Roxy training diary month 30
November 2005

Shredded Box of Shredded Wheat

I had rented some "rock skis" since it's early in the season and I didn't want to ruin my good ones.  I was in Alpine Sports returning the rock skis when I decided, based on my experience Thursday, to buy a helmet.  (I still have a scar on my scalp where I smacked myself but good on an icy patch.) 

I've been coveting a Bad Lieutenant helmet.  Here's why.  When we were kids, we were watching a cowboys & Indians movie on our old B&W TV.  Dad (who had a scar on his head from when he was a roughneck in the oil fields) convinced Lisa (who was maybe 9 at the time) that the scar was from when Indians had captured and almost scalped him, but that he escaped just in time.  She believed him.  So, I figured I could convince the snowboarders (these helmets are big with the 13-to-18 crowd) that I got the helmet in WW I fighting on the Marne.  Poison gas attacks and everything. 

My plans were laid low when I discovered that the helmets only come up to size L, and I need an XL.  So I ended up with a different helmet.  I trust it will protect my head just as well, but I don't have a good story to tell on the lift when I'm forced to ride with shredders.

Dylan has been taking an unhealthy interest in the recycling bin.  I knew one day it would come down to this.  Irony alert: the green box at left that is in a million little pieces once held shredded wheat.  I think Dylan is trying to say, "you should take me up shredding when you go skiing."  Dylan definitely has the shredder (snowboarder) personality.  Maybe I could train him to slide.  Wouldn't that be something to see: me on skis and Dylan on his board.  I could probably work out a way to steer it with ropes or something.  Hmm.

Shredded Sunday Supplements

Final Resting Place for the Recycling Bin

Shredded Milk

Nov 26.  Let it snow.

As noted below, it hasn't snowed much here, until today.  We had some flurries earlier in the month, but today's snowstorm will be the first significant snowfall since we moved here.

It was Roxy's first snow ever, and she spent a good bit of time investigating the ground to see exactly what was going on.

Annie has seen snow before.  She wouldn't go off the porch.  She knows it's not right. 

Last night, I went to the first Weber State women's basketball home game.  They lost to Air Force, but it was a good time anyway.  I can get into games free with my Weber ID, which is pretty cool, and we live about a half-mile from the Dee Events Center, so I just walked up, presented my ID, got a seat right next to the player's seats (just like Jack Nicholson at a Lakers game), talked to AD Jerry Graybeal, talked to Rosemary and Lucky Conover, and then settled in for the game. 

Roxy's discovery for today: snow is slippery.  No pictures, but it was funny.  She didn't fall or anything, but she did have some trouble with traction as she ran up the hill when I called her.

I made cocoa with Splenda and skim milk for the first time tonight.  It was not bad.

It's Not Right.

Roxy's First Snow

Ski Season Opens; NaNoWriMo Season Closes                

Nov 24.  Two things of consequence happened today.

1. I opened the ski season at Snowbasin.  It was all man-made, and just one real run operating, but I skied.  Badly, and with some difficulty, but I skied. 

I found a new use for my Reebok Pit Bulls, a turf shoe I bought a long time ago for doing agility in the mud.  Not much mud here, and they never were very useful for agility, but they make a great shoe to bite into snow at ski areas when you are making your way from the parking lot to the lift.  No more clomping around in ski boots.  It was all kind of theoretical, as the only snow that was around was in a 40-yard-wide strip that they laid down the east side of Mt. Ogden.  It was totally and completely man-made.

The morning went really well.  I was stoked.  I was having a lot of fun.  The crowd was pretty sparse when the lifts opened at 9 am, got much thicker around lunchtime, then thinned out again about 1 pm. 

November 24

I'm a winner!

50,395 words

Notable achievement today:

Passed the finish line in a rain of Red Herrings

I had a bad run about 1:30 pm.  I totally wiped out and banged my head on the ice.  It hurt.  I swore.  A couple of snowboarders helped me retrieve my equipment, which was pretty much strewn across the mountain.  I decided that my legs had gotten pretty tired, which was why I fell, but I'm pretty serious about getting back up on the horse.  So, I took one last gondola ride up the mountain, skied down (being very tentative, which made it not much fun) and then went home about 2 pm.  I had hoped to ski from the 9 am opening to the 4 pm close, but I was just wiped out.  That meant I got home two hours earlier than planned and got an early start on NaNoWriMo...

