The Children's Defense Fund just released its annual report the State of America's Children 2008.

From their website:

CDF's State of America's Children 2008 report, a compilation of the most recent and reliable national and state-by-state data on poverty, health, child welfare, youth at risk, early childhood development, education, nutrition and housing. The report provides a a statistical compendium of key child data showing epidemic numbers of children at risk: the number of poor children has increased nearly 500,000 to 13.3 million, with 5.8 million of them living in extreme poverty, and nearly 9 million children lack health coverage―with both numbers likely to increase during the recession. The number of children and teens killed by firearms also increased after years of decline.

According to the CDF report, children in America lag behind almost all industrialized nations on key child indicators. The United States has the unwanted distinction of being the worst among industrialized nations in relative child poverty, in the gap between rich and poor, in teen birth rates, and in child gun violence, and first in the number of incarcerated persons.

Ah, these kittens are going to tbe the death of me. You might not want to read the third paragraph, if sad kitten stories will ruin your day.

Sidney, our last foster, was adopted on Friday within five minutes of her making it to the adoption floor. She had surgery on Thursday and we didn't have space on the floor for her. I had just cleaned a recently vacanted cage and was carrying her out to the floor, when a couple who was leaving saw her and asked if she was available. Poof--she was gone to a new home. That was the good news.

Bad news was that little Britches who was sitting in the back at the shelter the past few days waiting for surgery had gotten sick. She wasn't doing great, so I decided to foster her. (Poor Alan. I keep getting him into these situations.) This time I was more prepared. We gave her fluids before bringing her home. In addition to her doxycycline, I had Karo syrup and experience with forcefeeding. When I got her home, she was already so weak, she could only walk a few inch before having to lay down. I fed her watered down food with an eye dropper--she was able to swallow just fine--and put her down in her cosy bed with her shelter bedding, a towel underneath for extra padding and the stuffed teddy that had been with her all week. She kept creeping out and I'd find her on the linoleum against the cold tub throughout the evening. She continued to deteriorate, so I brought out the Karo syrup to rub a little on her gums. Low blood sugar can kill kittens quickly and the syrup sometimes brings them back. A near death kitten can be up and playing shortly after Karo syrup and time with a heating pad. She perked up a little bit but there wasn't anything more I could do for her but let her rest. She didn't make it through the night.

I'm including another happy ending to balance the last story out. I got a couple calls from a family that had adopted a kitten from us who was lethargic and sick with diarrhea. Their vet was concerned about FIP, which is certainly a scary thing to face since it's fatal, although it is rare. FIP can hit cats at any point in their lives but often appears in kittens. It comes from being exposed to a mutated form of a common feline Corona virus. Only a small percentage of cats exposed to the mutated form develop FIP. The most common symptom which is used to diagnose the FIP is a fluid filled stomach and often the diagnoses isn't confirmed until after the cat dies. (A full stomch in kittens usually means worms or another parasite, so you shouldn't ever panic about FIP until it's checked out by a vet.) Adults can carry the virus and never develop FIP and it can also be brought on in later life by stress. The very hard part of FIP is that there really isn't a definitive test for it and the vaccination for it is still relatively untested. The family made the tough decision to return the kitten to us and we immediately put her in an isolated cage until one of our vets could examine her. At this point, she has regained her energy and playfulness and doesn't appear to have FIP after all. If she'd had Feline Distemper, the other very scary kitten disease, she wouldn't be getting better and would be dead already. I'm hoping she'll okayed to go back to the adoption floor this week and maybe go back to her original adopters.

Some of you may have heard about George who found his way home 13 years after disappearing when someone traced his microchip. (Everyone who has a dog, cat, rabbit or ferret should have them microchipped even if they are house only pets. I can't tell you how happy we are at the shelter when we have a stray come in who is microchipped. You need to keep the contact information updated, too--many are dead ends.) He wasn't home for long before he was diagnosed with cancer but his last days were with his original family and very happy.

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=the-cat-that-came-back-after-13-yea-2008-12-12

Happy Tail

Large, strong breed dogs like pits, labs and hounds sometimes get "happy tail" while staying at the shelter. They wag their tails so hard against the walls of the kennel, the tips develop sores which can quickly develop into larger problems. In the past when adoption rates were slow, "happy tail" could lead to amputation but with our higher adoption rates, we haven't had to do that in a long time. The hardest part of treating happy tail is keeping the bandage on so we often use e-collars.

Earlier this fall, we had our first live dog birth since I've been working at the shelter--a really big litter--and we are remembering how much more work a litter of pups can be than kittens. They've been in two different foster homes but had to come back because the last family couldn't keep the mom in the pen with the pups. There's about a week left until they can be separated--they're eating on their own but not completely weaned. This last little bit of time is important to their socialization than their health. She is really sore and deserves a little time to herself. Yesterday, I took our momma dog out for a walk to give her a break from the puppies and it wasn't until it was too late that I realized she had happy tail. I will have a set of scrubs at work from now on to give me an option for changing clothes. The vet was worried about her and her pups pulling the bandage off and I was worried that a regular e-collar would be hard on the puppies. Gambit left my legs bruised and sore when he had his stint with an e-collar. After we got it bandaged, we were able to use a cervical collar that had come on another happy tail dog from one of our other shelters. It wrapped around her neck like a neck brace with straps that wrapped around her body and front legs. So, part of the problem was taken care of and now we'll have to see if the pups leave it alone.

Oh, the Mall of America... What more can I say?

Both Noni and Lodi were adopted within a few days of going to the adoption floor. I was there for Lodi's adoption and it was nice to tell her adoptive mom everything that she had been through. We have little black Sidney still and she has a ways to go. She climbed onto the bed to visit me for the first time today which was a very big step. If we caught her on the bed, sometimes she'd stay and sometimes she wouldn't. Most of the night she stays in a corner of the closet. We're hoping she'll move to the bed soon. She has a tendency to slip away and hide whenever she's given access to the rest of the house and, because the door to the basement was accidentally opened, she is now hiding somewhere down there. Food always brings her back, though!

Working in an animal shelter there's always a small risk that I'll bring something home on my clothes or shoes from work that will spread to the pets. I've come home covered in poop, blood, and vomit. I've been accidentally exposed to scabies while bathing puppies (which made me itchy--at least in my mind--the risk to me was pretty small) and a few other parasites. I try really hard to change right away when I get home and minimuze exposure. Saturday might have been the worst so far. I was sneezed, drooled and coughed on by at least eight different dogs with a very liquid form of kennel cough. It was in my hair, on my jeans, and all over my arms and body. I went through six different lab coats that day trying to stay ahead of the germs. When I got home, I had Alan meet me at the door with a robe and scrambled down to the laundry to de-germ while he held the dog back. After a long, hot shower, I felt much less like a walking commercial for Musinex and could actually greet the dog. A good glass of draft cider and good company makes even the respiratory infection gremlins disappear.

The blog lately has been mostly about kittens and this post is not going to stop the trend. (Things are pretty good right now; we've been working on the house and through episodes of The Wire on Netflix, I've been working on a story revision, and we have new gutters to go with the new roof, just in time for snow. On a sad/happy note, we are not going to be at Wiscon next year because Alan's sister is getting married that weekend in California.)

Foster Kitten Update: Lodi and Noni went back to the shelter on Monday for an exam before surgery, then came home again for one last night because we were out of space in the kitten room. Both had surgery on Tuesday and spent the rest of the day curled up together in the litterbox in their cage. The next day, Noni was back to her old self and Lodi was still a little scared. Noni was adopted that day by someone who had lost a cat recently that looked exactly like her. We see adoptions like that quite frequently and also people are looking for an animal just like their old pet personality-wise. While I've loved all my past pets, most of mine have come to me through serendipitous accidents, so, the idea of trying to find one just like an old one is a little foreign to me. Obviously, replacing a pet with a duplicate is not going to happen (at least until cloning is more common) since everyone is going to be a little different, but it's nice to see people so attached they want to try. Anyway, Lodi was still at the shelter this afternoon when I left but was doing much better and soliciting attention, so I'm hoping she'll be adopted tonight or tomorrow. I found out that she has the same talent I'd noticed before in Noni--they can both stand on their hind legs for quite a long time with any other support. Noni always did it in front of the TV stand where she studied her reflection, thinking it was another cat. They are both such beautiful cats and have totally won me over to the idea of long-haired kitties.

I brought Sidney home because her littermate was handlable right away and had already been adopted. Sidney came around in time for an exam but completely freaked out when they tried to take her to surgery, so I brought her home for some socialization. She's black and little and round both in her face and body. She hisses everytime you pick her up but then settles in to purr and snuggle. I was hoping to work with her just a week or so before bringing her back for surgeyr but that will depend on how quickly I can catch her in the basement. We still have about 1/4 of the basement filled with my grandma's stuff, so there are plenty of places to hide.

