five fast findings: perhaps my life is a bit boring

1. omg Internet Explorer is SO slow. I heart google chrome.

2. My dog stuffed himself! My other dog, Shelby is staying with me for the night before I take her to a better home (literally, not like, code for killing her or anything), and I'm trying to fatten her up from being underfed for a month (I was the one who fed her but I wasn't there for a month), so I put out a can of wet food. Well, shelby went to relieve herself and who but my dog Hiro raced in to finish it off. He ate HALF A LARGE CAN of food and now his little belly is way distended and he's sleeping on his side cause it was uncomfortable sleeping on his stomach. haha.

3. Having a Wii is awesome. I've been playing Wii sports on it. It's even better when I don't have to share it with a precocious 7-yr-old who beats me at everything!

4. There are going to be pig races at the Spokane Interstate Fair (which starts tomorrow). I'm SO there.

5. I really like Miley Cyrus' CD, Can't Be Tamed. At first I thought it was loud and cheesy, but after a few listens, the songs are pretty cool.

five fast findings

I'm going to start doing Five Fast Findings, when I have little things that I don't want to do an entire blog post for.

1. I have a confession, I know the vast majority of dog owners HATE when their dog drags their butt on the carpet, but I find it hilarious!! I don't even mind vacuuming later.

2. My car has been leaking transmission fluid and antifreeze and needs some seals replaced and my first reaction was, thank GOD that's all it is. Man. My car sucks.

3. The "t" button on my Samsung Gravity sticks, so either I write "hanks for he noe" or ttthanks for ttttthe nottte." It's kind of annoying but I'm not really ready to bring it in to Radio Shack to be exchanged for a new one (I have radio shack insurance and I just bought the thing like two weeks ago anyway) so it will probably be one of those things I always complain about but never ever fix.

4. My mom just got a Wii, so that we can both exercise. I played Wii Sports, and did the training exercise in boxing where you have to hit the punching bags, and I got 16 on my first try. Who rocks. But I was out of breath. So I guess I don't really rock so much.

5. I've been addicted to this game on Facebook, Sorority Life. I started playing like a week ago and I'm already on level 42. Another one of those things where I rock, but the fact that I've been playing it so much kind of negates the rockstarness.

The things I do for him

After sleeping for hours at my side, he suddenly bolted awake. Seemingly unable to speak, but obviously needing something, I mimed out different possibilities with him. Hungry? eh. thirsty? nope. Outside? his tail wagged and his eyes went from puppy-dog to huge and excited. We raced to the door "come on buddy let's go!" and he twirled and jumped a circle in the air three times before I got the door open.

My dog Hiro is pretty funny. My mom says he kind of looks like an alien. He does, a little. But I think he's incredibly adorable, even if no one else does. He was abused, we think, before I got him, so he is pretty scared of most men and often growls at people before he gets used to them. It could be nice to have a "normal" dog, but it's not a big deal to me, I just tell people don't try to pet him and they back away pretty quickly!

He and I are pretty intuitive with each other. One time, my almost-niece-to-be asked, how did you learn to speak dog? She had just witnessed me training Hiro and my shared dog, Shelby, and was intrigued. I guess I started learning to speak dog a few days after I got Hiro. He was pretty timid at first, but then as the hours went by he slowly crept closer to me. By the next day he was jostling my hand while I was on the computer begging to be petted. How could I resist? At first, he had accidents in the house, probably because of being in a new environment AND because he and I still didn't know each other well enough to get that I-have-to-pee signal across. And I'll admit, there were several times over the first few months where I'd glance in his water dish and notice it was completely empty, with no way of knowing how long he'd had a dry throat.

But now, he is pretty well aware that he has me wrapped around his left front paw. I know that when he gets excited all of a sudden, I go through three possibilities and ask, hungry? thirsty? outside? Whichever one he needs, he wags his tail, jumps up and twirls around and gets all excited. Whichever ones he doesn't need, he either stops wagging his tail or just does a fantastic ice sculpture impression and freezes in place. It's pretty impressive, I think.

Later at night though, he can get a little cryptic because he's hungry, thirsty AND has a full bladder, but isn't sure which is most important. Like a few minutes ago, he ran outside, but then ran inside right before I closed the door. I got him food and he ate two kibble bits then looked at me pleading. So I put on my shoes (muttering "sheesh the things I do for you.." not really minding so much though) and walked out into the front yard with him, which has his favorite spot to mark. Then we went inside and I gave him a piece of leftover pork (he's been a good dog today, he needs a lot of meat, he's a boy), which prompted him to race around the house about two times after finishing it, then he went and finished his dry dog food (gross) and slurped half the water bowl. Of course, now he's back on the sofa and trying to wedge himself between me and the computer. Thanks buddy. You're welcome on the food by the way.