2. After I got home, I started banging away at NaNoWriMo and actually crossed the 50,000 word "finish line" at almost exactly 10 pm Thanksgiving night.  They turn the validator on tomorrow at noon PST, and then I can go pick up my certificate.  You can find my NaNoWriMo profile here.  There's an excerpt from my "novel" and links to other interesting NaNoWriMo tidbits.  I think the final novel will be about 60,000 words but I don't know when those last 10,000 words will be written.  It badly needs editing, too.

Yes, I saved a copy to a CD.

Pit Bulls for Snow

Shredbetties Unite

The Run Ahead

Nov 23.  If you purchase music CDs and play them (or attempt to play them) on your computer, then please read this important announcement.  (Look at the entry under November 15.)   This version of the story is at Alexa.com, but I have read mainstream media reports about this.  Horrible. 

I, too, have experienced not being able to load music I paid for because of some goofy software that is bundled with the CD.  Shouldn't music companies give me an incentive to actually buy music that I load onto my iPod, instead of swiping it through file sharing sites?  I am that rare person who has actually bought every single byte of digital music that is loaded on my 30 GB iPod.  This punishes people like me.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I highly recommend this article by the Dalai Lama, which was originally sent to me by my cool sister Lisa.  Thanks, Lisa.  You will need to register (free!) for the NY Times site.  If you don't want to do that, here's a quote:

"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change."

Compare to this:

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God; you just rejected him from your city."

If you think God reads opinion polls, see how your religion stacks up, popularity-wise. 

I'm disappointed, as I'm sure Greta von Plant is, that FSMism ("pastafarianism") does not show up on this list.  The link between global warming and the decreasing number of pirates is a core belief of FSMism, yet this year, with pirate activity on the rise, we had more hurricanes than any previous year.  Is Pastafarianism strong enough to survive this challenge to its most basic tenet?  We'll see.

November 23

6,359 to go!

43,641 words

Goal 38,333

Notable achievement today:

In desperation and totally blocked, wrote utterly pointless sex scene just to get my word count up

November 22

Broke 40,000

40,092 words

Goal 36,667

Notable achievement today:

Red herring delivery arrived!

Nov 22.  My first clear memory is from 42 years ago today, when I was 5 years old and John F. Kennedy was shot.

Roxy appears to be going out of heat, but her frankly bitchy behavior will not stop.  Tonight, she pinned Annie on her back and Dylan, ever the scrapper, wanted to join in.  Luckily, I didn't get hurt in the ensuing melee, but Roxy found herself propelled into her crate at a fairly high rate of speed, not that it blunted her resolve very much.  It's upsetting to me to lose my temper this way. 

Novel writing continues.  I made up my mind to break the 40,000 word barrier today, and I made it, but just barely.  All afternoon, I was sitting in a meeting that was alternately productive and boring.  During one of the boring bits, I had a vision: the Red Herring delivery truck, a huge 18-wheeler, visited and suddenly my Red Herring drought was over.  Not a moment too soon.  A mystery such as the one I'm working on needs a constant supply of Red Herring to keep the narrative going.  I was getting worried there.

Less than 10,000 to go.  The end is in sight.  I hope to finish by Friday, but that will depend on future deliveries of the fish that keeps me in business.  I don't know if they deliver on Thanksgiving, too.

Good vs. Great

Nov 21.  I came across an odd thing this weekend while I was on my Planned Weekend Writing Binge.

Part of the philosophy of NaNoWriMo is to tie up your Internal Editor and throw him (or her) in the closet, bound and gagged, so you can spew out the 50,000 words you need to chalk up a "win".

"Well," I thought to myself on one of my writing breaks, "we knew that already, because 'the great is the enemy of the good'."

Meaning that, if you try to achieve perfection, you'll get bupkes.  (Note this is the second Yiddish word in two days.  Oy vey.)

I wondered if I got that quote right.  So, I went to Google and typed in: great good enemy

I got back a bunch of hits that said, "The good is the enemy of the great."  Which has the opposite meaning: if you settle for merely good, you'll never be great.

Hmm.

I typed in the phrase: "The good is the enemy of the great" in quotes.

155 hits.

I typed in the phrase: "The great is the enemy of the good" in quotes.

78 hits.

So, a minority of people think, as I do, that you should just get on with it.  Twice as many think you should not even start unless you intend to be perfect.  I find that profoundly depressing, in the same way that I'm depressed when "my" candidate loses 2-1 in an election.

