Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Thursday, April 29, 2010 Garden Variety It's the second year in a row for our backyard garden. We're hoping to improve on last year's harvest. Since that haul consisted mainly of a dozen thumb-sized carrots, some green onions that would fit inside the barrel of a Bic pen, a couple dozen pea pods with tiny bumps inside them, a shitload of squash flowers, and some tomatoes that might have gotten as big as a runty plum had they not been killed by a September frost, we have plenty of room for improvement. We are stoked. We're also expanding the program, although that expansion is primarily temporal rather than spatial. Our main plot is still the size of our study, but this has been the warmest April I can remember, with most days over 60 degrees and very few nights below freezing, so we got a much earlier start on getting the seeds planted and outside than we did last year, when summer came in the second week of July. We also got an earlier start on acquiring the seeds. In fact, Trash had her mom get her a wide assortment of seeds and plants by mail order for Christmas. The raspberry plants are expected any day, the tomato plants arrived today, and the strawberry plants were delivered early last week. We're not optimistic about that last one, since they've been in the ground for several hours now and show no sign of perking up. But the seedlings are in great shape. Trash planted the leeks, peas, watermelon, and some others in March. Everything but the leeks was just beginning to sprout (and the leeks had sprouted and been eaten by the cats) when we started moving them outside during the day to take advantage of the warmth and sunshine. And for weeks now, they haven't even been coming into the house. Although Trash has been insisting I move them into the garage on nights when it gets below fifty, which was almost every night for a few weeks. I would argue that it's not much warmer inside the detached, unheated, open-doored garage than it is outside, but she would insist. Sometimes it was difficult to see her point of view when she said it was important for me to head out and relocate them out of the open now. Especially the times when it was already after midnight and I was 89% asleep. But almost everything survived, thanks to their minimal exposure to starlight, I guess. The pumpkins are already bigger than they ever got last year before their stems were guillotined by the sharp edges of the sawed-off milk carton we'd unwisely planted them in. The carrots are cute, the peas are perky, the cantaloupe is coming up, and although I've never seen cauliflower growing before, the little plants look pretty healthy to me right now, even if they turn out to be oranges or something. At this time last year, I had just built and installed the frame for our vegetable bed, even though we knew we'd have to wait another whole month before we could safely plant anything in the ground, unless we wanted to rent a front-end loader to bring the whole mess inside every time frost threatened. Now, half of our plants and some new seeds are already in the ground. This is great news. It means our plants will enjoy a longer growing season. It means they'll be exposed to more sunlight as the days grow longer. And best of all, the fact that half of it is permanently planted means I don't have to go outside tonight and move the ones in pots back into the garage. Gardening is fun! posted by M. Giant 9:20 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Wednesday, April 28, 2010 Combing My Memory Okay, so let me tell you about my own comb story, even though you never reminded me like I asked you. You people really aren't holding up your end here. As I've said before, I've been aware for a long time that I'm not a trendsetter, or even a trend-follower, but more of a trend-ender. If I'm into something, it's probably already over. The one exception in my life was a period in high school when I was wearing flannel shirts all the time, years before anyone else. They were my dad's, and they were big and warm, and it was Minnesota, so it made enough sense to me that being dubbed "Flannel Man" was a small price to pay. Then when flannel shirts blew up in the early nineties, to the point where even freaking Prince wore one in a video, I kind of wished I still knew people from my high school so I could rub their faces in it. Which they would have appreciated, because there are worse things to have your face rubbed in than flannel. But that was the exception that proved the rule, and it came after one of the formative experiences of my life. A few years before then, I looked around my junior high school and realized that all the guys had the handles of big old Crazy Combs™ sticking out of the back pockets of their Levis or Lees. I realized I'd better get one of those. Granted, I had been successfully resisting the perm craze that was raging through our school like Ebola, but I thought it best to make at least some concession to fashion. So I got me one of those Crazy Combs. I felt a little self-conscious the first day I wore it, but I'd already realized that it wasn't so much a thing to be used as a fashion accessory. (like wallet chains in recent years. Are wallet chains still a thing? I'm not sure. I'll get one and then they won't be, and that'll be my answer). God knows I never saw anyone else using theirs, even though circumstances cried out for it. And by "circumstances," I mean "the Eighties." Everything went fine until one period late in the afternoon. For some reason, I was either the first or the last person in my Social Studies class that day, so the room was nearly empty. I got up from my chair and felt something go twang against my butt-cheek, and a split-second later was aware of some projectile whickering dangerously across the room. What had happened was this: My Crazy Comb (and that phrase is one of the most embarrassing I've ever typed) has been protruding through the wide gap between the back and the seat of my chair. When I got up, the handle got hooked under the bottom edge of the seat, and the comb catapulted out of my pocket to fly free. If it had been a knife, or even a slightly sharper comb, it would have killed anyone else who'd been there. But there were three good things about this. One, I got a blog entry out of it a quarter-century later. Two, nobody was there to witness it, a rare blessing in a place and time that was a minefield of embarrassments, especially for me. Three, I started to realize I'm never going to be a bleeding-edge kind of guy, and my Crazy Comb days were over before they even made it into the plural. And I've been a little wiser and warier about trendy crap ever since. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go see what my Tamagotchi wants. posted by M. Giant 7:00 AM 2 comments 2 Comments:My comb had a picture of Ziggy on it. What was on yours?
