Day 141

Try not to stare directly at it lest you be sickened.

So I finally did it. I shaved my head today. I don't have to constantly worry about how messed up my hair is when I go out in public. I have very fine hair and it's a bitch to manage. Having a shaved head frees me. This isn't exactly new territory for me as I had my head shaved briefly in 1991 (basic training) and through various periods starting in 2004.

Hair talk aside, today was an average day. I had to move everything from my walls this morning so the exterminator could do a thorough job. We don't have a bug problem. These visits are quarterly to help manage any crawling critters that manage to make it into the house. The problem was that our last visit was well before Hurricane Ike struck, which makes it early September. I know they tried to schedule an appointment in early January, but I was in Los Angeles at the time and I completely spaced about calling them back. Time goes by and here we are in May. I also got my annual termite spray done. The good news - no termite activity for hopefully the next 365 days.

I also bought a handheld light meter today. I was originally looking for something with spot-metering as my DSLR doesn't have that capability. I'm trying to move on to more compelling compositions and the ability to spot meter a scene is going to be important. The meter also does reflected and incident light readings. The incident readings will help with staged portraits. The reflected readings will come in handy for my medium format film camera with the touchy shutter release.

And today I got to see Terminator Salvation. I must say I was pretty impressed. They didn't fiddle at all with the backstory, which is very refreshing (I'm looking at you, Star Wars and Highlander franchises!). I won't give any spoilers here, but I liked the movie. The door was left open for a 5th release. It will be interesting to see how they handle the assasination of John Connor in future releases. Anyway, enough of the geek stuff.

It's rather late here and I have a lot of PT paperwork ahead of me in the morning, followed by running around in the afternoon. To all you, my faithful and not-so-faithful readers, I bid you goodnight.

Day 140

(Our) Edge of the Universe

Normally I don't like to post those images that I worked on with this blog (that's why I maintain a flickr page and Primordial Light) as I try to reserve this for quick snapshots. Today, however, I forgot to take a picture. So, here you have it - above is my latest creation. I hope you enjoy viewing it as much as I enjoyed creating it. Now I just need to find a way to get a good print out of it, but that's an altogether different adventure.

Sharon is watching television at the moment. She is so cute when she does that. Her attention lasts for only about a minute, but she really gets into it for that time. The first time I noticed it was when 102 Dalmations was playing. Every bark that came from the television got her attention and she would watch the screen, even with Ozzy biting away at her back and neck. It's just fun to watch her do that sometimes.

I was pleasantly surprised at their behavior today, although I did suffer a setback with Sharon last night. Late last night I needed to correct her behavior when coming back into the house from a relief session. I didn't hit her, but I did need to scold her. Since then she's shied away from me more than usual. Sharon came from a home with 2 women. The lady we got her from said her brother played with her all the time. The thing is, when it comes to people Sharon is more readily friendly with women than men. I'm just wondering how rough the previous owner's brother was with Sharon. I guess I'm just going to have to work to earn her trust again. She's a very well behaved dog and very eager to please her master, but it looks like we still have a ways to go with her development.

Damn, this blog is slowly starting to turn into a dog-blog. I guess it's only natural since those 2 little monsters take up most of my free time lately. I'm enjoying it though. I know once they reach adulthood they won't need my attention as much, but sometimes you just can't wait until they reach that point.

I just noticed that Sharon is really getting big - with nose pointed toward feet she is almost 24 inches long from crown to rump. She's just around 13 weeks old... she's gonna be big. A typical GSD female is 22 to 24 inches at the front shoulder. The body proportion is typically 8.5 units high to 10 units long... she is definitely going to be a larger specimen.

Anyway, dog talk aside, today was a fairly normal day. I was able to give myself a general target for my planned photo shoot. I do need to work out a couple of other things as well, the most important being having permission to go on this trip, but at least one variable has been solved. I'm really hoping I can do this photo shoot. It's something I've been wanting to do for a while.

At any rate, I have an exterminator coming to my house in the morning to do a quarterly spray. Keeping bugs out of my house is a good thing. So, to all of you, my faithful and not-so-faithful readers - I bid you goodnight.

Day 139

The original little blue pill... the one that will help me get a good night's sleep with my headache.

Headaches really suck. I get migraines every once in a while and if I don't take something soon after sensing the onset I can become a basically useless human being. I have one right now for which I already took some painkiller. Hopefully this will keep the edge off the pain long enough for this to pass.

I'm looking at Sharon and Ozzy right now sleeping peacefully. Today they were up for quite a while and are pretty much lights out for the evening. They're both angels when they're sleeping, but little hellions when fully awake and belly-full. When they get to playing both dogs will snarl and every once in a while I will hear a yelp as one has bitten the other too hard. All in all they get along great. We were really lucky to have gotten 2 basically friendly puppies.

It appears that Ozzy may have had a touch of Canine Pink Eye. When I looked at him this morning his right eyelids were a little swollen but not as bad as last night. Also the sclera was nowhere near as red as last night. Add to that he was responding to my fingers waving in the right peripheral vision area and it appears he's going to be fine. I didn't find anything about Pink Eye being a reaction to standard Rabies vaccine so it stands that he probably got some dirt in his eye or took a tooth from Sharon during one of their marathon play sessions. Either way I'm just glad he is alright.

