The White Death

We're having a blizzard! Or, more technically, Cincinnati is under a Blizzard Warning until tomorrow afternoon.

When we woke up this morning, we found just a light dusting of snow had fallen overnight. We haven't had any really heavy snow showers, but it's been coming down in a steady flurry all day long, so we now have about 6 inches in our back yard, with plenty more on the way. The weathermen are breathlessly predicting 11-15 inches, which is a huge amount of snow for a city so close to the Mason-Dixon line.

Bella has been loving every minute of it. One of her favorite toys is a open-mesh ball made from a foam-rubber material, like Crocs. When she takes it outside, it fills up with snow, and then she brings it back inside and scatters snow all over the place. (I don't mind snow on the floor much-- It's an improvement over her normal habit of bringing sticks into the house and turning them into mulch all over the carpet.)



She's clearly one of the few souls who enjoys snow as much as I do. Everyone else around here views it as a dreaded plague!

Malcolm Gladwell and Cesar Milan

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an interesting article about Cesar Milan, aka The Dog Whisperer.

What I like about Gladwell's writing is the way that he synthesizes information from many different fields. For this article, he brings in an anthropologist, an ethologist, an expert who studies dance and movement patterns, and a psychotherapist who works with autistic children to help explain why Cesar is so good at working with "bad" dogs. Here's a section of the article that I found especially interesting:

...Before [the dog] fought, he sniffed and explored and watched Cesar—the last of which is most important, because everything we know about dogs suggests that, in a way that is true of almost no other animals, dogs are students of human movement.

The anthropologist Brian Hare has done experiments with dogs, for example, where he puts a piece of food under one of two cups, placed several feet apart. The dog knows that there is food to be had, but has no idea which of the cups holds the prize. Then Hare points at the right cup, taps on it, looks directly at it. What happens? The dog goes to the right cup virtually every time. Yet when Hare did the same experiment with chimpanzees—an animal that shares 98.6 per cent of our genes—the chimps couldn't get it right. A dog will look at you for help, and a chimp won't.

"Primates are very good at using the cues of the same species," Hare explained. "So if we were able to do a similar game, and it was a chimp or another primate giving a social cue, they might do better. But they are not good at using human cues when you are trying to coöperate with them. They don't get it: 'Why would you ever tell me where the food is?' The key specialization of dogs, though, is that dogs pay attention to humans, when humans are doing something very human, which is sharing information about something that someone else might actually want. "Dogs aren't smarter than chimps; they just have a different attitude toward people. "Dogs are really interested in humans," Hare went on. " Interested to the point of obsession. To a dog, you are a giant walking tennis ball."

A dog cares, deeply, which way your body is leaning. Forward or backward? Forward can be seen as aggressive; backward—even a quarter of an inch—means nonthreatening. It means you've relinquished what ethologists call an "intention movement" to proceed forward. Cock your head, even slightly, to the side, and a dog is disarmed. Look at him straight on and he'll read it like a red flag. Standing straight, with your shoulders squared, rather than slumped, can mean the difference between whether your dog obeys a command or ignores it. Breathing even and deeply—rather than holding your breath—can mean the difference between defusing a tense situation and igniting it. "I think they are looking at our eyes and where our eyes are looking, and what our eyes look like," the ethologist Patricia McConnell, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says. "A rounded eye with a dilated pupil is a sign of high arousal and aggression in a dog. I believe they pay a tremendous amount of attention to how relaxed our face is and how relaxed our facial muscles are, because that's a big cue for them with each other. Is the jaw relaxed? Is the mouth slightly open? And then the arms. They pay a tremendous amount of attention to where our arms go."

Gladwell also wrote a follow-up posting in his blog about the New Yorker article, to address some of the criticism that Cesar receives from other animal behaviorists.

And despite all his talk about dominance and being a pack leader, what is striking about Cesar viewed in full context (and this is one of the major themes of my article) is how paradoxically gentle he is. That's why, in the piece, I compare the way he relates to troubled dogs with the way movement therapists work with autistic children.