By I'm really sorry I forgot to remind you to tell us the comb story. But I'm really glad you remembered anyway.
By Sunday, April 25, 2010 Cat Diet III After Phantom's vet appointment a couple of weeks ago, Exie needed to be brought in too. Plus it was a chance to update Dr. M. on how the diet was going. And since Exie had gained three pounds since his last visit, I think the success of the diet can be clearly judged…too early to tell. She was quite impressed by him, though. "You're something else, aren't you?" she flirted. He really is, with his long, black luxuriant coat. Before they put him on the scale, they politely speculated that maybe he's less fat than his poufy fur makes him look. Which he is, but not much less. Both he and Phantom have gained three pounds and three ounces. Which isn't as bad for him as it is for her, but only because he was fatter to begin with. Still, I was hoping they would have noticed how nicely combed he is. Our habit is that at some point in every workday, he hops up into my lap for an indefinite period. I grab the kitty-comb I keep on my desk, and start working him over. He's always pretty ambivalent about this, because while sometimes he hates the comb enough to start grabbing at it, he always loves the attention more. Cats do give mixed signals, as you'll know if you've ever been bitten by something that's simultaneously purring. On the morning of his appointment, he had gotten a particularly thorough combing. For all the good it did me. In the exam room, he reluctantly emerged from the carrier not only spiky with indignation, as I'd expected, but also so covered with new stress-dandruff that he looked like he'd gotten in a fight with a salt shaker. What made me even more indignant than him was the fact that apparently there's a spot on his back that he can't reach because of his own size, and even with my combing it's getting a little oily. I told Dr. M. about the daily combings, but she strongly recommended a new comb, called the "Furminator." So I got home with the cat, and the new comb ($33, which is several times more than I've ever spent on a comb for myself, and remind me to tell you that story some time), and went to work. My God, it was like bringing forth a new cat. His old comb was pretty fine-toothed, enough so that a Monday combing could produce a glob of loose fir the size of a guinea pig. But the "Furminator" doesn't have teeth at all; just a serrated edge that you drag along the cat's coat and behold the horror, until you are engulfed. I've used it a few times, hoping that once we get into the habit, there wouldn't be as much to take off, but every time we get to work, I'm surrounded by thick wisps of fur floating around me like some kind of feline Ghostbusters. The "Furminator" even removes giant clumps from short-haired Phantom, who is all but impervious to the old comb. I had Trash try it on herself, but she stopped when she started to fear baldness, and with good reason. And then, after every session, I have to vacuum myself off. I'm not at all sure this is a good thing. Unless of course, they each lose three pounds in Furminated hair, which at this point seems well within the realm of possibility. posted by M. Giant 9:25 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:I love the Furminator! I had to go back to our pet store twice because they kept running out. Unlike you, we rarely brush the dog but now that summer is knocking on the door, tumbleweeds of fur are starting to blow. I'll remind the hubby to brush the dog tonight. It takes 20 minutes and we end up coating the entire yard with fur. But what a difference!
By The Furminator is quite effective, but the whole static electricity factor makes me use it less often than I otherwise would.
By My husband and kids use the Furminator on our (enormous) cat and then put little paper eyes and a mouth on the fur pile, making a mini-cat. It's . . . slightly disturbing. But funny.
By I work for a vet that sells Furminators, and whenever people balk at the price, I just run one across our clinic cat's back, and they're sold. We do always tell people to brush their pets outside, unless they have industrial strength vacuum cleaners.