I was rather amused by the salesperson at my door today. She was trying to sell a new security service in the neighborhood and offered free equipment for the opportunity to post a sign in my yard. She kept engaging in small talk at intervals and poking fun at my mannerisms while going through her sales pitch. This appeared to be an interesting tactic to keep the conversation going as I'm sure she gets a lot of doors slammed in her face. At one point we even debated the merits of vehicle emissions testing and their supposed purpose. In the end I told her that I wasn't really interested at this time. The human contact was nice (since I work alone most of the day) but most salespeople that come through are people that I usually have to get nasty with in order to get them to leave my door.

Between that and my errand running, today was pretty average day. Tomorrow looks to be a little busy, so at this point I need to get some sleep. To all of you, my faithful and not-so-faithful readers, I bid you goodnight.

Day 138

I felt like a proud papa earlier this afternoon. I took Ozzy to the vet to get his final shots. The doctor told me that Ozzy's health is top notch and that his body's musculature is superb. He congratulated me on the job I've done with him, although I can't take credit for his musculature. You see, Ozzy thinks he's a cat and often I can catch him trying to gauge whether he can make a jump or not. He'll even sit on my Polk Audio R40 speakers, which are 3 feet tall. If only the doctor could see the stress we go through each day as Ozzy runs a close 2nd to Marley for hyperactivity.

I ended up not going to the gym today as the muscles surrounding both shins were tight as hell. This is nothing more than my body punishing me for the 2 month hiatus. It sucks because walking is not all that comfortable when those muscles are so tight. I honestly didn't think I would be able to give a good go on the treadmill. They're still tight even at this late hour, although not as bad as this morning. It's funny - we like to think of ourselves as big and tough, but it's often those tiny little muscles that give the most nagging pains.

Ozzy's eyes were red earlier. I think he is really tired and fighting it. He may also be having a reaction to his Rabies vaccine. I tried to research it, but could not find anything on red eyes after the shot, so my guess is he's tired. He's sleeping soundly right now. I'm a little concerned at this point but will wait and see. I gotta get him licensed too.

Other than the above, my day was pretty standard fare for a Monday. Tomorrow I have to go stand in line to renew the registration for my Outlander. I need to get there early as there is usually no line during the first 30 minutes of operation for the vehicle registration office. Traffic court, now that's a different story at 9 am and if I want to avoid that line, I need to get into the registration office.

There is no picture tonight as I didn't really think to take one today. Hey - I'm only being honest.

To all my faithful and not-so-faithful readers I bid you goodnight.

Day 136+1

I look like a big red beached whale, but whatcha gonna do?

I had a chicken and black bean quesadilla with a slaw with a southwestern style lime vinaigrette. It was a good lunch. I'm going to have to tweak the vinaigrette a little, but overall I was happy with it.

Today (Day 137) was pretty lazy for me. I woke up at 7 am to 2 dogs screaming to go outside. I let them play for an hour, took a nap, woke up, let the dogs out again, made lunch, watched TV, took another nap, replaced a doorknob, watched TV, ate dinner, snapped a few photos, let the dogs play, went to the gym, came home, had snack, made blog entry...

Yep, that was my day in a nutshell. I was supposed to cut into the ceiling above my refrigerator today, but the person who was going to help me never showed up. I'm a little disappointed because I didn't even get a phone call. So, because of this I can't really say I was productive at all, although my photos turned out quite nice (www.flickr.com/yankee-in-texas). My trip to the gym was my first since mid-March. I know one person who may be reading this that's probably ready to give me a good tongue-lashing. I deserve it and I'm getting back on track.

Yesterday (Day 136) was a little more filled. I pressure-washed my driveway in the morning. Let's just say it was a little overdue. It's amazing how much better the property looks from the outside with a clean driveway. Next weekend I'm going to do as much of the sidewalk as I can (hose and AC cable limitations).

Then we proceeded to take Ozzy and Sharon to the dog park. Sharon had a much better experience this time and even mixed it up in the small dog area. She did ok in the big dog area, but she's still pretty skittish around other dogs. There was another GSD puppy in the park. I talked to the owner for a bit and she told me that her dog was really skittish at first as well, but eventually through good socialization became more confident. Given the improvement I've seen in Sharon I'm confident that she will be more normal socially given time and patience.

I do have one other superficial concern about Sharon. A good chunk of GSD's by her age (about 12 weeks) already have their ears standing erect while Sharon's are flopped. I read that in some GSD's it can take up to 7 months for their ears to stand fully erect as somehow the standing ears is linked to the development of their adult teeth. The 7th month is about the time most large-breed dogs have all of their adult teeth set. I really don't know how to tell if she has soft ears (which is a recessive gene in GSD's, considered by breeders to be a defect) or if possibly there were injuries sustained in the musculature of the ear. Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but it often appears that the ears are standing a little higher than they were the day Sharon became a member of the family. It won't change anything if her ears don't stand up as I will love her just as much, I just wish I could know if it was going to happen or not.

