Cliff Notes: Dogs Decoded

And, this is totally seasonal because the National Dog Show is always on at Thanksgiving... not that I ever watch it or anything.

[Dogs have been happening for a while now.]

I was watching an episode of Nova last night called Dogs:Decoded.  It was so amazing!  Basically, it was about how geneticists, anthropologists, and archaeologists are beginning to recognize the important role dogs had in progressing humanity out of the hunter-gatherer stage.  They have begun conducting experiments and gathering data evaluating things dog owners have claimed for years; namely, that dogs and people can understand each other.

The data was fascinating.

On the human side, most people seem to be able to understand a dog's basic emotions.  When given audio of different kinds of barks, people can accurately identify the emotion or situation the dog is trying to convey.  Curiously, wolves (the dogs direct ancestor), bark very little.  They make occasional sounds in order to convey danger, but the sounds dogs make seem to have originated solely as a method of communicating with humans.  Which makes perfect sense.  If you assume a dog has an intelligence level similar to that of a toddler before it begins forming words, many of the comparisons become clear.  Any parent can tell you their child understands words and meanings, and communicates in their own way, before they learn speech.  Why not a dog?  In fact, further research indicates that when a human is petting a dog, both experience a jump in oxytocin levels, the same hormone that helps generate the bond between a mother and a newborn.  It's no wonder we bond with them.

[Clearly the happiest dog ever.]

On the animal side it gets even more interesting.  Dogs have become adept at learning non-verbal cues.  Not only are they capable of understanding hand signals--such as pointing or other information providing gestures, they are able to understand them as a rule, and not as an exception.  Even small puppies are able to follow the direction of a pointed finger.  While other animals, such as chimps, do theoretically have the ability to learn and understand hand signals, it takes a significant amount of training and does not seem to be a universal trait like it is in dogs.

Even more importantly, dogs can read our emotions.  In multiple studies,  it has become clear that dogs use the same method of facial tracking that humans do to read emotions.  They are the only known animal that does this.

[How is this not the most adorable thing you've ever seen?]

So three-cheers for the dog owners.  Turns out they were right all along!  (But maybe still you shouldn't have long conversations with your dog like you expect him to answer.)

I'm told I have a dark sense of humour

[The other denizens of the workplace jungle watched in horror as the stress of Fiscal Year End Crocodile claimed another victim. March and April would never be the same.]

It's not all our fault: Exhibit D

Exhibit D: Captain Planet

"We're the Planeteers, and you can be one too!  'Cause saving our planet is the thing to do.  Looting and polluting, is not the way.  Here's what Captain Planet has to say..."

"The power is YOURS!"

A theme song so catchy that 15-20 years later I can still recite it verbatim, hear all the character's voices in my head, and even remember some of the episodes.  Now THAT is some good marketing.  Especially when you consider that the message they were selling was that we all have the ability and the duty to protect the environment.  So what did we do?  Our generation flocked to cities like Seattle, Portland, San Fran and Denver as soon as we were able so we could spend our days driving electric cars with bumper stickers that say "My other car is a bicycle" and buying range-free organic free-trade vegan gluten-free everything.  And also make plastic illegal.  Literally.  When I go into grocery stores outside of Seattle and see the stacks and stacks of grocery sacks, a part of me cant help but gaze in confused sort of awe, wondering if I'm allowed to use them.  We only want to work for companies that prove their environmental conscientiousness.

We want to save the world.  And we believe we can.  Thanks Captain Planet.  And probably Dic.  I seem to recall basically every 90s show ever was produced by Dic.

Also.  I heard a rumor that Sony is going to produce a live-action version of Captain Planet.  Can we talk about how totally amazing this is?  I am completely geeking out over here.  I may or may not admit that I will probably dress up as Linka for the premier (she was always my favorite... and now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the source of my life-long obsession with all things former-soviet).

Magical Narnia wardrobe? Nope. Just regular type.

Our new apartment has next to no closet space.  And we both have enough clothes to fill the one closet we do have single-handedly.  So we've been looking for options.  Mine mostly consisted of going to IKEA and buying a new wardrobe, but Ty thinks spending so many monies on something we might get rid of in the next year or two is absurd.  Logic.  Weird.  So yesterday we decided to go check out some consignment stores to see what we could find to fill in the storage gaps.

First of all, we found some awesome consignment stores.  Armadillo was closed, but I could see all kinds of mid-century awesomeness from the window.  I'm very excited to go back.  And when we went to Mosaic, FIRST they had a labrador that likes to follow you around the store.  10 points to Gryffindor.  And as we were pulling up I could see the most gorgeous cabinet just sitting on the concrete being offloaded from a van.

me-I want that one.
Ty-But it's in pieces.
me-but I bet it is beautiful when it's not in pieces anymore.

