I Got a Dog

Joy finally relented to my pestering and said yes to getting a dog as long as it was a German Shepherd Dog. Yea! I like big dogs and... well, you know the rest. I researched German Shepherds and found two rescue groups in Houston. I ended up going with the Greater Houston German Shepherd Dog Rescue. From the time I turned in the application to when we got Gabriela was about three weeks. It took a little longer because she was undergoing treatment for heart worms.

We met her at her foster mom's house first to see if we both liked each other, and it went well, so we moved forward with getting everything set up. She came to live with us on July 4th. She was very shy and skittish. The only tail wags she gave for the first week were for Percival. She so wanted to be friends with him. After that first week, though, I finally got a tail wag. That made me so happy.

Now she is really coming out of her shell. I love that she has a loud bark and uses it anytime she sees a stranger near the house or when someone rings the door bell. She's a pretty good walker unless she sees what my friend Meredith calls a "morsel", a small yappy dog or a squirrel. Then she wants to take off after it. I've also figured out she is not too fond of male dogs as those can set her off too. We are definitely going to have to work on that. Despite all that I love her! She is the best dog ever. And she's pretty smart. I'm trying to teach her the names of all her toys. We're still practicing, but she always knows what I mean when there's one toy out no matter what I call it. She's also helped get me out of the house more, which is nice. I never wanted to go walking by myself before, but now I have Gabs to go with me.

Transgender and Grammar Rules

In recent years I have met more and more transgender people in various stages of transitioning. I understand why some people have issues understanding it as I myself have some difficulty understanding why anyone would want to be any gender other than female. Alas, there are men who do like to be men and feel they are male. Crazy if you ask me. ;)

Seriously, though, for a while I did have some difficulty truly understanding what it would be like to be born in the wrong type of body. I think I still do. For a while I thought my issue was based on cognitive heuristics, a need to know the gender of the person I am talking to in order to know which box to put them in. Today, though, I think I finally figured out what my hang up is. Grammar...and a complete distaste for making mistakes--especially when it comes to grammar.

I've heard the different pronouns out there to be used instead of she or he. I could get behind that. Language changes with the times, but it wasn't until just this month that I actually heard someone use these new pronouns, and I felt like a kid on Christmas morning, excited with something new to play with. But what really made me understand my hangup was an email I received today where a person included under his signature line and contact information another line that read "Pronouns: he, him, his". A light bulb lit up over my head. Ah ha! I now feel completely comfortable speaking to this person because I won't make the mistake of using the wrong pronoun and inadvertently offending him. Awesome!

Oh, I Loved That Book!

I love books, and I love talking about books. There are times when I see someone reading a book and I want to stop them--a complete stranger, mind you, and gush about how much I loved the book they're reading, but I don't usually. I hate spoilers, and I wouldn't want to ruin the book in some minor way for that person. So I have mixed feelings about reading in public. I don't want someone to ruin the book for me in any way, like when I was reading one of the Harry Potter books at about 12:30 in the morning of its release and someone walked by and said, "Oh, I heard so-and-so dies in this one." WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!? unless you're some sort of sadist. I mean, come on. So that's an obvious breach of etiquette...but the seemingly harmless "oh, I loved that book!" gush can be just as annoying. There are some books where if you'd really read the book you just would not do that. Instead, knowing how traumatic the book was for you, how treacherous some books can be just to reach the climax and ultimately the finale with your heart still in one piece...you wouldn't be so exuberant and bouncy with words like "love". You would gently lay a hand on their forearm or maybe their shoulder and look deep into their eyes with strength and understanding and maybe not say anything at all. Just nod in understanding. Maybe your eyes would tear up a little. But you have to be careful with that. The reader might be just at that breaking point and the teary eyes might push them over the edge and you might have to sit there with them for a moment as they grab hold of you in a bear hug and sob uncontrollably. And you'll know because you'd been there before.

The Color Run 2013

At the starting line, color free

I ran my very first 5K today. A friend in my neighborhood and I had tried to start walking at night together, but we were not as consistent as we would have liked, so Meredith decided it would be best if we had a goal for running--well, walking really, in a 5K, so she started a team for us for the Color Run. 

I've always wanted to be a runner, to just step outside and take off running for fun. I've had dreams where I could fly, and while I enjoyed those, my favorites were the ones where I was running effortlessly. I guess I appreciated those dreams more since that is something possible in my waking life. To be reasonable, it is possible if I train. So I started training. I've been working my way through the C25K app. I have been going through a series of sessions where I walk for so long and then run and then walk and then run and so with increasing time increments. I appreciate that I'm not in nearly as much pain as I was when I started C25K, and I do feel like I'm getting faster. I also appreciate that I have energy afterwards--well, if I run in the evenings, I do. I may be a morning person, but I am absolutely not a morning runner.

Me, Meredith, Kristie with downtown skyline in background

Back to the Color Run. It's called the Color Run because at several points throughout the race, there are color stations, I guess you could call them, where volunteers throw dry powdery paint at you. It's a very fine powder that gets everywhere. The day of the race was cold and very windy, so the paint made clouds the runners could see from some distance. I got my sister and my niece to join me in the run and my niece would ask throughout the race, "what color's next?" She's nine and not tall enough to see over the crowds.

