(a) what I feel like after a tossing-and-turing night near a conehead of a dog who, not that I can blame her, had a sleepless time in her bed, a big plastic sheath wrapped cumbersome around her neck. She whined for a long while, unsettled, before dozing long enough for us to do the same. But she had me out of my bed by before six, and we cuddled up in the Lazyboy, a blanket pulled up and the plastic cone replaced with one of my headlocks; and also (b) what I almost hit driving down Ellerslie Road this morning as it came bounding out of the twilight ditch and forced me to invoke the first, probably not (but hopefully) last instance of emergency braking [...]

Sparkle curled up in the Lazyboy with me last night for a solid two hours, the election debate burning a hole in my brain, and her looming surgery (today, soon, perhaps as I write this, in fact) lingering like a brick in my mind, and completely without care in her’s. I think, last night, her biggest wonder was why I would not let her have any rawhide to chew, an addiction (if anyone wonders how to buy the love of my dog) that seems to only be increasing. She paced the room after a while, scoping out her den and the “toybox” for any little scrap of consumable chewy things, but (of course) to no avail. I only tortured her, eating a savoury taco just [...]

I realized (after the fact) that this was a recovery weekend. No travel. No visitors. No expectations. We spent some quality time with Sparkle. A few hours (and dollars) were spent at West Edmonton Mall where the hoards had reduced to a tolerable level post-holidays. We took the tree down, sad as it was, tossing it (literally) to the curb, and putting the vacuum to good work. And watched a couple odd movies, neither of which were bad, but not worth deeper analysis either. Geeks as we are, Karin and I implemented the “alpha test” of our new meal planning software this weekend. We decided, for both convenience and monetary reasons, that we needed to spend more time planning meals in advance. A scheme to [...]

It was inevitable, I suppose. After a essay-slash-manifesto of dog-food information arrived (as requested) from Karin’s wandering pal Liz this morning, forwarded for my information, Karin apparently felt compelled to finally make that vet appointment for Sparkle. It seems she’ll be having a bit of a lesson in minor surgery next week as we pay to have her maternal capacity diminshed to nearly zero. No baby Sparkles for us. But I can picture it now: that look of betrayal in her eyes as we leave her at the vet. I’m cringing about it now.

No one doubts for a moment that I was a strange kid. But those memories tend to percolate on occassion, and as such, I realized that one of my oddly notable temporal markers came due the other day. [Beep] Picture it: New Years Day 1986. I was sitting in a closet in my aunt’s house in Berkeley, California, with a large pad of art paper and the heady fumes of some colourful permanent markers. I remember this, because on that paper, with those markers, I scratched out the art of a nine-year-old writing “1986 WooHoo!” in a grafitti-esque vomit of colour. Still have it. Twenty years. Strange.

What did you do in 2005 that you’d never done before? Business Taxes. Yup. Filed a good ol’ T2 for Starkware. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Resolution: Avoiding the Walmart — and I didn’t even go in their parking lot in ’05! This year, of course. I’ll let you know how they turn out. Did anyone close to you give birth? Yup. I got a new once-removed cousin, and also first parental new-year-congrats out to Chris and Ada! Did anyone close to you die? Too nearly. Others by mere degrees of separation. What countries did you visit? Canada. Uh, well, that multiple province thing. Otherwise, none. What would you like to have in 2006 that [...]