Our new dog, Nina, is scared and jealous of Elvis, our cat. Elvis just wants to play, but Nina’s having none of it!
I’ve never seen a dog so unwilling to play in my life. She doesn’t like toys and just ignores them. She doesn’t want to play fetch, tug-o-war, or even chew the toys. Elvis has tried in vain to get her to play with him, but she just avoids him or retreats to her bed. Mike and I got her to play with some bubbles a couple of nights ago, but she refused to even look at them last night.
The only thing that makes her smile is a walk. She loves to run in the park and is always surprised when the leash runs out of slack and she’s pulled back. She loves to smell every plant and post along the way.
How can it be that the only play she is interested in is a walk? Is this common?
I found this article about watches in O Magazine October 2010. It’s basically an advertisement posing as content, but it was nice to see a Swatch in there with all the others:
Filed under: Nina,Our Pets — Laura Moncur @ 10:00 am
“I know of a black lab puppy if you would like one.” NakedJen was sitting across from the table from Mike and me at lunch this Friday. Mike surprised me with the answer, “A black lab is too big for us. We’re looking for something smaller.” I had no idea that we had been looking for a dog, but I suddenly realized that I was perfectly okay with the idea. I tried to recover. “You know, the other day, I saw a couple walking their dogs and I really missed having a dog. Not that I was able to walk Sid or anything, but seeing them made me wish I could have a dog that I could take on a walk.”
We talked some more about Jack Russel Terriers and Australian Shepherds before the conversation turned to something different, but something had changed. Mike and I were looking for a dog. As of Friday afternoon, we started looking. We lost a lovely Australian Shepherd named Disco to a family with two kids, but I really think that was for the best because yesterday, we found Nina.
She’s a Chihuahua/Dachshund mix, so she’s bigger than a Chihuahua and much more calm. Here is her picture from the Humane Society:
They also made a video of her to try to get her adopted:
I’m surprised that she had to come all the way from Los Angeles to find us. I imagine she was originally owned by a woman who enjoyed carrying her around the posh places in L.A. When she grew up, however, her Dachshund side made her a tad too big to carry around everywhere, so she was sent away for a different trendy pet. She wasn’t treated badly, she just became too large for the flighty woman’s purse.
Well, she’s EXACTLY the right size for us. I took her for a walk this morning around Daybreak. She was good when we passed other dogs, joggers and bicycles.
She’s never been taught the basics like sit and stay, much less the litany of tricks we are planning on teaching her, but she does know come. Most importantly, she loves a treat, so we’ll be able to teach her how to be a perfect dog for us.
Right now, she’s passed out on the couch after her three mile walk with me. It’s good to have a dog in the house again.
Update 06-20-11: Dr. Lynette verified that Nina is approximately four years old, so we’re considering her birthday to be June 12, 2007. She also got a clean bill of health, so we are so happy we will be having her in our lives for a long time.
It’s dark and stormy again today. We are nearing the end of May and we have yet to have a perfectly sunny day. Sure, we’ve seen the sun come and go behind the clouds every couple of days, but the pure blue skies of a Utah May day have eluded us.
I’m beginning to think that we are to have a year without summer.
Although it’s the first time in my life, this wouldn’t be the first time this had happened. In 1816, the northern hemisphere experienced the year without a summer. The poor crop harvest killed thousands and the endless days indoors spawned such great works as Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the paintings of J. M. W. Turner, the horseless carriage, and surprisingly even the Book of Mormon.
The last year without summer was caused by volcanic eruptions, but the earth itself is not responsible for our change in climate this time. Let’s just hope we don’t get so bored this year that we spawn yet another new religion. I don’t really think that will help anything.
Update 06-27-11: For the record, summer came, just a little late. It’s sunny, warm and lovely in Utah now. I’m glad we weren’t stuck indoors with rain all season long. I don’t think I could have faced a winter after a year without summer.
A special thank you to Michael Verdi for reminding me of Bill Viola.
Long ago, Mike and I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. There was a video installation there and one of the videos was called The Greeting by Bill Viola. In super slow motion, it recreated the Visitation, which is a series of famous paintings depicting the Virgin Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth. Each woman has wonderful news. Mary is pregnant with the son of God and Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist.
