As I sat down to write this post Biscuit threw up in the other room. It was the yellow frothy kind of dog vomit. Many years ago, when I had just taken “companionship” of my first dog (as an adult) an older friend assured me that, “yellow frothy dog vomit wasn’t anything to worry about.” While that may be true in the abstract, I could have lived without it tonight.

I’ve been away from the blog for a while, though my sporks-based Wall-E review has kept sporksforall humming along. Very much like Wall-E himself.

I don’t know if I’ll return to faithful blogging through aught eight. I want to, but life gets in the way of sporks.

I’ve started a new (interim-again!) job as of two days ago. Four years ago when my boss hired me to be the interim thing that I’m now the permanent thing, I got sick. So sick that during the networking event with the University President, I stayed in my hotel room at the Marriott with fever and chills.

This year we did our slog/sling through the South early. I came back and have managed to get a massive cold (including fever and chills) and a nice case of laryngitis. Did I mention that my new job requires talking? It does. And I just don’t sound right

I mentioned to my boss that I had been sick the last time she gave me an interim job. She said, “I remember. Maybe this job change thing is more stressful than you think.” Could be, indeed. Also stressful is travel. And bombardment.

My favorite day of the “sling” is always the day Honey and I escape to the closest Spanish Moss draped city. Our usual escape is Charleston, but this year we went to Savannah.

As my few (and loyal!) readers know, I like me a National Park and will take a National Monument in a pinch. Thus, did I drag Honey to Fort Pulaski on Tybee Island.

Not brushed up on the Civil War of late? Here’s what happened. Fort Pulaski was started in 1829 to protect Savannah. (Tybee Island is 15 miles from Savannah). Savannah has always been an important port/city to Georgia and is one of the oldest cities in the Southeast. Note, please, that its importance is in no way related to Paula Dean.

Anyway, this being the 19th century and engineering being what it was, not to mention it’s bloody hot in the South in the summer, they didn’t so much finish the damn thing by 1860. South Carolina (a mere fifty miles away) seceded from the Union in January of 1861. Georgia followed suit and the governor ordered the occupation of the fort. The state then gave it the Confederacy. How kind. Lessee–”we’ll take this from the gumment (that’s how you say it) and give it to this other gumment. Yep.”

Righto, so in April of 1861, the War starts in earnest (you knew that right? April 1861 to April 1865) and the Naval blockade of Southern ports began.

Here’s the thing about Pulaski. The folks who built it: they thought it was invincible.

By November 1861, the Federals were encamped at Hilton Head and the Confederates got worried about that and abandoned land forces on Tybee EXCEPT for those at Pulaski. Whoopsie.

The Federals marched onto Tybee. The Confederates in Pulaski though they were safe. The guns of the day only went a mile and Pulaski is more than a mile from Tybee. The Union fellows, though, they had this new gun. Those Federals, always with the new guns. Must have been that industry infrastructure. They shot up the fort. Seemed like they might get to the powder magazine. 30 hours into the siege of the invincible fort, the Confederates surrendered.

The National Park Service notes, “Today the fort serves not only as a memorial to the valor and dedication of those connected with its construction, bombardment, and defense, but in a larger sense as a history lesson on the elusiveness of invincibility.”

I hope you can see that I get it. Not invincible.

I did survive that week and may yet survive my cold, my laryngitis, my new job, and my own vulnerabilities. I am certain, though, as certain as I can be, that invincibility eludes me. And I’ve never run very fast. Mofo needs to slow down and shows no sign of it.

Ok, I won’t effuse too much, but the first 30-45 minutes of Wall-E (and I think this despite the-really-full-of-kids-who-didn’t-get-that-they-were-watching-a-silent-film theater) was some of the best filmmaking I’ve ever seen.  So, go see the movie.

I need to take a moment to do a special shout-out. The movie featured one of the best EVER scenes featuring a spork:

Wall-E collects things he finds interesting and takes them back to his “house.” He finds a spork. When he goes to put it away, he has a collection of spoons on the right and a collection of forks on the left. After puzzling for a second, he places the spork between the forks and the spoons with great reverence.

