Alley Cat Alley

October 16th is National Feral Cat Day - the annual kick-off for Alley Cat Allies' national education campaign.

As a sort of promotion of the event, and just a generally fun way of showing support, there is Photo Pledge page for members of the public. Basically the game goes like this:

1. You print out this page and put your name on it.
2. You take a picture of yourself (and your pet! If you have one)
3. You upload the photo here.
4. It gets posted to the gallery here.

Highly entertaining - so I encourage you to do it. I'll show ya mine, if you show me yours :)

Lots of Dog Park

In the pursuit of finding novel things to do, we've been taking Locksley to as many dog-friendly places that we can find. Fortunately the DC Metro area has quite a few.

Recently we went to both the Quiet Waters park in Annapolis, and the Greenbelt Dog Park. The Annapolis dog park was nicer - it was huge, had a dog beach (unfenced which was not so good for us) and lots and lots of people and well behaved dogs. It cost $5 to get into, though, which was kind of lame but understandable since the park was HUGE and obviously well maintained. The Greenbelt Dog Park was nice and close, but when we went there weren't many dogs around (and the ones that were there weren't as mellow and playful as the Annapolis dogs).

Regardless, Locksley had a great time and was exhausted by the end of it. More pictures in the Locksley photo album, but a couple silly ones here:

I am good at the internet

I am in a job transition. My last day at the job I've had for nearly 2 years was July 25th, my first day at the new job will be August 4th. That means I have a whole week to reflect and get ready which was afforded to me by the wisdom of my new employer. When they asked "When can you start?" I of course enthusiastically replied "Whenever you need me to", but instead of saying "Tomorrow!" they said "Why don't you take a week off and start on the 4th". Brilliant. I need people to set boundaries since - as evidenced with the last job - my work ethic can get the best of me.

Regardless I've been spending the time rediscovering why I love the internet in the first place. I've been researching getting a laptop for school (since the company issued one is where it belongs - with the company I left), re-acquainting myself with personal email, and playing with an assortment of Google incepted toys. I've been bouncing around bulletin boards, signing up to mailing lists, and - yes - spending way too much time with lolcats.

I've also been thinking about actually working on my website, making an honest woman out of my blog (what?), and finally getting around to picking my mother's brain about setting up her website.

Today I realized it was only TUESDAY. That is good and also terrifying. I don't feel like I've had this much time on my hands in a while and I apologize in advance for whatever messes I make between now and gainful employment.

Locksley

I have acquired a dog.
This should be absolutely no surprise since I have a long history of surrounding myself with animals. However even I will admit that this was probably a bad idea, mostly impulsive, and something I will mostly likely regret on a bi-weekly basis.

I am of course being melodramatic.
For months and months I had been scouring pet shelters looking for a dog that might like to come home with me. I finally picked a medium sized Afghan Hound Mix Female. When I went to visit, though, it turned out the dog was more like a large German Shepherd Mix Male. Oops. Fortunately (for him) he was very endearing and I decided to fill out adoption papers anyway.

I ended up bringing him home on June 27th and spending the rest of the weekend FREAKING OUT. Mostly because I thought I was just filling out paper work and not bringing him home until the week after. But no. Chaos, right out of the gate.
Thanks to my very best partner in crime I kept my head on and so far dog partnership has been pretty entertaining. We've gone to the woods in Pennsylvania, walked around Old Town Alexandria, had 4th of July in Delaware, and taken a swim in a Lake in North Carolina.
The Dog's name is Locksley (or Loxley, if you prefer) as in "Robin Of". While he is a bit puppyish (he's maybe 10 months old and gets bored - read: destructive/hyper - with a frequency that I can mostly tolerate) he did come crate trained, knowing how to sit, lay own, and "shake", and for the most part listens really well. He get walked twice a day for anywhere between 15 and 40 minutes and has energy to spare.

So be on the lookout. Click on the picture above for an album. More pictures as they come, and probably some good adventure stories.

Moss

I like moss. So I decided to make it the subject of my digital photography final project. The shots aren't technically very good, but I like them anyway.

Twigs and grass

I can't believe I haven't mentioned this before, but I am fond of the artist Faryn Davis.

SM gave me one of her creations for Christmas and it is, hands down, my most favorite Piece Of Pretty to wear. I am a well document friend of things-in-jars and as far as I'm concerned, this is a wearable thing-in-a-jar (or resin, if you want to be accurate).

Survivalism

Yes, it's a Nine Inch Nails song.

But I came across a really fun link called "Who Wants to Live a Million Years" on the Science Channel website. It's really fun, and additive paying with the different trait combinations and seeing how the species you've created does.

I've always though natural selection was neat because it's not like an organism "decides" to grow a longer neck or something. A mutation just happens, and there it is. Of course you can converse about whether a Higher Power makes the change or if it's completely un-designed - but either way I think it's neat in any case that the organism has really no part in it.
I remember my college ecology class talking about natural selection and it was really interesting that some folks had some pretty big misconceptions about natural selection. My favorites:

1) an animal stretches its neck out reaching for berries up high, its neck gradually gets longer, and that trait is passed on to its offspring.
The error here is that the animals genes have remained the same. While its neck has physically changed, it was due to outside stimulus that did not effects its genes. It's ability to pass on short necks (what it was born with) was not changed on a genetic level, so if the animal was born with a short neck, its offspring will have a short neck. UNLESS of course, the physical change was brought on by a gene altering act (a bunch of glowing green chemical waste was dumped on the animal, changing its genetic makeup, giving it a longer neck! Thank you Hollywood!) This also goes to the premise that individuals adapt, but only species evolve.

2) an animal starts to look like a flower, in order to be camoflauged.
This is a real example from class. We were talking about a species of praying mantis that looks exactly like a part of an orchid. The mantis hangs out in aforementioned orchid where it snatches bugs who try to drink/gather pollen. The question was how did the mantis know to look like an orchid? Simply, it didn't. A mantis, thanks to genetic mutation, was born accidentally looking a little like an orchid (maybe it was white, or had fanned out forelegs or something) and because other insects couldn't see it as well, it went on to make more offspring.

I think it's amazing. Not everything is calculated, thought out and logical. Sometimes there are just brilliant accidents. Without realizing it, or having a say in it at all, an entire population can start down a divergent genetic road. It makes me think, from an individual's stand point, what kind of survival techniques we adopt by accident without really realizing it.