Tonight, I am going to a Converse store that sells only Converse. It will be a pilgrimage, or a quest - I haven't decided. But either way I shall come back with shoes, which I shall put on my feet.

Last week, my mother showed me a booklet of coupons for school supplies from an office supply store. "Sexy," is what I said to her in response. Every once in a while I like to surprise her, but not by calling from the ER, a police station, or an abandoned building. She thought this exchange was amusing enough to relate to her colleagues at the Passionist Bros. Catholic retreat center where she works.

Yesterday I promised Mister Bones that we would make him new peanut butter dessert cookies and sew the squeaker heart back into his moose. The moose is closely related to his camel-with-two-humps-and-no-head, because apparently in the world of dog toys moose and camels are in the same family, and he'd had it for approximately five minutes before he'd ripped its heart out. Anyway, I had the genius idea of taking a nap from 1045 am to 1145 am, when I was supposed to wake up to continue the process of waterproofing my green messenger bag. Instead, I woke up sometime around 11 pm. This may have had something to do with not sleeping in a few days, but now I have so many things to today - all of yesterdays thing and all of todays things. But I can't find the upholstery thread I need in order to sew together the Moose with no heart, which means that so far this enterprise isn't going well.

The day before yesterday I seized on what little free time my father had to make him go with me to buy Hello Kitty notebooks for school. Remember kids: hunting for Hello Kitty school supplies is always five hundred times more fun with a whiny mexican who pretends he doesn't want to be there but actually does! So now I have five Hello Kitty notebooks which will undoubtedly unsettle some of my classmates and professors while also making my classroom experience exponentially more amusing.

Some of them have pink pages with little apple & Hello Kitty designs in a slightly darker pink. I shall purchase some no nonsense black clicky pens to write on them - the kind I liked to use in Chem, Physics, and Calc. I shall also have to purchase some pen refills for my Hello Kitty pens for use on those days when the combination of Hello Kitty Pen with Hello Kitty notebook is more amusing than the combination of no nonsense black clicky pen with Hello Kitty notebook. Good times. Accompanying this post is a particularly imposing photo of Healy Hall at Georgetown. Hello Kitty school supplies are also amusing in combination with Healy - I would know. Also, for the record - my father was the one who spotted the Hello Kitty washcloths. I didn't even know they were there.

I never want to hear the words "yule ball dress" ever again; if I do, it will be too soon. Also I keep dreaming about blueberry free coffee shops. Apparently this is the form my withdrawal has now taken - it's been two and a half months since I've had coffee, but the start of school is so close I can smell it. 'It' = the coffee, of course.

Box Monster comes from the land of Shiner, Texas, and is affiliated with Shiner Bock.


Box Monster can open its mouth to display its fearsome serrated teeth and gaping maw of DOOM.


Box Monster can close its mouth to chomp off your head.


However! Box Monster is no match for Mister Bones. I pressed the button on the camera before Mister Bones turned the corner from the kitchen into the dining room, and by the time the photo was taken he had already attacked!


This is Box Monster in the corner of the living room, contemplating its crimes. Mister Bones is keeping an eye on it.

Later, when Box Monster has been thoroughly vanquished (because it always rises again), I will take an after photo.

Mister Bones and I had a very productive day today: we made peanut butter dog cookies! They're shaped like hearts and stars, and I've been meaning to make him some since he ran out of the garlic peanut butter cookies I bought him at Baked and Wired. Using Milk Bones smeared with peanut butter for dessert really doesn't cut it.

Often, when people find out that I bake Mister Bones cookies for dessert they freak out about how spoiled he is. Actually, he kind of isn't. There's context. This all started when my parents adopted him from a shelter near where we live. Mister Bones had spent his time at the shelter eating a very carefully constructed diet on a very carefully maintained routine to gain fifty pounds. For part of that time, he lived with the cats instead of the dogs, and we think this may be why he purrs and cleans himself like a cat. When he was brought to the shelter, he weighed only forty pounds, as whoever had owned him had, among other things, deliberately starved him to less than half his body weight. His ideal body weight is one hundred pounds. So, when you do the math, he still needed to gain ten pounds when my parents brought him home.