Ty is learning that sometimes the best defense against my irrationality is to not respond.  Responding encourages me.  It makes me fight for the crazy, and only serves to convince me further that I really want whatever it is until I become so entrenched in my delusion that every rational argument in the universe can't convince me I'm wrong.  Probably luckily for both of us, he stopped at this point.  Because when I can debate things out in my head,  usually rationality is allowed to happen.  But I did let myself wallow in the idea of the 1920s English dowel-construction solid wood wardrobe with mother-of-pearl inlay and some Jacobean influence.  We walked around the store for a while and made friends with the owners (you can never be too good of friends with the owners of a vintage/consignment furniture store) and looked at all the other offerings.  And came back to the cabinet.  It was too big.  And didn't have the right sort of compartments.  And was missing some beadwork.  And was probably too much money.  And.  And.  And.   It was beautiful.  And we could have made room for it somewhere. right?

Wrong.  Reality prevailed.  We walked away.  But at this point, the dream of getting all our piles of clothes off the floor was so close we could practically taste it.  So we drove over to Goodwill.  We've found good things here before.  In an episode a few months ago that I still feel bad about, I wanted to think about a cabinet Ty wanted to buy and when we went back for it the next day it was gone...  But we learned that good things disappear quickly.  So that was a good lesson.

This time we found a kind-of awesome probably TV cabinet.  And it was only $35.  Thirty-five.  That's like practically free.  But it was a gorgeous red-stained solid wood cabinet with some subtle Japanese influence in the details.  The idea was we would get a rod and bolt it inside the main compartment to hold hangers, and put all my sweaters in the drawers.  There was even a moment of excitement when I realized that I might could put hooks inside the doors to hold all my necklaces and belts.

This is very exciting people.  No more necklaces hanging on the knobs of my dresser.  And all the doors of the house.  And laying horizontally on every empty surface.  And living inside the individual compartments of a pill case (on second thought, those will probably stay there.   It is so convenient to take on trips!)  We were getting excited.  When we realized why it was $35.

Clearly this was a "custom" cabinet.  They had drilled sections out of the shelf to put vents.  Actual louvered vents you would normally see in your carpet.  And they had jerry-rigged fans to run behind the vents.  And then they lined every seam in the cabinet with foam weather-stripping.  Everything was secured by hot glue, duct tape, finishing nails, AND adhesive.  Because one method just isn't enough.

I have no clue what they were insulating against.  The vents and fans would imply some sort of server system that overheated easily.  The insulation implies the opposite.  And I have no clue what the giant hole through the top means.  In retrospect it's not unlikely that this wardrobe was involved in something illegal.

But we just wanted to buy something and move forward.  So we did.

ADVENTURE TIME!!

Because when we left our house at 5 that afternoon, neither one of us was actually prepared to purchase anything.  Certainly nothing that would require manual labor and tie downs.

However both of those things were needed.  Because after realizing that the cabinet was way too huge to fit inside my mariner, Ty and I took a trip to Fred Meyer to buy some winches and a rope.

Now, you have to understand.  My father gave me unrealistic expectations about my ability to use a winch.  I have seen my Dad tie down anythings so many times that I assumed it was one of those things we could do with out training or instruction.  No You-tube videos required.  Like some sort of instinct or urban-survival-of-the-fittest technique.  This was Darwin.  We would open the package and thread the straps through and winch that wardrobe up that a champ!  And all the people dropping off and picking up at Goodwill would be awed by our prowess at tying things down.  They could only hope to be as awesome and handy at tying things down as we were.

Turns out.  Although I have figured out how my Dad ties knots in ropes... winches are only simple if you know how to thread the strap through the mechanism.

Ty and I do not know how to thread the strap.

So after it took three grown men to lift the upper portion of the cabinet to the top of my car, we started trying to tie it down.  The rope worked great.  The winches... were more decorative than anything else.  I plan to have my father give us remedial winch training at his earliest convenience.

By the time we got it home, we realized that there was Ty... and me.  And together we count strength at maybe 1 1/2 grown men.  And that's only because Ty counts for 1 1/4.

Through no small amount of effort and the creative use of our all-purpose LPT, we managed to get both halves of the unit up to the second story of our building with minimal damage to it or ourselves.

Ty did demo, and I removed insulation adhesive like a bandit.  Then we just bolted a good solid rod to the interior, and some hooks on the door.

Et, voila.  Precisely what we needed.  A tv/weirdo storage cabinet that had been designed to look like a wardrobe... that we re-purposed as a wardrobe.  So back to its roots really.

It's not all our fault: Exhibit C

The next piece of evidence in my ongoing exploration of why the millenials turned out the way they did.