Here is one of my favorites representations of The Visitation by Jacopo da Pontormo:
Here is Bill Viola’s video representation (it’s best if you watch it full screen):
I stood in front of that video screen for so long that my party (Mike, Cory and Kathleen) left me to look at other things. When they came back and I was still watching this same video over and over, they were amazed that I was still standing there.
The focus of the video is Mary and Elizabeth, of course, but I felt such a connection to the woman in the background. She is not pregnant. She is left behind while the cousins share their news. She struck such a chord with me. That brief look of pain that flashed across her face was stretched out in the slow motion and really showed how it felt to be a woman who is childless in a world full of pregnant friends. Even right to the end, you can see the frown of the woman who has been left behind between the cousins.
If I were to point to any one thing that portrays how it feels to be childless when all the world around me has pumped out enough puppies to replenish the Earth, it would be Bill Viola’s The Greeting.
Filed under: Our Pets,Sid — Laura Moncur @ 8:57 am
I’m so sad that I can’t really talk about it, but I wanted you to know that Sid died yesterday night.
We came home yesterday at about 4pm and Sid was acting groggy, ashamed and lethargic. There was a tiny amount of slobbery puke on the floor under the kitchen table. He was so changed that we immediately took him to the vet. They checked him out and said that he looked fine, but to watch him over the evening. We took him home and he lay next to us the whole time. After a couple of hours, we tried to wake him up, but he was so loopy that he barely noticed us, so we drove him back to the vet’s. They took his blood and gave him a few X-rays, but while he was on the X-ray table, he had a gran mal seizure that stopped his heart. They tried CPR to revive him, but he was gone that quick.
The doctor did what he could to find out what went wrong. The blood work came back almost perfect. He was slightly anemic, but everything else looked great. The X-rays looked pretty good as well. There was a slight growth on his liver, but a death of liver failure would have taken about three days, not three hours. The slobbery puke on the floor indicates that he must have had a seizure at our home while we were out. The doctor was able to rule out poison and other toxins. Considering the two seizures and lack of other indicators, the vet thinks that it was a brain tumor.
I know we took the best care of him while he was alive. I had Dr. Lynette’s office fax over all his records to the emergency vet and we were able to compare all of his blood work every year for his whole life. We took really good care of him and we rushed him to the vet the second we noticed there was something off about him. He died quickly and without pain, so I’m grateful for that.
I’ve been looking at all my old videos of Sid. Here are my favorites.
On the drive home from California, I snapped this photo of the snow that hit St. George last weekend.
It’s hard to drive from the sunny warmth of California back home to the snowy cold of Utah. The temptation to stay there all winter was hard to surmount this time.
Just a quick note to wish you a happy new year! May 2011 be
a better year, by far! Here’s some Death Cab For Cutie, performing The New Year, to ring out the old year and ring in the new!
This video has everything I want for my new year: a nice ride on a bike and a meal with my loved one.
I saw this typewriter at the DI yesterday. I really wanted to buy it, but I really don’t need that sort of antiquated technology cluttering up my house right now, so I left it for someone else to buy. I did, however, take some photos of it with my iPhone.
It made me want to write a story called Hunter Thompson’s Last Typewriter, but I really can’t write something that depressing right now. It will just have to be the title for the photograph for now and maybe someone else will write that story…
I found these bubble lights at Hobby Lobby the other day. My grandma used to have some on her Xmas tree, so they made me feel closer to her. For only twelve bucks, I was able to bring my grandma back to life, if only for a second. I’m continually amazed at the power physical objects have to connect me with my past.
Eve Pearl is a makeup artist who works at The View. Here is a clip showing how she transformed the crew into a bald biker guy, a Planet of the Apes character, Linda Blair from The Exorcist and Pinhead.
She used real nails for the Pinhead costume. I don’t think that’s all that safe, if you ask me. Can you imagine showing up in the emergency room and having to explain how you injured yourself by trying to make a really cool costume?!