My big accomplishment today was replacing the wiring in a stained glass floor lamp that the puppy (now 3 years old) chewed up in his first six months. I had always known it was easy to do but kept forgetting to buy the kit. The hardest part was feeding the wire through the base and stem. I have a love/hate relationship with wire hangers. I try my best to keep them out of our closets but I'm always thrilled that I can find one when I need it. In addition to threading wire through the lamp, I have used them in the past year to thread cable through the wall, pick a lock, free a sock from the vacuum hose, attach a handle to a broken bucket and fish something important (for the life of me I can't remember what) out of a drain. [Actually, my big accomplishment wasn't really fixing the lamp but finding my favorite ratcheting screw driver complete with all of its bits which had been missing for over a year and was in the side pocket of an old bag.]

Gambit is apparently recovered (although still gassy) but will be on the EN food for a few more days. Veterinary bills totaled about $545.00.

Kittens are bounding through the room like a pack of velociraptors with furry feet and are getting into everything. They sound much larger than they really are. They only weigh about four pounds between the two of them but then again they do have eight feet. Lodi, the smaller and shyer of the two, and the one who was so sick I was afraid she wasn't going to make it, has really come into her own and will even stand up to the dog now. Right now she is snuggled up behind me on the back of the couch purring. 'Noni is perched on an enormous pile of freshly laundered blankets stacked on a chair and is fiercely attacking them. She's been gnawing on everything the past couple of days. We must be getting into teething time.

Very long weekend this week. Our dog, Gambit, stopped eating and drinking sometime during the day Friday and then starting vomiting late that night. When blood started appearing in the vomit, I decided it was time to visit our local emergency clinic. He's had a bad stomach and not eaten with a little vomiting a couple times before which he got over on his own but it was never this extreme. An x-ray ruled out a blockage and blood-work ruled out other serious things. So, he probably got into something he shouldn't have and not knowing what it was won't allow us to prevent it in the future. He got an anti-nausea injection and some fluids and they sent us home with a syringe and stomach medication after a couple hours of no vomiting. Of course, he vomited soon after leaving the clinic. I sat up with him the rest of the night/morning for clean up and to keep on eye on him. In the morning, he still wasn't eating or drinking but the vomiting had ended and become diarrhea, so I called my vet and he had me come in for some more anti-nausea pills and canned EN food. We monitored his hydration by looking at the elasticity of the loose skin on his back and his gums. I was planning on bringing him back to the emergency clinic for fluids this evening because his gums were starting to get a little tacky--gums are a much faster sign of dehydration, I think--but then he drank some water and finally ate something at 4 p.m. today. Since then, he's eating and drinking and is back to chasing cats. We are left with some of the worst dog breath I've ever experienced and a little over $500 in vet bills. Why do these things always happen at night and on weekends? Anyways, the good news is the roofers were finally out and finished the roof this past week and our little emergency didn't eat up all the roof funds like it did when he had kidney failure a couple years ago. Another question, why is it so much harder to open the mouth of a sick dog than a healthy one--shouldn't they be weaker?

On the foster front, both kittens are still occasionally sneezing and we have a very full surgery list Tuesday and none scheduled for the rest of the week, so Noni and Lodi are with us for another week at least.

Also, after a long bout of writer's block, I've had a very productive week and I received my contributor's copy of Exquisite Corpuscle with a very old story by me based on one of Alan's poems. The book also includes the work of many talented artists and authors.

Speak Up For Wildlife

Yay! Evey was just adopted! Our first successful foster complete!

Kittens make politics better. I will no longer face the final day(s) of election coverage without a cuddly kitten on my lap. (A dog curled up on the couch next to you doesn't hurt either.)

I dropped Evey the foster kitten off at the shelter today to get her exam and be ready for the surgery truck tomorrow. She'll have spay surgery tomorrow and go to the adoption floor right after. She'll be available to go home on Wednesday. We ended up having her with us for a whole month because she developed the sniffles and it took a while to get over them without resorting to drugs. We'd gotten quite attached to her but are also relieved that we managed to have our first successful foster. One of the pets broke her out of her confinement early on in the foster and so she freely mixed with our other cats and dog, a big no-no. Two of the cats are paying for it with the sniffles themselves but so far it hasn't gotten any worse and they should be fine. Our oldest cat is missing her playmate and was sitting at the front door looking forlorn for a while tonight. Did I say that we named her Evey after Natalie Portman's character in V for Vendetta because she was so fierce when she first faced the dog? Update: Alan informs me he named her Evey not for her fierceness but because she didn't realize her cage (small dog kennel) door was open the first few times we tried to let her out.

We still have 2 little girl fosters left (one of the vet techs named them Benoni and Lodi--apples?) from another litter which Alan has nicknamed the Fluff 'n stuffs. They came in feral, hissing and swatting. All the litter were variations on black or brown tabbies but one little orange tabby male. The orange tabby was friendly from the very beginning and won all of our hearts. They waited for a foster home for socialization and gaining weight for a long time but never went out, so I decided to take the 3 who remained after 2 hit the right surgery weight. The little orange one was losing weight in the shelter, a bad sign, and they all were showing symptoms of upper respiratory infections. We lost the little one the first weekend which was heart breaking, but I managed to nurse the other two through not eating and being so stuffy that their bodies shook with every breath. A combination of force feeding watered down canned food mixed with ground up lysine tablet, a nightly dose of doxycycline, saline nose drops, a humidifier and a lot of love seems to have gotten them through the worst. Sunday, they started eating on their own again. They are beautiful cats and will be probably be long-haired. Benoni is a tabby/calico mix with a cute little orange tip on her tail and Lodi is about a third size smaller and a black tabby. They will continue residing in our bathroom until they are symptom free and ready to go back to the shelter.

Criminy... Alan waits until halfway through the debate to suggest a drinking game using Joe the plumber.

Letting go...

We had to say goodbye to the little foster kitten yesterday. His urinary tract blocked up again and this time we couldn't get it unblocked. He was going to die horribly without an expensive surgery that probably wouldn't solve the long-term problem. Because of his very young age and his health history, both the shelter vets and an outside vet advised putting him to sleep. It was exactly what I would have told any of our foster parents, but it didn't make it any easier. Urinary tract problems at that age are really rare and usually mean something is wrong. Everything we went through with him only made it harder. I never would have thought a little kitten could get under my skin in such a short amount of time. Losing foster kittens is just part of volunteering--they wouldn't need fostering if their immune systems were developed and they weren't so vulnerable. We named him Leif in honor of the the Viking kittens.

Because we have an overabundance of kittens waiting for fostering to get up to spay and neuter surgery weight and because having a kitten in the house--without adding to our already high number of cats (3)--is so much fun, I was planning on continuing to foster anyways. There were a few litters with moms, a couple groups of 3-4 kittens and a single. I took home the single female brown tabby who seemed to be the healthiest. She has little elf-like ears that look like lynx ears without the tufts and big paws that look polydactyl until you actually count and realize she just has huge toes. The tabby stripes are complete except for a little bit of light brown on her tummy, so she looks very different from our eldest tabby cat, Tora, who has white on his face, paws and tummy. We keep her separate from our other cats and don't let the dog get too close. They already have a very different relationship than he had with the other foster who was fascinated with the dog and whose little butt became an obsession for Gambit. This one is fierce and puffs up when he comes nearby. He fled across the room when she spit at him from four feet away yesterday and Alan said he jumped over the arm of the couch to get away from her later that night. (Is there anything better than seeing a kitten doing the sideways hop, puff up and spit?)

Foster Kitten Part 2

I'm sitting on the couch with my notebook in my lap and a purring kitten on my shoulder. The foster kitten's stay has been extended since he had a few weeks to go before he gets up to neuter surgery weight. It's amazing how fast they change. He's recovering from first worms, then an upper respiratory infection and now a urinary tract infection very quickly. He is now definitely a "he." His eyes are still the blind-looking blue of a very young kitten but he's looking more and more cat-like and less rodent-like with his formerly spreadeagled rear legs, triangular shape shifting to lean kitten legs. One rear leg is little thicker than the other--the vet thought it was either an older injury or congenital--but it doesn't seem to hurt or to be slowing him down at all. This week he learned how to jump and run which is making it a little harder to keep him separate from the resident cats. In the couple accidental encounters we've had, the kitten has gone bounding up to a cat and promptly scared it away. He gets along well with the dog. (After the dog snuck in and raided his litter box a couple of times, we pretty much gave up on the idea of keeping the two of them separate.) The dog is learning boundaries (finally!) and that his larger size means he has to be careful. All of their contact is still monitored constantly. I wanted to name him "Tom" because he's got the same coloring as the cartoon cat. Alan favored "Playa." I'm open to suggestions--keep in mind that the goal is to choose a name that will help get him adopted, although the adopters always have the option to change the name.

