Amy’s Gripping Commentary

Last day of NaBloPoMo. I wonder if I’ll win a prize this year.

We found a fair amount of snow on the ground when we got up this morning. At least it had been snow, but turned to slush quickly. Casper isn’t fond of the wet stuff on her tootsies. My car is leaking again, thanks to the melting slush.

A grammar find in the toy aisle at Menards: Rule the Sea’s!

After a four day weekend I’m feeling better. I still have a lot of work to do (I have the other computer up too for work) but I got a lot done and was able to nap and relax and feel a bit rested. I have another long weekend in a few days!

Let’s see how much snow we get in the next several hours…

Having a weird last name is good when you want to be found online (assuming anyone can spell it in the first place) or generally remembered. It’s not so good when spellcheck wants to suggest something to replace it. At work, Lotus Notes suggests Deathly.

Here’s what Firefox just suggested:

Dirichlet
Benchley
Crotchless
Pitchblende

Some news recently in the world of pets, both from pet stores and shelters.

Petco announced they will no longer sell rabbits! This is great news, especially for those of us working hard to clean up the messes the impulse buys in pet stores often cause. IHRS as an organization effectively stopped the sale of baby rabbits in nine Indiana Petco stores in the last few years by instituting an adoption program instead, but now the entire chain is going purpose-bred-bunny-free and doing adoptions instead. Thanks, Petco!

Meanwhile the Humane Society of the United States exposed Petland as the nation’s largest retail supporter of puppy mills after an eight month investigation. Yep, we have one of their chain stores right up the road in Carmel. What appalled me more is Petland’s response: We have high standards and you shouldn’t listen to the HSUS because they are extremist. No promise to look into it, no proof that puppy care is good, just refusing to discuss the issue because they don’t like the messenger. Of course that initial response no longer appears to be on their website, but what they put up instead just digs into HSUS again, touts their own “charity programs,” and still doesn’t promise to do anything about the issue. Bottom line: why would you shop with a retailer who sells dogs when there are so many dying in shelters?

In what seems like good news for the Humane Society of Indianapolis (not affiliated with HSUS mentioned above), their new director of ops has a background with some really good local animal welfare organizations like SNSI and they’re talking low cost spay neuter. THAT’S what we need! Let’s see how it all plays out.

Dear HSI Friends,

I’m pleased to let you know about the newest addition to the Humane Society of Indianapolis team, Christine Jeschke. Christine will soon join HSI as director of operations. She will oversee all operations of the shelter, including the wellness center, and will help HSI jumpstart our foray into low-cost spay/neuter services.

Christine joins us as both an accomplished professional and a highly respected member of the animal-welfare community. She’s currently vice president of human resources at Indiana-based Liquid Transport Corp. She also serves as president of Spay-Neuter Services of Indiana, Inc., a nonprofit that sponsors low-cost spay/neuter programs. Prior to becoming president, she served as the group’s treasurer for four years.

[picture] Christine has volunteered in many capacities for Indianapolis-based animal-welfare groups Alliance for Responsible Pet Ownership, Move to Act, and Indy Pit Crew. She’s the proud pet parent of four dogs and four cats, all adopted or rescued. (That’s Christine with Otis, rescued from Animal Care and Control/ARPO, and Chaucer, adopted from HSI as a puppy.)

Christine’s knowledge of and passion for animal welfare is invaluable to us, and I hope you share my enthusiasm when I say I could not be more excited to have her on the team.

Best regards,
John Aleshire, Executive Director
Humane Society of Indianapolis

(from an email I received this week)

This seems like a healthy response to the many in the community who have been disappointed with HSI’s operations in the last few months and years. I hope to be working positively with them again soon!

My humble blog, just my diary and a way to keep up with friends and family, occasionally attracts some cranky outsiders. Getting involved with shelters confiscating breeders’ rabbits always pulls the breeding community in for a throwdown. Today I discovered my Tofurky picture, part of my meal last Thanksgiving, was linked in the comments on a conservative syndicated columnist’s blog post about people whining too much about Sarah Palin’s turkey-pardoning-in-front-of-turkey-killing interview. I think her interview was in poor taste (or perhaps super ironic but still poor taste) and I’ll just leave it at that. I’m not surprised that the Fox News-watching crowd thinks my Tofurky looks inedible; this is the guy who made my dinner famous. But I wouldn’t recommend reading his work if you think our president elect is more than his middle name or you actually like gay people.

