Zoë is quite the chewer. We’ve supplied her with tons of toys and chews, and she’s destroyed a good number of them, along with quite a few cat toys. We’ve been pretty lucky furniture-wise, and she’s only chewed the corner of one end table, and we put a quick stope to that (with a lot of bitter apple spray).

Zoë can go through a small rawhide bone in a couple of hours. It’s almost frightening. Often, though, she’ll chew down one knot and the middle section, then keep the remaining knot around for days. It’s rather disconcerting to step on one of those after she’s been at it. Then they’re warm and slimy.

I’ve been careful in the toys I’ve picked out for her. I want them to be reasonably sturdy and without small parts that she could chew off and swallow. The more tattered ones I end up taking away because she likes to gut them and rip out their stuffing. Sometimes, it looks like a stuffed animal massacre has taken place in our game room. The few toys I’ve been able to repair were ripped apart again within a matter of minutes of giving them back to her.

One of those, a cute stuffed gorilla with a screech box inside, is a particular favorite of hers. She chewed off his little nose, so I put him in the sewing room until I could repair it. Every time Zoë went in there and saw the ape, she’d grab him and play, so I finally stitched the nose-hole closed, and it didn’t look half bad. I gave the ape back to Zoë, and she was happily slamming it around and making it screen within minutes. A couple of days later I caught her chewing on the severed arm of the ape. Her violent flailing had ripped it right off! I took the arm away but left her the rest of the ape. One night, she went to town on it and totally chewed off its face. What’s left of the ape looks like a horror movie prop.

She really loves the noise it makes, so I reached down through the gaping face-hole and pulled out the screech box. I put it into another toy of hers which has a velcro-fastened opening for replacing the noisemaker, and she was in heaven. Her little blue pig now squeaked AND squealed.

Unfortunately, Zoë doesn’t limit her chewing to her toys and treats. I put her harness on her last week in preparation for taking a walk, left her unattended for 10 minutes, and when I came back, she’d chewed through a dangling part of the harness, thus destroying it. At the same time that we bought her a new harness, I picked out a new collar for her as well because she was outgrowing her old one. Yesterday while she was in the back yard, she slipped the collar (which she does often), and spent the night ‘naked.’ This morning I went out to find the collar, and she’d chewed it up as well! I can understand why she chewed at the harness. The dangling cord was either annoying or tempting. But it’s not like the collar was uncomfortable or restrictive. It was clearly loose enough for her to slip out of, so I guess she was just bored.

Now, I need to get her another collar, and I don’t know if I should go with nylon again, or a heavier leather collar. Whatever I get, maybe I should coat it with bitter apple.

For several months I’ve been having problems with my desktop pc. It didn’t like being shut down and it would often take multiple attempts to get it restarted. Sometimes, I wouldn’t be able to boot it again until a day or so later. At one point, the motherboard complained of not having enough battery power, so Dale swapped out the battery with one from a spare motherboard. While it didn’t complain about the battery anymore, it still had power issues.

About a month ago, the computer would power up, but not finish booting. My 3.5″ floppy drive had died so we couldn’t boot from a floppy. Dale and I gave in and made a trip out to Fry’s. We bought a new floppy drive and a new CD-rom drive (my old one was very old and slow). We also bought a fan for the computer case, because Dale thought the motherboard might be getting too hot and causing problems. With a working floppy drive and a cooled-off motherboard, Dale was able to get my computer running again.

Two weeks ago, I had to reboot after upgrading a program, and my pc refused to boot again. Dale and I messed around with it for a couple of days. Finally, Dale decided it was the motherboard, so we went to Fry’s and bought a new one. (My processor and motherboard had been a package deal from Fry’s and were less than a year old. A crappy life span for those parts, but they weren’t exactly high-end.) The new motherboard was supposed to be quality, and it was the last one in stock, so we took that as a good sign. We also invested in a 2-year extended warranty. We brought the new motherboard home, Dale coached me as I swapped out the old one. I noticed that there was dust on one part of the board and wondered aloud if it had been a returned item. It was then that Dale noticed the sticker on the box. The motherboard had indeed been previously returned, but Fry’s had certified it ‘as good as new’,

The new board in place, I turned on the computer. Same damn problem. Couldn’t boot. Dale was surprised, but then thought it might be the cpu after all, so the next day we went back to Fry’s and bought a new cpu and a fan for it. Came home, swapped cpu’s. Still no boot!