All we know at this point is that Good and Great don't get along with each other.  Probably never will.

I fixed the graph so it more accurately reflects the progress of my writing.

November 21

Slightly ahead of pace

37,153 words

Goal 35,000

Notable achievement today:

Just good, not great, writing

Nov 20.  I've been busy NaNoWriMo'ing, so I haven't had time (or the spare words) to catch up on the RoxyLog.

November 20

Planned Weekend Writing Binge completed

34,614 words

Goal 33,333

Notable achievement today:

wrote epilogue and ending

Annie Slumbers

If you're interested in my NaNoWriMo novel, then you can see an excerpt here.  If that whets your appetite for the whole thing, then you'll have to wait until I finish this first draft at least.  I can always use feedback on plot and character development.  I'm pretty good in the copyediting department already, so I know when I'm using a comma splice and probably doing it on purpose.

If you like the excerpt and want to read the whole thing when it's written (not done, because that's going to mean editing and rewrites, and all I promise is that there will be a lot of words on the page when you see it), then email me and ask to be put on the mailing list for the first draft.  I warn you of two things: it will be rough (it's a first draft) and there are some adult-type scenes and language in there. 

This weekend, I managed to get my word count up to the standard pace: you want to write 1667 words per day, every day, but of course I got a late start with the grant applications going on.  Now I can "relax" and write a little bit each day, instead of having to binge-write like I have been since Nov 13.  We mailed off the grants Nov 12, and I started writing my novel in earnest the next day, as you can see from the graph.  It feels good to finally catch up with the "pace".  Now all I have to do is finish the darn thing.  I wrote the ending today, and I'll go back and "backfill" some parts that I just didn't feel like writing.

Some of our work is bearing fruit.  It looks like we got a $1 million directed appropriation for the Planetarium.  Stacy is deserving of this, and I'm thrilled for her, plus it helps my bottom line since I supervise Sponsored Projects.

Annie and I took the time to go for a walk.  I've not been keeping up with my exercise, and it's starting to show when I climb on the scale.  Now that I'm not locked into sitting on my tuchas writing all evening, I can get some physical activity mixed in with my day.  I want to go to Snowbird when they open Nov 24, even though I know it will be a mud-and-rock skiing experience.  I'm just itching to get my ski ya-yas out.

Nov 14.  Roxy's picture appeared on her OFA webpage today.  I had paid $10 and sent it in, but hadn't heard that they had accepted it until Rosemary emailed me and told me to go look.

I still haven't heard from PennHip yet.  I check the mailbox every day, except Sundays and Holidays.

I know you're all wondering, "How is Jim doing with his NaNoWriMo project?"  Well, here's a graph.  I made some progress today, as you can see.  This is only my third day of writing, and I'm pushing 10,000 words, so I'm hopeful I can catch up with the pace (red line) and get back on track for 50,000 words in the next week or so.  Greta von Plant started her novel today.  It's not too late for the rest of you, just click on the NaNoWriMo icon below to get signed up.  I hope you can write fast; you'll need to hit 3333 words a day to finish on time.  I'm getting about 3000 words a day; you can too.

November 15

12,205 words

Goal 25,000

Notable achievement today:

finished horrid Star Trek fan-fic parody

Nov 13.  Dee Dee reports that Sheena, the Topeka Correctional Facility Stumpy-Tailed Cattle Dog, has been adopted.  I'll take down the link now.

Two finger-related events today.  The half-scab, half-cotton construction on the end of my finger separated from me today.  It had been giving me trouble the last couple of days, getting caught on things and causing me a great deal of pain and embarassment from bleeding all over stuff.  Nothing like Tuesday, though.  It was interesting to see it for the first time in five days, though. 

I finally found finger cots in the store.  Here's something creepy, though.  It was an Albertson's, and they were in Jackson, Mississippi for something like two years before they gave up.  I think it was in 2003.  So the checker asks me for my card; I don't have one.  She wants my phone number.  So, I think, what the hey, and give her the number in Jackson.  It works.

I made some more progress on my NaNoWriMo project, but I'm way behind.  It is fun to do this, though, and I recommend it for anyone.  It's not too late to join this month, if you have an adequate supply of caffeine and free time.  I am going to try for 10,000 words this weekend, which would put me only 10,000 words behind.  Maybe I can get some evening writing done.

I was intrigued by news reports of a shopping mall riot in suburban Minneapolis.  Apparently, the riot was incited by a boy band called B5.