Sporks deserve their own place and it should be special.

This maxim is NOT true of foons.

It’s been such a long time since I wrote a post that my browser didn’t autofill my blog address. I guess it can be said that sporksforall exists on its own without care from me, but my Google Analytics reports seem to suggest that it exists in such a state as to prompt a series of empty-answered philosophical question about whether something that doesn’t get looked at has any meaning at all.

Word to the visitor from Midvale, Utah who spent .56 of a second on the site. I don’t think my mouse clicks that fast.

Actually, to be fair, that seems to be the minimum unit of time Google Analytics calculates, so my Midvale, UT readership exactly matches my Decorah, IA and Fayetteville, NC readership. Also Arlington, VT. S’up y’all?

I shouldn’t complain, I suppose. Someone from Riga, Latvia has spent more than four minutes learning about sporks or nene or something. And I’m hoping the one minute nineteen second someone from Male in the Maldives was deeply meaningful to them. Sporksforall–perhaps now meaningful in the Maldives!

The map on Google Analytics is my favorite feature. The numbers are depressing and what I get hits on focuses more than I want it to on elephant seals and their Latin name. The map, though, gives these nice green emphases to people in their offices or on their laptops coming my way.

I heard recently about this thing the new iphone does called “document cloud” wherein one floats documents in the ether to be retrieved as needed. I pictured (as I think I was supposed to) floating excel spreadsheets–transparent and ephemeral–gently bouncing along at chest height.

The Google Map, on the other hand, makes me think of all those people in real space finding their way to me. California is dark green. I’m most “popular” there. Some states that are medium green I can explain (I have blog friends there, I said nice things about Miss Washington, etc.) Others puzzle me. I might explain away Nevada’s darker green color by physical proximity, but New Mexico is pure white (meaning no folks from Truth or Consequences–or anywhere else in our 47th state–have visited my blog at all). I should note, by the by, that I typed in New Mexico’s 47th place in their joining of the union and then confirmed I was right (which I was). January 16, 1912 was when it became a state.

Anyway, my lack of readership MIGHT be explained by New Mexicans still being mad because I didn’t initially understand that I actually had to surrender the hideous chili pepper wreath at the agricultural station. I had bought it in a moment of irony, I swear. I also gave it up willingly, and am still glad I did. Irony stops being ironic at a certain point, after all.

Hey Germany, how is it that Google thinks you are UNDER 0 seconds as an average time on the site? Negative time visits seem so, well, contrary, not to mention improbable. I took “German for Graduate Students” while I was doing my PhD. What more do you want from me. Bring it UP to 0, ok?

Anyway, wherever I go, you’ll find me here.

Ok, so more than one person has recommended yoga to me.

My buddy Shannon even has gone and gotten herself certified and everything to teach it. Dallas readers? Look her up, yo.

Anyway, Associate Professor (with tenure!) Treecup and her family belong this fabulous place out where they live that’s kind of half spa half really nice gym.

Honey and I went with Treecup and child a few weeks ago and as we were walking out, we picked up the fitness class schedule and noticed that Saturday morning they offered a class called “yoqua.” We all assumed it was yoga in the water and talked about our coming out to try it out one weekend. Treecup and family live about 45 miles away from us, which is no small jaunt when you’re trying to get to a 9am Saturday morning class.

We had plans to go this morning that looked in danger of getting derailed because Honey has a cold. Treecup suggested that she and I go and check it out sans partners.

I got up really early this morning and picked her up in time to make it to “yoqua.” I’m working up to feeling comfortable enough to try actual yoga and I figured I would try it in the water first. I’m fairly buoyant.

It turned out that the yoqua instructor had quit and not taught anyone how to teach it before she did so. We got “aqua fit” instead. We were the youngest people in the class and neither one of knew that the default fashion accessory was a visor and very large sunglasses.

For an hour we sort of jumped around in the water. It was fun and I liked our chatty instructor, though her chattiness was, to me at least, an indication of how not aerobically challenging this class was. I should also note that there was no yoga centering or anything what with the Katrina and the Waves we were jogging in the water to. “Heels down, ladies!”