That was something to see, though. All the people running and walking and dressed in white and tutus and crazy socks. I'd seen a marathon before (in Naha) and all the crowds of people running, but I'd never been in the crowd, so that was really neat--to be involved in something that so many others were doing just for fun.

Me, Jennifer, Savannah at the finish line

At the end of the race you were supposed to open the bag of color they had given you at pickup and then throw it all around in celebration for having finished. I was able to throw part of three different bags since Jennifer couldn't get hers or Savannah's open. I opened mine and started celebrating but then she handed me hers saying she couldn't get it open, so I gave her mine and opened hers and started throwing it around in celebration but then she handed me another. It was funny. The best part besides finishing with what I think was my best time so far--which is amazing considering the number of times we stopped to take pictures or get really covered in paint, but it was that my mom and Joy were there at the start of the race and at the end. They had to sit in the cold and the win to cheer us on, but I'm so glad they were there to share in the experience of my very first 5K.

Mom and Joy rooting for us

The End of Books

While digging through the archive today I discovered that the end of books was predicted not just recently because of new technology giving us ebooks but that the prediction goes even farther back than that. Apparently in 1894 there was a prediction that the end of books was nigh because of a new technology: audio books.

Manufacturing Books

The Binding of the Future. (Tubes de luxe.)

The Automatic Library.

Phonographic Literature for the Promenade.

The Author Exploiting His Own Works.

To read the whole article, check out the link on the Internet Archive.

Janki Method

The Janki Method sounds like a truly great learning tool--and not just for programming.  It seems similar to Pimsleur's language program, but it allows you to create flash cards for anything, and then the program uses an algorithm and your input to know how often to ask the question. I might have to use it to keep my Japanese at a decent level and to improve my Spanish.

Spontaneous Trips: New Braunfels

Last year Joy and I were going to open a wine and coffee bar called Alegria, and we wanted it to have some interesting, unique items, so we went antique shopping and met a guy named Shawn who owned a place called Junkology. He had a fantastic piece of Texan history for sale: a gondola from the HemisFair in San Antonio in '68. He also had the banner. We thought it would make a great addition to our cafe and put down $200 until we could make it back and give him the rest if the money and take the gondola home in a bigger vehicle than what we had with us. Well, the cafe fell through for various reasons and we told Shawn that we couldn't take the gondola. I said I would mail the banner back, but we thought it would be better to just deliver to him at his shop in New Braunfels so we could check out the rest of his shop and find something we could use at our new home, and that we did. Check out our new bikes! Well, old bikes but new to us. It's been a while since I've ridden a bike, so I'm pretty excited about our new adventure. They definitely need some clean up work, which we've already started on. Yea! for learning new things.

While Shawn was cleaning up the bikes a bit and adding air to the tires and so forth, he recommended we walk across the street to a restaurant called Huisache Grill. Boy, are we glad we listened to him. The food was amazing.For starters we had the shrimp cocktail with avocado. Amazing! Then we shared a spinach salad with blue cheese, green apples, candied pecans, pickled red peppers with a vinaigrette on the side and a cup of tortilla soup. For the main course I got the steak medallions. If you go, definitely get the pecan dusted steak medallions with Jack Daniels butter sauce. Delicious! It had green beans and roasted potatoes on the side. Everything was so good. For dessert we had the chocolate buttermilk cake. That was my least favorite thing, but everything else was amazing! Oh, but the ice cream on top was made in house, I believe, and that was really good.

After that we went to Natural Bridge Caverns, a place Joy has been wanting to go to for some time. It had been a while since I'd been. It was just about the same except now they have another cave you can go through but you need special equipment and you have go spelunking to get to the cave and crawl through other parts. I don't think I'm quite ready for that. Maybe next year. We also logged a geocache finding.

Next it was time for dinner, and we debated about going back to Huisache Grill. Yes, it was that good, but instead we went into San Antonio to go to La Fogata to get mole enchiladas. They were perfect. Not too spicy, not too chocolaty. Perfect. Then we drove home. It was truly a great day trip.

Spelling Bee

Tonight I competed in a spelling bee for adults... No, that does not mean we had to spell R-rated words; although, that would have been funny. Hm...maybe an idea for something. No, they were normal words and it went like a regular spelling bee. We made it to round three or four. It's kind of nerve-wracking when a bunch of strangers in really expensive suits are watching you spell and hoping you'll mess up, so you'll have to forgive me if I can't be accurate.

Audience members could help you out by buying a lifeline, which would save you to go on to the next round and cost $500. Yeah, not five dollars but five hundred dollars. Remember the part about expensive suits? Most of the audience was made up of lawyers and some of the teams were lawyers. After the second pair of lawyers had been saved by a lifeline I knew we were not going to win, which helped me relax. I wasn't angry. It was a fundraiser after all, and I think my teammate and I held our own pretty well.