But there is nothing like having a dog as a companion. Yes, humans talk with you and sometimes make YOU food, but the loyalty and unswerving love and dedication a dog has for you is unmatched by any human. I don't know that I'd want a husband as dedicated as my dog is to me, but I'll take my dog any day. I've had a tumultuous few years, and he's lived with my aunt for a while, he's lived in Seattle, in Deer Park, with my parents, in Idaho, and now in Spokane with a crazy cantankerous dog who alternates between sucking up and growling at him for no reason. And yet he never trades me in for a newer model. Even though he loves my parents now too and jumps on them to be petted, I'm always his priority when I walk in the door. If I had a husband like that, I'd feel selfish and perhaps a bit guilty, but with a dog I just feel loved and wanted. There's a dog shirt at Target I thought about getting that says "Better than a Boyfriend." Got that right.

Hiro sleeping. Look at his little paw tucked under his chin and tell me that's not adorable. A mother's love..

I have a favorite blogger. I first discovered her on a lark when she wrote a parenting blog for Parents.com or something (and I was like, 19, and in no way interested in having kids, so who knows why I was there), and I followed her when that blog ended and she moved to a private blog. It's kind of funny because I've never met her and rarely even post a comment to her blogs, but I feel like I know her because her son wasn't even a year when I started reading, and now he is 4 years old with a sister. She is a hilarious writer too and my poor friends, mother and former fiance had to suffer with me as I read passages aloud from her blog.

Anyway, I bring her up because she recently recommended a book: What We Have by Amy Boesky. It is a memoir, so I was immediately interested. I found it at the library last week(I love our Spokane County library, they are so well stocked!) and just finished it last night. It is the story of a woman who has lived her life in fear of ovarian cancer. Every other woman in her family has died of the disease before the age of 50, and she and her two sisters have always known it was coming. It's a wonderfully-flowing book that follows her life and family interactions and how the big cancer target has altered who they are. It is well-structured and I often forgot I was reading a memoir, because it moves like a novel. I felt like I knew her at the end of the book and was rooting for her family to beat the cancer curse. Anyway, this review is sounding like I copied it from Emily's review, because she loves memoirs too, but if anyone is looking for an engaging read, "What We Have" is it.

I've been reading a lot lately. Ever since me and the fiance broke up, I've been throwing myself into books. Perhaps because he and I watched a lot of movies, but I think a lot of it is, books make me fully engage myself. Movies, I usually have to do a craft or fold laundry or something to keep from getting bored (a whole other post there), but books, I have to fully concentrate on what's going on.

I got really into the Star Wars books a few months ago. It's nerdy, I know, but this entire world created and detailed is really kind of fascinating. Plus, after the breakup, they were comfortingly devoid of romance. But alas, I caught up to the newest book in the sub-series I enjoy, and now have to wait until the next book is released at the end of this year. So Star Wars is done for the moment.

I've always enjoyed memoirs. I was thinking about why that was earlier today. I don't like biographies much, and I'm not really a non-fiction type of person, normally. But I love memoirs, because they are written by real people, who aren't always trained authors and who don't (hopefully) recreate their life just to tell a better story. It is what it is.

Despite my love of reading, I'm pretty selective on my choices. I don't have much patience for "the classics." Dickens, Shakespeare, even Hemmingway, I don't enjoy. They are too flowery for my taste, and I know it's mainly because they were written 200+ years ago, but I just don't enjoy taking an hour to read one page. I learned to read at an early age and I learned to read fast, because I enjoy the story, not individual words, and I want to find out what happened! That's why I love rereading books, because there are often things I skimmed over the first time. It's like a whole new book each time. Because my priority is the story, it makes sense that memoirs are interesting to me. It's someone telling of their life. Plain and simple. No allegory to interpret, no two-paragraph description of the freaking sunset, just the story. And you know what? There must be a lot of fantastic book editors and ghost writers out there, because there haven't been many memoirs that my critiquing mind has found issue with. I worked for a newspaper, and the average person is a crappy writer. They do too much or not enough, etc. A majority of my day was spent rewriting press releases to a readable format. I have a pretty careful eye and I've caught mistakes in many a paperback novelist's book (Danielle Steel is the worse when it comes to editing. It's like the editors just stamp it good to go without glancing at a single page), but rarely do I find glaringly obvious mistakes in memoirs, even more subjective issues like sentence structure or flow. Perhaps because this is someone's life. This is their legacy, if you will, not just the newest $7.98 Walmart paperback.

That's why I like memoirs. If someone is willing to take the plunge and tell me why their life is worth putting on paper, I'm willing to take a few hours to care.

The tech generation

I'm going to take a moment to reflect on the so-called technology generation. Now I'm 23, and I was one of the first people in the eighth grade to get a cell phone. But when I got to high school, it was becoming more popular. However, texting was still not a trend until I was older. I didn't even learn how to text until my last year of high school or so, and I got my first QWERTY keyboard phone less than a year ago. That being said, I feel like I was fairly on track with other people my age. People about 5 years younger than me, fresh out of high school now, have probably had phones since they were in middle school, if not younger. Phones aren't really a novelty anymore like they were when I was in the eighth grade. For younger people today (referring to middle/high school ages up until about mid-20s) is assumed that you have a cell phone and that said phone receives texts, and 99 percent of the time, that assumption holds true.