Afterwards we spent some time in the jacuzzi. I am a little sunburned, so maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge the bevisored.

We did some cardio, had nice spa-like showers, and then went to lunch. In other words, a very nice day, but I’m no closer than I was yesterday to yo/qu/ga.

Om.

I got tenure.

I’ve lately been hankering for an iPhone. My current cell contract is up July 19th, not that I’ve got it down to the day or anything. I’d like to keep my number and not pay an early termination fee, so I have not yet gotten an iPhone. Still, I keep saying things to Honey like, “an iPhone will save my life.” A colleague at work has one and today I was sitting next to her in a meeting just staring at it. I think it winked at me.

Yesterday, Honey wanted to shop for clothes. I do not like shopping for clothes. At all. Not even a little. Even for clothes for someone else. While she was shopping for clothes, I tried to occupy myself. I first went to the Sharper Image going out of business sale. To say that they were picked over three days from the end of their existence is an understatement. Fixtures and gift boxes and Star Wars poker sets and some REALLY large binoculars sat around in a store that was filled with despondent looking retail clerks for whom I felt sorry.

I then wandered into Body Shop, where I discovered that they have again decided to break my heart and discontinue the bath gel I love the scent of. The world of retail has littered my life with products that I can’t live without only to then require me to live without them. Oceanus joins Coke Blak and original Fresca and Nike Long Ball Slip Ons and…

I bought some Ocean Lilly and can say definitively that it is not the same.

Finally, rather than shuffle into Old Navy and act despondent while Honey tried on clothes (though that would certainly come later), I walked into the Apple store. Oh, it is a bright and shiny place. Not in the Hemingway sense. In the bright and shiny and lovely sense. I looked at the MacBook Air. I wished (yet again) I had waited to buy my iMac until after the silver ones came out.

Finally, as if pulled by some unseen force, I found myself playing with an iPhone. Then, feeling strong and brave, I put it down and walked away. As I walked back over to the iMacs, I thought I’d mess with them a little. And, lo, there was a new product about which I did not know. It was a new Apple keyboard. It was silver and had no tiny crevasses in which bagel crumbs might lurk or lodge. It has pleasing slightly offwhite keys. And they clacked satisfyingly as I typed. I turned without another thought and picked one up. As I headed to the counter to pay, a bright and shiny Apple employee asked if I needed anything else. Did I ask him about an iPhone? I may have. Was I a little relieved when he said that they were sold out? I may have been.

As I finally shuffled (perhaps a little less despondently) into Old Navy to find Honey, I clutched my new keyboard in my hand like a beacon. And tonight, as I type on it, I can say that sometimes what you get is ok. July 19th will come. In the meantime, I have clacking. It’s unlikely to save my life, but it’s still pleasing.

I’ve never been a big fan of Paul.  You know Paul, right?  The guy who wrote all those letters.  The ones in the Bible?  That Paul.

Despite my general distrust of him, I always liked this painting depicting him.

That’s Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St. Paul which hangs in a small chapel in the back of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome.  I’m a little bit of a freaky fan of Caravaggio.  He’s always seemed, well, funny to me.  Don’t you just get the sense the the horse is looking at Paul like, “What the hell are you doing on the ground?  You know I poop down there, right?”

I spent a semester in college in Rome and wandered around from church to church with my very worn Michelin guide to the city.  Always a bit of a completest, I saw every Caravaggio in the city.  It wasn’t a singular obsession, I also saw every Borromini church in the city.

That’s St. Ivo della Sapienza.  I like how wavy it is.

Anyway, back to Paul.  I don’t much like to say what he has to say about women, among other things.  I should note that I come by my dislike of him perhaps somewhat organically.  An ancestor of mine was so enraged (relatively late in his life) about the Pauline perspective that he resigned his ordination to the ministry and began writing books trying to debunk the various epistles written by Paul as heretical.  The demand to publish these tracts was rather small, as you might expect.  So, he opened up a vanity press to publish them himself and kept it going with others’ projects of the same type.