It is so nice to have a cuddly cat for a while! We have one who will sit next to us on the couch when the dog isn't around (Kochan the semi-feral) but the other two are hands off (Tora the biter) and pet me on my own terms (Piper the diva). Pictures to come once I get them uploaded.

Alan and I are celebrating our 5th anniversary this weekend. It was actually yesterday but I work Saturdays, so we met for dinner at a nearby Japanese restaurant, Sushi Tango. We'd been meaning to try it for while as it's in the same little Woodbury strip mall as our favorite Indian restaurant, India Palace, and conveniently located about halfway between our house and my work. It's a little noisy because of the industrial ceiling and cement floor but had a pretty full menu, good beer selection, friendly service and lower than normal prices. Despite Alan's skepticism, I ordered the signature dinner plate and polished it off completely. Alan said I got my sushi look early on which is kind of a blissful face that accompanies stuffing my face with raw fish and rice and drinking Asahi beer with good company.

Our mutual anniversary gift this year was a very geeky Wii, but I think it was a great purchase. I will be using the Wii fit as soon as it arrives in the mail and we've already had some fun with Sports and a new Mario game. We finished the evening off with an episode of The Wire courtesy of Netflicks and then some Mario. I helped Alan by zapping stars which was about all my overstuffed, end of work week self could handle. Today we are going to take the dog for a long walk at one of the local preserves and get some writing done. Perfect weekend!

We have a house guest over Labor Day and maybe a little later as he/she's a little young to be on his/her own. He/she's a little high maintenance but we are happy to accommodate.

Wanted

Tall, dark and handsome Akita is looking for a life and running partner. Likes: long runs/walks on the beach or anywhere, exploring, leaning on a friend, car rides and back scratches. Dislikes: kennels and locks. References available upon request.


[P.S. No more wearing sandals until Kaden is adopted.]

I have got a crazy job. I knew this going in but didn't really understand the true extent of the craziness until recently. My normal duties are managing staff and the flow of animals through the shelter and can include things like helping out with a customer who is surrendering their animals because of foreclosure and setting up a cage for a pair of ferrets. This past week, I also chased an escape artist Akita through the neighborhood three different times. The second time we caught him as he walked down the drive-through lane at Arbys visiting everyone at their open car windows. The third time one of my fast thinking staff took her car and we learned he likes car rides. We also learned that very large dogs attract a lot of attention even when they are in the back seat. The Akita, Kaden, is still at the shelter. He's a very nice dog, a good walker on the leash, but a handful getting in and out of the kennel. With regular exercise, he should be easier to handle. His kennel is now locked to prevent him pushing past unprepared visitors.

I saw my first (and second and third) botfly larva removed from the neck of a poor little kitten. They were crazy big and one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. They had to be the inspiration for The Wrath of Kahn.

I got called back to the shelter just before close one night to try to help with a kitten who had gotten its head stuck in the bottom of a cage while hiding after a customer set it on the floor. Removal involved dismantling a whole bank of cages but the kitten came out just fine and was placed on hold that night and adopted the next day. A volunteer and I managed to get the cages put back together and didn't even misplace a single screw!

I named two kitten brothers Bo and Luke after which one of the vet techs immediately apologized to them. Choosing names on the spur of the moment is not easy, even if you are creative! My ice cream flavor theme for a large litter of rats didn't go so well the week before. (Most ice cream flavors are too long for the name box in our computer software.)

I endured a 1/2 hour hot (my air conditioning is out) car ride with a coonhound who I brought back to the shelter after he had donated veterinary surgery to have a mass removed from his foot. Our two large dog kennels were in transit other places so I had to put him in the back seat. He alternated between bashing me in the head with his e-collar, breathing extremely stinky dog breath on me which was concentrated and funnelled into my face by said e-collar and trying to climb into the front seat and onto my lap. Did I mention that this was a coonhound? Not a small dog at all.

I can't really talk much about the hard parts of the job without having this post be a major bummer. Seeing adult cats fly out of the shelter (through adoptions) this summer despite the large numbers of kittens makes all the craziness worth it. Seeing people willing to take in an older cat for foster for six months until things are slower makes it worth it. Seeing happy people go home with animals makes it all worth it. Seeing the excitement in a stray when her family comes to find her, makes it all worth it.

I haven't posted in ages. Once you are late, it's very hard to start up again. So instead of making a big deal here's a quick catch-up.

All late winter into spring, balancing two jobs with too many hours--crazy!
May:
My birthday and the Walk for Animals - set-up (rain, cold, cold, rain) walk day (rain? no, no rain! lots of wonderful dogs, other critters, people, volunteers)
Last day at Rain Taxi (very sad, but I'll still be volunteering for the magazine, check out the latest issue just out!)
New full-time position at the Animal Humane Society (scary, exciting, sad because I love working with the volunteers, but I will be there more and may actually see more volunteers)
Week at Rio Hondo writing workshop (with Alan - New Mexican mountains, snow melt streams, hot tub, amazing food, amazing writers, fuel for revising)
Wiscon (with two of my favorite people in the whole world as guests of honor!)
We have book: The Sun Inside by David J. Schwartz!

June:
Dave has another book! (Reading tomorrow Dreamhaven - Thursday, June 12th, 7:00PM)
Alan sold a novel!
The new job is kicking my butt but I do think I'll have it under control soon. I planted flowers this past week--something I wasn't able to do last summer! After a few months of leaving the house at 8:30 a.m. and not getting back until after 8:30 p.m., I am also enjoying having dinner with my husband and playing ball with Gambit while it's still light out.
Life is good.

Minnesota Pet Lovers-we need your voice for animals!

Please call your legislators in the next few days.

The “dangerous dog” bills are on the Minnesota House and Senate floors and need your action right away. Please contact your State Representative AND your State Senator and ask them to vote YES on the bills below.

S.F. 2876 authored by Senator Ellen Anderson

H.F. 2906 authored by Representative Michael Paymar

These bills address a real issue relating to dangerous dogs, which is accountability of the people who own the dangerous dog.

H.F. 2906 and S.F. 2876 strengthen existing law by giving animal control authorities the tools they need to better protect the public from dog bites and dog attacks. They address repeat offenders and the culpability of dog owners who endanger the public. They clarify existing language, require the sterilization of dangerous dogs, increase the dollar amount of insurance required (for a victim of a dog attack), provide due process for a dangerous dog designation, provide for prohibiting further dog ownership, and increase penalties for those who create dangerous dogs through irresponsible actions. The maximum penalty is often paid by the dog,
but there are relatively light penalties, if any, placed on the owners.

• Please mention these points when placing your phone call:
  
• Ask them to support dangerous dog bill S.F. 2876 and H.F. 2906
  
• Tell them you do NOT support any amendments that would include a dog breed ban in Minnesota.
  
• The problem is the not the breed of a dog.
  

Call your State Representative to support H.F. 2906
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/hmem.asp

Call your State Senator to support S.F. 2876
http://www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/members/index.php?ls=85#header

If you don’t know who your legislators are, go to:
http://www.leg.state.mn.us/leg/districtfinder.asp

Thank you!

Annual Humane Society Book Sale

The shelter in Woodbury where I work is filled with books as well as animals for the annual Animal Humane Society Book Sale. We're having it at two locations, Woodbury and Golden Valley. The hours are slightly different between the two sales because we had different hours back when they were setting it up. Thursday night is $5 at the door but the rest of the weekend the sale is free. We'll have books, CDs, DVDs, videos and classic vinyl records. It looked liked everything was under $10 and most is priced $1-$5.

Here are the addresses:
Animal Humane Society, 845 Meadow Lane North, Golden Valley and 9785 Hudson Road in Woodbury.

Here are the hours:

Woodbury

Thursday, February 7
5:00 - 8:00 pm

February 8, 9 & 10
Noon - 6 p.m.

Golden Valley:

Thursday, February 7
6:00 - 9:00 p.m.

Friday, February 8
11:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Saturday, February 9
9:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Sunday, February 10
11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

I'm coming out of my winter cocooning to say that we saw Cloverfield today and really liked it. No spoilers here. We usually wait until someone we know sees a movie or a lot more reviews appear but this time we didn't. Coming out of the theater into the frigid winter evening was not so much fun.

