Miscellaneous Shellfish

For the past seven years or so, we have been getting a lot more cable channels than we pay for. It just happened one day. Instead of the minimalist 20 channels - really only a replacement for bunny ears in areas where reception is bad - we had 75. We didn't ask for them, but we didn't think too much about it. This week, the cable company noticed their seven-year mistake and took the channels away. We have no idea what brought it to their attention, but whatever. We're going to do without for a while and test whether we really "need" the added channels. I mean, how much television do you need in your life, really? The only things we regularly watch on those channels are The Daily Show, South Park, and Battlestar Galactica. The question is - are they worth $30 a month? Stay tuned.

The dogs had a fight this week. It happens rarely, but it does happen; they're both pretty confident dogs, with a complex agreement about hierarchy that even we don't fully understand. There was a toy on the ground, and that was a mistake, they don't get toys for exactly this reason...anyway, it's always highly unnerving, to see our cute, loving animals become snarling, teeth-baring beasts, making the ugliest fighting noise imaginable. It's deafeningly loud, the sound of a dogfight. It's generally just noise, but Toby actually drew blood this time. When that happens, I'm pretty sure it's by accident rather than intent, but still. Toby is by far the less belligerant of the two, but that also means that when he gets pushed hard enough to fight, he's also the last to back down, because by that point he's really pissed off. Nonetheless, once we get them separated and calmed, they are instantly friends again, while we're left with the jitters for hours afterwards.

I submitted my application for private investigation school!

I just re-read one of my favorite books, Sole Survivor by Derek Hansen. Hansen is an Australian/New Zealand author, and as far as I know Sole Survivor is the only one of his books to have been published in the US. I rarely re-read books, and yet I could happily read this one over and over. It's the small-town salvation story that I'm such a sucker for, and this one particularly draws me in. I loaned it to a friend a while back who was put off by the sexism in it, and I must admit that this time it got to me a little too; the story is set in 1966 and I've always been able to place the gender stuff within the context of the time (along with the attitude toward the Japanese by characters who are scarred veterans of WWII). This time, it stood out a bit more. Nonetheless, I was still sorry when I'd gotten to the end and had no more to read. Which is the best feeling you can have about a book.

The blackberries are ripe in the back yard, and boy are they good. Those blackberry vines are invasive and thorny and a pain in the ass, but around this time of year I'm happy we don't kill quite all of them off.