Dear readers, I warn you that this will be a stream of consciousness post. I don't feel like thinking this through and making it coherent. Anybody who doesn't like it can complain to the management and get a full refund for your blog subscription.
So, Kate and I have a pile of stuff in the study that we really need to get rid of. For instance, the router that John and I bought at a garage sale when we lived together. 5 years ago. I have moved some of these things every time I moved since my mission. Since the beginning of my mission. So, I decided to finally take the time to put them on Craigslist.
One of the things was a TV I bought from Seth, my old roomie. I bought it from him when I was getting married and he was getting married and I needed a TV. But it has been sitting in the study for 6 months unused since Kate and I found a steal on a better one. So I finally bit the bullet and sold my old TV for a loss. I posted it for $70 and let the guy talk me down to $50. When he showed up he brought two friends, and they were barely able to carry it out of the apartment. And then they couldn't get it in their car.
I felt a little bad about this, but I had warned him that it was a big, old TV. I even sent him measurements. So I didn't feel too bad. We offered to put it in the back of Clifford (the F-150) and take it to his dorm for another $10. So, we loaded it up into the truck, but Elio was worried that it would fly around and get damaged. He had already paid for the TV, so I totally understand his concern. So, he decided to ride in the back of the truck with his new TV. Bear in mind that it was well after dark, 17 degrees, and kind of snowy.
Poor Elio thought he could handle it, but Kate was smarter than him thankfully. She gave him an extra coat, hat, scarf, and a blanket. We drove all the way across town to his dorm and by the time we got there he said he couldn't feel his legs. But he had a new TV. He got 10 guys from the dorm to help him unload it and take it in. I got $60, he got a TV, and everybody walked away happy. Capitalism!
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Stop SOPA and PIPA
For those of you who haven't heard about SOPA and PIPA, you should inform yourself about these laws and write your representatives and senators if you are opposed to them (which you probably will be- they're really poorly written legislation that will be bad for the internet).
But, to not have too much of a downer post, here's a fun video. About SOPA.
See, activism can be fun!
I wrote my senators and representative today. Did you?
But, to not have too much of a downer post, here's a fun video. About SOPA.
See, activism can be fun!
I wrote my senators and representative today. Did you?
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Chinese food
Last night, Kate and I went out to eat Chinese food at a place in Ypsi called Emerald City. We went because we've seen signs saying they have a buffet, and we love Chinese buffets. But, sadly, they only had a lunch buffet. We thought about going somewhere else, but we didn't know any other Chinese buffets so we decided to just go for Chinese food in normal portions.
The restaurant was really pretty, and I think I may go back some time during the day to take pictures. It was very unexpected. The entrance is around the back, so the front is very plain and it looks kind of like a dive from the road. But the entrance is really fun, with brick arches surrounding the entrance patio. Inside is pretty too, with lots of carved wood work. We were also the only white people there, which I always take as a good sign.
We ordered a family dinner for 2, which turned out to be more than enough food for the two of us to have dinner and a few lunches. When I asked for chop sticks, they brought me out the standard splinter-in-your-mouth disposable ones. You know the ones where you have to break the two chopsticks apart from eachother? Those.
I didn't mind because, like I said, that's pretty standard. But when I looked around, I noticed that all the other people -- the Chinese people -- had way nicer chopsticks. They all had nice polished black chopsticks. So, they gave me the kiddy sticks and saved the nice ones for the folks who know how to use them. I laughed all the way home.
The restaurant was really pretty, and I think I may go back some time during the day to take pictures. It was very unexpected. The entrance is around the back, so the front is very plain and it looks kind of like a dive from the road. But the entrance is really fun, with brick arches surrounding the entrance patio. Inside is pretty too, with lots of carved wood work. We were also the only white people there, which I always take as a good sign.
We ordered a family dinner for 2, which turned out to be more than enough food for the two of us to have dinner and a few lunches. When I asked for chop sticks, they brought me out the standard splinter-in-your-mouth disposable ones. You know the ones where you have to break the two chopsticks apart from eachother? Those.
I didn't mind because, like I said, that's pretty standard. But when I looked around, I noticed that all the other people -- the Chinese people -- had way nicer chopsticks. They all had nice polished black chopsticks. So, they gave me the kiddy sticks and saved the nice ones for the folks who know how to use them. I laughed all the way home.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Majzy pictures!
After posting the History of Majzy, I figure I should post some pictures. I mean, that's what everybody wants to see, right? These are all from the day we brought her home.
We set Majzy up a little spot for her food right below our food in the pantry.
Here you see Majzy in one of her favorite sleeping positions: all joints locked directly out.
And in the exact same pose, except she is sleeping under a chair. It looks way less comfortable. But, she had had a long day.
I'll post some more pictures soon. They're super cute.
We set Majzy up a little spot for her food right below our food in the pantry.
Here you see Majzy in one of her favorite sleeping positions: all joints locked directly out.
And in the exact same pose, except she is sleeping under a chair. It looks way less comfortable. But, she had had a long day.
I'll post some more pictures soon. They're super cute.
Majzy
For those who don't know, Kate and I recently got a dog. Here's the executive summary: she is pretty darn cute and we are very excited.
The more detailed version follows.
Kate gets really bad panic attacks (I've asked permission to share that with you, dear reader, so don't feel awkward about knowing something you shouldn't). We've done a lot of reading, and we have found that dogs can be trained to help cope with panic attacks. But to make this a useful thing, we would need to be able to take the dog anywhere (because the panic attacks aren't kind enough to only strike at home). So, we did lots of research into service animals.