Things that make me feel old: the twentieth anniversary of Joshua Tree. This album accompanied me to Japan for my semester abroad and was my jogging music. At that point in time, in that neighborhood, a white woman jogging attracted a lot of attention. I only saw one other person--a very athletic looking Japanese young man--jogging the whole time I was there. (I needed to jog or I'd have to give up our daily oyatsu office treats.) I'd put my headphones on and it was much easier to ignore all of the staring.

Funny things: A few days ago Alan and I were watching TV and an e-surance ad came on. Alan speculated that there was probably fanfic for the hot main character. Tonight, after working late and with my brain fried, I decided to check it out. I should have known because of Rule 34. Anyway, I found this hilarious: http://kissmesuzy.blogspot.com/2007/04/high-risk-insurancethe-time-is-right.html. It's safe to read through the first few comments, after that read with caution.

Scary things: We saw No Country for Old Men over the holiday and I've found a new scariest bad guy eva! He doesn't have the charm of Ralph Fiennes's Amon Goeth or Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter, but he made me want to scream at the screen each time he started his little game. A friend said he's had nightmares all week after seeing it. Great movie!

Christopher Barzak Day

Today is the release date for Chris's book One for Sorrow! I first met Chris at the 1998 Clarion writing workshop in East Lansing. I very quickly fell in love with his writing--probably from the first thing of his I read. It didn't matter what story he was telling, I just wanted to sit in my inner tube and float down the river of his prose. But Chris's writing is more than just beautiful prose--he is a marvelous story teller. He takes everyday people and, through a fabulist sleight of hand, lands them on the precipice of the extraordinary. Go check out his book right now! You won't regret it. And, if you haven't read any of his short fiction, you can find a list of them (many available online) on his website at: http://christopherbarzak.wordpress.com/news/.


For other people's opinions of Chris, please see Mumpsimus.

Happy birthday to my one and only, Alan!

And a belated one to Mr. Barzak!

We had a really lovely weekend at Diversicon with Dave Schwartz, Mark Rich, Martha Borchardt, and all. Got to see Mark and Martha play as Keg Salad again-they need a MySpace page! Listened to two chapters of guest of honor Andrea Hairston's awesome new hoodoo (vodou?) novel which needs a publisher. Chatted with wonderful people about books, writing and movies and got lots of titles to Netflick. Bought lots of used books-not as many as last year-and a big bag of seventies era F&SFs. (The bid was only $1 for them so I had to up it to $2-little did I know there were many more bags of magazines for the auction.)

Happy birthday, Ms. Bond! Many fabulous returns!

What I learned over the last two days. 1. The smell of puppy poop is very difficult to remove from your skin when you can't take a shower and use your beloved scrubber until later that night. 2. A squirmy puppy will get its poopy self all over you including your forehead and the back of your neck behind your hair. 3. Six poopy puppies... well, we're not even going to go there. 4. There's nothing like exposure to sarcoptic mange to make you feel itchy all over.

P.S. The puppies are much less poopy and will hopefully soon be mange free.

Tired. Sick. Need to go to bed.

Can't stop watching Gambit charge and retreat from the June bug on the living room floor.

June bugs! Summer must be here.

I am the big 4-0 today. Except for the fact that it is a multiple of 10 and so invites some looking at life milestones, it doesn't really have a huge amount of significance for me. Life is very good and the only thing I can complain about is lack of time to do everything I want to do. One thing I am thinking about is getting a tattoo to celebrate. In my twenties, I held off because I didn't know how I'd feel about it when I was 40, 50 or 60. Now that I'm 40, I don't see my attitude changing at all and of course, a tattoo isn't such a big deal these days. My mom surprised me last night by saying she was thinking of getting one, too. (She first got her ears pierced when she turned 40.) My dad looked at both of us and didn't say anything. He's had years to learn that that is probably the best response! At our family get together last night, I did get to tease them both a little about being so old they have a daughter that old.

I've had two days of ice cream cake, gifts, flowers of both the delivered and natural kind (our crabapple tree is in full bloom today) and lots of good food. Sushi is on the horizon. Who could ask for more?

Here was my fortune from lunch today:
Age can never hope to win one whose heart is young.

[This is me sticking out my tongue at the stupid thing.]

OMG! Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed's dog, Snippy, looks just like our dog, Gambit.

Snippy
http://www.aetv.com/genesimmonsfamilyjewels/gsfj_meet.jsp

Gambit
http://www.goblinmercantileexchange.com/index.php?s=Gambit&submit=Search

How could I resist? Doesn't everyone want a Daemon?

Baby squirrels! Last week, one of the vets, Jim, brought in a box with holes drilled in the top and told everyone he was fostering four Peruvian lynx cubs. They were actually baby squirrels found after he'd livetrapped and released the mother out of his attic. It brought back memories of the time when I was 11 years old and tried to raise a baby squirrel who had been kicked out of the nest in the fall. That story did not have a happy ending. Though very sad, it was a good experience--I remember having to get up for feedings every two hours. That little guy was so young (and bald) that we didn't know ay first if he was a squirrel or a rabbit. I had him long enough to see his eyes open and his fur get glossy and full before he got very sick. These guys are already that old. They are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and are starting to get very fluffy tails. They sleep most of the day but are good climbers and pretty active when awake. I'm hoping they've gotten enough of their mother's immunity to make it. Jim asked if I wanted to spend some time socializing them so I took them into my office and had them one at at time on my lap as I returned phone calls and e-mails. One of them climbed out of the box and was halfway up the inside of the my pants leg before I noticed his escape. The box is now secured with a rubber band. I got to feed them with a syringe on my lunch break. Jim had shaved a spot off on a different leg for each of them so we could tell them apart. We had quite an audience watching through my office windows. I don't think there's anything cuter than a baby animal who is still on milk (or milk replacer in this case.) I got to see (and play with) them again today when I stopped by the St. Paul shelter at the end of the day. One of the other staff took two of them to foster so Jim only has to juggle the frequent feedings for two now. Their tails are fluffier and they are a little bigger. I'll try to get photos next time. They were a little too wild for me to handle both the phone camera and squirrel. Everyone else was still on duty and I didn't want to interrupt their work.

Amazing, beautiful, open all the windows weather. I'm actually sitting here in a t-shirt! In Minnesota, in March! Our first thunderstorm was late last night and I was awake to hear it because of a ill-considered, evening mocha. We are supposed to pay for the weather later today with more thunderstorms and the possibility of hail and tornados. Despite that, we are headed to a nearby theater for The Host and later I have The Merchant of Venice at the Guthrie with my family and uncle who is here from Beijing.

We were at Borders last night for some writing time in the cafe and were pleased to see Hal's Ink and Jon Armstrong's Grey on the new book table.

I'm partway through Wizard of the Crow and loving it. I've got Kristin Lavransdatter, recommended by the wonderful Mr. Schwartz, sitting stand by. How can I not love a book that has the spelling right? Over the last month, I've also discovered and developed a fondness for Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

If you have a dog or cat and missed the news of the food recall, you should check out my post at One Tough Puppy right away.

Here's a link:

http://1toughpuppy.blogspot.com/2007/03/pet-food-recall.html

So two whole months have passed without a post. I wish I could say it was because I was so busy but, while I was immensely busy (juggling two jobs, travel to Erie to visit Alan's family, frozen and leaky pipes, lots of reading deadlines, city citations and levies,) I was also struggling with some writer's block. It didn't seem right to be spending time on the blog and not doing other writing I was supposed to be doing. I think I've broken through the block -- it was primarily stress induced -- so I can post again.

I've reached the end of my week (at least for the humane society) and have a warm dog cuddled up on the couch next to me. We've been doing a lot of Netflicks watching and I've been reading up a storm. I haven't been able to get to the library so I was browsing through all our books to see what I missed including some free books we brought back from various places. Boy, have I been reading some bad stuff lately! Some things really stood out, though, so I thought I'd take some time to make a few recommendations:

I just finished Kirstin Allio's Garner: A Novel which I loved and highly recommend. (Garner was the LitBlog Co-op's Read This selection for last winter.) It's set in a small town in New Hampshire at the turn of the previous century. The language is lyrical and the characters quirky and unique. I'm going to take another look at at least parts of it because I'm not completely certain I understand what happened in a couple of places but the unreliable narrators are part of the novel's beauty. Allio is definitely someone to watch.

