A Busy Bear

Currently Reading: The Theban Plays by Sophocles

First of all, yes, that's right, Sophocles. I know a lot of you log in to this blog and shake your heads wondering just what on earth I'm reading now. Never let it be said I'm easily pinned down to any one particular type of literature. In this case, I can't even remember why I got the idea to read these plays again. I must have seen the book at Borders and decided right then. I haven't actually read them since high school, EARLY high school so we're talking 1984? 1985 maybe?

For those who aren't familiar with the work, there are three plays and you'll know the title of at least one: Oedipus The King (sometimes listed as Oedipus Rex), Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. After this I'll probably read something a little more modern but I do plan to read The Aeneid by Virgil (which is about the founding of Rome). It's always good to touch base with the classics from time to time.

Speaking of time, I haven't had very much of it lately, which I'm sure many of you have noticed. CC left for Manila on the 19th taking the first flight out (6:30 am!). We had to be at the airport by 4:45 which meant I had to be up at around 4:00 just to make sure we got there. Why do we always follow the rules like this? Because CC is what you might call a difficult case at the airlines. She doesn't have a US passport because she's not a US citizen. At the same time, because she's a legal resident, she doesn't have a visa either. When checking in at the international counter, what are the two pieces of identification that the little scanner will read? You got it, a US passport or a travel visa.

The procedure usually runs something like this. We walk up to the counter. The clerk tells us to use the little touch screen thing to get the boarding pass. So we go through the motions of trying it knowing full well that it won't work. We do this once for each bit of ID she has then tell the machine we don't have what it wants. This summons the clerk who then goes through the whole thing again once or twice (I guess to make sure we're not stupid or something) even though we've explained the problem. FINALLY after 15 minutes or so, the clerk takes CC's ID and keys in the information in the little terminal behind the counter. Another 10 minutes later she's got her boarding passes and her luggage is checked. Every time this happens. You'd think just once they'd actually listen to us and skip to the part where they type the stuff in themselves.

*You may have noticed that I didn't really have pictures that match this blog entry. I put in some generic shots of The Philippines instead*

She went to Manila a little earlier than she needed to. By arriving in the middle of Holy Week, she was able to spend a few days with her family and get in a little vacation time at their house up in the mountains (it's actually a big volcano that's not really active). Up until today, she's had it fairly easy, just the usual office work. But the boss arrived a few hours ago and everyone switched into hyper mode. I probably won't get to hear from her nearly as much now.

At work, nothing too dramatic has happened. Our one little adventure had nothing to do with the actual job. My boss is having some family problems. More accurately, her family is having health problems (I won't go into the details). Some of the problems have been building over time and wearing her down, little by little. Friday she had one more added to the pile and she pretty much snapped. It wasn't a serious breakdown mind you but it was fairly obvious the stress was just a little too much for her. I went and got the general manager and told her all about it because really, apart from CC, I'm not very good at dealing with all the emotional stuff face to face. You have a crisis, get the emotional people out of the way, turn me loose and I'll solve the problem. I can do that. Dealing with someone having a nervous breakdown? Not my strong suit.

Anyway, the GM calmed her down and pretty much sent her home for a few days so she could get all the family stuff under control. That left the rest of us to cover the holes in the schedule. Ok, that left ME to cover the BIG hole in the schedule. Saturday I pulled a 12 hour shift. Just wasn't any way around it. She couldn't handle it. The other groomer wasn't available. We had customers. So there ya go. In exchange for that though, I got Sunday off, which was nice. That allowed me to visit with MY family a bit and celebrate my niece's birthday.

So now you're all caught up on things around here. Any gaps in the story you can just fill in with boring, mundane housework, which is what I've been doing. With CC gone again naturally I have to do the chores that she'd normally do and since I'm not really a pig like most men, it means I have to clean.

Oh yes, I do get to play War Craft as well. That's how I relax between chores and work. And there's the reading of course. But until CC gets back next week or so, I doubt I'll have any adventures to post. Sorry about that.

The Holiday is Ending

Just Finished Reading: Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

Back to work tomorrow. It's hard to believe I'm already at the end of my vacation. Seems like just yesterday I was rushing to get out of the salon so I could start the break as early as possible. And now it's almost over. It went by too fast. I never even had a chance to get bored.