Exhibit C: Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Answer? Yes.  We all were.  For years my sisters and I didn't like to go to bottom story of our house alone.  Why?  There was no telling what kind of creeper was hanging out down there.

I love to sit and think and come up with reasons for things.  Everyone needs hobbies, right?  But for all my efforts, I have yet to think of a good reason for all of the spooky-related books and TV shows we were flooded with in the early to mid 90s.  Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Tales From the Crypt.  And 48 Hours Mysteries.  Arguably not a show for children, but we still watched it.  And it was on the air in the 90s.  So I think it counts.

The most frustrating part about 48 Hours was that you were left with no resolution.  Just the after-image of live re-enactments with terrible acting.  And the icky feeling that the were murderers and rapist living next door to you.  No matter where you went you would never be able to escape the horrors of it.  And probably they were hiding in your basement right now. And those of us with healthy imaginations are still coping with the residual scenarios our brain summons when it's a 'dark and scary night'.  It's like everything is perfectly normal until it's the middle of the night, and then your brain is like, "you know what we haven't thought about in a while?  Demons."

Thanks brain.  Thanks a lot.

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall

Truer words my friend.

I woke up this morning to the most absolute wonderful feeling after a gloriously hot summer:

I was cold.  Which meant that the months of being in a love/hate relationship with my blanket were over.  I got to snuggle up deep under my covers with no worries that in an hour I would be sweating.

Fall is that wonderful time of the year when you don't have to scrape off your windshield, but you do turn on the heat in your car.

I had my first hot apple cider of the season today.  Love that stuff.  I don't even want to know how many Costco boxes of it I have consumed.

The colors are amazing.  And I don't even mean Seattle green and grey combined with the golds and reds, which is admittedly pretty spectacular, I mean jewel tones.  Wearing plums and peacocks with accents of citron and olive.  Layer after layer of charcoal and silver.  Wool, plaid, cable-knit, cashmere, sequins, sheepskin, leather. I think leather must be one of my absolute favorite things in the world.  The feel of suppleness against the skin is just so comforting and decadent at the same time.  For what more can you ask?

Did you say silver sequin skirt?  Because now you can come out of the depths of my closet and make my life wonderful again.  Because, for whatever reason, just like it seems wrong to wear copious amounts of white after labor day, it seems vulgar to wear sequins before it.  Like I'm trying to compete with the dazzle of summer.  But good news: fall is basically an invitation to prepare for the glitziest season of them all: Winter.

As much as I love going out and seeing people and doing outdoorsy things, I love that I can stay in now and not feel guilty because it's gross outside.  Thank you for assuaging my conscience Seattle.  You're the best.

Football happens again.  And also the sheer number of hours I spend discussing it with my Dad.  Watching games, and rehashing them, and then talking about how the players need to shape up, or just keep being totally awesome.  And predicting how they'll do in their next game.  Who they might recruit next year.  The fun never stops!

I feel like the whole season is basically the best excuse ever to bake everything and anything that sounds delicious.  Like donuts.  And pumpkin bars.  And anything containing apples or cinnamon.  On top of all it's other stellar qualities, Fall is totally delicious.

Fitzgerald knew what he was talking about.

It's not all our fault: Exhibit B

Exhibit B: Mr. Sketch Markers

In the words of the BFF, "mmmm...  Mr Sketch is delicious!"

These actually were first released in 1965... but all that really means is it's had more time to affect people.

Because it taught us how to sniff markers people.

Let's just sit quietly and think about that for a while.

Time for an Update

I love clocks.

I don't know if it was a product of growing up in a house where from any given angle in any room you can see at least two clocks, or the fact that the rhythmic ticking sound is terrifically comforting to me, but either way they are pretty spectacular and I totally believe in them.  The bigger the better.

So when I moved to Seattle about a year ago, I decided that a giant wall clock was one of my primary needs for a new apartment.  I found this little gem on ulta-clearance at Fred Meyer.  I wasn't certain that I loved it, but as my mother pointed out--you can't buy a 20" clock kit for as cheap as this was.

True.

So I bought it.  And the clock remained undisturbed inside of its original packaging through two moves, and multiple mental redesigns, until last night.  When I made the sudden decision that I was ready to paint it.

So I did.  I still mentally changed the design about three times after purchasing all the materials, but I think I like how it turned out.  

Survey says?