A couple nights ago, we finally watched The Descent and both of us loved it. I've always been addicted to scary movies so most of the time, I'm the one who pushes Alan to watch them with me. Alan was very excited when he heard that Neil Marshall of Dog Soldiers was coming out with another movie. We somehow never made it out to the theater to see it, so we had to wait for the DVD release and then remember to bump the movie up our Netflicks list. If you somehow missed the trailers, the story has a group of women embarking on a caving expedition. It had strong, believable women characters, a very scary setting and terrifying plot twists -- what's not to like? I've been claustrophobic as far back as I can remember and I think that having asthma makes it worse. I'd probably be okay descending into a large caverns despite some acrophobia. The tight spots are a different story, though, and one scene made me hyperventilate and physically sick. (I watched the movie a second time (with one of the commentaries) and I had the same reaction. Even thinking of it makes me panic. Terrifying! It was great! But there's much, much more. Highly recommended if you like chills like I do.

More recommendations to come.

Thanksgiving Evening in Front of the Vast Waste of TV Land

"You know what movie this is?"
"Yes, it's Conan the Destroyer. I saw it when you had the info on."
"But do you know which one it is?"
"Is it the annoying one with the girl and the island?"
"I don't know why everyone disses this movie. It has Grace Jones in it."
"Grace Jones is the best part of this movie."
A short discussion ensues about the annoying and not so annoying characters in the movie as the heroes move to rescue the magical Asian character from being roasted alive.
"How is this different from The 13th Warrior?
"You're kidding, right?"
"Other than Grace Jones, of course... They both have sword fighting."
On TV, the bad guys are riding across a vast plain.
"Well, they both have villains on horseback dressed in black with skulls on their heads. And, the main characters have accents."
"They're both taciturn."
"Yes, both have taciturn main characters with accents."

For the past five weeks, I've been obsessively plowing through Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe books. I first encountered Sharpe through our local PBS station's airing of the Briitish series of TV movies which also inspired a long-term crush on Sean Bean. I'm a voracious reader but I don't think I've ever been so obsessed with a series of books and certainly not sustained an obsession through this many different books in a series. [I pooped out after initial obsessions with Stephen King's Dark Tower series, David Weber's Honor Harrington books, and Anita Hamilton's Anita Blake series.] The great thing about starting to read these books now is that I am able to read them almost completely in timeline order versus the order in which they were published. In some cases, I have pursued this order by maximizing my use of the Washington County Library interlibrary loan system. In other cases, I have driven from one library branch to another library branch and visited the adjacent St. Paul Library system to feed my habit. Internet library search is a wonderful thing. During lulls between copies of the book, I've finished a few other books. One, The Requiem Shark by Nicholas Griffin is a novel about the pirate Black Bart which I highly recommend. There's a good review of it up at Salon. Pirates - yay! Sam Enthoven's Black Tatoo, a YA dark fantasy, was next and was one of the freebies from World Fantasy. While there were a few times I looked up from the book to frown in consternation, I was nicely pulled through the book by interesting characters, surprising world building and sword fighting. Sword fighting - yay! I am awaiting the last three Sharpe novels and have to content myself with my new obsession, watching the Sharpe's movies through Alan's B-day subscription to Netflicks. Because it is his birthday gift, I am limiting myself to one of his two movies at a time which he puts up with since he knows the movie will be probably be watched and returned within 24 hours. I will plow through the whole series of movies in just a few weeks. Interspersed amongst these, we'll have our usual Alan's obscure foreign movie picks coming in at a regular pace, too. I was a little disappointed by the first two films in the Sharpe series (the Wellington character made me want to barf) but I've been told things pick up with this next one, Sharpe's Company. [I would be watching it RIGHT NOW but someone is playing something on the Gamecube. The dog is between us destroying his new rawhide bone. We all have our obsessions, I guess.] I currenlty am reading John Scalzi's The Ghost Brigades which like his previous novel, Old Man's War, has soldiers, aliens, intrigue and bloody battles. Bloody battles - yay! Unlike the first book, which I did really enjoy, the main character isn't annoyingly perfect and brilliant and always saving the day. On my bedside table waiting to be read, I have Partick O'Brian's Master and Commander and Sabatini's Scaramouche. So everything I've been reading the past few weeks has conveniently though not intentionally had battles or swashbuckling in it. I've been trying to figure out my obsession with the Sharpe books and this focus on warfare. The Sharpe books aren't as well written as some in the genre (?) but I've always been a forgiving reader if the story is compelling, the characters interesting and the writing not so bad it throws me out of the story. I think that Cornwell has hit on the right mixture of romance, intrigue and adventure for my taste and it probably doesn't hurt that I still picture Sean Bean as the main character. Another time, we'll have to have a discussion about why Sean Bean has to always play bad guys in American movies.

I was supposed to be working from home this morning but the website I need is temporarily down, so I thought I'd take some time to do a quick post-WFC rundown.

This is what we brought home:
A cold - despite getting plenty of sleep and no drinking
A burned mouth from hot cheese in excellent Austin Tex Mex food that has turned into a killer toothache

Two awesome freebie bags. We could actually check these bags which allowed us to bring more home than we thought we'd be able to.
From the freebie bags:
Night Wars - Graham Masterton
Pandora Drive - Tim Waggoner
Shadowmarch - Tad Williams
From Black Rooms - Stephen Woodworth
The Mount - Carol Emshwiller - this will be a great Christmas gift for someone
Some recent F & SFs
George and the Angels - Glenn Maganek
The Fair Folk anthology
Best Short Novels 2006 - Jonathan Strahan's SFBC anthology
The Black Tattoo - Sam Enthoven - an ARC - beautiful cover
A Princess of Roumania - Paul Park - nice to see this promoted so much - another gift
Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard anthology
Genetopia - Keith Brooke

We also came home with:
(Hot off the presses)
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #19
Electric Velocipede #11
The Sense of Falling - Ezra Pines chapbook with illustrations by Mark Rich
(as well as)
The Ephemera - Neil Williamson
Summer of the Apocolypse - James Van Pelt

We were lucky to score the Neil Williamson since none of the book dealers had copies and we got one of the few Neil brought with him. Reading the first few stories on the plane going home reminded me all over again why I was so excited when I first found his writing. This collection is highly recommended.

Much more busyness so no posting lately. A couple of things making me insanely angry. The last straw was this interview of ignorant homophobe Paul Weyrich from the Free Congress Foundation by Michele Norris on NPR this afternoon. I almost slammed on the breaks in the middle of traffic, it made me so angry. It happens right away so you don't have to listen to the whole thing.

Conservative Groups Call for Accountability on Foley

If you don't want to listen to it (and I don't recommend it if you are trying for a low stress day) he said that Foley shouldn't have been in charge of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus because the Republican leadership knew he was gay and as we all know "gay men are preoccupied by sex."

Busy, busy week. I feel like I'm juggling about a million things right now. I posted at One Tough Puppy about the new job a little bit and the money-pit but lovable dog. The job is going well. I love working around animals and the people who volunteer are great. I spend a lot of my time on the phone since we're starting our annual phonathon. It is probably the hardest thing to recruit people to help with but is also our largest fundraiser so we have to keep trying. At home, I've been plowing my way through all the Diversicon books and only have two left. Alan brought me more library books today. I love how he helps feed my habit. Work prevented us from a more formal 3rd anniversary celebration tonight. We'll be doing something this weekend when we are both available and have time to relax. Tonight, we opted for pizza and a quiet night on the couch bookended by pets. Life is good.

Last weekend, we headed up to my parent's cabin in northwestern Minnesota for Friday night. The next day, while my parent's took care of the dog, we headed up to Duluth to the Northern Lights bookstore for Alan's book signing. The drive is beautiful with lakes and mixed pine and deciduous forest. We found the bookstore right on Canal Street in the peak downtown tourist area near the lift bridge and the lake walk. For a small store, it packed a lot books in and had a great selection of Great Lakes related and regional materials. I decided to treat myself to a book, although we'd recently hauled two books full from Diversicon, and went around browsing and trading through books. I found the winner, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Rufiz Zafon translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves, on their Booksense Picks shelves. It was a pick back in February when it came out. Despite its satisfying thickness, I blew through it this week. I'm still gathering my thoughts about it and will write more but I highly recommend it. It was kind of a literary mystery set in Barcelona during the 40s and 50s with a great gothic feel and compelling characters.

It was Alan's first visit to Duluth and long overdue. We poked around Duluth a bit before doing part of the North Shore Scenic Drive up to Gooseberry Falls State Park. On the recommendation of one of Alan's co-workers, we stopped for pie at the New Scenic Cafe and, tempted by the menu, ended up eating an early dinner and taking the pie with us. At Gooseberry, we toured the falls and then took the Gooseberry River trail to the lake and Agate Beach. Alan grew up next to Lake Erie, so it was nice to finally be able to show him Lake Superior, which has a quite different feel to it. We headed back in the dark to the cabin and cool sleeping temperatures. The next day we swam, read, ate good food and played with the dog until it was time to go home. After chasing squirrels and chipmunks all weekend, as well as swimming and playing fetch, he was a very tired dog on the drive home.

