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Daring rescue

Amanda — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:11:49 +0000

Daring because I totally brought an unknown, stray dog into my house (gah) today. Rescue, because this dog has been wandering my neighborhood since January 23, and NO ONE else has done anything about it. Oh, one other person called animal control, but no one has tried to catch him, I don’t think anyone has been feeding him… nothing. We had 13″ of snow fall in my neighborhood Tuesday night, and some really cold temperatures, and yet he was out there sitting on my cross-the-street neighbors front porch and yard, shivering, all week long.

I first called animal control Tuesday morning, but with the impending snow and subsequent chaos because of the amount that fell, no one was able to come out until Thursday. Evidently they did make a trip, but couldn’t find Stray anywhere. Friday night was really the first opportunity I had to do anything for him… I had tried to offer him a bowl of water earlier in the week, but he wasn’t interested. Cat food, however, he was interested in. This morning when I opened the front door he came flying across the street to see me! I fixed up a spot in the garage, led him through the house, and installed him out there with some more cat food and a bowl of water. A friend (thanks, Amy!) brought a spare collar and leash and some actual dog food, and for the rest of the weekend I’m keeping him in the kitchen, gated or crated away from the cat, rabbits, and guinea pigs.

He seems like a nice dog – he’s not terribly skinny, so he’s been eating something, but his coat is long and thick, so he’s probably been an outside dog for a while. He doesn’t like being left alone, so I’m kind of trapped in here. He also hates the crate, so much so that he destroyed my kitchen curtains while I left for an hour to get some supplies at PetsMart. Crazy Stray. I’d take a picture, but that means I’d have to leave the kitchen and right now, he’s flat out on the floor sleeping up against the gate in the kitchen doorway. In order to get out, I’d have to step over him… he doesn’t want me to leave. Unfortunately for him, I have other animals to care for, as well. He’s going to have to get used to it.

I’m not terribly excited about taking him to animal control Monday morning, but his chances there are better than if he remained a stray. I know he’s just as likely to be euthanized there as to be placed for adoption; they have too many animals and not enough room or staff to care for all the animals surrendered there. Taking him there buys him 4 days of warmth and safety, though, with guarantees that he won’t be hit by a car or injured by another animal. It’s sad; I don’t know why he’s a stray, but I’m a rescuer. I had to do something. Doing nothing, just waiting to see what happened, just wasn’t an option… it never is. I may be apathetic about many things, but animals are not included in that list.

If you live in the Indianapolis area and are looking for a nice Lab mix, check with Indianapolis Animal Care and Control next week… he’s an adult dog with some scars on his nose, black with a white chest, ears that stick up and then flop at the ends, and a curly tail. He needs people, and probably a fenced yard…

Checkin’ in

Amanda — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:06:45 +0000

So, hi… hey, this NaBloPoMo thing is working out really well for me, eh? All this blogging… wait, what blogging? Oh, RIGHT. I haven’t written anything in about a week.

In other total failure news, I spent about $100 since Friday that I did not need to spend. It all started Friday at lunchtime – I decided to go out to eat, but I can’t just eat by myself. I have to have something to read while I eat. Since I had forgotten to carry a book with me all week, I figured I’d stop by Barnes & Noble and pick up a magazine… just something quick. I ended up with two books and two magazines. What is wrong with me, that I can’t walk into a store, buy one teeny magazine, and walk back out?

This morning as I got dressed, I realized the pair of pants I was planning to wear just felt… a little tight. So I figured I should replace them, right? The replacement pair at Old Navy were on sale for $19.50, so that’s not so bad. But then I added a 3/4-sleeve cardigan… still not terribly pricey, but I didn’t really need it.

I’m going to extend my spending hiatus to try and make it up… I’m going to go for the end of February and see how things go. Somewhere in there I have a wedding to go to, so I need to get shoes and some undergarments (at least I already have a suitable dress!), but other than that I think I can do it.

Closed caption

Amanda — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:47:47 +0000

I had no intent to liveblog the inauguration, but I’m watching the live feed at the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies website. It’s nice, because they’ve got closed captioning, but that technology is just not right. Apparently, President-Elect Obama entered to “cheese and applause”. Hmmm.