I read with the same horror that my parents must have when hearing about the Beatles at Shea Stadium or the Who destroying their equipment on the Smothers Brothers Show.  Except that my parents didn't have the World Wide Web in the sixties, so they weren't able to go snag a bunch of really insightful quotes and stuff from the Internet.

B5 is a band, reportedly discovered by P. Diddy/Puff Daddy/Sean Combs/The Artist Formerly Known as J.Lo's Boyfriend But Not For Long.  The five Breeding brothers are from Atlanta, and the eldest, Dustin, is 17.  He likes to sing and stuff. 

Dustin Breeding's Quotes and Stuff

"Yeah, automatically I'm going to look after my brothers just cuz I'm the oldest one. I'm going to watch out for them and stuff."
—http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p5723.htm

"It's a good feeling to be compared to the Jackson 5," said Dustin. "But then again, you know, we want to be our own group and stuff."

—http://www.mtv.com/news/yhif/b5/

"We used to do this Radio Disney contest all the time, to win tickets to concerts and stuff."
—http://www.mtv.com/news/yhif/b5/

"The last show we did there were a lot of girls fainting and falling out left and right. We had to cut our show short. A lot of girls fainting and stuff."

—http://tinyurl.com/9voh8

So when I did a quick Google search, I found lots of quotes and stuff.  What is upsetting to me, is that unlike most vocal tics people have (y'know, like, uhm, all of which I'm not immune to), this one is a written tic and stuff.  It seems to be the equivalent of "et cetera", but instead of appearing at the end of a list of two, or three, or more things, it only takes one example to be the antecedent for "and stuff".

For example, one B5 fan (or is that phan?) writes, "And for all u gurls that are really obsessed over patrick don't email me and say.. Patricks mine and stuff like that cause that pisses me off...well i hope u enjoyed my web.. and like it says..haters leave now!!! "

I'm not a hater.  More of a disliker.

Nov 12.  Roxy has ended the First Bloody Phase of her estrous, so she doesn't have to wear pants anymore, and she has the run of the house when I'm home.  She even got to sleep on the bed last night, and she's pretty happy about that.

Official word of her OFA status came in the mail today.

We got two grant applications sent in today.  Back when I was in Mississippi, I got so good at this grant writing thing that I could usually just take my time and get things done with some time to spare.  That didn't happen this time.  I absolutely hate pulling all-nighters and chasing the FedEx truck around, but I ended up doing it this time.  They're gone now, so I can relax a bit for the next 36 hours or so.

The worst part of this grant-writing thing has been the crimp it put in my NaNoWriMo experience.  When you're writing science fiction, like a grant, it really interferes with crime fiction, which is what my novel is.  Who knows if I can catch up?  I should be at about 20,000 words now, and I'm not.  I will put in some serious time Sunday and see where that leaves me.

I'm counting the days until Rosemary is here.

My finger scab keeps catching on things, and ripping, which means sharp, intense pain and another bout of bleeding.  It's annoying, but I can't stand to keep it bandaged always and I've failed to find finger cots in the drugstore.  I did find them online so I know they exist.  I might try a latex glove with the fingertip cut off, but I'm not sure what would cause it to stay in place.

Nov 10.  A photograph of Roxy's hips with OFA certification.

Remember Tom Cruise (another hunky little man) climbing on Oprah's couch and screaming, "I'm in LOVE!" ?  Well, Dylan is doing the same thing this morning, even though (presumably unlike Tom Cruise) he's neutered.

He's following Sexy Roxy around and screaming, "I'm in LOVE!"  They're rasslin' and playing at every opportunity.  Annie wants you to know that It's Not Right.

Weber State! License Plate!

Great! Great! Great!

It Was on the Tip of My Finger

Nov 9.  Today is Rosemary's birthday!

Roxy's OFA results came back: her hips are OFA Excellent!  This was a tremendous surprise, because her preliminary hip score was Fair, or two grades lower.  I always felt her prelim score was too low, but I never dreamt she would go up two grades.  We are still waiting on the PennHip results, but this is fantastic news. 

She's still in season, and still drippy.  I feel bad that she is spending so much time in her crate, but she seems to prefer that to wearing stupid training pants.

Yesterday turned out to be a bad day.  I had to get up at 5 am to take a job candidate to the airport, which was fine.  On the way back, I decided to get some flowers to cheer up an officemate who had a bad day Monday.  I got those home, and was cutting the ends of the stems when I cut the end of my left index finger off instead.