Flingsoft has brought us a huge collection of old movies that you can stream onto your iPad. I thought maybe all of the movies would be really bad, but there are some good ones there including: Dementia 13 (directed by Francis Ford Coppola), White Zombie (with Bela Lugosi) and The Last Man on Earth (with Vincent Price).
Check out these awesome makeup tutorials from Sephora! They make me want to run right over to Sephora and buy a bag of false eyelashes, glitter spray and black lipgloss!
What makes this look really pop are those red contacts she’s wearing.
Sephora has been posting videos like this for the last couple of years. You can see them here:
I have been vaguely amused by Angry Birds on the iPad, but the fact that Rovio came out with a Halloween edition of the game shot them to number one on my list. Here is a video showing the action.
I found this photo on AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, but this family doesn’t look awkward to me. All of them (except Mom), look totally stoked for a Star Trek: Next Generation family photo.
I especially love the daughter’s Counselor Troi outfit with beautiful matching hair. They all look so awesome!
Why just paint your face to look like ONE of the members of Kiss when you can be all four. Check out this video from James Kuhn, face painting artist:
If you’re at a loss for what to do for a costume for Halloween this year, this idea is perfect. Just wear a black turtle neck, black pants, and spray your hair black and the makeup will do the rest!
Here is his version of Miss Piggy and Kermit.
This body builder job is AWESOME!
If you go as this Cyclops, you’ll have to walk around sideways all night at the Halloween party, but you’d be a shoe-in to win the costume prize.
With just a little bit of face makeup, you can be the life of the Halloween party! Make sure you do a couple of test runs before the big night so that you are able to do it without pressure. Good luck!
I love this advertisement for Mattel’s Fright Factory:
It reads:
Now you can be the moster you’ve always wanted to be!
Make all kinds of icky, sticky things to wear… bloodshot eyeballs, scars, mustaches, drooling lips, monster fangs, and more. You make them with Mattel’s new Fright Factory Thingmaker. It comes with a Thingmaker, molds, 4 colors of Plasticgoop… everything you need to make yourself into a new monster every day.
And while you’re out scaring the neighborhood, why not fill it with slinky, creepy, ugly bugs and beetles and lizards and centipedes. The kind you make with Mattel’s famous Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker.
The best part of this ad is that you can cut out one of the eyes and wear it as a mask. I think I would have loved this toy, but I’m pretty sure I would have burned myself with it. I still have Easy Bake Oven scars.
Here is a commercial for the Creepy Crawlers Thingmaker:
I love this old advertisement from Coty cosmetics.
The Mummy and the Wolfman are two classic monsters that we just don’t get to see anymore. Sure, there are scary mummy or werewolf movies, but they have changed so much since the Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney days.
This advertisement just brings back all of that classic Monster Mash to me. Here is a closeup of the Wolfman.
I love the inventiveness of this Toilet Bowl Costume from Carolyn Terlet.
It looks like a Porta-Potty connected to a white box. Add a white mask, turtleneck and leggings for the finishing touches. They used a flushing handle made out of aluminum foil and a clothes pin, but a REAL toilet handle is pretty easy to come by at the hardware store, so I’d go that route.
According to Carolyn, the candy went in the toilet bowl. Brilliant!
This year, our Halloween theme is 60’s and 70’s. I absolutely LOVE this costume idea because it reminds me of the Roy Lichtenstein paintings in the Sixties.
This was created by a M.A.C Cosmetics artist for Halloween last year and I think it’s genius. They started by using white makeup on her face and then added the black lines to highlight the features.
Then they used a dowel twisted into red lipstick to create the red dots on the face.
The finishing touches include a bright yellow wig, oversized earrings and a dress made from polka dotted material (which might be the most difficult part of making this costume).
One note of caution: if you are going to a Halloween party, this kind of makeup is VERY difficult to keep for an entire night. One touch to the face, and the image is ruined. Make sure you do a test run at least two days before your party so you can perfect your technique and practice NOT touching your face for the month before so you have a chance of living through the night without smearing your own makeup.
Via: Go Retro!: A Halloween Costume that Really Pops
Update: 08-15-13
Felicia Day did a similar look for Comic Con this year:
Check out this creepy Halloween walker on YouTube:
According to WGhost9, it is a lot more complicated than it looks.