I do have some pictures though, which I suppose is what you're supposed to have at the end of every vacation. This first set, I think everyone is going to enjoy. It's from Sunday. No, you're not imagining things. That is a poodle with a mohawk! And yes, I'm the one who did it. There I was on Sunday afternoon, pretty tired from the usual work when this woman walks in with that little poodle. New customer, just moved here from South Carolina I think it was. Anyway, after doing all the paperwork I asked her what kind of cut she wanted and without any hesitation she said she wanted a mohawk. Apparently this is the normal haircut her poodle usually gets and I have to admit, he looks pretty damn cool.

This particular mohawk came out MUCH better than the one I did a few months back for the maltese. Poodles have really good hair for this kind of work. See how nice and full it is? And you can make it nice and wide so there's no doubt of what you're looking at. That is a poodle with a mowhawk, no doubt about it.

The owner, incidentally, really liked the cut so there's a good chance I'll do this again. This marks the THIRD time I've been asked to do this sort of thing and so far this is the best it's turned out.

So, what did we actually DO on vacation? Nothing much really. I'll skip all the details and give you the highlights because, let's face it, it was a pretty slow week, which was WONDERFUL. We did clean the carpet in the aprtment though, which REALLY needed to be done, especially the heavy traffic section in the hallway and the spot where Jack likes to pee when he can't hold it in until the morning walk. It looks a LOT better now.

I also managed to trim the boards on CC's desk mat thing that we made. Everything pretty much lines up now. I'm sure she'll be posting pictures of that for you to see when she gets a chance.

Probably the BEST thing we did this week was go and have a massage. CC got a gift certificate for us for a day spa for my birthday and we went over and did that Friday at around lunch time. We got a full massage and lunch. Oh MAN that is something everybody has to do at least once. It's a requirement, like going to Disneyland. You MUST have a professional massage at least once. Seriously, go and do it because I just can't describe how relaxing it is. There just aren't the right words :-)

Now, as we were heading out for the massage, it started to snow. It was still pretty warm out though so the snow would just hit and melt. No big deal. By the time we were finished, the snow was coming down pretty heavy and the winds had picked up. It was a LITTLE bit colder but the snow was only sticking on metal things or maybe patches of dirt. Nothing was building up in the grass. By the time we got HOME, the snow was sticking pretty much to everything. The wind was blowing it in all over and we had our own little winter wonderland.

This morning, I woke up and it was like January. Full blanket of snow, about 6 inches I think. The parking lots and all the roads in the apartment complex were covered in a sheet of ice. Everywhere you walked you made a crunching noise. The doggies were NOT amused by that. Katya actually likes the snow. She tends to bound through it and take little bites of it as she goes along. Jack, well let's just say the snow makes him even grumpier than usual.

Our morning walk was actually pretty funny. Katya was enjoying herself until she got to the street and had to deal with walking on ice. She managed to stay on all fours most of the time but as we were coming in, she came around a corner a little too fast and did a belly flop. Jack was having a hard time finding a place to go to the bathroom. Every time he assumed the position the snow reached his belly and he did NOT like that at all. I finally got him to the top of a small hill where the snow had mostly blown off. 2 inches he can handle. 6 inches is not fun.

I didn't realize how much it was blowing around out there until this morning. I was out on the back patio taking pictures when I saw that the snow ahd reached the forrest. In fact, there was snow pretty much all over the patio in varying depths. Over by the guard rail it was thicker of course and it sort of blended in from there. A nice winter storm, something we haven't had here since February 2007. And so late too, that seemed a bit odd.

The snow's already melting though. Tomorrow it'll be in the 50's. Later in the week, probably the 60's. Spring will arrive quick.

Katya's Twin

Every now and then something odd happens in the salon. Sunday, I was reminded of the first time Katia came in for a cut. See, Katia is Katya's twin, almost. Katia looks like someone took Katya and shrunk her a bit and sucked out some of the color. Confused? Here, check this out.

Ok, over on the left, Katia. Over on the right, Katya. See what I mean? The owners brought her in last summer and ever since then she's normally one of my regulars. Sunday they needed her in and out earlier than my schedule allowed so Andrew took her instead. It's not a tough cut or anything like that. In fact, I had two more Aussis that day and another one about two weeks ago. I'm slowly building up a little niche market for Aussis here in Memphis. I imagine I'll have it cemented right about the time we need to move to Nashville. That's ok though. I can always do the same up there.

Thursday we're in for a little treat. A new customer who has just moved here from Alabama is bringing in HIS Aussi. The treat? It's a MINIATURE Aussi. I've been wanting to see one of those ever since I read about them online. I'm curious to see just how small they are and to see if they've retained all the usual markings and shape. If I can, I'll get pictures.

