In a further bid to prevent people from cashing in on her characters, Rowling had a online chat to reveal what happens after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Obviously, spoilers follow.
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General | Kabitzin 7/30/2007 | 
Comments (3)
My office is near a number of trees, and I often have birds fly into the window that is about 16 inches from my right arm. I also have squirrels come up to my window and peep in. It’s really weird having a squirrel checking over your shoulder to make sure you are correctly encumbering future charges, but such is life.
Recently, apparently the squirrels have been coming into the office through the lunch/conference room windows. The windows on both sides of the lunchference room are kept open, because there is no a/c in there. Yes, mini-training and long meetings in that room suck during the summer. So anyway, this morning a coworker and I were talking outside the lunchference room, and a second coworker trudged in past us. Suddenly we hear a loud “aaauuuuuurgggghhhhhhhHHH!!” and we see him run out. There was a frantic squirrel who had come in and gotten lost in the room! We didn’t really want to corner it, in case it was rabid, so we tried to direct it to the open window. It took about a minute, but finally it left with a loud squeak.
Of course we all joked that the the squirrel had come to check up on the second coworker, and that the squirrel’s budget better be done by this afternoon.
Bunky and I had our appointment with the pet therapist yesterday. The session was just under 2 hours, and to make a long story short, it is all Bunky’s fault.
The therapist didn’t make herself especially credible at the start, having tremendous problems parking and getting into our building. However, her analysis of the situation and formulation of a hypothesis was reasonable. The gist of it is that Sydney is bored out of his mind and frustrated that Bunky doesn’t spend any time playing with him anymore. Back in law school, Bunky would get home pretty early, and they would hang out a lot. Now, Bunky works past 9 PM most days, and there are no birds, deer, raccoons, etc. outside our window for Sydney to watch. So whenever Bunky gets up at night to get a drink or go to the bathroom, Sydney tries to play with her, and has learned to get too rough because Bunky doesn’t discourage it (and worse, she shrieks and runs).
The general solution is to teach Sydney that this behavior is not allowed, and to give him more play time before bed. Bunky was given a chart that she has to fill in every day saying when she played with Sydney. We were also told to put toys that move, e.g. streamers or something, outside the window for him to look at. At the same time, Bunky is going to get a bunch of spray bottles to put all around the house to defend herself from ambushes. All in all, it sounds like a reasonable plan, even if Bunky was miffed at being scolded the whole time.
Unfortunately, that is when things got a whole less credible. The therapist started into some absurd alternative medicine thing, using various plant essences to draw out various vices. She did some silly exercises with Bunky where she would tug on Bunky’s arm after asking a question and use Bunky’s arm resistance as an indicator of yes or no. It was so ridiculous that I had to avoid looking at Bunky for fear we would both start laughing. It was a total scam, but we both listened politely.
The lowlight probably came when the therapist made Bunky raise her arms like a ballerina. When the therapist tried to pull Bunky’s arms down, she couldn’t do it the first time, so she sorta lightly punched Bunky in the collarbone, and then successfully pulled Bunky’s arms down. This was to demonstrate how the therapist had “depolarized” Bunky. Yeah, I know…
Anyway, the therapist finished up and said she’d check back in with Bunky at least once this week. Hopefully Sydney’s behavior will improve, so that Bunky won’t have to feel that she wasted time and money on this consultation. I didn’t get to participate very much, but it was fun listening to the therapist tell Bunky to stop being so wimpy.
Pets and Plants | Kabitzin 7/27/2007 | Comments (14)
Turns out someone else from Comcast physically disconnected our wire before. When the technician came to us, he said he’d already hooked it back up, so all I had to do was sign a form and he was done. Everything works now. We joked that he could go hang out at a coffee shop for an hour now and say he was still working on it. It’s like he hit his Staples Easy Button and everything was fixed.
Kinda annoying that some other retard disconnected us though…
General | Kabitzin 7/26/2007 | Comments (1)