Later that afternoon I met my uncle's new Labrador Retriever named Mickey. Mickey was apparently dropped off at a vet tech's residence. The vet tech couldn't take care of it so he advertised on Craiglist and my uncle took the puppy home that day. The puppy was only about 4 weeks old when it was dropped off (now about 5 weeks old). Mickey is cute. At this point he's about the same size as Ozzy was at 2 months. The dog is going to be big... I would be interested to see which one is bigger at adulthood (my Sharon or Mickey).

After that my day pretty much progressed slowly. I watched Get Smart on cable and then went to the theater to watch Angels and Demons. I must say that I was pretty impressed with the latter. I thought the story flowed much better than the movie adaptation for The DaVinci Code. After reading the hype about how the movie is anti-Catholic, I have to say that I didn't find it in the movie at all. I found the movie telling the story of a flawed man using the power of religion to further a flawed belief in the letter of Catholicism. A key character and his story-line was left out of the movie (thereby changing the motivation used to set the chain of events in motion) but it was adapted well. In the religion vs. science angle, a good job was done in balancing the debate by giving the positives to both sides (something the book really doesn't do). Overall, if you just want to see a good movie with an original plot, by all means go see it. If you're looking for a religion-bashing flick, you may just want to rent a copy of Religulous instead.

I was going to write this last night, but again, late movies = falling asleep on the sofa after turning on the laptop. At this point I will need to wrap it and get some sleep as I have a busy day ahead of me tomorrow. So, to all of you, my faithful and not-so-faithful readers, I bid you goodnight.

Day 135 Redux

Say "Hello" to Sharon... she became a member of the family on 3 May 09 (That's day 123 in Project 2K9-speak).

Ok, so here we are at the end of Day 135. The day itself was fairly uneventful. I spent most of my time at home making sure the Beagle and German Shepherd Dog didn't kill each other fighting over chew toys and such. Sharon is much bigger than Ozzy, but the difference in size is no deterrent to Ozzy trying to establish is Alpha status. Sharon generally defers, but sometimes will stand her ground and get the better of Ozzy.

Sharon does not like going for walks. She walks with me mostly out of fear that I am getting too far from her. She has been improving on the leash, but she runs whenever she sees me come out of my kitchen with it in my hand. Ozzy, however, starts going nuts with anticipation when sees the leash. The skittishness on the part of Sharon does cause me some concern about her social development. German Shepherds can be dangerous as adults if not properly socialized. Tomorrow she's making her 2nd trip to Bill Archer Park as we work on her socialization. Ozzy - well, he's just going to have fun no matter what.

Other than my dogs, I really don't have much more to say about today. Tomorrow I get to pressure wash my driveway (oh yay :-/) and maybe cut into the ceiling about my refrigerator (double yay :-/) so it has the potential to be a long Saturday. The weather forecaster's are calling for rain tomorrow, which I hope at least waits until after we get back from the park with the dogs.

As promised, here is a picture of Sharon taken a couple of days after we brought her home. I haven't really taken any pictures since then and right now she's asleep. To all my faithful and not-so-faithful readers I bid you goodnight.

Day 135

Wow, almost a month has gone by since my last post. Talk about busted projects. I know I have a more interesting life than this. Buckling down is gotta be the watchword. Here's a little recap...

- Had a birthday party - most of the guests were my wife's friends;

- Woke up at 5:00 am on April 29 to find myself in the middle a pond. The water was about 1/4-inch from the lip of my front step. Thankfully none got into the house. People who lived in the Cypress area all their lives can never recall being flooded - ever. The Cypress, TX area got a total of 11 inches of rain in 24 hours;

- After the water receded spent the rest of the afternoon trying to dry out 3 cars;

- Went to the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University on April 30;

- Bought a 2008 Ford Edge on May 1. Our Solara had 176,000 miles on it. It was still in good condition but we needed something we could depend on better due to the fact that without the car we can't work;

- Got another puppy on May 3. Her name is Sharon and she is a German Shepherd Dog (believe it or not the word 'Dog' is part of the proper name for the breed). At 10 weeks old she was flea-bitten pretty bad and had a microbial parasite giving her orange diarrhea. We gave her a flea bath as soon as we got home and spent 2 hours combing out her coat. A $200 vet bill took care of the parasite (to be fair, it did include shots and an exam). The housetraining oddysey continues...

- Finally got rid of our 1995 Nissan Pathfinder via a donation to the Houston Can Academy. Getting rid of it feels like closing a chapter on an old life. It's funny how attached we become to our cars.

Anyway, there's a quick recap of what's been going on. I left out one thing but we'll see how that goes later. First I want to say congratulations to my sister who just found out she's pregnant. I'm also planning a trip this summer to do a photo shoot. If everything works out ok for me on that thing I left out, this will be the last chance I have to a photo shoot for a long time. The only thing that remains is securing permission for the trip.

At any rate, I need to get back to work. I'll have a redux done tonight along with a photo of Sharon. To all my faithful and not-so-faithful readers I say "Have a nice day!"