Despite my dislike of Paul, I’ve always liked one verse.  Really, half of one verse.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.”  That’s 1st Corinthians 13:12, if you want to know.

That was the King James version.  Here’s the New International version:

“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.”

Same basic idea, though the “through a glass darkly” is the bit I like the best.

I’ve always connected it to the Platonic allegory of the cave.

“Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.”

The difference, really, is that Paul makes promises.  He suggests that at some point, we will see clearly.  Which gets me back to not liking Paul–how can I believe in the clarity when the rest of it seems so suspect?

So, art, ancestors, philosophy, and religion aside, what’s my point?

I don’t like how what sometimes goes on in my head seems disconnected from reality.  I keep trying to turn my head to see what’s reflected, but it’s always just out of view.

Last night I made us dinner while Honey vacuumed.  There is a freedom in the detached ranch that we never had in the apartment.  Vacuum anytime, night or day.  It’s not a freedom I treasure or think about much, but it is a freedom.

I made us chicken curry and rice.  For some reason, the smell of the curry didn’t appeal to me.  Honey tasted it and pronounced it fine, but I decided to doctor up mine with some soy souce and chili oil.

I was munching on my warmed up flatbread, which was tasty, and began to eat the rice and pieces of the chicken.  The chicken still tasted off to me and then it dawned on me that the chili oil was rancid.

Rancid is a very unappealing word.  Also an unappealing oil condition.

I stopped eating and for the rest of the evening felt a little (as my grandmother would have said), “puny.”

I went to bed early.  When I woke up this morning, I felt compelled to brush my teeth again immediately.

I sleep with ear plugs in to keep dog noises out of my head when I sleep.  I don’t like ear plugs, but there they were, all blue and squishy and shoved in my ear.  I started to brush my teeth.

Brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush and ear plugs rates as one of the oddest sensations I have ever experienced.  So odd I had to come blog about it.  It made my head feel as if it were vibrating independently of my body and might just float away.

The magical head vibration was a totally unexpected consequence of eating rancid oil.  Who knew?  Not that I’m going to repeat the chain of events, but I may just brush my teeth with ear plugs in on occasion when I need to slightly realign how my head and body fit together.

OK, fair warning…

This post is about poop and pee. Really. So, if that’s going to gross you out, may I suggest pineapples or nene? Those posts don’t involve poop at all and are escapist besides. Imagine yourself in Hawaii. See, isn’t that nice?

For those of you who are ready for poop, here we go:

As I have pointed out on more occasions than most people would ever want to hear, we have too many pets. It’s not that any one of them makes for “too much.” Rather, all sixteen paws add up to more paws than our four feet can manage.

Let’s have a roll call, ok?

Calif?

Ah, there she is. 14 years of fussy but sweet kitty.

Halo?

Oh, look Halo brought her meerkat lovah, in somewhat the same way that Dawn Denbo brought her lover Cindy everywhere on The L Word this season. Actually, it’s not really the same. Halo and the Meerkat only had the one tryst and it was documented on my trusty Rebel. Halo is going on six and is a svelte six pounds.

Biscuit? Scout?

We’ve been calling Biscuit “cockerdome” recently because the last time I got her groomed (really, shaved down, but it makes me feel better to have spent $50 on something called grooming than on something called shaving), I asked that the groomer to leave the top of her head alone. I wanted it left alone because it sometimes can be formed into a forelock that makes Biscuit look like a member of Spandau Ballet. We may have sung (in her “voice”) “True” a few times.

Doesn’t she kind of look like the guy on the left?

Anyway, the groomer said, “oh, you want me to leave the cocker dome.” Thus, Biscuit has become “cockerdome.” We may have noted on an occasion or two that she is “beyond cockerdome.” Ok, that was my only Mel Gibson reference, I promise. Biscuit is four.

Scout, the most junior member of the quadrapeds, is going on two. He still has a touch of puppy mange and is one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever been around.

So everyone is accounted for. Lovely.

