Don't Screw With The Librarian

Something I learned long ago. Librarian's are useful and make them your friends. They make painful enemies.

No… F--- you. Librarian gets revenge on "junk" faxer.

Frankly, I don't believe most people think, either.

Here's an excellent article on dog behavior at Slate.com. I was struck by this passage:

Do Dogs Think? - Owners assume their pet's brain works like their own. That's a big mistake. By Jon Katz: "This time, Heather got my full attention. I took notes, asked questions, then called a canine behaviorist at Cornell and explained the problem in as much detail as I could.'Everybody says the dog was reacting to her going back to work,' I suggested. 'Everybody is probably wrong,' was his blunt comeback. 'It's 'theory of mind.' This is what often happens when humans assume that dogs think the way we do.'"

I've lived my life around dogs and other animals. And I've found that the more I treat a dog like a dog and not like a child, the better it responds. Animals have emotions. They get angry, scared, get bored, and experience pleasure and pain. But like this article says, they don't think about things in the same way that humans do.

I grew up on a farm and always remember being around animals of all types and one of my earliest memories is going with my Grandpa Murray to pick out a long hair German Shepherd pup, Duke. Duke was a huge, dignified dog who was hit by a school bus when he was nearly a year old and walked with a limp for the rest of his life. One of his pups, sired with a neighboring collie, became my first dog, Nicky.

Nicky had Duke's size, but not his long hair. I remember getting him when I was six, the same year my brother was born. He and I were constant companions. He accompanied me on my daily cores. He stood by me and blocked the icy wind howling across the prairie as I pumped water for the cows. He played with us kids and never complained with any ill treatment, but he terrified adult strangers that came to the house and stared at them through their car doors, eye-to-eye. And I once saw him pick up a concrete cinder block that someone had left in the barn yard, carry it off under a tree, and chew it into pieces.

I thought of Nicky as my best friend. But I always thought of him as a dog. I don't know. Perhaps it was because I was raised on a farm and worked with lots of animals. But I'm also a big believer that humans and dogs have co-evolved, so we need each other. Dogs, above all other animals, have adapted themselves to living with us and providing us companionship. In a way, they're a very successful species because of that.

I strongly recommend Desmond Morris's book, Dogwatching. It was very helpful for me an my relationship with dogs.

Hey, I wanted one of these when I was a kid!

Well, not this thing, but close. Wired News: Machine Makes Dishes on Demand

When I read this paragraph, I knew exactly what they were doing.

"MIT Media Lab's Counter Intelligence Group, which develops innovative kitchen designs, has created a machine that makes dishes on demand and recycles them after diners have finished a meal. The dishes are made from food-grade, nontoxic acrylic wafers, which are shaped into cups, bowls and plates when heated, then resume their original wafer shape when they are reheated and pressed."

My friend, Bill Bailey (yes, just like the song) had one and it was so cool. It was the Mattel Thingmaker Strange Change Lost World Set! You had these little plastic cubes, but when you put them in the special chamber, they turned into dinosaurs! Then you could compress them back into little squares.

Oh, and I remember burning my fingers on the hot plate that caused them to change. That's probably why they took them off the market. But from my perspective as a 7 year old boy, the danger was part of the attraction.

I also will note that as a sign of my growing self control, I did not automatically buy one of these off of eBay the second I remembered this bit of childhood.

A Fresh Coat Of Paint

I spent all of yesterday, a few hours Sunday evening, and most of a previous Saturday a week back painting the "Bonus" room.

This T-shaped room has been the "play room" since we moved into the house nearly 12 years ago, a place for the kids to store their toys and play, watch TV, and study, often all at the same time. But now the toys are put away and sold off at garage sales. The room was long overdue for a touch up.

Now, almost finished, we have a comfortable alcove with a lounge chair and bookshelves, painted in an eggplant purple. Diane has two desks there as well, one for sewing and another for paying bills and sorting papers. And the main room is a duck's egg green, a mellow and comfortable color.

I've take the opportunity to upgrade the TV to a flat screen, high definition unit and included a Mac mini for web surfing, slide viewing, but mostly access to our music library. Soon we'll install decent speakers to fill the room with music.

I wondered during the transformation if I would find this a melancholy task. But no, it's a time of comfortable maturity, both for ourselves and our children.

Diane and I moved the furniture and painted the walls, but I'm hiring a pro to paint and apply a faux finish to the theater lobby downstairs. Few will see our little sanctuary up over the garage.