maisy did run away from him out into the street and got hit by a car...* She's completely fine, but now I know what it means to give a dog "fluids." The doctors take IV fluid and fill the scruff of the dog's neck with it, so the dog looks effectively like Qasimodo, and then feels like Jell-O when you pet her.

*In Maisy's defense, the idiot driver was doing 35. up a residential hill. on a dead end road.

New, Improved Maxwell

I don't think I ever posted about this, but a couple months ago, Max (Remember? Big fuzzy guy? REAL big?) presented with a really aggressive type of skin cancer under his gums that looked like brains bubbling up behind his teeth. It was really creepy. At first we thought it might just be an infection from eating bones of roadkill, but alas... They surgically removed it a few times at the local vet, but it kept growing back. Why? Because its cancer and it does whatever the fuck it wants with no rhyme or reason. I hate cancer.

Earlier this week, Dad drove down to the Univ. of Wisco animal hospital where they admitted Mashmash and poked and probed and CT scanned him, and then removed the front part of his lower jaw, and 6 of his teeth. This was the preferred method of treatment, since chemo or radiation can have unexpected long term effects. This way, he may have trouble getting the food into his mouth, but he can still chew it once its in there (also, NO MORE CANCER). I mean, he was slobbery before, but now he physically cannot keep his tongue inside his mouth. Dad sent this picture yesterday when picking him up, "Max: the Shortened Version." It looks so silly, but he's still a happy dog, AND he'll make it to this Christmas, and hopefully several to come!
Moral of the story? Wear your sunscreen. And for the Love of God, don't ever get a dog. Too many bad things can happen.

Wow

Puppies are exhausting.

My legs hurt from walking her so much. And stooping down to pull everything she tries to eat out of her mouth, including poop. And that's in addition to the 2+ miles I walk to and from the bus station every day to get to work and back, twice (to walk her on my lunch break).

And I'm tired from waking up in the middle of the night every night to let her out to pee.

And my god...the cute is just wholly overwhelming.

So, yeah. That's why I haven't been posting. Also Paulie is home, so I'm sorry world, you can wait.

Maisy Jane

I think its only fair if I consider this a remotely worthwhile blog to give you the full story of how I got my new puppy. However, I have no additional pictures of her, since we're spending all our time learning how to walk on a leash, or cuddling.

Having my very own dog is something that's been on my mind for YEARS, decades even, and part of my motivation for buying my home instead of renting - I can do whatever I want. Including keeping pets, kicking out unwanted visitors, cleaning like I MEAN it, install a programmable thermostat, and God Forbid, actually control my own temperature. (Though I don't think I ever explicitly complained about the "heat & hot water included" from my old apartment, which mostly just mean that the heat was up allll the way allll winter and the only way to keep it under 90 degrees was to open windows and KILL TREES AND PROPAGATE GLOBAL WARMING)

Last week I found a shelter very nearby my house and applied to foster since they were so close. Take a puppy for a test drive, maybe? After my application was approved, even though I hadn't found a particular dog of interest on their website, it was time to start the process of interviewing Potential New Family Members. Also, I learned that that particular shelter only houses cats and its dogs are all in foster homes and I have to arrange individual meetings. Well that just isn't very efficient. So I started looking for other shelters. There was one about an hour from Boston which had a LOT of dogs on its website, and didn't give much information on each. Instead they encouraged interested parties to come to the shelter and meet the dogs, which is EXACTLY how I think it should work.

I went on Saturday morning, telling myself I was just going to play with them and see what they have "In Stock". Well there were no less than four adoptions underway when I got there, and the dogs were almost all different from the ones they had listed on the website, so the turnover rate is HUGE for this shelter, which could be good or bad. There was a huge number of puppies from two or three litters, all 12-13 weeks old, all Lab mixes, and then one bum-legged Beagle/Hound, a very overly timid Basenji/Husky (but she was WAYYY loud) and then a few larger, fiesty terrier mixes. The advantages of a puppy? Her experiences are all going to be with ME, rather than some mysterious former life causing unexpected behaviors.

Most of the puppies were busy wrestling with each other, since they were all distributed in 4 cages. When I stuck my hand through the second puppy kennel, there were three girl pups laying in the gravel in a pig pile. The one on top walked straight over to me, looked me in the face and layed her head in my hand, totally mellow, tail wagging, just wanting love. Then her two sisters came and jumped on her trying to get at my arm, and started chewing on my sleeve and such. I opened the door and walked into the kennel, and the same mellow head puppy crawled into my lap and tucked her head under my arm and stayed there, wagging her tail. After I was done getting jumped on by the other two, I re-read their cage info, and it said "Foster to Adopt available" So I had to ask what that meant.

It meant she had the black plague (a.k.a. Kennel Cough) and she was on antibiotics for another week and wasn't cleared for adoption by the shelter vet. So I would need to bring her back to the shelter in a week anyway. Sounds exactly like a test drive.

I was already wrapped around her little paw, though... I bought a crate, took her home (she snoozed in my lap for the whole hour) introduced her to Oliver, and then sent a few pictures out. She's totally mine. I already taught her how to sit and heel and go berserk over bits of hot dog (OK, she might have figured that one out on her own). When she meets new people, she says hi for a second and then comes right back over to me, she only gets up to pee once in the middle of the night and she doesn't whine anytime around me. She sleeps in my lap while I read or computerize from the floor. When I stand around the kitchen, she lays right behind me and calmly chews on the hems of my pants (and I walk on them anyway, so I don't really care) and occasionally on her toys. She's a Lab/Hound mix, and I was so smitten that I forgot to ask what sort of hound. Coonhound, maybe? I love her giant floppy ears. They're the perfect complement to Oliver's short stubby ones.

My only complaint is the horrendous separation anxiety when I leave for work. She's going to be a crate dog, and she's OK with that as demonstrated at night, but she is a total nutjob when she's not in the same room as me for more than 3 seconds. Even when I go to the bathroom and shut her in the hallway she barks. She's always calm when I get home (and I don't leave her in the crate longer than 4 hours, ever) so it may just be a matter of seeing me come home all week, or all month and knowing that I will be home soon. As a new "mom" I can't help but be worried and Google it incessantly while I'm supposed to be working.

P.S. her name was originally Colt. Which is not a real name. I tried MJ (like the redheaded girl in Spiderman!), since it was Halloween and Thriller was on the radio, but the neighbors said "oh, that's a cute name for him" even though she was wearing a neon pink leash. So I made it girly. Now she's Crazy Maisy, or Maisy Moo, and it just fits.

Going Big

So with this whole "New House" thing, I also decided to start some "New Hobbies" like fermenting my own hard cider/applewine, and getting a "New Puppy".

Here's Maisy Jane, a 12-week-old Lab/Hound mix that I adopted from a shelter yesterday:

Her dark coloring makes it hard to get her features show accurately (my very own little Basement Dog) but she has giant ears and the cutest little tiny face I've ever seen. She's already peed in the new house twice. And yes, she gets along just fine with Oliver, thought they're both a little hesitant around each other.