Life, in a Nutshell

I realize that it's been a very long time since I've posted anything on this blog, and there are some very good reasons for why I haven't been writing. This past year has been extremely difficult, and it seems like most of the things that have happened were just too personal and too emotionally draining to try to share on a blog. But since these things were major events in my life, I would have felt dishonest if I had continued to write about trivial stuff, pretending that everything was OK and normal when it clearly wasn't.

So here's the (simplified) update of everything that has happened in the past year:

• Jobs - I no longer work for a Fortune 50 company, and I hope that I never will again. For awhile I worked part-time for a small company (~20 employees) and that was a learning experience too. After that, I took some time off. Now I'm working on starting up my own LLC. I'm really, really excited by the idea that I'll be working for my self, from my home. I'll have a hard-wall office with a door and a window-- the dream of every cube-dweller-- and I'll also have the option of working from my back deck or pretty much anywhere else I want to be. There's no dress code, I can bring my dog to work with me, and I won't have to worry about what my boss will think if I have to go to a doctor's appointment or if take an hour and a half to have lunch with friends.
  
  My self-confidence was really shaken by losing my "dream job" last year, but I've come to realize that I am an intelligent, responsible, hard-working, talented engineer, and so I deserve something better than being treated like a replaceable cog in a corporate juggernaut that grinds out far more bureaucratic sludge than productive results. I hate corporate politics, and I hate that my roles have been defined and my worth has been determined by managers and directors who are inept at best. (I won't even try to describe the worst bosses... I know. You know. We'll leave it at that.) I know that I can be far happier and more productive working for myself, and I now I see that my true "dream job" is SO much bigger than anything that could fit into a 6x6' cubicle.



• Pets - I am no longer the proud parent of a tubby tabby and a cross-wired wiener dog. We still have the dachshund, but my sweet fuzzy cat was stricken by cancer at Christmas time, and she died in March. At the same time, I suffered through a difficult health issue of my own, and I wound up depressed. I tried some medication, but the side effects seemed as bad as the symptoms, so I quit my job and got a puppy instead.
  
  Her name is Bella. The rescue folks told us that she was a Border Collie / Golden Retriever mix. Now that she's grown up a bit, we think it's more likely a that she's a Border Collie / Labrador Retriever mix, since she looks just like a small black lab, but with white toes. We've been talking about getting another cat, but I think we'll probably wait until Bella settles down a bit.



• Travel - I have done a quite a bit of traveling in the past six months or so.
  
  In February, we did our annual ski vacation in Tahoe. There couldn't be a better group of friends to ski with, but things went badly for me at the end of the trip, so the memories of this trip aren't as fond as they have been in previous years.
  
  At the end of April, I tagged along on my husband's business trip to Zurich, so I got to wander around the town while he was working. I really enjoyed Switzerland, and since my new LLC will be partnering with a software company there, I hope that I'll be able to go back again.
  
  In June, we went back to Longboat Key for a week with my mom's extended family. This year we got to spend time with my mom, my grandparents, my grandmother's sister, her three daughters, two of my aunts, two of my uncles, two of my cousins, and one of my cousin's kids. The weather was nice. I got to feel tall for a week. It was a good trip.
  

So that's my life, in a nutshell. Now that things are looking up, I have a feeling that I'll be writing more often. Not to mention that now I'll be able to blog from work without having to worry about getting busted by my boss and I can blog about work without violating any stupid corporate policies!

Lunacy & Voodoo

Another week, another trip... this time to rainy L.A.

According to one of the magazines in my hotel room, there is a great new body treatment available at one of hippest spas in town-- a salt scrub mixed with warm coffee. You can absorb caffeine through your skin, so apparently it's quite a rush. My only thought was, "Doesn't it stain?" Maybe the other benefit is an artificial tan.