By that time he was eating normal portions of actual dog food instead of the small portions of rice and broth they started him out with, so it was easier. Part of constructing a food routine to deal with the starvation and other issues involved giving him midday snack cookies when people came home or when people ate lunch at home, as well as giving him some kind of dessert cookie. This works better if the dessert cookie is not the same as the midday snack cookie (Milk Bones).

Unfortunately, a lot of the dog treats on the market are crap and bad for your dog, even if they've had a normal diet history. Lots of preservatives, chemicals, unidentifiable animal parts, and the like. Sometimes, depending on the origin of the treat or the animals, they can be more outright malicious. Mister Bones wouldn't have even been able to digest some of the more normal things, as his system had adapted to no food and then to the simple diet required when weaning him back onto food. As it is, we've had him for almost two years, and there are still a lot of foods that make him sick which wouldn't make other dogs sick. Hence, baking him peanut butter dessert cookies, with only a few healthy ingredients.

Peanut Butter Dog Cookies

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
  
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
  
• 1 cup soy milk
  
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
  
• Combine all, knead, roll out to 1/4 inch, cut out shapes, and bake at 375˚F for 15 to 20 minutes
  

You can (maybe) substitute skim milk for the soy milk, but it's the kind of thing you should definitely consult a vet about - a lot of dogs (and cats, despite the stereotype) don't take to lactose well. The peanut butter absolutely shouldn't be crunchy, and we actually use the Simply JIF, as it's also easier on the digestive system.

Speaking of peanut butter - the easiest way I've found to measure peanut butter ever is to submerge it in liquid. In this case, but measuring out the 1 cup of soy milk first into a 2 cup measuring cup, and then dropping in large chunks of peanut butter until the soy milk level is at 2 cups. For this to work the milk has to completely cover the peanut butter, and you'll have one cup of milk and one cup of peanut butter by volume. Also, instead of scraping peanut butter off the sides of the measuring cup, it will all pour out smoothly and quickly.

Speaking of pets and food, the ASPCA is a highly valuable resource concerning what kinds of foods and plants are and aren't poisonous to different animals. Sometimes people are surprised at what can hurt their pets; their Animal Poison Control Center has a lot of information on what can be poisonous, what to do if your pet is poisoned, and also an order form for free safety information/materials towards the bottom of the linked page.

I can't quite decide what I think of this movie. It isn't crap.
Rotten Tomatoes has it at a 66%.

It isn't good enough that I can't watch it without multi tasking, though. After a while the neurotic-ness of the neurotic character gets trying, especially since he's really just a stereotype. The whole movie is kind of a stereotype, but a bit more subtle about it than most.

As long as I have a laptop and an internet connection, it's enjoyable enough, though.

I'm thinking of applying for a weekend preview thing at Harvard Divinity School. Worst case scenario I'm out a stamp and some time spent reflecting on my life's goals; best case scenario I get a free trip to Cambridge, Mass. Acceptable losses. That means I would need to start on that application, though, and get it done well before it's due in September. At some point in next semester, I have to edit a term paper and submit it for an award, preferably before Fall 2008 finals. Ok, that's not actually that much.

Mister Bones has a refugee look. He sits, extends his neck, hangs his head down, and pulls back his ears so that he looks thinner and you can see more of the whites of his eyes. Then he just looks at you. Sadly. Like a refugee. I should enter him in a talent contest.

I should probably start editing that essay sometime this week. By editing I don't mean editing, of course, but striking through random paragraphs for rewrite and then letting it sit for a month. Of course.

Mister Bones is looking at me. In my eyes.

I finally got around to seeing Charlie Wilson's War this morning. It was good - I especially enjoyed the many loving shots of things blowing up midair. I was also reminded that the eighties were scary for many reasons, none of which have to do with communism, Russia, or Afghanistan. Also, East Texas is scary. I won't even bother with the analysis of how it's especially timely.

The best parts are those with Philip Seymour Hoffman, natch:
Mister Bones is an advanced cuddler, by the way - right now the left half of my body is immobilized by sleepy happy dog. Speaking of dogs, I think the dogs in the movie are Whippets, but I'm not sure.

The hair is still painfully bad.

I finally have a grade for my last class, which is great - I can stop worrying now. I definitely made Second Honors which is nice considering my only goal this semester was to not get kicked out of school. Also, I have housing! Yay! Now I just have to contact people so they can do things and I can get a specific room. Maybe tomorrow.