It's not all our fault: Exhibit A

Reasons why the Millennials turned out this way:

Exhibit A: Mall Madness

Let me be clear here.  The goal of this game was to spend money.  Faster than anyone else.  Whoever spent money the fastest won the game.  The game used the same marketing techniques stores use, that sales were limited time only, limited quantity, and that if you don't have it first you're missing out.  Mall Madness was like real life.  And the box had these really cool-looking girls on it who were shopping for rad things like boomboxes and those mini backpacks everyone had in the early 90s ( you know what I'm talking about.  Don't deny it).  Everyone who was anyone had it.  And we played it often.
We learned that as long as it's on sale, it's totally worth it-even if you don't need it.
We learned that whenever you spend all the money on your credit card, you just need to go to the ATM.  It's a magical money dispenser.
And we wonder why people have a hard time with money management if this is how we spend our formative years?
Because I don't wonder.  Mall Madness has a lot to answer for.  Other than being fully awesome of course.

Today is brought to you by the letter...

Tyler doesn't like things that start with the letter D.

Dogs.
Dragons.
Most desserts.
...
And David Bowie.

I mean weird right?

And even though Harry Potter arguably starts with an 'H', he didn't think he would be a fan of that either.  Because mostly he just doesn't love the fantastical.  But he does love me, and I love the fantastical, so I suppose by some sort of transitive property he loves it too.  Subconsciously.

Regardless.

Apparently I use too many HP references in my life, and Ty decided that he needed to figure out what all this nonsense is about.  So we have been slowly but surely making our way through the movies (movies first... so if he gives up before he gets to the books he'll at least have the gist of it).  Slowly.  But as we were talking about it, Ty asked what house he would be in.

And that's when I heard it.  That innocent question might not have signaled anything to you.  But to me, it meant curiosity.  It meant... interest.

So of course I told him that, rather serendipitously, JK Rowling has a whole website about her books.  And that if we went on it would sort him into his house.

Tyler.  Got on.  Pottermore.  Clearly one of the greatest achievements of my life.

Only once.  And I suppose it doesn't really count because he hasn't been back.  But it did happen.  And everyone knows that Harry Potter is like a gateway fandom to all the other worlds of fantasy.  So maybe one day he'll be making me watch LOTR or Star Wars.

It's not impossible after all.  Just improbable.  And that's what I'm all about.

I mustache you a question

After a recent conversation, I am forced to re-evaluate all my childhood memories.  'Cause turns out I'm crazy.  Or, as I prefer to think of it, my brain is just remarkably creative.

In the house I grew up in, I knew the dead bolt was locked when it looked like this.  Well,  mostly like this.  Approximately like this.

Mostly it looked like it was a face with a mustache.  So, in the grand tradition of Stephanie, I made up a quasi-mnemonic device that really serves no good purpose.  In this case, during my daily manifestation of early on-set paranoia, I would ask myself if the door was locked.  I would glance at it and think, oh good.  Mustache.

The mustache became not just linked, but synonymous with security.  Can we talk about the irony there?

I have since suffered multiple setbacks upon realizing that some dead bolts look like this

What am I supposed to think when I see that?  Nose?  Beak?  Everyone knows that noses and beaks have nothing to do with dead bolts.  It's absurd.  Irrational.

Even worse are these

Okay.  I can see that it says locked.  And I can see an arrow.  But actually you mean that it's locked when it's at a weird angle.  Okay.  Cool.  I'll never remember that.

Simplify

It's that thing we're all supposed to be doing right?  Clearly, this one is not cut out for it.

I've been thinking about all the cacophony of craziness in my head (not to mention my life) lately and how I really need to start streamlining some things.  Whether it's overbooking myself, or having too many clothes to fit in my closet, looking for a new job, moving to a new apartment, and being newlywed; everything in my life seems to be chaos right now.  And chaos is not one of those things I have great coping mechanisms for.  Mostly it involves a lot of me not being pleasant to be around in the wild hope that the world will sort itself out.

This week my solution to restore ma'at to my universe was to get a new email address.  This was clearly the most logical solution to all my problems.

Unfortunately the universe didn't get that memo.  Probably because it has been using my old email address to contact me for the last eleven years.  After all, EVERYTHING in the universe has been using my old email address to contact me.  For eleven years.  That's.  Eleven.

The thing about Google that is both awesome and frustrating at the same time is how deceptively simple everything is.

Insanely easy to sign up for a new email address.  Easy to import my contacts.  Beat-my-head-against-a-wall difficult to make everyone and everything show up the way that I want them too.  And, with some perverse sort of logic that I suppose I should have been expecting, the more often I contact them, the more convoluted their contact information was when I imported it.  Some of you appear more than four times in my list now.  So that's cool.

So while I attempt to wrangle all the horses into the same corral, do me a favor and only use my new email address :)

We're not dead

just only married.

We thought we were even being completely normal about the whole thing.  But turns out that it's completely impossible to be normal about being newlyweds.

But that's fine.

We'll suffer the consequences.

And make everyone else suffer too when we come to your parties :)