Not having a bowl of Wendy's Chili handy, I saved the piece in the refrigerator and went to seek medical help.

It was bandaged and splinted.  Not a horrible injury, but painful; there's a lot of nerve endings in there.  It'll fill back in.  But it's really hard to type with a splinted finger, especially when that finger is responsible for r, t, f, g, v and b. 

Today was better.  I made a second trip to the DMV to get my Utah title and license plate, and was successful.  So now I have Weber State plates on the dogmobile. 

Nov 6.  I started on my National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project today, about five days late, but still not as bad an episode of procrastination as in the past.  The basic idea is to write a novel in a month, a novel being defined as "50,000 words of anything you can spit out".  The idea is to get that difficult first draft out, then revise it later.

My novel is called Ten Little Novels, a ripoff of the Agatha Christie novel Ten Little Indians .  Ten would-be writers check into a small B&B on a Maine island in the off season.  The idea is to write in complete isolation.  They get stranded, and one by one they start dying.  The first character writes 1000 words, then gets killed; the second, 2000 words; and so forth.  That makes a sequence (1+2+3+4+...) of 55,000 words.  The killer is character #10, who has to write 10,000 words.  I'm getting a late start, but I have 2281 words so far.  If you beg me, I might even post up an excerpt.  I don't know how I'll write grants, and the RoxyLog, and my NaNoWriMo project, but I have to try.

Roxy discovered The Secret Garden today.  When Rosemary was out here, we fenced off an area behind the garage to keep the dogs out, not as a permanent thing but just because they were hard to find.  That worked for a good long time until today; Roxy was lost in the dark and would not come in.  In her current state, I got pretty panicked but checked every possible exit and could not see any way she would escape.  So after checking every other place, I figured it was The Secret Garden or nothing.  Sure enough, when I went underneath The Secret Garden (it's at the top of a hillside, and one has to climb from the level below to get there), she was standing above me, looking like, "WHAT?!?!?". 

She has become quite adept at wriggling out of her butterfly panties.  As I promised, here are her pictures modeling her new, larger-size panties.  These are for toddlers 38-50 lbs so they're slightly bigger than the 4T-5T we used last heat cycle.  I got some of each, just in case.  As you can see, she hates her panties.  As long as she doesn't have access to carpet, I'm leaving them off her and I will clean the floors in a couple of weeks.  No visitors in the meantime, because most people are disgusted by droplets of blood on the floor everywhere.

Another weekend, another trip to the Animal ER for Annie.  This time, as we were snuggling up for bedtime (no snuggling! says Annie), I found a crusty area right next to her eye, which had a lot of pus in it.  It looked small but deep and I was worried about the eye getting infected.  So, I called Rosemary and woke her up, then worried about it some more, then went to the Anniemal ER.  (They renamed it and might even build a new wing with the money I'm spending.)  We trimmed it up and got it cleaned out; not as deep as I had feared but I was still glad I went.  The doctor remembered us from two weekends ago and gave us a huge discount, so I got out of there with drugs and all for under $100.  However, I did only get 4 hours' sleep.  C'est la vie, I suppose.  Her ointment is named after her, too: Annie-Max.

I'll post pictures of Roxy in her new training pants (they're too big for diapers).  These come in "girls" (butterflies) and "boys" (racecars).  She hates them.

This is pretty cool:

Death by Caffeine

Death by Chocolate

I would be killed by 2207 Kit-Kat bars (but what a way to go!).  Sadly, it would only take 33 cups of my morning favorite, a large Americano with 4 espresso shots, to lay me low.  I think it's the theobromine and not the caffeine that would kill you in a chocolate bar, though.

Just for fun, try forgetting to input your weight. 

Roxy's Butterfly Panties

Annie-Max Ointment

After the ER

Sheena, Queen of the Prison

Nov 5.  Back home again. 

Roxy is still not in season yet.  She has always been a sly minx that way, and refuses to stick to any kind of schedule, whether it's house training or estrous cycles or anything else for that matter.

Dogs were locked up today while Matt Dolph, Tile Guy, did the tile work in the laundry room.  When I let Roxy out, that was that — drops of blood on the kitchen floor.  And so it begins.  Luckily, Rosemary has sent me covers for the furniture, but I need to stop at the store tonight and get disposable diapers.  When she's not wearing those, I will confine her to tiled or laminated areas of the house, because I don't want to deal with the mess otherwise. 