Very busy, very social couple of weeks passed.

We had a last minute weekend with the families of Haddayr and Karen. Wonderful people. Great discussions. Nice relaxation. Some birthday, ice cream cake goodness for Alan. What more can I say?

Alan got Netflicks from my parents for his birthday. Yay!! Now instead of checking the mail for rejection letters we look for movies. So far we've seen:

Irma Vep which was a strange but compelling movie by the director of the very twisted Demonlover. While both movies had unsatisfying endings, they were worth the trip.
and
Dog Soldiers which was an interesting twist on the traditional werewolf movie by the writer/director of The Descent. The werewolves were cheesy but the acting was strong (including Kevin McKidd from Rome) and the characters sympathetic.

Up next are Dave Chappelle's Block Party and Walk the Line. Suggestions for movies to add to the queue would be very welcome.

Diversicon was last weekend. We've only been once before two years ago when SP Somtow was guest of honor and Mark Rich was special guest. We missed it last year because we were out of town. This year we had the magnificent Kelly Link as guest of honor and very cool Bryan Thao Worra as special guest. I missed most of the panels due to absent mindedness but also because I was helping out or gabbing with Gavin at the Small Beer Press table. It's a small convention but packs a punch with programming, lots of time to meet and visit with the highlighted guests, and lots of other interesting attendees. Highlights included seeing Lyda glammed up as Tate; stocking up to feed my reading habit with two bags of used books from the dealers room; an affordable live auction with booty including more books and original Mark Rich artwork; a long chat with Eleanor Arnason (check out her new blog here); Bryan Thao Worra's awesome presentation on Laotian mysterious places (see Dark Wisdom #9 for his article on the Plain of Jars) and mythic creatures (toe sucking forest spirits!), music from Mark and Martha as Keg Salad, and a great film discussion with Andrea Hairston that included one of my favorite films, Lonestar, and a new, eye-opening take (to me) on Rush Hour. Andrea will be guest of honor next year, so you'll have to come and ask her about it.

Once again, the past two weeks reminded me how blessed we have been with such a great group of friends and writing/SF community around us. As one of my new co-workers said on the way out the door today, "Peace out, y'all!"

Discussing musical taste, that is whether someone has good musical taste or not, led to a slight disagreement this evening. I would tend to be more inclusive in defining someone's musical taste. For instance, in addition to such obvious things such as music purchased, music played and music shared with friends, I believe that songs one chooses to sing at home, out of the view of the public but in the presence of roommates or family, should also be included. The manner of such singing, and if there is also dancing, could also be considered. What do you think?

*WARNING - Hex Spoiler*








Last night I tuned BBC America for Hex and found out Cassie had died. I swear I caught the episode last week but did not remember losing the main character. I immediately zapped into on demand just be sure, and yes, the last episode showing up was #6, the one I'd watched. I sulked a bit and decided I must have missed it and they were just slow to put up the next episode. I checked back later and found out they'd put up last night's episode, #8. Same thing today, episodes #6 and #8. I feel so betrayed. I haven't felt like this since I was a kid and somehow skipped the whole Gandalf dying in Moria scene and found out he was dead when I opened the next book. I cried that time. This time I wasn't sad (she could be so mean to Thelma) just angry with Comcast or BBC America or whoever blew the surprise for me. I expected some commiseration from Alan but he already knew she was going to die having read all the episode summaries on some website or other. What's the fun of that? And why the hell am I getting so hyped up about a consistently inconsistent show I know is already cancelled without a nice series wrap up at the end?

This new job is going to do wonders for my writing discipline. With the way my schedule is structured, I need to lose a few hours each week during the day and have been alternating camping out at the two nearby coffee houses. And, in case I ever entertain the unproductive idea that I will work at my desk (not just catch up on blogs and news), overcrowding has someone needing to use my computer, desk or chair any time I'm away from my desk for more than ten minutes. I've been avoiding the heat by heading out early to make use of their free air conditioning, too. This week has taught me that although I think I can get writing done at home, I'm really just treading water since they're too many distractions.

About the new job... I'm about one week into it and am loving the work. I'm coordinating volunteers part-time for the local humane society shelter, a position that draws on my weird assortment of past volunteer and work experiences. It's amazingly close to home and I can keep my low paid but promising job with the start up company while having a steady paycheck during our slow season. Best of all, it's so good to be working in an animal shelter again.

We're back from Readercon and post Readercon activities. The air is hot and dry, our house is almost unbearable and all the lawns are getting crispy, a very different situation from water-logged Massachusetts. We lost a kitchen chair and one of my sandals which is pretty good considering I didn't have as much time to puppy proof things as I would have liked. The sandal must have been hiding deep underneath a chair or the couch. The poor chair broke at some point, then was yanked apart and then chewed. We think the dog jumped on it to get to a cat although the pulling apart could have happened first. It was the chair facing out into the room under the table and thus more accessible than the others. I did also get the good news that I have a second interview for an interesting job tomorrow morning.

Readercon was fun and mellow with lots of interesting people. It suffered a little from its lack of parties, although that didn't stop us from making use of the Irish pub in the hotel. Oh yes, we spent way too much time in that bar. A desperate search for brunch one morning led a mtoley crew of us to a strange meal amidst birthday partying kids and jungle noises in the nearby mall's Rainforest Cafe. I enjoyed readings by Brett Cox, Paul Park, Patrick O'Leary, Jeff Ford and others. I'm still a little brain dead, so you'll have to excuse me if I forgot yours. The most memorable reading was for Twenty Epics which my husband hijacked to read an excerpt from the stories of everyone who wasn't present. I almost died during his rendition of David Schwartz's story because at times he sounded more like my Aunt Joyce than David doing his great uncle's accent. If you'd like to hear it for yourself, you just need to buy him a shot and hand him a copy of the book. Although I hit more programming than I ever have since my first convention, I only caught one half of two different panels because I had to sneak out to readings I promised I'd attend. I missed guest of honor James Morrow completely and only heard a few words from China Mieville one of them being, "tentacular" a great, great word. Sometime during one of "let's do shots" periods in the bar (I stayed with beer) we started up the "which SF author would you do" thing that was first played during the DC World Fantasy, I think. I had to pull in Lauren, who had just been voted onto the island, to balance out the mostly male, mostly gay panel because they kept vetoing the inclusion of guys with pony tails. If you want more details than that, you'll have to buy me a cider.

We're back from my parent's cabin a day early so we can do some work around the house. It was a glorious, long weekend and Gambit's first visit. He got to explore the woods, swim as much as he wanted to and take his first boat ride. He was very well behaved and we're pleased to have a dog we can actually swim with instead of having to watch for claws and fend off attempts to climb onto us. He's very fast and can beat me in a flat out race, although he has a tendency to keep circling back to cut me off and make my front crawl into a much slower breaststroke. There was very little barking, which with the swimming, helped win my dad over. The last few years with our old dog had involved lots of senile barking at anything that moved including every boat passing on a busy lake. Gambit's passed out next to me on the couch right now and the cats are having a little peace because he's so tired.

Being Wisconsin, where these things are legal, we had lots of fireworks. They've done amazing things for the home market and we had couple nights of professional quality shows from different cabins. It was a beautiful sight from the boat after dark and at one point there were alternating explosions from both sides of the lake. I was going to bring Mentos and Diet Coke to duplicate Greg's experiment for our fireworks but didn't need to and will save that for a weekend when we have kids at the cabin.

There were all these new buoys around the lake which my dad said were marking Eurasian milfoil outbreaks. People raced right by them ignoring the problem and chewing up the plants to spread them to other places. Lake residents formed a lake district over the last two years and have gotten funding to work on the problem, but it's going to be an ongoing thing. Once it's in the lake, it's there for good, I guess, and it still might get completely out of control ending up stifling all the native life. The other big topic was the number of large muskie on the lake and the lack of the smaller northerns. Muskie don't bite very often while northerns do so the fishing has changed. We had a number of boats just off the point by our dock saying they were tracking some huge fish on their radars there. The water gets really deep fast and a couple times I wondered what was sharing the water with me. Muskies were always the monsters of legend on our lake.

