So, dogs. Flash is fine, to our knowledge he has not had another seizure since, but he's also not been at my house much lately. It's nothing to do with the seizure, more to do with my sister moving home. He's here right now on my right, Denny's on the left.

Denny's arthritis has been giving him problems lately. He's had a hard time getting into the car, but I do try to make him take the stairs at night. He makes it, sometimes with my help, but he always gets applause when he does get to the top of the stairs.

Yesterday Denny spent time at the dog park. He usually gets pretty stiff and sore afterwards, but yesterday was particularly bad. He was running to get his rawhide (Flash was trying to take it) and fell; his growling turned to whining and so I managed to get him on his side. When I got home I decided not to make him try the stairs. Later on I thought I heard him eating and listened carefully; eating is always a good sign. It turned out it wasn't eating but him struggling to get on the couch to sleep. He was whining again (he is not a whiny dog and is usually too proud to show weakness) so I helped him on the couch.

He's fine now--he's had his bufferin. He's currently sitting on my left.

Labels: dogs

Yes! I finally read a book that wasn't for class! Of course at 160 pages it is more accurately described as a novella, but I'll take what I can. At least it's not Levinas, right? But I did get an A- in the class and good closure. Whether or not we broke the prof's spirit is not the issue, right?

I listened to the interview with the author on one of my favorite podcasts, The Bat Segundo Show and decided to check it out. Listen, it's all about carrying on. No matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are, it all falls apart. I've spent a lot of time recently mourning the death of good old American work ethic, so this book makes me both happy that maybe there's someone out there like Manny, and sad that this is just a fictional character and there may not be real folks out there.

I have only worked in food service for four days (and that was a Taco Bell, hardly anything as classy as a Red Lobster) but management is a rough existence. I've had my run-ins with retail management and when you find a good one s/he rarely sticks around. In fact, you'll probably get in a passive aggressive battle with a woman who collects cats and Precious Moments figurines--a deadly combination.

Anyway, it's all about carrying on, something I don't remember enough.

Labels: books

ok, so it seems as though this blog may be dangerously close to becoming a shoeblog, but there is nothing wrong with that, is there? That aside, let's get to it!

I heard that there was a French's Shoes in Franklin. Seems as though I knew that, but forgot that I did until a co-worker reminded me. Seems as though they had lots of Uggs in stock and I kind of want some.

Now, let's get this out of the way. Uggs are hideous, especially when pants are tucked into them or when worn with ridiculously short skirts. You know what, though? They're lined with sheep fleece. They're WARM. Granted, we get very few days with weather THAT cold, but with my trip to Iowa next month I thought I'd invest. Unfortunately, the pairs I saw were either ugly colors, ripped in odd places, or just looked too worn for the price I'd pay for them (one of the things about French's is that you have to accept that shoes may be gently worn). I'm going back next week, so we shall see.

While I'm browsing I hear an interesting tidbit: they get shoes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays and they get most of them in size seven. With my shrinking feet (But growing waistline) I can fit in sevens on occasion. In fact, after this comment was made I did notice that the seven section was much larger than the rest.

There was also shoe drama: during my considerable time there a woman was trying to find her own, personal shoe that she'd come in with. She had one of the shoes, the other was nowhere to be found. Wow, can't believe people just put their shoes down whereever in a rack store like this--seems as though you'd want to keep track of that sort of thing. I know mine are always nearby as I tend to buy shoes at these rack stores and since the price tags are sometimes difficult to remove I live in fear that my own shoes will be purchased by some bargain shopper. This is just me.

So, having found a nice pair of Merrell t-strap mary janes I checked out with a nice 30% discount and headed to the thrift store next door where I BEAT A RECORD! Now, I had once bought a nice pair of Doc Martens for about $10. At this store I bought a pair of two-tone wingtip docs AND a packfilm polaroid for $3.33. Amazing! But I was told that the camera probably didn't work and was asked if I'd return it. No, thank you though.

So I had long looked forward to conveyor belt sushi. I'd tried to go many times but it never worked out; add to this my insatiable craving for sushi on Sundays when most sushi joints are closed (understandable, given that the fish is probably left from Friday). Ugh. I ended up ordering fresh off the menu because the items on the belt looked a little funky.

These are the things I do. This is all. Throw me some fun and you'll see more exciting entries!

Besides, I never did mention my trip to a real live working commune, a stop at Marti and Liz (another rack shoe store), and my discovery of Steve and Barry's. mmm.

Labels: shoes

My bottle of Two Buck Chuck and personalized dogtags from the end of year roller derby spanquet. It was fun. Well, it was fun until my crippling social anxiety decided to rear it's ugly head. Sorry, y'all.

Labels: pictures, roller derby

Back during the summer semester I did a short research paper about the Angelus Temple. It was founded by Aimee Semple McPherson and...ok, you can wikipedia it your own dang self. This was just one of the comments in a book I used in my research. It was FULL of this sort of stuff--not just allusions to Jewish ancestry but snide comments about her ministry and personal life. Honestly, it was more fun to read than the book itself. I got a decent grade, I want to say an A or B+?

Labels: pictures, school

I've been slightly new agey lately, and I thought I'd share.

Sage Smudging
After a vacation that left me not relaxed but even more hopeless. See, it was around the time of my birthday which is NEVER a good time. No matter how great things are I seem to feel very down. I stayed on the couch most of the time, even TV was boring and TV is NEVER boring. The week before I bought soem sage smudge sticks at the local metaphysical store and looked up the process. I opened everything except the fridge and the one window that doesn't have a screen and proceeded to do my own thing based on what I'd read.
Result: Things have been increasingly positive. Money is all right, I was selected to hair model at a hip, cool salon, and I was selected to go to Iowa to help with the caucus there in January. My mood is better and I'm not crying constantly. Just intermittently.

Chiropractory
Ok, that may not exactly be the way to say it, but I had an adjustment with a chiro. The roller derby league has an official chiro who comes to pratices, so her most recent visit I decided to see what she'd do. I casually dated a dude a while back who promised to fund a chiro visit but I soon lost contact with that half-ass and nothing ever came of it. So, this lady's doing free adjustments and I get in line. She had me laying on the massage-like table and did some feeling around to see what was going on. I had some tension in my back and one hip out of alignment, something I attributed to the scoliosis diagnosis I'd gotten ages ago (remember scoliosis scrrens in gym class? ugh. Not that they discovered it there, but it's just a girl thing I relived just now). After much cracking and twisting I got up feeling a little bit lighter.
Result: I skated so much better that night and felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. I was able to pop right up after single knee falls and even joined in a falling drill. This may, however, be better attributed to my newly lathed wheels, giving them a grip they hadn't had in a couple of months. Seriously, good wheels make the difference.

Labels: roller derby, therapy