Re: Fox News: I actually check in now and then to see what’s up. But the conservative columnist mentioned touts her contributions to the channel, so there ya go.

The folks who make Tofurky, who must have a sense of humor about how much ribbing their product gets this time of year, have a contest to win an eGO Electric Cycle. You guess how much grain is saved this year by all the Tofurky eaten instead of turkey. (Don’t worry, there’s a hint.) In 2007, 1.6 million pounds of grain were saved by not feeding them to turkeys first.

And now for something to eat with your Tofurky!

Curried Roasted Vegetables

2 large baking potatoes
3 red potatoes
3 large carrots
1 turnip
1 orange or red bell pepper
1 large red onion
olive oil
salt and pepper

1 T curry powder
1 t chili powder
1 t turmeric
2-3 t grated ginger
3+ cloves garlic, minced
1 can coconut milk
1 can chickpeas (I drained them)
vegetable stock if more fluid needed
cornstarch if thickening needed

Chop all veggies (except chickpeas) into 1″ chunks. Drizzle generously with olive oil, salt, and pepper on baking sheet. Roast at 425 F for about 45 minutes (time will vary based on size/type of veggies), turning veggies with tongs at least once during roasting.

Saute garlic and ginger in oil and add spices, frying to a lovely aroma (couple of minutes). Add coconut milk and chickpeas and cook (med/high heat) for a few more minutes. Add roasted veggies and simmer until chickpeas get that ‘done’ texture. Add vegetable stock and/or cornstarch to make more of a sauce or gravy as needed. Salt to taste. Serve over basmati rice or if it has a good gravy, on its own!

This recipe came together after I had a similar dish at Georgetown Market. I got an ingredient list from them and used tips from KNH and random online recipes to work out amounts. I used the root veggies I had available (and I wanted to finally try a turnip!), so feel free to sub in sweet potatoes or anything else that sounds good. We would like more zing to the dish so we’ll probably use more chili powder and curry next time, but as written, this is a hearty dish with a mild sauce that has a bit of sweetness.

My brother sent me this graphic from The Onion.

Walter is definitely a farting dog tonight.

Anyone interested in a copy of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest? Most of the people I hang out with already have it. It’s all vegetarian recipes but generally simple/homestyle/hearty, and is another of Mollie Katzen’s in the Moosewood Cookbook series. This is the new revised edition. We already have a copy (which we use all the time) so I’d like to find another interested person! I can mail it to you (U.S. locations please), so be willing to share your address with me through email. I’ll give it a few days and then use a random number system to pick the receiver if there are multiple responses. Please let me know if you want it by leaving a comment!

You can see a preview of what appears to be the whole thing at Google Book Search. Google’s always doing something cool, aren’t they? Now you’ll know if you are really interested in it or not because you can read it ahead of time!

This summer while walking the dogs, a neighbor down the block came out of her house to ask about Casper’s breed. She then went on and on in one of those inextricable conversations that covered everything from her dogs (there’s quite an assortment of them, but they seem well-behaved and well cared for) to her sister who grooms dogs to her art studio in the basement to her boyfriend RJ, their relationship self-described as “on and off.” We also heard all about the time she went to Wishard (local hospital generally known for taking in all the riffraff and uninsured cases) and they thought she was nuts and put her in the mental ward and about the police screwing her in some investigation and a bunch of other stuff that you normally might only share with your best friend, not neighbors you met for the first time. She also had the most enormous, un-contained breasts imaginable, and while this isn’t a feature that normally draws my attention, the bralessness made it unavoidable.

So we pretty much call her Crazy Big Boob Susan, which isn’t the nicest thing ever, but I’m probably known as the Crazy Rabbit Girl so maybe it’s even. Living on small lots in the older part of the city has been pretty entertaining.

A few times we’ve gone by Susan’s house and seen painted signs of rants about something RJ’s done. She’ll put her grievances in art and prop them up in the driveway or on a vehicle. A few days ago there were police cars in the vicinity, and yesterday we found a new batch of signs, these just hand-written, taped to the exterior of a car. Today the signs have been moved inside the car but are still there. The one in the windshield is something about RJ Stole My Phone and Took My Money, and you can peruse the others here.

Some of the fine print includes “Hero, In Jail,” a heart with “Steve Fred Love RJ,” and “Not Bipolar / Not Suicidal / Just Hate Men.” It’s all very bizarre. Since the police are already involved I’m not worried that I should be calling someone about her immediate safety, but I’m not sure what the signs are supposed to do.

