Chin Up

It has been a fair amount of time since I have last felt the need to post on my blog. This is mostly because I am a lazy person by nature, but also because my life has not been so extraordinary as to need to be blogged about.

It has been hot and humid here for the past few days, and that generally makes me an unattractive person. We have turned on the air conditioner for Kobold, who has had no time to adjust to the sudden temperature spike and has been a very lazy dog indeed. He languishes most of his time away laying on either the bathroom or kitchen floor tiles, panting away and looking anguished-ly at me whenever I walk by. Apparently the apartment is still not cool enough for him? Kobold may be a winter dog at heart, who knows. He will have to learn to suffer with some heat, though.
I will keep him well-watered in the interim.

Patrick and I went grocery shopping today, and since it was there, we stopped first by Petsmart. Kobold recently tore up his rope toy, which was fine because with it in threads, the risk of him swinging around a heavily knotted rope and bashing us in the heads was much less a threat. Unfortunately, Patrick and I refused to pull half-digested strings out of his butt when we walked him, so we threw it away.
We learned our lesson and got him a (hopefully) longer-lasting bouncy-ball-honeycomb-thing that he seems to like. We also picked up a head collar for walking him, and a mesh muzzle to start training him to STOP BARKING ALL THE DAMN TIME IT IS UNNECESSARY. Head-collars work in an interesting way to divert the energy of a dog that tugs on the leash. There is a loop that goes around the snout and sits snugly (but not restrictively) up near their face. This is attached under the chin to a collar that fits around their neck. The leash attaches under the chin as well. In this way, when the dog tugs on the leash, it redirects them to the side and frustrates the hell out of them until they learn that pulling away is a useless thing to do.
The muzzle is a necessary training object because Kobold seems to think that any time the guy upstairs is moving around after dark, it is a reason to bark loudly and incessantly. Another good reason is when he hears someone outside. Anyone. At any distance. The muzzle goes on when he won't stop barking, and comes off when he's calmed down. He also gets a treat when it comes off, to remind him that the behavior he was exhibiting not only merits removing the torture device he hates so dearly, but also a treat because he is doing good things that we like.

My progress on Evenstar is being made slowly, since I feel no need to rush and don't want to. I don't want to make a mistake and rip out again. On the other hand, my sweater is making good progress as it is a mindless sort of knit. I'm about 2/3 up the front, with the back complete. From there, I make two sleeves, a hood, stitch it all up, and add the edge around the neck and hood.

However, for now there will be very little of anything besides video games. The Halo: Reach beta just dropped and Patrick, Bob, Caryn, Ben and I are keen to check it out. The game itself releases this fall, so the beta will be a great way to play around with it and see if we like it (unfinished as it may be) enough to preorder any of the special releases. Halo itself is an Xbox first-person shooter game that we are all rather fond of. I won't go into the details since I think they bore most normal humans, but the Reach beta will be a joyous time for us.

You say you're down
You can't lose that frown
Live sucks, what else is new?
That's tough, there's not much you can do.
You're not the only one
Not having any fun.
I've got a funny feeling
That we're all born to lose
I've got a funny feeling
That this life ain't worth living
Through.
~Reel Big Fish "Cheer Up"