The guys enjoyed Ruffledale immensely, but they also seem glad to be back home.  We stopped at the Layton Grounds for Coffee (it's right next door to Ruffledale) and got a grande Americano for me and a dog biscuit for each of the guys.  They liked that too.

It may have snowed a bit while I was gone, but this morning was the first snow I have seen since moving here.  At our house, about 4400 feet, there are flurries but no accumulation.  Just a little higher, right about the level of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail (5600 feet), there is an accumulation of snow that one can see from down here on the benches.

Nothing is prettier than Mt. Ogden and Ben Lomond with just a dusting of snow at the very peak, but this is nice too.  Of course, now I am very much in the mood for skiing.  Who wants to come along? 

Rosemary will stay down in the lodge and stay warm and dry and safe and flat, thankyouverymuch.  I may join some friends in Park City for Thanksgiving skiing, if the weather and snow conditions permit.

As I mentioned in the Nov 3 entry, we visited the Topeka Correctional Facility (TCF).  I had pictures of a cattledog on disk, but my laptop has no 3½" disk drive, so I had to wait to get home to download them.  Sheena has just graduated from the TCF Blue Ribbon Dogs program.  Helping Hands Humane Society of Topeka takes dogs that are about to be euthanized, and places them in the prison to learn Basic Home Manners from Dee Dee.  She certifies them as Canine Good Citizens and then they're ready to go to their forever homes. 

Nov 3.  Chris Millard and I traveled to Wichita to look into aerospace partnerships between Weber State and industry.  While we were in the neighborhood, so to speak, we drove up to Topeka to see "graduation day" for the dogs being trained at the Topeka Correctional Facility.  As always, it's fascinating and gratifying to see the inmates working with the dogs. 

On the way back, we discovered a truckload of pigs, which of course had to be in the RoxyLog.  So here it is.

We also cooked up a scheme.  Since we were meeting Brad at the Wichita airport Thursday night, we wanted to make sure he had a warm welcome.  So, we made him a sign proclaiming him a "hometown hero".  He was, I'm sure, delighted at all the attention he received.

Chris and the Pigs

I Saw a Sign

Brad is Surprised

Brad Mortensen, Hometown Hero

Mangled Gorilla

Nov 1.  Dylan was quoted in the Standard-Examiner.  I had no idea he was going to high school, much less that he could talk to reporters.  "Conan the Barbarian" is somehow appropriate, though. 

"Junior Dylan Hoffman said his favorite [past Halloween costume] was 'Conan the Barbarian, because he's got the body that you'll never have ... gets the ladies.'"

(Scroll down to the comment from Rosemary in Jackson to see how very true this is!)

Roxy chewed the leg off a gorilla.  Really.  This house was occupied by four kids, ranging in age from newborn to maybe 5, before we moved in.  That means that one finds all kinds of toys and geegaws in the yard.

Until this morning, the best find was a tiny canvas espadrille. 

Roxy likes to eat the pine bark out of the flower bed next to the back porch.  I generally let them out to eliminate after their breakfast, and then go do something else that I think is more important at that moment in time.  This morning, I saw Roxy chomping on something in the semi-dawn and told her to drop it and come inside, thinking it was yet another piece of pine bark.

However, when she dropped it, I saw a fairly large black thing on the ground where she had been.  I locked the dogs in the house and went out in the yard to investigate.  There, where she had been, was a mangled gorilla.  Maybe it's King Kong, but it seems to be a female gorilla holding a baby by a moveable piece of fake bamboo.

It's not every day you find a gorilla with a mangled left foot in your backyard. 

Roxy is becoming increasingly difficult.  On the one hand, she is very very cuddly and often checks in with me for reassurance and petting.  On the other, she is being nasty, brutish and short with Annie.  Annie is giving it right back to Roxy, and then we have a bitch fight on our hands. 

I had to peel Roxy off Annie and use the patented ACD-Owner Cheek Lift Technique to say, in the strongest possible terms, that I did not approve of her behavior. 

Nov 1.  Jackson.   Some of the young female production editors at Lippincott's journal division in Baltimore are huge fans of the Roxylog.  Well actually they are fans of Dylan. 

After seeing the photo of Dylan by the waterfall in the October Roxylog, one person (who obviously has superb taste) wrote:  

"look how HANDSOME he is!!! I heart Dylan!!!"

I sure heart him too.