By Thursday, April 22, 2010 Home Office When I started my current job, one of my favorite things about it was that it meant that one day, I might just be able to work from home full-time. Ours is a global, forward-thinking, paperless work environment, and now telecommuting makes perfect sense, but back then, it was the brass ring. I'd been there less than a year when Trash and I started strategizing about how we'd make it happen. When would I bring it up to my boss? Who else would I talk to? How would I build my case that working from home was the best solution? I was already working from home on Wednesdays, so I was about ready to start generating little spreadsheets and reports on how much more productive I was on those days. And to prove it, I would spend most of a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and another Monday generating those spreadsheets and reports. Then at one of our staff meetings (actually conference calls, with my far-flung coworkers dialing in from all over the country), the subject of my one coworker in that office came up, and how she was planning to start working from home the following week. She'd been there longer than I had, so I wasn't bitter. Much. But then my boss (on the phone) and his boss (in the room with us) turned to me and said, "How would you like to work at home?" "Yes!" I said. "End of this week?" they asked. "What?" I said. I hope my coworker wasn't too bitter. To my surprise, I found myself putting off working at home until I had time to wrap up a few projects in my pipeline. I thought they were just in a rush to get my desk clear for someone else, but it was still empty the next time I stopped by the office. Seven months later. Trash's transition wasn't quite so smooth. When she first started her job at my company back in August, her boss's boss wasn't such a believer in the company's telecommuting-friendly posture. But then, early one morning a couple of months later, Trash's boss suggested something like, "Why don't you start working on this urgent project right away instead of spending time getting ready and going into the office." Trash said sure, and never looked back. Well, that's not entirely true. She'll tell you that she did go into the office since then. And I will point out that it was on Christmas Eve, on our way to the family celebration at her dad's house, and we were there exactly long enough to raid the supply closet. Apparently space is at a premium now, especially in the area where she sits. Chao started in her department last month, and someone seriously suggested they share a desk. Like people who work the same shift can do that, like hot-bunking on a submarine (no, Chao, hot-bunking is not as dirty as it sounds. Next thing Trash knew she was an official telecommuter. She's taking it harder than I expected. I don't think she misses actually going to the office every day. Far from it. I just think she missed having an offsite location to store all those file boxes she's going to be driving around in the trunk of her car for the next few weeks. posted by M. Giant 8:18 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:Our company has a generous "work from wherever the hell you want, just don't miss a deadline" policy. I still come into the office, but only because I LIKE my office and my coworkers and, like Trash, I would need to set up more official office space in my home if I took all of my crap there! Also, my husband has gone back to grad school full-time, and I don't think that having us both home all day on days when he's stressing about a paper would be good for our marriage! I love the 21st century, though!
By I have been working from home since 2002. It's been totally convenient. I get kids off to school, I meet them as they come off the bus. The only issue I have is that the refrigerator is way too close to my office.
By Tuesday, April 20, 2010 Dirty Windows The bottom ledge of one of the windows on the south end of our house was rotting away, and we couldn't put off replacing it any longer. So we only put it off for another month or so. I'm glad to say that after almost 17 years of living in this house, we're finding ourselves less having to undo the damage of previous owner Dr. Jellyfinger (who's about due for another visit, and this time I really am going to kill him) and more dealing with the issues that naturally arise from living in a sixty-year-old house. The windows on the first floor were all still original, thank God. You could tell because they're old-fashioned, double-hung ones with the counterweight, not all frosted-plexiglas louvers with an etched hibiscus pattern, that you have to open with a crank that fell off the year after we moved in and has since been replaced by a pair of pliers. Still, some of them had to go, and the day after we heard a bird persisting in attempting to build a nest where the outside ledge used to be, the project began. The amazing thing about replacing windows is the sheer number of "that's what she said"s that come up in the course of the work. After a while, even the most innocent remark can seem like it came out of the sore-filled mouth of a dockside whore. A small representative sample: "Make sure you get it in the right hole." "You can put your fingers in there." "I felt it going in that time." "Did you get it off?" "Damn, it's too big for the hole." "I need a little screw." "I need a big screw." "I need a bunch of screws." [Sticking a screw through a washer and wiggling it in and out] "That wood's holding up nice." "Top or bottom?" "You need to trim that a little." "I need more caulk." You might say I'd try to have a little decorum, with my five-year-old son in and out and my parents there the whole time. To which I might say, aren't you adorable? posted by M. Giant 8:13 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Monday, April 19, 2010 An Ass-Kicking Is in Order, All Right At the theater closest to my home that was showing "Kick-Ass," the guy at the box office is this round, mustachioed fellow who looks like the "Gotta make the donuts" guy. One of the things I was most looking forward to when I went to a late-Thursday-night preview showing was telling this gentleman, "One for Kick Ass." When I got there, I was the only customer in the lobby. As I approached the counter, he asked me, "Are you here for Kick Butt?" Goddammit! The good news is that I was literally the only person seeing it there. It was kind of cool having the whole theater to myself, which is the first time that's ever happened. I felt a little bad for the projectionist, who I figured would have gotten to go home early if it hadn't been for me. I called Trash on my cell phone before the