Handy, take 2

Amanda — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:26:29 +0000

I think I’m just a lucky person. Or unlucky… but I bounce back?

I got up this morning to shower, turned on the tub faucet, and it went “pffffttttt”. No water. Frozen pipes. It was supa-dupah cold here overnight, with lows of -12°… and I completely forgot to leave a faucet running. Oops. I called my dad, who suggested that if the pipes had not yet burst they surely would, so I should attempt to thaw them with a hair dryer. I couldn’t imagine that it would work, so I (naturally) second-guessed him and checked on the internet. Lo and behold, every website I read said to use a hair dryer. I bundled up and headed into the garage with my trusty Conair and set to work – it took 45 minutes, but I was able to get things flowing again. According to a local news channel, it is currently NA°, which is why I left the faucet in my bathroom running and the furnace at a nice, steady 71°.

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In other news, I mentioned the other day that I ordered a hard drive enclosure so I could take the hard drive out of the decrepit Gateway desktop and try to recover files. It arrived yesterday – can you say quick shipping?? – and I was able to mount the hard drive and get it up and running. There’s clearly nothing wrong with it, so something else in the Gateway malfunctioned… I’m not even going to bother trying to find out what. If I had to guess, I’d say the graphics card finally died, but it’s just not worth it to me to try and keep it going. I am relieved to know that I didn’t lose any data, though, and I’m glad I can keep that hard drive for additional storage. I consider that $39 well spent…

Accountability

Amanda — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:07:48 +0000

I am so bad at this not buying anything new! I think I’ll post purchases here… at least that way I’m forced to face it.

Yesterday I bought a replacement bird feeder. The other one I had was kind of icky and didn’t come apart for cleaning. It could probably have waited until next month, but the birds have been spending a lot of time at the feeders lately, and I don’t want them to get sick! The feeder was $34 or so + tax.

Today, I ordered a hard drive enclosure so I can try to get all the data off the hard drive before I ditch the ol’ desktop. It’s definitely dead… I don’t know what, exactly, is wrong with it, but I’m tired of messing around with it. Total cost, including shipping, was $39.

I think I’m done for the week… if I can avoid leaving the house, I might be able to keep from spending any more money. Maybe.

The worst timing

Amanda — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:27:14 +0000

It’s been about three weeks since I’ve been needed overnight at my brother’s… my sister-in-law was on vacation over the holidays, and RC took vacation last week. While it was a nice respite, being able to sleep in my own bed every night, I’m now out of practice. The girls were SO excited to see me, even the four-legged one – you’d have thought they hadn’t seen me at all during that time! And they were terribly cute, playing “let’s dress up and pretend we’re playing in the snow”. Wia has such a big imagination for a three-year old, and Emma follows right along behind her.

Yep, they were cute until bedtime rolled around. Wia took the opportunity to get up no less than 10 times… “I need a little drink of water”, “I need to make a stinky”, “I need to take out my ponytail”, “I need a little drink of milk/juice/more water”. I finally had to threaten a spanking, and fortunately it worked, because I don’t think I could follow through with it.

But poor Bailey suffered the most… she’s now 15 weeks old, and is 99.9% house trained. She’s so good – she lets you know when she needs to go out, and will even come and get you if you’re in another room. But she still takes a long time when she needs to do her business, and I wasn’t paying attention to the cues tonight. I sort of hurried her back in after she squatted, and didn’t give her time to… you know. Wia and I finished up her evening ablutions, and came into the kitchen to get a sip of water, and there it was. In the middle of the living room floor, a steaming pile of Aunt Amanda’s Mistake. Poor puppy. She was so embarrassed; she just stood by it and kind of whined. I felt terrible. Thankfully she forgives easily.