We decided after all that research that we should get a dog that we could train to be of service to Kate. On the blog, I don't plan on dwelling overly much on the fact that she will be a service dog, but I figured it would come up at some point, and I wanted to mention it from the start.
In looking for a dog, we looked at lots of different makes and models. We looked at grown dogs and puppies. We looked at rescue dogs, rescue-rescue dogs (a term I just made up for dogs from places like Last Day Dog Rescue,which saves dogs from shelters on the last day before the shelters put them down, giving them another chance to get adopted), and dogs from breeders. Janine even tried to get us to adopt a Potcake, which I would have really enjoyed (partially because the adoption process involved spending a week in the Bahamas...) In the end we went through a breeder instead of rescuing a dog, which I feel kind of bad about. I would really have liked to save a dog from a bad situation, but that just wouldn't fit our needs.
We started looking at different breeds. We made a spreadsheet of about 200 breeds (all those recognized by the Ann Arbor Kennel Club). It seemed like as good a place to start as any. One by one we started removing them. Some were really easy- we got rid of about half just based on size. We ended up with half a dozen or so breeds that were worth looking at. So, we called breeders and did in depth research on those breeds.
We found a breeder about an hour and a half away from Ann Arbor who breeds Labradors and Flat Coated Retrievers. She just had a fresh litter of Flat Coats, and one of them seemed perfect to us. When we went out to meet Kim and the pups, we found that she had put little colored collars on each of them as soon as they were born so that she could tell them apart. We wanted the girl with the Yellow collar, which we just called "Yellow," for lack of a better name. We brought her home the next week.
As for the name, Kate wanted to keep the Yellow theme, so we thought of different things that are yellow. Banana is a terrible name. So is Sun, or Daisy, or Corn. Really anything sounds either like a person's name (like Daisy) or like a hippy's name (like Corn). So we went another step. We started looking at other languages just for fun. We put all those words into Google Translate and listened to them in other languages. Kate really likes scandy-land, so she fell on the idea of "Majs", Swedish for Corn. It's pronounced with a soft "J", like Maize. And since I am at the University of Michigan, with Maize and Blue as our colors, it seemed like a good fit. So we landed on Majzy (MAY-zee, rhymes with Daisy).
Majzy is a great pup, and she is being a lot of fun so far.
I was planning on having this post be mostly pictures with just a little explanatory text, but I think I will do that in a separate post. For anyone who just wants to see a cute puppy without going through all the boring explaining.
The more detailed version follows.
Kate gets really bad panic attacks (I've asked permission to share that with you, dear reader, so don't feel awkward about knowing something you shouldn't). We've done a lot of reading, and we have found that dogs can be trained to help cope with panic attacks. But to make this a useful thing, we would need to be able to take the dog anywhere (because the panic attacks aren't kind enough to only strike at home). So, we did lots of research into service animals.
We decided after all that research that we should get a dog that we could train to be of service to Kate. On the blog, I don't plan on dwelling overly much on the fact that she will be a service dog, but I figured it would come up at some point, and I wanted to mention it from the start.
In looking for a dog, we looked at lots of different makes and models. We looked at grown dogs and puppies. We looked at rescue dogs, rescue-rescue dogs (a term I just made up for dogs from places like Last Day Dog Rescue,which saves dogs from shelters on the last day before the shelters put them down, giving them another chance to get adopted), and dogs from breeders. Janine even tried to get us to adopt a Potcake, which I would have really enjoyed (partially because the adoption process involved spending a week in the Bahamas...) In the end we went through a breeder instead of rescuing a dog, which I feel kind of bad about. I would really have liked to save a dog from a bad situation, but that just wouldn't fit our needs.
We started looking at different breeds. We made a spreadsheet of about 200 breeds (all those recognized by the Ann Arbor Kennel Club). It seemed like as good a place to start as any. One by one we started removing them. Some were really easy- we got rid of about half just based on size. We ended up with half a dozen or so breeds that were worth looking at. So, we called breeders and did in depth research on those breeds.
We found a breeder about an hour and a half away from Ann Arbor who breeds Labradors and Flat Coated Retrievers. She just had a fresh litter of Flat Coats, and one of them seemed perfect to us. When we went out to meet Kim and the pups, we found that she had put little colored collars on each of them as soon as they were born so that she could tell them apart. We wanted the girl with the Yellow collar, which we just called "Yellow," for lack of a better name. We brought her home the next week.
As for the name, Kate wanted to keep the Yellow theme, so we thought of different things that are yellow. Banana is a terrible name. So is Sun, or Daisy, or Corn. Really anything sounds either like a person's name (like Daisy) or like a hippy's name (like Corn). So we went another step. We started looking at other languages just for fun. We put all those words into Google Translate and listened to them in other languages. Kate really likes scandy-land, so she fell on the idea of "Majs", Swedish for Corn. It's pronounced with a soft "J", like Maize. And since I am at the University of Michigan, with Maize and Blue as our colors, it seemed like a good fit. So we landed on Majzy (MAY-zee, rhymes with Daisy).
Majzy is a great pup, and she is being a lot of fun so far.
I was planning on having this post be mostly pictures with just a little explanatory text, but I think I will do that in a separate post. For anyone who just wants to see a cute puppy without going through all the boring explaining.
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