trailers. I was even planning to live-tweet the whole thing just because I could, but then I forgot. Which I guess is a good sign. There was a surprising amount of stuff going on in this movie, which is good, because the part of Kick-Ass I liked least was Kick-Ass. Basically he's an annoying whiner whose only redeeming qualities are an underdeveloped sense of self-preservation and a tendency to get the shit kicked out of him a lot. He almost works better as a simple framing device, easing us into the dark meta-comic-book world where most of the good stuff happens. He gets one funny line in the whole thing, in voice-over near the end, and then he backs off of it right away anyway. He sucks. Moving on. The much more interesting parts of this movie are…well, everything else. Much has been made of the potty-mouth on 11-year-old Hit Girl (and I'm sure without even looking that the Internet is already bristling with those creepy 18th birthday countdown clocks for her). But that didn't surprise me as much as how many people she kills with élan, joie de vivre, and lots of other things that have not only foreign names but also sharp edges. I mean, movies with kids who swear stopped being shocking to me at about the time I became one, but I haven't seen that many movies with children laying waste to an entire mob army almost single-handedly. That's definitely new. But at least you can understand how she learned to Matrix her way through a phalanx of bad guys, which isn't necessarily true of her more verbal violence. Her dad talks like the bespectacled, cardigan-wearing nerd he is in daily life, and his secret identity, though dressed like the Christian Bale Batman, talks like the Adam West one. Still, the origin story of her and her father, Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage, hopefully forgoing his Annual Crappy Movie [TM Glark] to make this) was way more interesting than Kick-Ass's. Compare: idiot in wetsuit confronts muggers, gets stabbed, bounces off speeding car; vs. richly painted comic-book panels that the camera sweeps around inside of, relating the operatic tragedy of an innocent family crushed and warped by a vengeful mob boss. But their purpose in a lot of the film seems to be show up to save Kick-Ass whenever he gets in trouble. Which parallels their narrative purpose, which is to show up to save Kick-Ass whenever it gets in trouble. As for the sequel that is hinted at in the end (rather presumptuously, if you ask me), I could do without any Kick-Ass at all, thank you very much. I might actually see Kick-Ass II: No Kick-Ass, with or without a supervillain played by McLovin. When I left, there was nobody out in the lobby except a graying guy in a shirt and tie. "Man, that was a violent movie," he remarked. "Especially coming from a little kid like that." This, of course, was the projectionist. I agreed, and apologized for keeping him late. "We've got other movies going," he shrugged. Who knew theatre projectionists channel-surfed? So contrary to expectations, I went home from Kick-Ass having learned something. posted by M. Giant 8:09 AM 2 comments 2 Comments:
The movie, I've been told, is a success for other reasons, too. John Rogers(TV and comics writer, responsible for such awesome things as Blue Beetle and Leverage) said it best in my Twitter feed: "Take the misogyny, racism, and nihilism out of a Mark Millar story, and you get a pretty good movie."
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By Friday, April 16, 2010 Deflated We have one of those jogging strollers that can be converted into a kid-trailer to tow behind your bicycle. Since M. Edium is too old for his stroller and too young to do all his own walking on the mutli-mile walks Trash and I have taken up since the indignity of my last weigh-in, we push that one along. Until a few weeks ago, it was still in Chao's garage, where we've been stashing most of the bigger stuff we had to clean out of ours for M. Edium's Halloween Birthday Party Haunted House Carnival™. But then I stopped by, stuck it in the back of my station wagon (where the back hatch failed to close over its bulk), and drove home. We took it for a walk that very day. Trash always insists on pushing the stroller, whichever one we use, whenever M. Edium is in it. When he's not, I'm the empty-stroller-bitch. Right around the corner from our house is a steep uphill grade. Trash insisted on Sisyphusing that thing all the way up there with fifty pounds of squirming human in it, except we skipped the part where it rolled back down and she had to do it again for all eternity. By the time she reached the top her ass felt like she'd done 30 minutes with Jillian Michaels. And then a workout. She'd also noticed that the alignment was off a little. The weight is borne by an axle running between one wheel on each side, and the stroller was clearly listing to port. Fortunately we were on our way to the gas station, where "FREE AIR" is available. Better still, they also have a hose you can use to inflate a low tire. I quickly topped up both wheels on the axle, and the difference was amazing. With a full cushion of air beneath it, that stroller handled like it was on repulsorlifts, a hover-pram straight out of The Jetsons. She found it so invigorating that she pushed that thing around the neighborhood for another three hours that day. M. Edium even came along for part of it. And then when one of the innertubes developed a lateral gas a couple of weeks later. We had to get a new one that very same day, along with a spare. Meanwhile, the back left tire on my car has a slow leak. One day I went outside to see the rubber pooled out around the sides of the wheel. I went and got some "FREE AIR," and it was fine for a couple of weeks. But I still have to make periodic stops at the gas station for "FREE AIR," sometimes when I'm already buying gas, sometimes not. It depends. Maybe there's some deeper meaning in the fact that we're spending more money on stroller maintenance than on auto maintenance. Could I draw some parallels between increasingly green habits at our house and at the country in general? Could I muse upon how we're walking more than we're driving? How both of us working from home has reduced our dependence on our cars, to the point where we've seriously considered whether we need to continue to be a two-car household indefinitely? Maybe. Or I could just admit that I'm half-hoping to get a flat somewhere and have an excuse to be late for something. Hey, as long as I'm staying off the freeway, I'm not hurting anyone. posted by M. Giant 10:28 AM 2 comments 2 Comments:Do not make fun of the "FREE AIR." Gas stations in California charge. FOR AIR. It's maddening.