A little depressed today -- I've not been sleeping well, plus it is so damn hot. The house managed to stay fairly cool all week but it's starting to heat up and I'm sweating just sitting here. Like they tell you to do in all of the job search books and trainings, I did my follow up calls for a couple of part-time jobs I sent in resumes for earlier in the week. I really thought one was a great fit, although I could see them thinking I was over qualified. Both are in the interviewing stage of things. While I still might get a call, it's not as likely, I guess. In small breaks between loads of laundry and washing wood floors, I've been watching soccer and then a Gina Lollobrigida and Rock Hudson movie, Come September, a little confection of a movie. I've enjoyed looking at the clothes and beautiful scenery and dreaming about being Lollobrigida and having her clothes. I have a very stinky dog dreaming beside me on the couch and sleeping kitties at various elevations throughout the living room. I can't give the dog a bath for a few days because I just gave him his monthly dose of anti-tick stuff. Next time, I'll remember: bath first, then medicine. We're headed up to my parent's cabin for the first time with Gambit along. Between the woods and the lake, he'll be in dog heaven. In the past, it's been the only time my dogs have been able to run around off-leash outside of a fenced in yard. With the dog park so close by, the off-leash part won't be as big a deal but the never-endingness of the off-leashness will be novel. If he's like other dogs we've had, he'll run and swim his butt off the first day and crash the rest of the weekend. Eventually, he'll learn to pace himself so the wiped out part comes after we get home.

Being only partially employed is not the end of the world. A friend called today to say they have surgery scheduled after a quick diagnosis of breast cancer. It looks to be an easy tumor to remove and we're hoping that's what they find. It kind of puts things into perspective, though.

I've been busy sending out resumes and doing a few interviews. Ever since my hours were cut because of seasonal slow down, I've been trying to decide whether to get a part-time job or full-time job. I've been applying for both and I guess I'll wait to see what comes up. I was feeling so lost that last week that I attended a three day job search boot camp at the Workforce Center. It was overwhelming but incredibly helpful. I've retooled my resume and started looking at my "portfolio." They really stressed that I needed a navy blue or black suit for interviewing. I'd been at my old nonprofit for so long that I didn't have anything that fit the bill. After buying and returning two different suits, I finally found one on sale yesterday at Marshall Fields that I love and that fits like glove. I also scored matching designer shoes on sale for cheap, cheap, cheap. (They said plain pumps would be best for interviewing but really, they're just shoes, right? Can't I have a little style?) I usually try on suits with skirts since they tend to fit better than suits with pants -- unless I can mix and match sizes. Last night, I tried it on for Alan and he got a strange look in his eyes and said it made me look very tall. I have to admit that it made me feel powerful. I guess that's where the whole power suit thing came from.

Jumping off from Gwenda and Jackie's comments to the post below, I've put up our first topic of conversation on 1 Tough Puppy: Cost of Pet Ownership.

We've officially joined Gwenda in the "leave your pet behind with the pet sitter guilt club." Our fabulous pet sitter, Lynn, left us a note saying that hyper puppy Gambit had caught his dew claw on the couch cover that day and it had bled a bit. She recommended checking it and seeing if it warranted a vet visit to have the nail clipped or removed. I checked it that night and the next day and it seemed to be getting better and wasn't causing him any discomfort. Then we went to the dog park yesterday. A pained yelp and a little blood later I decided it was time to head home and make that vet appointment. Another pet owner warned that the toe could be broken, which was quite painful, and recommended that I keep some pain stuff like Demerol on hand for pet emergencies. Luckily, the pain wasn't bad once he settled in and they got us in this morning - thank goodness for Saturday morning office hours. I was hoping for just a nail trim and bandage. It was that but also a sedative, local anesthesia, antibiotics and three days of E. collar. $200 worth of stuff. Ouch, especially so close on the heels of Wiscon. Of course, I hadn't gotten around to completing the pet insurance policy, yet.

So, we've instituted the BIG PLAN - 1 Tough Puppy - a blog dedicated to pet issues of all kinds. I'm hoping to provide a forum for advice and discussion and a place for recommendations and reviews of pet products. I'm hoping it will generate a little bit of Adsense revenue to help us pay down the surgery debt. It will definitely keep me from posting my long pet rants on this blog. If you are interested in joining in, let me know. Some of you have been so helpful here with support and advice and I know others would benefit from your wisdom, too.

Thanks everyone for your support. I thought I'd lighten things up a bit with the best news I've heard all week (other than personal visits by bears.)

Meerkat Manor

Oh Yeah! (Picture Alan's falsetto here.)

I won't be able to fly out to California for my uncle's funeral, although it sounds like we will probably have a memorial service here in the Twin Cities, too. I didn't get to see my uncle very often when I was growing up but I have great memories from two family trips out to Davis to see him. My uncle, Robert Price, was a marine biologist who taught for years at UC Davis and specialized in seafood technology. When I was ten, we borrowed my aunt's parent's RV and drove down the coast on Highway 1 ending up at Disneyland. We spent an amazing, magical time on that trip exploring the tide pools on one of the rocky, northern beaches. I remember looking into a tidepool and seeing nothing. Then, my uncle brought me closer and it was teeming with life. It was just like Pagoo and, at that moment, I couldn't think of anything better than having an uncle who was a marine biologist.

This was going to be a kind of Wiscon post but I don't have the energy right now. I just got bad news about my uncle. His lung cancer has progressed to the point where they're saying good-bye. One of my cousins was able to fly out to be with him and his wife. Everyone else is so far away.

Wiscon's over. The drive home was fairly uneventful once we got some caffeine into Alan. He started the drive and promptly crashed. I took over and, while falling asleep wasn't an issue, noticing something off to the side and finding the car swerving off into that direction was. He was supposed to keep me awake and, instead, I was throwing questions out to him in panic. "Who was your favorite new person? What was your best conversation? What gossip haven't you shared?" There was also some poking. "You have to stay awake!" One can of coffee drink later we were just fine. No storms. No traffic. Everyone else seems to have had a much harder time getting home.

We arrived home to a sweltering house, smelling of cat and dog. The puppy promptly peed on my sandaled foot. We had a cryptic message about our mortgage needing payment but couldn't get more information because both the bank and the mortgage offices were closed. I realized I'd lost my debit card and had to call to cancel it. Thank goodness that bank still had staff on duty. (She was probably in a country that doesn't have Memorial Day.)

I had a nice break from the stress yesterday when I drove up with the Hegge side of the family to Fargo/Moorhead for a wedding. Dad drove over from Brainerd and fishing opener for the night. Much fun was had by all. I was so tired, I only danced to one song, Love Shack. Very sad.

Publisher's Weekly has a mixed, mostly positive review of Alan's upcoming short story collection. (Of course, I think they are way off in the "self-conscious blandness" comment. I can think of a lot of words to describe Alan's stories but "bland" is not one of them!)

I am about 5/6 of the way through Hal Duncan's Vellum and am absolutely loving it. I can't wait to get to WisCon to discuss it and congratulate Hal.

I got the fifth installment of Rabid Transit to the printer on Thursday. We'll have it time for WisCon. The title is from an old Italian saying and fits well with our stories this year. Here's the text Chris wrote for the back cover:

"The stories in Long Journeys, Great Lies—the newest installment in the acclaimed Rabid Transit series—are meditations on travel, voyages, exile and escape. Some are adventurous, others politically charged. Some will take you to far-off lands while others will bring you back to a strange place called home. No matter what, they will excite, soothe, thrill, frighten and provoke."

This month has been crazy with WisCon stuff. I finished up as best I could with readings scheduling. I had no idea how much work goes into planning the convention until I started helping out a couple of years ago. My appreciation has grown over time. I'm talking about work that doesn't end with the convention and continues pretty much the entire year to bring together all the wonderful details we mostly take for granted. Readings is a very, very small part of things but to many who attend, an important part. There is a certain sense of entitlement for some writers for panels and readings. Not enough of us are helping out with other parts of the convention. I worry sometimes when I see how long the core group of volunteers has been doing this and don't see enough other people stepping in to help out. We're all really busy during the convention but stopping by to see what needs to be done for an hour or so when you have a lull once during the weekend would be really helpful. Childcare, consuite, greenroom, registration: there are a lot of different choices of places to help.

By the way, I really could use some help next year with readings. Feel free to e-mail me or talk to me at the convention, if you think you might be interested.

For the two people who don't read their blogs:

Alan's been long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Chris has got a book. Well, we already he knew he had a book but now everyone will be able to read it! Yay!

All in all the past two weeks have been very good.

There was Barth's reading at Dreamhaven last week.

Alan and I saw V is for Vendetta last weekend. Awesome movie! Why aren't more people talking about it?

We finished the readings schedule for Wiscon this week and while there are problems that need to be fixed, no one has threatened to kill me, yet.

We learned that we will most likely have a karaoke DJ at our annual Wiscon Ratbastard party. Yay!