I guess we’ll have to ask the nosy neighbor across the street for the scoop.

This HDMI cable hanging in our basement looks like a butt!! Yes, it entertains us, and we are in fourth grade.

Today’s WalMart finds:
“THIS BAG CONTAINS” 5-10 LB. POTATOES

Santa does not have an E on the end of his name, but he is too busy playing his video games to care. (It lights up too.)

Today is David’s birthday! Unfortunately one planned gift didn’t pan out and now I have nothing for him. The pleasure of living with me ought to be enough, right?

David wrestles with Walt, who pretends to eat us on a regular basis. After being a stray puppy he lived with a Rottie and a Doberman and they taught him all about fun play with a soft bite, so it’s actually pretty entertaining to fight with him. Of course sometimes he just ambushes you, especially when walking in the yard, so you have to be on your toes.

Love of dogs definitely played into David and I getting along so well from the beginning. Dogs and politics are probably the only major similarities we have, though (I’m trying not to count inattention to an immaculate household here too). I’m not mechanically inclined, but he can make or fix about anything. He’s also good at breaking stuff. His trade is roughly trim carpentry, hence the lovely custom cabinets surrounding the fridge submission below. Lacking money and time, though, means the face frames and doors have not yet been built! He does most aspects of remodeling so this relatively crummy bungalow now sports real wainscoting, slate and travertine floors and walls, a finished basement, a privacy fence put together with pocket holes, and even strange security measures like a blue LED that comes on at the back door if any of the gates are left open. That is pretty handy for the dogs but may have been a bigger pain to install than the excitement about this idea compensated.

David is also an excellent pianist and even got his degree in music, which is why he’s a contractor. While I did fine at violin when I was a kid, I certainly don’t have a tenth of the natural talent David does. I don’t get how someone can listen to something and just bang it out without sheet music. He also sings well, something I certainly can’t claim. Someday I’d love to buy him a baby grand, but it won’t be this birthday. Nor would it fit in this tiny house.

I’m sure you can see why our freezer space stresses me out. We need a new fridge, but I know people get by with small ones. It’s just the American Dream, as Dad would say, to have a giant fridge. So do we really need one? I can’t justify the purchase but I won’t say if this one died I would be all that sad about getting a bigger Energy Star replacement. Can’t beat a free refrigerator, though.

This service is new to me. FindToto is a service you pay to call all your neighbors with a recorded message about your lost pet. It is exempt from the existing Do Not Call lists (though it appears you can choose to get on this service’s Do Not Call list specifically by going to their website). Someone at work used it recently (see Bruno below!) after having no luck looking everywhere and calling shelters repeatedly for 24 hours. They paid $145 to call 750 nearby homes four times and had their dog back in two hours! Just goes to show that many pets don’t wander far, so if you find the people who have seen him wandering, you have a chance to get him back.

I would totally use this service if we lost one of our dogs! It’s nice to know someone local who actually had success with it. Apparently you can choose how many houses to call and that determines the price.

According to Genderanalyzer, there’s a 61% chance that a woman writes this blog.

This one is really bizarre: according to Typealyzer, I’m an ESFP personality (or at least my blog is written that way). That happens to be exactly the opposite of my pretty well established INTJ! Seriously, I’m “entertaining and friendly”?? They even suggest I use their “I am a feeler” widget.

Meanwhile I write 16% like Mark Twain according to oFaust, where I copied in all of my current page’s text. This may be more like him than you would think, because I copied in an excerpt of Huckleberry Finn and it told me it was 25% like Mark Twain. It thought a Scarlet Letter excerpt was 39% Poe. I gave it Grapes of Wrath and it thought it was 56% like Frank Baum. And then I gave it Goethe’s Faust and it said it was 86% like Goethe, so at least it knows its namesake.

Someone farted (hint: not me), and David thought the frequency was about 180 Hz. He hit it on the piano, saw it was an F, related it to an A in a major third, did some math, and came up with 176 Hz. I feel like I should be impressed but he was just singing along with a fart.

At least it sure looked like it. No one had dressed it with sawdust yet.

Winter coat weather!