By Heidi's right. I used to mock the "FREE AIR" - until I moved to California.
By Tuesday, April 13, 2010 Date of Mind I thought I'd take a little break from writing this week's 24 recap to post here. I've just spent way too much time watching and thinking about unlikely adventures that drag characters around New York City in pursuit of unlikely items, having unlikely interactions with even more unlikely people as a result of even more deeply unlikely decisions. But enough about Date Night. No, actually, not enough about Date Night. I went in expecting a mash-up of After Hours and The Out-Of-Towners and ended up with a misguided, undercooked, crock-pot mishmash of North by Northwest, Mission Impossible, NBC Thursdays, Enemy of the State, and bad things. As I said to Chao when the credits rolled, "That movie was really lucky it had Steve Carell and Tina Fey in it." Because honestly, the only thing I believed in the whole thing was their relationship. I appreciated how they're always tired and worn out, all but dragging themselves from one day to the next, but still making an effort for each other. My favorite part is how Tina Fey gets all dressed up, and you expect her husband not to notice and her to be crushed, like every other TV and movie couple ever. But instead he takes one look at her and steps right up in a big way. Aaand now we're rooting for them. Which, unfortunately, is where the trouble begins, in more ways than one. I don't just mean how Phil and Claire end up entangled in all manner of imbroglio, but how the whole enterprise spins off into implausibility. When they're in Times Square trying to figure out what to do, because the mob's after them for a MacGuffin they know nothing about and the cops are dirty, most people would be like, okay, where's the FBI Field Office? End of movie. But then they decided to find the MacGuffin themselves and I was like, "Okay, I'm out. Everything that happens to you two from now on is your own damn fault." And as for the rest of what happened to them, I didn't believe any of that either. That includes the whole conjoined car chase scene, none of which made a lick of sense; Mark Wahlberg's home office out of Minority Report; Phil's master plan to get them out of trouble with everyone at the end; that dance sequence that had to walk a line between funny and convincing and ended up missing both. But this isn't to say there aren't funny bits. The part where they go back to the restaurant and deal with the rude staff by being even ruder is good, and the bit with the boat, and…okay, I've officially been sitting here too long trying to think of another one. The laugh-out-loud moments generally don't work as well as the quiet ones where Carell and Fey are doing what they do best, which is being relatably awkward and dorky. Which I guess is what I meant when I made that comment to Chao at the end of the film. If the leads had been, say, Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston…well, obviously I wouldn't have been there in the first place. And what's the message? They get into trouble because Phil decides to make an effort, to go the extra mile for his wife? How many husbands drive their wives home from this movie thinking, Dude, I'm never doing that. But I'm glad we stayed for the credits, not only for the smattering of amusing outtakes, but because I learned this interesting fact: Mark Wahlberg had a costumer. Must have worked part-time. posted by M. Giant 7:18 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
By Sunday, April 11, 2010 Cat Diet II It had been about a year and a half since the last time I brought either of the cats to the vet. I had almost forgotten what it's like to have only healthy cats that you don't have to bring in every two or three weeks for more bad news. The last appointment had been for Exie, who had weighed in at twelve and a half pounds, which for a cat his size is what scientists call borderline-tubby. This time I brought Phantom in. She was due for shots, and I wanted Dr. M. to take a look at her teeth after her oral surgery last year. Lately she's started chewing on paper when she gets the chance, which is fine with me but M. Edium doesn't appreciate bite marks on his art projects and I wanted to make sure it wasn't a sign of something. The good news is that that's apparently what cats do, and her teeth are in great shape. But I noticed something while we were waiting for the vet to come into the room: away from Exie, she looks rather bigger. Sure enough, the bad news is that she weighed in at about twelve and a half pounds, or borderline-tubby. I don't even know what Exie weighs, but I know it's more. Maybe even a lot more. So of course, since they're indoor cats and most of their exercise comes from jumping on my lap, the next big questions were what, when, and how much we feed them. I explained how we just feed them regular food (as opposed to the kinds with all the letters in them that we used to have to buy at the vet, during vet office hours), and try to keep their bowls from getting empty. And if we ever do forget to check that there's enough to last them the night, they're only too happy to remind us. Usually when we're asleep. Dr. M. said that "free-feeding," as this is apparently called, wasn't working any more, so it was time to start controlling the amount of food they get. I didn't feel like splitting hairs with her about how we do control the amount of food they get; with the stuff living on top of the refrigerator in sealed Tupperware containers. So she said maybe it was time to start limiting their daily feedings to three quarters of a cup, between them, once a day and once a night. Reducing it more might freak them out, but reducing it less might end up with them eventually being confined to one floor because we have to cart them around the house in a wagon. So she gave me a plastic measuring cup (which is good, because it means I can return the one I was using back to he measuring-cup drawer) and sent me on my way. And I know it's too early to tell if the reduction is having an effect. It is not, however, too soon to tell if it's an actual reduction, which I don't think it is. Used to be one of us would just fill the bowls every day and a half or so. Now I measure out three quarters of a cup -- roughly three eighths per bowl -- morning and night. Yet still, their bowls are never empty. I can see part of the bottom of one of them sometimes when I fill them, but that's it. I'm supposed to be feeding them less, but I'm feeding them more. At least in frequency, if not amount. The other night I was talking about this to Trash, and how I worried that the food "reduction" wouldn't have much effect on their weight if it wasn't an actual reduction. She had one question for me: "Wait, so you're feeding them too?" She's lucky she was kidding. posted by M. Giant 10:01 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:Same thing here. My cats were HUGE, and I was barely feeding them! The only thing I could think of was that their metabolisms had become paralyzed in the face of years of constant inactivity, so it didn't matter how little I fed them. I think I got down to 1 cup a day, period, and still- fatties. Go figure.