Lately Calif has cemented her status as “pet most likely to put waste in inappropriate places.” We have one rug that gets washed with so much frequency that the washer must really feel bonded to it. Whether this plot loss is a function of senility, spite, or some combination of both can only be known by the Calif litterbox committee of one.

A few weeks ago I was wearing my slippers and Biscuit came up and started to gently remove something from the bottom of the sole. When I jerked my foot away from her, I noticed a dried piece of cat poop. I had cleaned some up earlier in the day, but must have missed this one (by conveniently stepping on it and fusing it to my slipper). I immediately threw those slippers away. It wasn’t a great loss. Still.

Biscuit manages to absent herself appropriately, but her devotion to cat poop as a snack may exceed her devotion to the squeaky football. We call it almond roca. Did I ruin almond roca for you just now? Sorry.

Halo mostly does as she should litterbox-wise, her destructive tendencies are more claw than waste based, so I need to give her some props. Ha-lo. Ha-lo.

All of this brings us to Scout. We were out-of-town last week and Scout and Biscuit went to “dog camp.” When Honey brought them home last Saturday, he ran into the house and lifted his leg and peed on the side of the couch. Since then he’s peed on the kitchen trashcan twice, my bathroom rug once, and I stopped him from peeing on one of the chairs in the living room. All this from a dog we got housebroken in two days. We’ve got theories (adolescent male dogness, a bladder infection, kennel-based psychosis, and inaccessibility of preferred backyard pee spots because of yard overgrowth). Whatever the cause, he’s making me unhappy.

Last weekend, while doing yard work in the aforementioned overgrown backyard, I found poopland. I shoveled and shoveled. There were hundreds of poops that had previously been obscured by the overgrowth.

All of these pet waste issues compound my frustration over the continued, but not catastrophic, malfunction of our champion toilet.

It won’t stop running. When your champion toilet isn’t functioning like a champion, it may be emblematic of a larger problem.

There are no simple solutions to managing waste. Therefore, I suppose that my wish for everyone is that your waste management goes smoothly. In the meantime, if you’re looking for me, I’m probably washing rugs, coaxing a toilet into stopping, or frolicking in poopland with my poop slippers.

Thus endeth the poop post, appropriately enough, in poopland.

I’m back from my travels. Here are some thoughts of a Monday morning in reference to the U.S. cities I visited.

#The Atlanta airport has too many words in its name. (Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport)

#Delta is still the best mainstream air carrier. I heart me some Lance crackers.

#Captain’s wafers with cream cheese and scallions eastbound. Whole wheat with cheddar westbound. Mmm.

#My dad’s classic car is cool, but the gas fumes made me a little sick. Did people stay a little sick from gas fumes all the time prior to catalytic converters?

#It’s weird that one of the best Philly cheese steaks I’ve ever had (and yes, I’ve had them in Philadelphia) is made by people from the Indian subcontinent at a strip mall in Atlanta.

#Getting from Atlanta to San Diego by way of LAX is a pain in the ass, but my Honey made it seem easy.

#Should you have occasion to stay at the Sheraton Marina in San Diego and the front desk person says, “we’ll put you in the Bay Tower,” please know that you will be in an entirely different hotel. And it will sucketh.

#Downtown San Diego looks a lot like Waikiki. Too much like it, really, only cleaner, less crowded, reachable by car, and with fewer one-way streets. There are fewer street performers, unless you want to count drunk people.

#Petco Park is a great place to watch a ballgame. There are no pets there. The food was good for ballpark food. None of it was kibble.

#People should not be preparing to be stupidly drunk at 8pm. The Gaslamp district was full of people whose paths were clearly about drinking a lot then getting arrested.

#Boring conferences are boring.

#Hard cider at a cool Irish pub will help make the boring conference go away. Leave early, though. (cf. drunk people)

#There are a lot of places that sell fancy cheese in San Diego.

#Most of them also have fancy jam. The jam will probably be more fancy than you want, if your jam tastes are anything like mine. The jars will be pretty, though.

#Did all the cheese stores used to be book and record stores? What will happen to the cheese stores when someone figures out how to internet market fancy cheese?

#I’m glad to be home.

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