While I'm sure that there are lots of other great reasons to live in Los Angeles, I have to say that I vastly prefer my standard of living (and 5 minute commute) in unglamourous Ohio. On Tuesday evening, we spent over an hour driving about 10 miles on the highway from LAX to Wilshire Blvd. We were in 6-8 lanes of stop-and-go traffic, all moving along at what seemed like a comfortable walking speed, and it was like 8-9pm at night-- so rush hour should have been well over, at least by the standards of any Midwestern city. Maybe the traffic snarls were due to the rain, but given the fact that the interstate has a total of 12+ lanes, I'm thinking it's far more likely that what we experienced is just a normal part of life out there.

I flew out to L.A. on Tuesday evening and back on Wednesday, so it was a quick trip. As it turns out, sitting in a plane for 3-4 hours a day is not the best cure for a stiff knee. But I am happy to report that my knee is considerably better now than it was last Sunday, and I didn't have to go to the doctor after all. Apparently it's going to let me off with a warning shot across the bow this time.

It was a rough week for the rest of the clan as well. My husband had a really bad cold from Sunday to Thursday, and my father-in-law had knee replacement surgery on Tuesday. Not to be outdone, the pets also got in on the act. The dog needed her teeth cleaned (which required general anesthesia) and had to have one tooth pulled, and my poor cat had a tooth pulled and surgery to remove a tumor on her side. They shaved a swath about 6 inches wide from over her spine to her belly, and she's got a stiched-up incision that is about 8 inches long, so she looks just awful. The only thing more pathetic and ridiculous than a wet cat is a half-shaved cat.

On the Subject of Lunacy...

We worked at the ski area yesterday afternoon & evening, and it was absolutely INSANE out there. (I'm attributing the craziness to the nearly-full moon last night.) We have five beds in our aid room, and at one point, they were all full, with another kid waiting in our big-wheel chair.

Before I became a patroller, I used to tell people that skiing was a safe sport that just got a bad rap. I don't say that any more. Now I can only say that, in general, skiing is only as dangerous as you (or the people around you) make it. Roughly 80% of the injuries that I see can be directly attributed to either a general lack of common sense or staggeringly bad judgment. Unfortunately, some injuries are attributable to somebody else's poor decision-making skills.

On the Subject of Voodoo...

For Valentine's Day, I bought tickets to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy for my husband, and the concert was tonight. They performed with the Cincinnati Pops and put on a really excellent show. They've got some amazing talent, and it was a lot of fun to see them live.

Sick Day

Today I'm home sick with a bad case of bronchitis. I went to the doctor yesterday afternoon, and after hearing me speak (croak, actually) and listening to me breathe, she quickly wrote out a prescription for antibiotics. While she was writing, one of my (obnoxious, overwhelming, and exhausting) coughing spells occurred, and when she heard that, she quickly added an additional prescription for cough medicine. It's a particularly busy time at work, but I think I'm better off staying home and trying to rest than going to work and potentially infecting all of my co-workers, especially since we're all going to be travelling a lot in the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, my husband came down with the flu yesterday, so he's at home today too. When I'm not busy coughing, I'm worried that four days from now, when we're both on our next business trips, he'll come down with bronchitis and I'll come down with the flu. He'll be in Huntsville, Alabama and I'll be in Miami, Florida, so if you live in the Southeast, start taking your vitamins now.

So my occupation today mostly consists of reading, surfing the net, and watching the pets migrate across the living room floor, following the pools of sunlight that are streaming in through the windows. The dog usually spends weekdays in her kennel, so a sick day for us turns into a rare treat for her. Here they are-- Virgil the Dingy Dachshund and Emma the Tubby Tabby...



What I'm really bummed about is that in the last 24 hours, we got about 3-4 inches of snow, and it's a beautiful day today. (In Cincinnati, fresh, fluffly snow is unusual, as are sunny days in February. Both things happening together are rare beyond all reason.) We were scheduled to be on duty at the ski area, but obviously, neither of us is in any shape to be skiing. (We have ski patrol duty every other Thursday, and two weeks ago, my husband was out of town on a business trip, and I couldn't make it to the ski area because of bad weather, so I feel especially bad about missing two shifts in a row.) It's bad enough being sick when all I'm missing out on is work, but to be sick and missing out on good skiing is truly unfortunate.