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I have three cats; a momma and her two hellion offspring (whom I love with all my heart). Momma is normal sized, the other two are super-sized at 14 and 17 lbs. Per the vet, I also had to stop filling the bowl as necessary and I feed them a total of two cups per day.
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One of my cats was fat, fat, fat, and I was already feeding her the diet amount recommended on diet cat food. I took her to the vet, and my vet suggested soft food. She said cats are supposed to be predators and eating mostly protein.
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Seconding the effect of soft food. A vet explained to me that it's partly because wet food has a lot of water. Also, that "cats are desert animals" and tend not to drink as much water as they need (I guess they're not camels, then) so wet food is an important health move.
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Third vote for switching to wet food and high-protein, grain-free dry. I also use Taste of the Wild and my cats love it. Of the five (in my defense, only three are ours-- the other two belong to my stepdaughter), four are nice and sleek and one is, essentially, a fur-covered bowling ball. She's regulation-- 16 lbs!
By You laugh, but I have friends who had the "Wait, so you're feeding them too?" conversation about their two obese dogs. Only they weren't kidding. And of course the dogs weren't going to complain. This went on for months before they caught on, and only because the husband wondered why they were going through dog food so quickly.
By My girl is going to be twelve this August and I have tried wet food, diet food, less food, etc for years. I finally put her on Taste of the Wild, a little over 1/4 cup a day (she's 12 pounds and that's all she was getting of the other kinds of food) and she shed weight like you wouldn't believe. A lot of foods have filler (corn!) or other grains that the animals don't need and all it does is pack on the pounds.
By Thursday, April 08, 2010 Basket Case The night before Easter, M. Edium was very specific about exactly where he wanted the carrots placed. He had three to work with -- not the little baby carrots that I only wish Bugs Bunny was still around to mock, but the big, raw, unpeeled kind. He directed me to place one in the very center of the back yard, where he could see it out his bedroom window; one in the hallway outside his room; and one on top of the dresser, right next to his bed. I don't question. I just obey. After he fell asleep, I went in to check on him. Half the carrot on his dresser was gone. I thought for a moment I could point this out to him as proof of E.B.'s existence, until I realized he'd eaten it himself, Which is odd, because he normally doesn't like carrots in raw, unpeeled form. Trash and I set our alarms early so we could wake up before him and [help] hide the eggs. I also picked up the carrot in the yard and put it in the trash, because even if the five-second rule did apply to the yard, we'd gone over it by several orders of magnitude. We got done just in time, and barely had time to sit down with the paper before we heard him up in his room, wanting to come down. He got to go through his basket treats, and was more excited about his new Narnia books than the candy. Clearly he gets his sweet tooth from his mom. And his nerdiness. Then his B-mom came over, which meant it was time for the egg hunt. Of the two dozen hollow plastic ones containing candy and money that (Don't worry, the traffic cone was in our yard, not on the street in front of our house. Or the freeway.) So between the excitement of the hunt, the gifts, the candy (particularly the Peeps -- none of us knows where he gets that from, a nice long B-mom visit, and a lovely bath to wash off all the blue Peeps sugar, he had a great morning. But then he seemed a little out of sorts the rest of the day, to the point where we ended up canceling our plans because we were worried that maybe his strep was coming back again. He had a meltdown while we were trying to help him with his new bow and arrow, borne of frustration at the fact he couldn't split an arrow in the target with his first shot. Leaving aside the fact that by necessity, you have to do that with your second shot at best, I don't think it's possible with suction-cup arrowheads anyway. Since this was what we call a one-parent meltdown, I withdrew and Trash got him to share what had been bothering him all day. It seems he had been pretty determined to see the Easter Bunny for himself during his visit. Hence the trail of carrots leading up to his bed. So when E.B. came and went without M. Edium ever clapping eyes on him, all the jelly beans in the world couldn't make up for it. But I think he understood when we (and every neighbor he talked to on the walk around the block we took after this conversation) explained how the Easter Bunny had a lot of houses to get to, and besides was quite wily. If he fell for every carrot-trap laid for him, he'd never make it. I think he felt better by bedtime. There's always next year. And one of our neighbors said something about knowing people in the costume industry. Oh, and that missing half-carrot? It turned up on his floor the next day, visible in the morning light. He'd snapped it off and tossed it down just to make the trail that much easier for E.B. to follow right to him. That's probably what hurt most of all. posted by M. Giant 4:58 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:Too funny! We gave up trying to maintain the fiction of the Easter Bunny with our 5-year-old. Santa Claus is hard enough!
