Cranberry's Journal

I got my puppy a few months ago, and he looked like this:



Now he is a GIANT DOG... of ten pounds and 13-14 inches in height, haha. He's five months old now and I don't think he'll get much bigger; he should just fill out more. He's only gained one pound (and very little height, if any) in the past month.

( Casper pictures! )

He's a great little guy -- he was housebroken quickly and with few accidents, was sleeping seven+ hours at night without waking by the time he was 11 weeks old, has never chewed any of my belongings, doesn't chase the cats, gets along well with Crystal the papillon, and loose-leash walks and sits and "touches" with his paw very well. We've still got a bunch of obedience stuff to go through, and we need to work on his nervousness with strange dogs, but I'm very happy with him.

Thanks, nicole_anell!

1. OPEN PAINT
2. CLOSE YOUR EYES
3. DRAW A CAT

( I call him Abstrcat )

I want you guys to do it, too (in my comments if you wish)!

Early last week, my parents told me about a TV news story they'd just seen involving a woman losing her papillon in the Nova Scotia woods after a car accident. When they mentioned the dog's name, Bentley, I realized that I know the dog and his breeder. I met them at a dog show on the island this summer. The breeder, Ena, is great friends with my papillon's breeder, Jody, and Jody had talked me up to Ena at the show, telling her that she should get me to hold timid little Bentley and carry him around the arena in an attempt to get him used to other people handling him. I did, and they were surprised at how calm and comfortable he seemed. I really liked the little fluffball. So I was worried and sad when I read this story:

Pint-sized Bentley fled crash, on loose

( Full text, in case the link doesn't work )

This happened last Sunday, and NS has had some near-freezing, rainy weather since. With the weather, the nearby highway and the predators in the area, I didn't expect Bentley to survive long. But I hoped... and today, my dog's breeder sent this e-mail:

( An e-mail from Jody )

Lily and Fynne have grown quite a bit since I brought them home:





I got a new camera! Those pics were taken with my old Sony Cybershot DSC-P73, but yesterday I upgraded to a Fuji Finepix F100fd (in black). I haven't played with it much yet, but so far it's living up to the hype of taking good low-light pictures (I think both of those were at ISO 400 without flash, but 800 and even 1600 look decent). I'm anxious to try it out in full sun and at night.

I made a checkered cake today!

First I sawed two 8" cakes (that I baked last night) in half using dental floss stretched between two Lego "handles." That technique works great!



Then I cut all of my pieces into rings using the cutters I borrowed from work:



( Lots of steps! )

That was a cake I'd been wanting to try for a while, and it turned out okay for my first time. It tasted great, too!

My whole family (six of us, plus my brother Mike's girlfriend, their three-month-old baby and my papillon) flew to Toronto last week for a family vacation. I'm pleased to report that both the baby and the dog were perfect on the plane (both trips, in fact!). Crystal just napped in her Sherpa bag under the seat in front of me and Addison slept or happily played with toys. I read Meg Cabot's Airhead and Jennifer Lynn Barnes' The Squad: Perfect Cover on the plane rides, and both books (and the second Squad book, Killer Spirit) were a lot of fun. I recommend them!

On our first day in Toronto, Mom, Dad, Justin and I went to the Medieval Times. It was cheesy, but fun. The story was seriously predictable and the food was only so-so, but the horses were pretty (especially the dancing ones), the falconer was impressive, and the fighting, although obviously choreographed, was fun to watch. There were six knights in the tournament, and our section's was the blue knight, who sucked. (Seriously, he lost most of the competitions and was eventually killed.) The green knight was the best -- not only was he the hottest and the best and fastest rider, but his backstory was that he was a hired mercenary from a town full of drunkards and whores. You've gotta love that.

( The Hills After Show )

( Unauthorized contact with zoo animals may cause injury )

( Bison attack! )

( They can apparently talk to dogs, but they still won't let them into the church. )

( I even hung around Yorkville! No dice. )

I'm back home now. I start work again tomorrow, and I've been catching up on TV. Gossip Girl is still a lot of fun, One Tree Hill's ending pissed me off (and wtf, Lucas? Complete 180 from like two episodes ago, or what? I know it's been a whole summer since they aired, but it's been what, a couple days in your fucked-up show time?), and I've yet to watch ANTM or 90210 (and, based on posts on my friends list, I'm wondering if I should even bother with the latter). I "acquired" Fringe's pilot and Dexter 3.01, and they're both good.

Finally, stuff I meant to write about earlier, but didn't: I had my awesome big dog Scout put to sleep last month. He was 11, which is pretty good for a big dog, and was suffering from various health issues. It was sad, but it was the right thing to do (and that's the third time I've said that in the past year -- RIP, Biber, Patch and Scout -- so that better be the end of it). I have a Flickr and a Twitter now, and I post pics (*cough*of my pets*cough*)/text stuff to Twitter more often than I post here, so feel free to friend those. And... that's it, I guess!

My calico cat, Patch, passed away in April, less than a month shy of her 19th birthday.



( Patch's story )

After Patch died, I knew that I wanted another cat. I've had cats my whole life and the house felt empty without one! I watched the humane society website, waiting until I saw the perfect kitten. One day in early June, I did.



( Kitten story and more pictures! )

I baked a cake yesterday... an emo cake.



( Click to see his tasty insides! )

Today my dog chewed up a pamphlet for a stealth "pro-life" pregnancy center that's being built in my city. I had to try really hard not to praise her. (Unlike 90% of their pamphlets, this one wasn't about the "sanctity of life," but about marriage, and contained such gems as, "Men are territorial... Women are nesters" and "Men are work-oriented... Women have strong parenting instincts. They have an inborn desire to 'mother' and find an inner delight in that process.")

Anyway. I take many pictures of my dog and post them on Facebook. Sometimes I feel like I post too many pictures of my dog on Facebook, but then I remember that a lot of my other friends post too many pictures of their kids, and I will never have any of those (suck it, Crisis Pregnancy Center!), so they can look at my dog instead. She's cuter, anyway.

( See? Not dial-up friendly, btw. )

There. Now, is it more socially acceptable to be a crazy dog lady than a crazy cat one? I hope so.

First, you have to read this.

Back? Okay. For a while now, several of my closest LJ friends and I have been utterly appalled and deeply outraged at what we see as a growing trend of disrespect for Katie Cassidy and Lauren Cohan, recurring regulars on The CW's Supernatural. Inspired by the brilliant campaign linked above, fox1013, puppetoflove and I have collaborated on this icon:



Please: Take this icon. Circulate it. Use it wherever people are talking about Supernatural, or Lauren or Katie, or women in general, or possibly-faux British accents, or demons, or daemons, or puppies, or British daemon puppies, or... hell, just use it as your default icon, okay? Awesome. Anyway. Encourage others to use it to show their support of the idea that these girls deserve RESPECT. Help us UNIFY the fandom behind this one simple, basic ideal.

Please Do Not: Affiliate this icon with any specific wank you found disrespectful (such as Katie's recent drunken non-driving scandal, which you should immediately forget I ever brought up, because it isn't productive to revisit old wounds). This won't work if it becomes a lightning rod for any individual issue. We are not trying to divide the fandom, to encourage wank or other fandom-destructive activity, because that would be wrong and not at all hilarious.

Remember, fans, Respect = Love. If you don't RESPECT Lauren and Katie, you don't love Supernatural. It's really that simple. And if you want to help spread the message, that's simple, too. Just use the icon everywhere. Link to this entry. Create some related cat macros. Start an online petition, because those are always taken seriously. In short, stand up and be counted! Show the world that Supernatural fans are respectful and well-organized and not at all wanky or self-important!