Puttin' on the dog, eh?
Mar. 7th, 2011 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogA bit of a breakthrough here last night.
Cameron was over for much of the late afternoon and evening; he stayed for dinner, and joined us for my first streaming Netflix in awhile, the first since we upgraded our router. (It didn't take at first, but I got on the phone with an incredibly helpful customer service rep of theirs; she talked me through the settings without talking down to me, and at the end I told her she was the best tech rep I'd encountered in at least three years, and that it wasn't from a lack of seeking them out. "Thanks," she replied. "That really helps get me through the night.")
The film de noir was Tapeheads, which we last saw at the Little in Rochester back in the late 80s. Lots of cameos, ranging from Weird Al to Jello Biafra to film producer and ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith as a water-cooler bottle guy; funniest moment was seeing their fake commercial for a real SoCal restaurant (Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles) that had me on the floor near tears when I first saw it in-theater. Best of all, though, was seeing Sam and Dave playing the Swanky Modes, making some trouble and taking names.
Yet that wasn't the best part. After dinner and right before the show, Em announced that her friend Kaits was coming over, as well. We did the usual routine of putting up baby gates to keep Tasha from going after the company; so far, Cam has been the only human she's accepted other than the three of us. After a few minutes, though, it was clear that the dog was perfectly fine with the extra company in the house, and after removing the gates, Tash was rapt with- well, not much more than indifference, but at least she didn't cause any trouble. This opens all kinds of possibilities for having company over, at least a couple people at a time, that we haven't been able to manage in all the years since we adopted her.
----
Today, a morning of low-key work and a late afternoon of errands. Brought Emily's first 16 mm movie to the place recommended to me a few weeks ago; they were thoroughly nice and professional and promised to handle with care. Then, Books to be Read numbers 11 and 12 of the young season: from BN, Liz Makowski's Evenfall (who![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whyaduck has actually met, dog and all); and from the libe, Jonathan Franzen's latest, Freedom. I liked The Corrections when I read it, though not quite as much as the rave reviews perhaps suggested I should have. I've upped my cardio to near-daily in the past few months, and each session is now taking almost twice the time and burning three times the calories I was when I started, and one other happy side-benefit of that is, more time on the elliptical to read. By month-end, I may be halfway through my book-read total for all of 2010, and that, along with the weight minuses and energy plusses, is a Very Good Thing.
After my final errand for a fogotten grocery item, I saw a bizarre sign at the corner of Main and Union. It's for a new dog-butler service in town, called Kanine Companion or something similarly punny. (You do not stop your car and take pictures at that corner between 5 and 6 p.m. lest you risk your life.) The dude's motto, which he clearly spent thousands to a consultant to come up with? We're #1 with your dog's #2.
Check, please.
Cameron was over for much of the late afternoon and evening; he stayed for dinner, and joined us for my first streaming Netflix in awhile, the first since we upgraded our router. (It didn't take at first, but I got on the phone with an incredibly helpful customer service rep of theirs; she talked me through the settings without talking down to me, and at the end I told her she was the best tech rep I'd encountered in at least three years, and that it wasn't from a lack of seeking them out. "Thanks," she replied. "That really helps get me through the night.")
The film de noir was Tapeheads, which we last saw at the Little in Rochester back in the late 80s. Lots of cameos, ranging from Weird Al to Jello Biafra to film producer and ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith as a water-cooler bottle guy; funniest moment was seeing their fake commercial for a real SoCal restaurant (Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles) that had me on the floor near tears when I first saw it in-theater. Best of all, though, was seeing Sam and Dave playing the Swanky Modes, making some trouble and taking names.
Yet that wasn't the best part. After dinner and right before the show, Em announced that her friend Kaits was coming over, as well. We did the usual routine of putting up baby gates to keep Tasha from going after the company; so far, Cam has been the only human she's accepted other than the three of us. After a few minutes, though, it was clear that the dog was perfectly fine with the extra company in the house, and after removing the gates, Tash was rapt with- well, not much more than indifference, but at least she didn't cause any trouble. This opens all kinds of possibilities for having company over, at least a couple people at a time, that we haven't been able to manage in all the years since we adopted her.
----
Today, a morning of low-key work and a late afternoon of errands. Brought Emily's first 16 mm movie to the place recommended to me a few weeks ago; they were thoroughly nice and professional and promised to handle with care. Then, Books to be Read numbers 11 and 12 of the young season: from BN, Liz Makowski's Evenfall (who
whyaduck has actually met, dog and all); and from the libe, Jonathan Franzen's latest, Freedom. I liked The Corrections when I read it, though not quite as much as the rave reviews perhaps suggested I should have. I've upped my cardio to near-daily in the past few months, and each session is now taking almost twice the time and burning three times the calories I was when I started, and one other happy side-benefit of that is, more time on the elliptical to read. By month-end, I may be halfway through my book-read total for all of 2010, and that, along with the weight minuses and energy plusses, is a Very Good Thing.After my final errand for a fogotten grocery item, I saw a bizarre sign at the corner of Main and Union. It's for a new dog-butler service in town, called Kanine Companion or something similarly punny. (You do not stop your car and take pictures at that corner between 5 and 6 p.m. lest you risk your life.) The dude's motto, which he clearly spent thousands to a consultant to come up with? We're #1 with your dog's #2.
Check, please.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-07 11:48 pm (UTC)And yay for getting lots of reading done! I'm actually eager to get back to the gym on my lunch break, for both the endorphins and the reading time...I'm getting behind on my magazine stack.
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Date: 2011-03-08 12:23 am (UTC)Gym reading's a funny thing, too. It seems a lot of people (including my trainer, who spends way more time on an elliptical than I ever will) can't handle reading while in motion; as long as I've got a stable platform for the material, I mostly do fine with it, and it's become quite the zen thing to do in (and these days, almost entirely in) that context.
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Date: 2011-03-08 01:02 am (UTC)