By I have a friend who leaves "bunny prints" in flour on the floor for her kids. Proof, somewhat.
By wait... you set the alarm and get up EARLY to hide eggs? You should really just hide them after he goes to sleep.... it's much more peaceful and you don't have to wait for the coffee to brew and potentially wake him up in the middle of "operation egg-drop".
By Tuesday, April 06, 2010 What's in a Nickname Some twenty years ago, Trash and I were watching SNL with friends. There was a sketch that had David Spade as a character named Bug. One of our friends (and I'm not going to out him here, but he knows how the comments work) said, "I wish I had a nickname, even if it was Bug." "Done!" The rest of us said simultaneously. "Wait, no --" "Too late!" we said. And it was. It stuck for years. I learned from his mistake when I decided to try to give myself a nickname. When I was 22, I had surgery to remove a benign cyst from my facial nerve. I decided in advance that the resulting scar, which was certain to render me gnarled and disfigured and hideous to behold, would earn me the nickname "Blade." Just my rotten luck that you can't even see the scar unless you're looking for it. That didn't stop me from trying for several years. Eventually I realized it wasn't going to work, so I picked a new nickname. But Trash for some reason failed to appreciate my introducing myself to her friends as "Tripod." Even though hardly any of them still call me that. There was also the series of park benches around town at that time advertising a realtor named Jeff Hero. Of course I snapped that name up as my own, at least among my friends. Probably the closest I've ever came to committing identity theft. Finally, there was the time Trash and I were on our way to a movie with friends and I saw a store I'd never seen before, called "Mattress Giant." Right there I claimed, "That used to be my nickname." Everyone seemed to appreciate it at the time, even though my years of being known as M. Giant were in my future rather than my past. Now, I'm sorry if you read all the way to the end of this to find out how Trash got her nickname. But that's her story, not mine. Maybe we can get her to tell it sometime. posted by M. Giant 8:59 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:
Ahhh, ha ha ha. That was fun. I remember rooting for "Jeff Hero" at the time. And that poor, poor bastard saddled with "Bug." I hope that never recurs, lest he flip out and have to cut a bitch.
By Wait. M. Giant stands for Mattress Giant? All this time I thought it was Mental Giant. I mean, you seem pretty damn smart and clever, so I put 2 and 2 together... My whole world feels blown to bits by this revelation.
By Sunday, April 04, 2010 Clash of the Titans So I've been doing this thing for a while where I save up the movies I've seen for three months and then do a capsule review of all of them at the end of the quarter. Well, I've belatedly realized that's stupid. It was one thing when I was seeing three or four movies a year and wrapping them up at the end of December, but it just doesn't make sense any more. Dammit, why didn't anyone tell me? So last week I IMed Chao and told him we were seeing Clash of the Titans. Chao's love of the original is matched only by his hatred for CGI. "Sounds good, even though I'm going to super hate it," he responded. "So am I," I said. "That's why we're going together." While I don't fully share Chao's feelings about the original, I do have a soft spot for it as the first movie I ever saw in the theater, and on video, and on HBO (now that I think if it, it might also be the last). And if there was going to be a cameo in this new version from someone who was in the 1981 release, I would have preferred anyone or anything to the stupid owl-droid. Although I guess I should be grateful that unlike everything else, it wasn't jacked up to eleven for the update. In a remake where the gods dress like Sir Liberace of the Round Table; the Kraken looks like it could happily swallow the Cloverfield beastie whole; and Calibos is not only more deformed, more powerful, and more evil, but also bleeds Insta-Gro giant scorpions; we're lucky the owl-droid wasn't re-imagined as a hulking mechanical horror with eyes that shoot laser beams and the ability to hack into the most heavily encrypted scrolls and stone tablets. Pretty much the only thing that was toned down is the Perseus. Sam Worthington just makes me go "meh." And what kind of leading man ends up with his narrator? That's like marrying your sister. This is not to say there isn't some stuff I dug. The Mount Olympus set is quite clever, as is Charon's ferry, an overturned shipwreck whose poop deck is the shattered keel. And I appreciated the humanistic themes, even if they did end up as muddled as Zeus's motivations for working against the plan he'd signed on for. And I would have appreciated a little more departure plotwise in the second and third act, rather than sitting there thinking, "Okay, now they're going to do X, and then they'll have to travel to Y and get Z." Which they do indeed do, only with a lot more CGI. But then remakes are a no-win proposition anyway. Either everyone complains because it's too different from the original, or because it's too similar, or in my case both, and at the end all you have to show for it is millions of dollars in box office receipts because of all the people who pay to go see it so they can complain. Speaking of which, one of the previews was for Robin Hood Are we really due for another one of those already? So I ended up being a little disappointed in not hating it more. As Chao said, it wasn't as much infuriating as annoying. Damn, maybe he should be writing this review. posted by M. Giant 4:15 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:Apparently, the movie they originally filmed made a lot more sense: http://chud.com/articles/articles/23299/1/BY-ZEUS-THE-VERSION-OF-CLASH-OF-THE-TITANS-YOU-DIDN039T-SEE/Page1.html .