Dale started mixing and matching old and new computer parts and finally got my pc to run using the old motherboard and the new cpu, so we start thinking that the ‘like new’ motherboard didn’t work after all.

At this point, my pc’s been down for most of three days.

The next day, Dale and I took the new motherboard AND cpu back to Fry’s. While the customer service guy is testing the board to see if it is defective, a customer walks up to the counter behind us. I noticed he’s returning the same motherboard we’re returning. Dale walked over to ask him what his problem was, and the guy says he couldn’t get it to post.

15 minutes or so later, the customer service rep concludes that the motherboard is fucked. And there are no others in stock. We could either return the board and service plan for a refund, then buy a new board, or we could have them truck in a board from the Houston store. Oh, or we could have the display board. (Hah!) We decided to go ahead and wait for a new board to come in. This was last Monday. We were told the board would be in on Thursday.

I spent that week afraid to power down my pc. Early Thursday the store called. Dale went to Fry’s again, taking along my new cpu, and had them test the cpu and motherboard together. It worked, so Dale came home with the new board AND a new case for me.

Once again, I got in there and swapped out the boards. This time, though, we only hooked up the power supply, power button, and monitor. Happily, we turned on the computer.

And absolutely NOTHING happened. The computer wouldn’t turn on at all.

OK, we knew the cpu worked. We knew the motherboard worked.

Dale took them and hooked them up to his case, and they posted.

The new fucking case was bad.

Thursday evening, Dale and I hauled the case, motherboard, and cpu back to Fry’s. Fortunately, the customer service rep took our word that the case didn’t work and just let us pick up another one. Dale made sure they tested the new case with my motherboard AND cpu before we left the store with them.

Got home, I hooked up everything in the new case, and guess what? It wouldn’t post.

Dale fiddled with it and finally figured that my OS didn’t like all the changes in equipment. We found the CD and did a repair, and by Friday, my pc was finally working again.

So, upgrading/repairing my pc took two weeks, a new 3.5″ drive, a new CD-rom drive, a new cpu and fan, two motherboards, two cases, and over half a dozen trips to Fry’s. Not to mention almost $500 for all the new parts. But finally, I have a fully functioning pc that I can shut down without fear.

*knock on wood*

He brought my tired, achy, cranky ass Sudafed and a chocolate cake. I am on the road to recovery. (And a fatter ass.)

I attended a friend’s baby shower last Saturday. One of the activities at the shower was to have everyone decorate a onesie (one-piece outfit for baby). We were given plain white onesies and several bottles of puffy fabric paint. It only took a few minutes of consideration before I knew how I was going to decorate mine.

I had a lot of fun with this and thought it was a really great idea. If I ever have a baby, and a baby shower, I want to do this!

You can see the other wonderful onesies in the shower photo gallery.

A friend of mine found two stray dogs on his front lawn. He and his wife have been caring for them, but due to circumstances, they can’t keep them.

Please visit Alex’s site for more details, and feel free to spread the word.

Help Margo and Miles

I have some friends who post occasionally about a weird dreams they’ve just had. Well, I don’t have ‘normal’ dreams. ALL of my dreams are weird. Really really weird.

Take last night, for example.

I had a dream involving a one-legged Martin Sheen trying to put out a flaming wad of $100 bills.

I’m finally done uploading, resizing, red-eye-eliminating, and captioning!

We’re having a Halloween Party tonight. The webcam will be on and broadcasting starting at about 8 pm CST, so tune in to see the freak show.

Many many thanks to everyone who gave me music ideas, especially Kami who sent me several CDs!