Warcraft, Part 2

Currently Reading: Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

As I mentioned last week, I've been playing World of Warcraft so there's no news there. What IS news is that CC has now started playing as well. She read last week's blog entry about the game and decided she'd try it out for herself. I woke up one morning as she was slipping back into bed grumbling, "stupid graveyard." The graveyard, you see, is where you go when you die. You then have two options. You can walk back (as a ghost) to your corpse and come back to life or you can pay the spirit healer to resurrect you at the graveyard.

That morning, I spent a bit of time teaching CC the basics of the game along with some basic techniques for online and fantasy games in general and she was back at it again. A few days later she had her OWN 10 day trial account so we could play TOGETHER. A few days after that she's signed up for her own FULL account and is now has a higher level character than I have.

She's now playing Warcraft the same way she plays The Sims. Her usual pattern is to play a game until she's reached all the goals or gotten her character to the maximum level. I imagine she'll do the same here. She'll keep at it until she reaches level 70 or nearly so. What she'll do after that is anyone's guess. There's one expansion set for the game out already and another one due to be released this summer. Also, there are 8 races and quite a few different hero types you can pick from. She's a hunter now but who's to say she won't max that out and then start over with a new character as a mage or a rogue? We'll just have to wait and see.

We've been having a lot of fun with this game though. She logs in from her laptop, about 5 feet away, and I log in from my machine and we meet up in the game world and go on a quest, which usually means a killing spree of some sort.

I'd LIKE to tell you that I've got a whole lot of interesting stories from the week but I'd be lying. This past week all we've really done is work and play Warcraft to unwind. CC logs more hours in the game than I do though. I like to read before bed so I play the game for a little while then do some reading and that's that.

Hopefully I'll have some better stories next time :-)

Warcraft

Currently Reading: Dune by Frank Herbert

Just a head's up for those who didn't know. I'm back to working a 5-day work week again. I have Tuesday and Wednesday off now and still getting used to that. When I'm home, I can't goof off quite as much as I used to because I have one less day to get things done. On the plus side though, I don't have to open anymore which means no more 7 am start times or waiting around for two or three hours for people to show up while wondering why on earth I woke up so early.

Unfortunately, I picked this week to start playing the online game called World of WarCraft. I'm sure you've seen it or heard about it or even played it yourself already. It's yet another in a long line of fantasy, online games where you run about cleaving monsters in two and gathering up treasure, that sort of thing. The main difference is that in this game you link up with anyone else who happens to be playing at the same time. This can come in handy as some of the tasks required of you can be a bit tricky.

Starting off though, it's not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. Maybe it's because I've been playing these types of games for a LONG time but I was under the impression that, especially with the newer characters, you'd need to group together more often. So far I haven't run into any serious problems. I have died twice (which is actually kinda cool). I can't say that I've made TOO much progress though because I can't really decide what I like to do yet while I'm in there. It all depends on my mood.

You see, you have the world broken down into two sides, the Alliance and the Hoard. All your classic good guys are with the Alliance, your dwarves, elves, humans, etc while all your bad guys are with the Hoard, including minotaurs, undead, orcs, etc. When I started out, I did what I usually do with games like this, I picked a warrior type, which is usually the easiest in any game to play. Your mission, run forward. Hit things until they stop moving. Remove treasure. Repeat. You can generally get a good feel of the game that way, how the monsters move, basic strategies, that sort of thing.

Ok I've done that. I had my dwarf out there bashing the hell out of things (which is a great little stress reliever let me tell you). Then I figured I'd try out some of the cooler classes like the druid (which can shape shift) and the warlock (which can summon imps and demons). Granted blowing things up from afar isn't quite as fun as running in there and bashing away but it's still good. Besides, you actually have to come up with a strategy before you start fighting things otherwise the critters will overwhelm you.

So where are we now? I've got 5 characters all of which at about the same stage of their career, all different races. I just bounce back and forth between them depending on what I'm in the mood for.

One thing's for sure, I'm glad I waited until now to start playing this game. You see, they've already come out with one expansion set for it and they're due to come out with another one soon which means there aren't very many people playing the basic game like I am. Also, I can see where playing this game can REALLY make the day just disappear down a hole of lost time. There are so many little quests you can do and skills to raise. You really can get caught up in it.

None of this is all that interesting to CC. She told me earlier that she prefers the "doll house" type of games, like The Sims. I told her that it's sort of like The Sims. Just imagine The Sims, but with killing :-)