I got to spend a couple of hours at the Battle Creek dog park four out of five afternoons this week with Gambit enjoying the beautiful summer-like weather and their multiple ponds/lakes. Over the course of four days, he went from playing in the mud and stepping into the water to stepping out into the water to going out as far as he could walk to swimming out to fetch sticks and balls and bringing them back to me. Two things learned in one activity: fetching and swimming! We have a water dog after all!

Coffee, critique and lots of chatting with Haddayr yesterday.

Dang, it's hard to concentrate on posting when you have three cats waiting for dinner looking down on you like vultures. I tell them they still have fifteen minutes left to go but it doesn't matter. I'll have to make this fast. We ended up taking Gambit's E. collar off a couple of days early after he managed to pry a corner up and start chewing it. He started squealing one evening and I found he'd bent it perpendicular until it was poking into his face. No harm done. Since Wednesday, we've had three trips to the dog park and Alan has him out on a walk now. He's still not making it through the night without waking us up with whining to go out but I have hopes of sleep in the near future. Just in case we can't break him off the whining habit soon, I've invested in some ear plugs.

My new favorite cooking ingredient is roasted sweet red peppers from a jar. I've tried them the past couple of weeks in stir fry, stew, soup, and couscous, and sauteed with chicken breast. Anyone have suggestions for other uses?

Really no excuse for not posting for this long. Things have been busy with a new job, two pets and three surgeries, lots of volunteer type stuff and some Rabid Transit work. I can give a quick run down and then do my best not to get so far behind.

Tora, our cat, had a tumor removed that was cancerous but the Vet thinks he got it all and the surrounding tissue was cancer free. The cat had to wear his e-collar for two weeks after the surgery which meant we had to keep him separated from the puppy and by default the other two cats. He never really adjusted to the collar this time, maybe because he's a senior now and less adaptable. He was always getting stuck on things and we were all very happy when it came off. Despite having a fairly large chunk out of his leg the wound has healed nicely and the fur is growing back in. In retrospect the surgery was amazingly cheap at $600 even considering it was about $425 more than I thought it was going to be because the estimate was totalled incorrectly. (I should have paid more attention to the details!)

Alan has posted some of this, so I apologize for repeating. The high amount of detail is more for me than readers -- who will probably be bored -- as I find I'm still processing the whole thing. Gambit, the Katrina dog, turned 6 months during the whole Tora thing, so he was next in line for surgery. We had him neutured on a Friday a few weeks ago. It was little more expensive than usual because one of his testicles never descended and they had to go up into his body to get to it. He wasn't doing well the next morning, so Alan took him back in. He got an anti-nausea shot and some antibiotics and seemed to be doing much better. The total for all of that was about $650. After our three day weekend, I came home from work the next Tuesday to find Gambit dribbling blood-tinged urine. The Vet's office was closed so I called the very close-by emergency clinic and they said I'd better bring it in. As the woman said on the phone, "Blood in urine is never a good sign." (I was having flashbacks to what we went through a couple years ago with my big, old dog, Burt who at the end was leaky, and at the very end when we finally learned it was cancer and not thyroid, a little bloody, too. But, at this point, I thought it had to be related to the surgery.) Gambit and I was shown into an exam room and he proceeded to spend the next few hours painting the floor redder and redder. They moved us once to get him away from the mess. In the meantime, they did tests, a series of x-rays and an ultrasound. They found a huge amount of urine just loose inside his body cavity which led them to suspect his kidney(s). We'd noticed the liquid before. When he lay down, part of his tummy would roll a little bit. I always thought it was just a full bladder or would encourage him to take a trip outside. The x-ray showed one of his kidneys wasn't functioning. There seemed to be three or four possibilities: a misplaced nick from the surgery, a parasite he picked up during Katrina, or a virus or infection that had attacked his kidney. We had to pay a deposit on what they thought the final total would be early on in the evening. The clinic staff were wonderful and always checked in with me before doing anything, quoting me the price as well. At that point it seemed we had two options, dead puppy or try to find out what was wrong. The total from the emergency clinic visit was $1,800.

Now, I should say that while Gambit was shortly to become our dog, he was still just a foster dog until March. I could have waited until the next day to bring him back to the animal shelter and have them take care of at least some of it. They don't open until noon and I still can't imagine waiting 16 hours with an internally bleeding puppy. Back when he developed a respiratory infection shortly after we got him, I decided to take him into our Vet instead of waiting four hours to get through to the shelter. He was hacking and I thought he was choking on something. The Vet found a parasite in his system that the shelter had missed, so I think I made the right decision and don't regret paying for the visit and meds.

The Vet on duty at the emergency clinic recommended taking him into the emergency clinic at the small animal hospital at the University of Minnesota the next day as this was beyond what she or a normal Vet's office could handle. They kept him the rest of the night and I went home, thankfully just a few blocks away, to try to sleep a few hours. I picked him and his x-rays up at 6 the next morning and we headed over to St. Paul. I love the St. Paul campus. All of my Chemical Dependency Counselling classes were there and offered only at night. I'd park right by the cow barn and as I walk to class, I'd pass by all these people walking dogs because the Vet school and hospital was right there, too. Just driving him through campus made me relax a little.

One of the staff from the emergency clinic by our house was also on staff there and she was ready to take him right away. I had to wait just a little while in the waiting room and it seemed to be labrador day at the clinic. All of them were older dogs and one was going through chemo and another was having some paralysis in his back legs and I sat there looking at them and the woman who had her cat wrapped in a blanket and the one who had her cat in a carrier and the bulletin board with the pet loss group notice. The young Vet who came out was very apologetic. She was having Gambit admitted to the surgery part of the hospital and another doctor would be taking care of him. He'd be having exploratory surgery sometime that day. She was supposed to come up with an estimate for me to sign and have me pay a deposit so they could go forward, but was nervous about coming up with a surgery estimate, especially when no one knew what was happening, yet. It ended up being pretty accurate. We were looking at another $1,600 - $2,000. In a daze, I signed the paper and went to the accounting office with a credit card and then headed to work. Later that day, a surgeon, not the surgeon, but one on duty, called to go over everything again. He said that it might help to have more x-rays but since he knew how expensive everything was going to be, it wasn't absolutely necessary. Gulping, I said, "Maybe we could go ahead without the x-rays." He said the surgeon would call when he knew something. The whole day went by and I finally called after the front desk had closed for the day. I kept thinking to myself, "How do parents handle this? The not knowing what's wrong. With a child it's got to be a million times worse." Gambit was still in surgery. It had been a very long surgery, I guess, at least a couple of hours. Alan spoke to the surgeon afterwards and they'd found a bizaare birth defect that had his kidney on one side emptying into his prostate instead of his bladder. So, the whole thing was unrelated to his neuturing and have happened eventually. They'd had to remove his kidney and all of his plumbing on that side, but dogs as well as humans can live very well with just one kidney, so he'll be just fine.

He stayed in the hospital for three days and then we got to take him home. We visited him in the hospital and he seemed happy to see us then but when I came to take him home. He ran away from me and did that smiling, showing teeth thing and the vet tech said, "Oh, are you mad at your mommy?" and it just about broke my heart. Once he came near me though, he did his little sag into me thing and everything felt better. All told, he cost us about $4,000 that week, a very expensive little dog. Last weekend, Alan drove down to Hastings to the shelter to sign the adoption papers, so he's all ours now. Some of my family thinks we should have given him back and that we spent too much money on fixing him up. I never felt we had a point that I've had with other dogs where you say, "Here's the time to make a decision - more money or just let the poor dog go." Always before I've faced the decision with an old, cancer ridden dog who was facing suffering. My dad sent me an article on keeping vet bills down and it seemed mainly to emphasize making relationships with a vet and an emergency clinic. With most vets I've used, I've developed a good relationship with them and everything had a set price and I never felt that bargaining was an option. Lord knows, we have a relationship with this vet now after Tora's cancer and kidney stone last fall and all of this. Has anyone tried the pet health insurance? I'd love to hear your experience.

Back to the puppy. Gambit had two weeks with his staples in and the e-collar and then another two weeks of e-collar and reduced (but really meaning no) activity. Even the first week when he had a sedative he was wild. We're heading into the last week and I don't know how they expected us to do it. They said no jumping, no running, no stretching but right away he was jumping on the couch and the bed. Each time, we had a moment of panic picturing internal bleeding. He won't let us sleep more than a few hours because he's so full of energy. He spends a lot of time in his kennel because he gets too wild. When we go outside he has to be on a leash and we're not supposed to even go for a short walk. How do people enforce no activity on a young dog? It doesn't seem right to keep him in the kennel all the time, he's already in there at night and while we're at work. I'd love to hear any suggestions for future reference.

By the way, Alan has photos of Gambit posted on his blog:

http://www.goblinmercantileexchange.com/