I feel pretty tech savvy, but at the same time, I have resisted the urge to constantly have my cell phone with me. I do depend on it for quite a bit beyond communication (alarm, clock, games, etc), but I do my best not to text constantly. As I type this, I think my phone might be in my purse in the kitchen, but I'm not sure. I know I haven't checked it in 2 hours, and I'm good with that.

I went out with a group of people last night, most of whom were younger than me, some who were younger than my 20-year-old brother. And several of us had not met others in the group before last night, so there were some awkward moments when conversation died.....OR THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN IF EVERYONE STOPPED PULLING THEIR PHONES OUT AT EVERY LULL. I was amazed at how, as soon as people stopped talking for a moment, no fewer than 3 people would pull out their phones, and not only check it for messages, but actually respond right then and there. I'm of the class that believes if you're physically with people, pulling out your phone for any reason that's not directly related to those people (ie. calling an errant friend to meet up with you all somewhere) is frowned on. Clearly, I'm getting old.

The worst part was, since there WERE some conversation lulls (and music was loud and made it hard to converse anyway), instead of making more efforts to talk with the others, I too am embarrassed to admit I found myself pulling out my phone to text other friends not there. AND I COULD HAVE WAITED. It's not like telling a friend about the lame-o music was important. But when everyone else is texting, what do you do?? Stand around awkwardly while they finish? Yes. I suppose I should have, just for the principle.

My former fiance had this problem. We would be sitting at Pizza Hut, and rather than sit in silence or talk to each other, he would be texting other people. It got to the point where sometimes I would text him, as we're sitting across from each other, just to get him to interact with me instead of other people not present.

Neilsen conducted a year-long survey on cell phone use that I read about a few weeks ago that determined that teenagers in the U.S. (ages 13-17) sent an average of 1,742 text messages per month, which not surprisingly, is the highest of any age group. The next youngest age group (18-24) only sent an average of 790 texts, which is a significant drop, but as age goes up, the average number of texts goes down. Interesting, yes, but not surprising. I was interested to learn though, that the 18-24 group made the highest average number of calls, at 265. I guess we still value talking to people, somewhat.

Until last night, I wasn't sure though, how results like this would play into everyday life. So teenagers text a lot. Who cares? Some people say it's a good thing because they're keeping in touch more often, and quite a few of those texts are probably to mom and dad. Well, I don't know what it may translate to in the future, but I'll tell you right now, compared to my days of being 17-18 and hanging out with people I'd never met before, last night felt a lot lonelier.

finding my street corner again

I need to start blogging again. I promise I will. Me and Calvin had moved to Lewiston and our place didn't have internet, then I got a job working for the Lewiston Tribune (awesome job, just didn't pay anything worth living off of) and was too busy to care about a blog.

Then me and Calvin broke up a few weeks ago, one month before our wedding was to take place. Enough on that.

So now I'm back at my parents' home in Spokane, where Quest provides high speed Internet and my new job at Northern Quest Casino/Hotel hasn't started up yet. and i'm putting off going through my stuff to store, donate or organize.

Right now, my parents are packing for an overnight trip to Nelson, BC, Canada, where they will drop my brother off at his new place. He is going to school at Selkirk College, in the ski resort management program. And let me just say this. WHY is it so bleeding hard to get a cell phone that works in both the USA and Canada without paying $1.49 a minute roaming fees and 75 cents a text? Apparently my brother has signed up with a prepaid verizon phone, and they assured him there are no crazy roaming fees. BUT I did lots of research last night and I'm convinced he will probably have some surprises on his first bill. Oh well, it's HIS PROBLEM! Live and learn, that's what I say. Just like he is set on getting a full sized bed for his room (in an apt he's sharing with 3 other guys), but believe you me, getting a full sized bed in a college apartment is easier said than done. I would have LOVED to have a larger bed in college (thank you, 3 years of twin beds on bed risers, for my fear of rolling off the bed in my sleep) but there's just a lot of logistics. a) a twin bed is cheaper, b) twin beds in a college town are generally easier to find, c) sheets for twin beds are cheap and come decorated with cartoon characters, and d) have you ever tried to lift your own queen-sized mattress? Even with two people, it ain't easy. I hope he makes good friends with his roommates and that they are big, strong guys.

So it's now 2pm, Nelson is about a 3 hour drive from Spokane, and HAVE THEY LEFT YET?? Nope! They are still puttering around throwing stuff in boxes (well, my dad is running errands for reasons only known to him) and my brother is still cleaning his room (as predicted by me and disputed three days ago by him, simply packing to go to college does not mean all of the trash in your room magically disappears), and I'm sitting here on my computer. Bored out of my mind but waiting for people to leave so I can have some peace and quiet!

Anyway. I'm sure I'll be posting a lot here because I have something like 6 friends in the world. 5 of them live nowhere near Spokane (Alaska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Michigan, see I wasn't kidding) and one WON'T CHECK HIS FACEBOOK AND HE LOST HIS PHONE AND NO ONE ELSE WILL RESPOND TO MY TEXTS BECAUSE I PROBABLY BORED THEM TO DEATH BUT HE IS STILL NEW TO MY WORLD SO I KNOW I DIDN'T KILL HIM YET. Yes I'm talking to you Skyler.

Welcome to my street corner.