Introducing the Creeper 2: My brand new hexapod.
Designed, built and programmed in about record 3 weeks! It runs C on an Axon microcontroller. It uses all digital servos and can lift over twice its body weight. The software (soon to be given out open source) allows for 6 synchronous degrees of motion. Future additions will include foot sensors and a remote control option.
Mike and I have a Halloween pumpkin that rolls around the floor making farting noises that we fill with batteries every year. I really should take a video of it for posterity. I would be heartbroken if it ever quit working.
Unless you’ve watched episodes of The Guild, this Halloween episode might not be very funny to you because it’s packed with inside jokes. The series is brilliant, though, so check it out!
This commercial for the 1967 Twist N Turn Barbie made me laugh today. Keep watching until the manic girls skip their way to the store to turn in their old Barbies.
When I first watched this, it sounded like a GREAT deal. Turn in your old Barbie and you can buy a new one for only $1.50. But then I decided to see if it really was a good deal. According to the Inflation Calculator, $1.50 in 1967 is the same as $9.53 now.
Considering that I can buy the Barbie in a Mermaid Tale Doll for only $8.95, that’s not a good deal AT ALL. Are products just cheaper now than they were back in the Sixties or has our standard of living gotten better?
I don’t know, but if you want a Twist N Turn Barbie TODAY, you can get one for about twenty-five bucks. That’s the equivalent of $3.63 in 1967 and THAT’S a great deal!! Hurry, let’s all skip on over to the toy store now before it’s too late!
My first car was a VW Baja Beetle. This is the only picture I have of it.
I was into my artsy photography phase when I took this picture, but all I had was a 110 camera, so I used black and white film and that made me feel bohemian enough. And yes, that sun roof is basically held in place by gravity. It remained in that state of disrepair until the day when it flew off the top of my car on I-15 at 1am after a night of dancing at the Ritz. Like a fool, I ran out onto the freeway to retrieve it. From that moment on, I had a garbage bag duct tapped to the top of the car.
During that time, I had an experience with a garbage truck that has been seared into my memory. I was driving behind the garbage truck on 201 heading west. It was the kind that scrunches up the garbage and supposedly counts as a covered load because the scruncher holds the garbage in place. It was spewing garbage out the back, littering its contents all over the freeway. We passed a sign stating, “Fine for Littering $250,” and at that moment, a loaded diaper bomb hit my windshield.
After that incident, I littered whenever there was garbage that needed disposal. I’d uncrank the window, and toss the garbage out of my car without a shred of guilt. If big old garbage trucks were allowed to plant diaper bombs on my windshield, then I had no qualms about tossing a Big Gulp cup out the window once it was empty.
The way the wind almost took the garbage out of my hand when I opened the window seemed to validate my actions. It was as if the outside WANTED my litter because it sucked it out of the car like a vacuum.
I called it The Infinite Capacity Suction Powered Garbage Disposal Unit.
One day, however, I was driving with Stacey and Angie. Without a thought, I fed the Infinite Capacity Suction Powered Garbage Disposal Unit my empty cup and candy wrapper. I may have even passed out the garbage from Stacey and Angie’s snacks. We were listening to music on the ghetto blaster sitting on my open glove box (I didn’t have a car stereo) and laughing at something funny.
When we stopped at the red light, a woman in the car next to us screamed one sentence at me that has stuck to this day:
Do you think you can just use the world as your garbage can?!
I was mortified, but tried to act cool. I think I laughed and said yes and she argued with me a bit more before her husband pulled away as the light changed to green.
I have never forgotten that woman to this day and the Infinite Capacity Suction Powered Garbage Disposal Unit has never been used since.
Unfortunately, it isn’t its own track on the album. It’s merely an afterthought at the end of Teenage Thunder. I separated it out and made a separate track of it. Listening to this old commercial reminds me of the Eighties all over again.
Although it’s the first time in my life, this wouldn’t be the first time this had happened. In 1816, the northern hemisphere experienced 
I love this costume. It looks like an 8-Bit rendering of her face. All it takes are some makeup skills and simple patches sewn onto a plain shirt. 