How You Live: one word. Meme via Return to Rural

1. What wakes you: dog
2. Your initial look in the mirror reveals: squinting
3. You usually first put on: slippers
4. Your closet: downstairs
5. Your mood before 11am: quiet
6. The first thing you look at online after email: weather
7. Something you tend to snack on: cookies
8. What you see out your front door: mums
9. Your takeout menus: folder
10. Number of boxes of tissue out in your home right now: four
11. The way you sneeze would read: ratt-chew
12. Number of times a day you probably brush your hair: 0.5
13. The most predominant thing in your pantry: tomatoes
14. A smell commonly coming from your kitchen: garlic
15. How you sort your books: pile
16. The way you keep your place in a book: circle
17. Something you hide when people come over: fur
18. Number of people normally at your table during dinner: two
19. Something you put on your nightstand before bed: pager
20. How high you pull the covers when you go to sleep: cheek

As a diary of sorts, I feel I should be able to rant on discuss any topic of interest to me, but I’m also sensitive to how my opinions (however strongly held) may differ from readers’, and that my opinions do evolve. I’m going to talk briefly about turkeys at Thanksgiving because it’s not something I’ve ever heard about until I went looking for the information, and while this may only be my third Thanksgiving NOT eating turkey flesh, it’s nonetheless important to me and I hope will not be taken as a strictly holier-than-thou entry (which I don’t intend any of them to be, but I’m not sure I’m successful in getting that across sometimes).

This year I decided to adopt a turkey, sort of in an effort to atone for the turkeys that would be purchased to eat at the work and family functions I will attend, and because it makes me feel good to donate to causes that make life better for animals. This is Apollo, who lives at Farm Sanctuary in New York:

Lacking the facilities to physically adopt animals saved from factory farming, I am really just sponsoring him. Maybe someday I will be able to do more, but the foster rabbits will have to do for now. I did get to meet some cool turkeys during a rabbit rescue last year.

While I was at Farm Sanctuary’s website, I found these (all pictures/italicized captions belong to them):

Bred to grow unnaturally quickly, factory-farmed turkeys suffer crippling leg injuries and often die stuck in the excrement that covers the warehouse floor.

Hanging upside down and shackled by their feet, turkeys enter the slaughterhouse.
(The Humane Slaughter Act does not apply to poultry or rabbits, which means they do not have to be rendered unconscious before killing them.)

(Celebration FOR the Turkeys at Farm Sanctuary)

I wish I didn’t feel like I had to apologize for being vegetarian, but an awful lot of people go on the defensive when they find out I am. Or they demand to know if I consume dairy/eggs, somehow looking for a loophole in my sincerity that excuses them from having to think about their own hypocrisy. Nope, I’m not perfect. I still have some leather shoes and I still buy a few eggs (I go out of my way to find free range eggs, but there are plenty of reasons why that’s “not enough”). On the other hand, once I thought about my reasons for eating meat, I decided it wasn’t acceptable for a being to have to die for my lunch. It just didn’t make sense to me. So that’s when I started figuring out where to draw my new line, and it still moves a little as I consider more data (no, it does not move such that I eat any meat or other foods that require someone to die).

Honestly, I haven’t watched the horrible videos that are supposedly out there about slaughterhouses and factory farms. I already know it’s terrible and would make me cry. But I have read enough and seen a few pictures; they make me look for alternatives, whether that’s me eating a fake turkey product at Thanksgiving, or encouraging a meat-eater to find a humanely-raised and slaughtered turkey for themselves. Did you know Californians just passed Proposition 2? It wasn’t just a bunch of vegetarians voting for this:

This law phases out some of the most restrictive confinement systems used by factory farms – gestation crates for breeding pigs, veal crates for calves and battery cages for egg laying hens – affecting 20 million farm animals in the state by simply granting them space to stand up, stretch their limbs, turn around and lie down comfortably

That’s AWESOME. I would like to have an audience that can share in those victories with me, even if we don’t practice the same eating habits. Perhaps they will make small changes in their shopping habits. One step at a time, people… just switching from regular eggs to ones marked “cage free” may not be all fun and games for the hens, but you won’t be supporting battery cage use, and that’s an EASY change at your same grocery store.

On the same day I sponsored Apollo, I also gave to Critter Corral guinea pig rescue, Wheeler Mission (which is uncharacteristically churchy of me, but they are doing great work with the homeless and hungry in our city), and Gleaners Food Bank, which runs nine food banks that distribute food products to 400 central Indiana hunger charities. I tend to identify with animal needs more, perhaps because they really have no voice except the one we provide on their behalf, but I am saddened by my neighbors not having enough to eat. I think I lack the constitution to make myself face the situation in a shelter (though I hope to “evolve” here too), so I choose to donate money instead. The downturn in the economy only means more trouble for those struggling in poverty in the first place.

Give where your heart is this season!