Backup

Amanda — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:32:50 +0000

I am afraid that my almost-8-year old desktop has given up the ghost. It worked for about 10 minutes lastnight – long enough for me to print a rabbit adoption contract and get some info from the internet – and then in the midst of installing the latest version of Java it just sort of went “eh”. The screen went all wobbly, and no amount of Ctrl+Alt+Delete-ing mattered. Unfortunately, I haven’t backed up files on that PC for some time… I’m going to try one more time to see if I can get it to boot up (I tried several times lastnight, and while it looks like Windows starts up, nothing shows up on the screen). If I can’t get it to work, I’ll take out the hard drive and try to recover the data. None of it’s very important stuff… just pictures and various and sundry other files. The desktop was supposed to be my backup for the laptop, but it’s obviously not reliable.

Now I need to find some other way to backup the laptop so I don’t lose anything else. I was looking at the Seagate FreeAgent Go because of all the pretty colors, but I don’t really have any great need for portability. The FreeAgent Desk comes in sizes up to 1.5TB (I can’t even IMAGINE filling something with more than a terabyte of data), and is not portable… I just need to figure out something.

This poor, pitiful Gateway has been limping along for at least the last 3 years… I upgraded the memory about 6 years ago, and then I upgraded to XP (it came with Me, if that tells you anything), and then I replaced the hard drive about 2 years ago. I’m kind of tired of messing with it at this point – I’m out of expansion slots, and the ones there aren’t really widely supported anymore; it came with a CRT monitor that I really wanted to replace, but just never took the time; and my laptop was configured to be a desktop replacement, so I don’t really need both of them. Now I have to figure out how to dispose of the thing… but I know there are tons of resources online for how to dispose of electronics.

January fail

Amanda — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 04:24:53 +0000

Oops. I forgot to post yesterday. You know, I’m not going to beat myself up about it – I mostly participate in the non-official months because the accountability for posting is helpful, so it’s not really a big deal that I missed one measly little day.

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I was thinking earlier this week about my resolution to be more financially responsible, and I kind of decided that for this month, that would mean not buying anything new. I hadn’t really put it into practice, and now I’ve blown it. After a bloody nose every morning this week thanks to the dry, winter air, I broke down and bought a humidifier. It was on sale for $29.99, and it came with three additional filters, so it was a pretty good deal. I could have ordered replacement filters for the ancient humidifier I have in the closet, but I’m not sure it would still hold water since it’s been several years since I last used it. Not to mention that it would cost more for shipping than it would for the filters, and I just can’t deal with that! I figure I’ll either sell it in a garage sale this spring or donate it to Goodwill.

On top of the humidifier, my toaster died this week. I don’t eat a lot of toast, but I need it frequently enough that I needed to replace it pretty quickly. Hey, I have a whole package of english muffins languishing uneaten in the cabinet! I can’t let those go bad, can I? I didn’t buy a fancy-schmancy model… I don’t need more than 2 slices at a time, and I don’t toast a lot of frozen items, so I didn’t need anything with multiple settings.

In addition to those things, I bought a new planner for my purse, and these really cool new Post-It Pockets. I always get the urge to get organized at the beginning of the year, and I’m sure these will work for a while, but eventually I’ll neglect them entirely. I figured I could at least stuff receipts in one of them – I’ve got to keep better track of what I spend on the foster bunnies this year. I almost always have a pile of things that need to be filed, and I can use one of the others for that. The third… I don’t know yet what I’ll use it for, but for now it’s stuck to the side of the kitchen cabinet.

I think I’m done… maybe I’ll just start not buying anything new on Monday? I’m just so tempted… Target has a bunch of new home decor stuff, I’d like to buy some more Wild Thangs, and I’m really wishing for some new houseplants. But for the sake of financial stability and home improvement, I’ll suck it up.

Damages

Amanda — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 04:16:06 +0000

Oooooh. Just watched the season premiere of Damages, and I’m so excited for the rest of the season. It should be good and suspenseful, just like I like ‘em.

Thirty-three

Amanda — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:26:33 +0000

Today I turned thirty-three years old. My brother asked me if I felt any older today, and I really don’t. I have a few more aches and pains than I used to, but I think that has more to do with being out of shape than it does with age. So far, I think the only thing I feel is more experienced. I’ve seen more things, done more things, and felt more things than I had last year. Most of the time, though, I still feel like I’m just a kid pretending to be a grown-up… and don’t they say it’s all about how you feel on the inside?

Photo by leo reynolds on Flickr.