Halloween Pics!

Jesse carved.






I carved.


Rah carved.


I got desperate and carved apples when we ran out of pumpkins. It was really easy, and I think I'll do a ton of apples next year.


The battery-operated Woe Ghost that greeted our neighborhood's kidlets when they came to trick-or-treat.


This is more autumn than Halloween, but here's a pic of Rah enjoying the fruits of her raking efforts this week.

Lots of kids showed up for candy this year, and we had fun making the jack-o-lanterns. (Last year nobody came to the door all night, and that pretty much sucked.)

We had a little girl dressed like a surgeon, complete with the little paper hair-covering, and a boy in a homemade cardboard costume that was a giant million dollar bill with a hole for his face to poke through.

Also there was a girl in a nice sparkly dress and I asked if she was a princess, and she wrinkled her nose and said "I'm a WITCH!" I told her witches were much cooler than princesses. At the end of the night we had some teenagers show up, one of whom was a chick in a sort of candy raver getup and white bandanna over her face. She said she was the Rainbow Bandit.

This town is awesome. I love Halloween.

DANGER: One Of Those Days

I woke up this morning with a cloud of ill luck hanging over me. I knew it was going to be one of those days and was not disappointed.

First, I had my first ever wipeout on the bike with El Stupido Hoondo. He decided to go play in the river while I was going down the path alongside, and while I was pulling to a stop, he came to the end of his leash a split second too quickly and yanked me over to one side. I went down in slow motion, contemplating the whole time: "Leg gonna get crunched...should be fine if I land right. Ouch, that hurts, but nothing is breaking so yay."

Didn't get the wind knocked out and I was already bawling him out the second I hit the grass. My leg got pinched between the handlebars and the crossbar, and I've got a nice big blue welt that may or may not turn fun colors tomorrow. Had my helmet on so I'm good, and the Captain just got his collar yanked a bit, which he's totally used to.

I staggered around for a couple seconds cussing and snarling while the Captain rolled over on his back and looked absolutely humiliated. Nothing else happened the whole ride home. Then he went to his kennel to wait for food, only I stopped to pee. Come out to find he's gotten impatient and knocked the food carton over and gorged on the contents.

I shut him in his cage and left him in there to decompress, then came into my room and promptly tripped on the extension cord that I use to power my workstation (which is located diagonally across the room). The power outlet gets pulled out of the wall, and while I'm trying to press it back into place, I manage to shut my bedroom door on my left thumb, and that definitely hurt like a bitch.

Next time I feel that haze of gloom hanging over me when I wake up, I'm going back to sleep.

Felidae

I found out today that they made a movie out of the Akif Pirincci novel Felidae. It was decent, although it's been so long since I read the novel that I can't recall whatall was cut off, but it seems like a lot. The script's translation from the German is a little clumsy, but the animation is totally badass.

The language and violence get pretty intense, to the point where I would say DO NOT LET CHILDREN SEE IT, but I recommend checking the film out if you can handle seeing cartoon cats getting killed in nasty ways. The whole thing is available on YouTube.

Nothing much going on today. T'was my day off, but I had a horrible headache so I mostly just sat around and prayed the Ibuprofen would kick in. When it did, I took the dog on a two-and-a-half mile bike run. Now I'm feeling mellow and sleepy.

Tomorrow, I will work on art all day long.

Update Post

New pages here!

Also:

Exorcism

Yesterday I got the bike out of the basement. I put it back together and wheeled it into the driveway, then obtained 1x poochito from the house. The idea was to get him nice and mellow with a walk and a hard play session at the dog park, then try him on the bike to see whether he'd enjoy running with me.

At first he didn't know what the fuck, and was shying away from the bike in that wary way dogs have, but as soon as I got on the bike and rolled a few feet, he figured out what I wanted and went right into jogging mode alongside. The leash I use is a 16 foot extendable deal, so I had plenty of room between the bike and the Captain and no slack leash to get tangled up. Lots of extra line in case I ever want to stop suddenly without breaking his neck or yanking my ass off the bike.

I didn't go full-speed, since I had to watch the road and the dog both in case of obstacles. Mostly I had enough warning when he decided to make a sudden stop or detour to slow the bike down and tug him back into line, and I was able to speed up some more.

Before I knew it, he was flying down the road (mostly on the verge, for the sake of his feets) with his jaws sprung wide and his tongue lolling out and bouncing around like crazy. By the time we got back, he was panting and shiny-eyed. The whole rest of the day, he was a docile and obedient little citizen who wanted to sleep more than anything in the world.

So today I thought, let's step it up a bit. Took him out on the bike first thing for a longer run, then back home for water, then we rode to the dog park. There were no dogs, so after a bit of lounging in the sun, I got back on the bike and we went around Northfield a bit. By the end, he was definitely losing his edge, so the ride home was pretty sedate. Immediately after taking off his leash, he fell over with his head resting on my leg, eyes half-lidded, tongue poking out a bit. Then back upstairs for the rest of his din dins and a nice long hibernation.

I'm trying to get him in the habit of spending a few hours of quiet time in his kennel alone each day after exercising, in case I get a job or ever want to, you know, have a social life. Hah.

Funny thing: He's learned to run upstairs, into the spare room, and tuck himself into his crate when I say "dinner." He'll wait in there quietly until I show up to feed him. I taught him "go to your room" but this other thing is his own innovation. He also has figured out that if you tell him to 'sit' and have a carrot in your hands, he should also sit up and beg without being asked. That dog is insane for carrots.

Befoer I start the next pages, I'm making up for lost time on the My Dog Rocks blogging front. Next up: photo post. Big one. 56k sorrow!

Let's see...what else.

There's a farmer's market here through the end of the month. It's only a few blocks away. Also, the air here usually smells like warm toasted cereal, though the flavor varies depending on what kind of cereal it is. I'm told Fridays are cocoa-puff-days. It is amazing.

I found a place by the river where they've dumped quarried stone to help with erosion. Digging around in the rockpile yielded SO many amazing crystal specimens. I brought home the smaller ones, though there's a boulder I need to drive over for. Unless I want to prove Jesse right in his prediction that I'll soon have nowhere to sleep for rocks in my room, I may need to think about adding a rock saw to my equipment.

Other than that, all is unpacking and photography.