By You said poop deck. Yes, I'm 12.
By Thursday, April 01, 2010 Movies 1Q10 pt II Youth in Revolt As much as I was tantalized -- nay, fished in -- by the deceptively simple yet brilliant concept of Michael Cera as his own evil twin, in the end I had to admit that this was simply another boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy has a psychotic break and embarks on a crime spree to get her back story. Legion I was disappointed to learn that the fallen angel who takes it upon himself to thwart the divine decree of humanity's destruction was the archangel Michael and not Lucifer. But this movie already features possessed horror-movie zombies as agents of the almighty, not to mention a gay Eurotrash Gabriel armed with a spinning, multi-bladed power-mace. How much more heresy can one ask for in a major studio release? Shutter Island There was a lot of talk about the twist ending, which I thought was totally earned. Now, it's not giving much away to remark that it's obvious from the first shot of the movie that even while investigating a creepy disappearance amid creepier people on the creepiest possible locale, Leo's going to be grappling with a few demons of his own. But holy moley. A lot of people said this wasn't up to Scorsese's usual standards. Which was fine with me because I think the last Scorsese movie I saw all the way through -- and this is a truly mortifying confession to make -- was After Hours. I thought this was better than After Hours. Rashomon You thought I was bluffing about going to see this, didn't you? I jumped at the chance to catch this Kurosawa classic upon which so many of my favorite episodes of television are based. In the sixty years since its release, Rashomon has of course become shorthand for the same story told from multiple points of view. But it's not like you can catch it at the local multiplex. But then came out at the local art house, so I was there. There were a lot of surprises for me in this film, starting with the running time. One expects such a universally acclaimed film to run three hours or more, but I was surprised to see that it clocks in at only 88 minutes. I was even more surprised to see that if probably could have told the same story in 60, if it really wanted to. Cut the five minutes of nothing happening but the woodcutter walking and you're well on your way. That's only one of the things this movie does that it couldn't get away with today. There's the fact that one of the multiple narrators is the dead samurai, telling his version of the story through a medium (and in a court of law, no less). The thing about how the court is presided over by an invisible judge who requires every witness to repeat his inaudible questions. There's the whole blame-the-rape-victim thing. But what am I going to do, trash Rashomon? I think not. It was actually pretty awesome. I must confess that this movie did not have any actors I've recapped, it being sixty years old and all. But it did have subtitles, and between The Amazing Race, 24, Burn Notice, and even Big Brother, I've recapped plenty of those. One other surprise? This was the sweatiest movie I've ever seen. Alice in Wonderland Brought M. Edium to this, against my better judgment, knowing it might well be too scary for M. Edium. I turned out to be right. For Pete's sake, just the day before I had told Trash to get rid of a pop-up ad for this movie on her computer when M. Edium was in the room. But then I heard the only reason for the PG rating was that the caterpillar smokes onscreen, which I guess makes me the idiot. Of course we ended up watching the first hour of it from the vomitorium, and then going home. Worst waste of the extra cash for 3-D Imax ever. Although M. Edium really dug the previews, which were interesting and plentiful. And after all, here have been any number of movies I myself have been to where those were the best part, so I guess it wasn't a total loss. One of those previews was for How to Train Your Dragon, which I'm probably taking him to in the next week. I'm hoping we can get all the way through that one. More on that at the end of June. posted by M. Giant 9:09 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
After Hours, seriously? Really, truly, seriously, that was the last Scorsese movie you've seen all the way through?!
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