Random thoughts after six weeks

So Metroid for the Wii...not surprisingly, it turned out to be awesome. I am now sitting at 97% item gathering, and with just the final boss to beat. My 6-week odessey to beat this game hasn't been helped by a rather serious case of "wii-itis" which has actually bothered my wrists enough that not only did I have to stop playing for a couple weeks, but I wasn't even able to lift heavy objects without pain.

During September, I purchases a new Aluminum iMac, opting for the 34 inch model with the 2.8 ghz processor. I have upped the RAM to 3 GB, and so far I am very pleased with the system. It is beautiful and very fast; anecdotally, it feels faster then my old 2 ghz Mac Pro (which Dave inherited, after upping it to 4 GB of memory). The only down side of the experience came with the out-of-box: a large piece of dust was stuck between the glass and the screen itself, requiring a trip to the Apple store for them to remove the dust in some kind of clean room procedure.

I can't say enough good things about the newest John Fogerty album. It's his best work in decades and matches up to some of the Creedence stuff. Short, sweet songs that get stuck in your head in a good way. Speaking of music, I am eagerly looking forward to being in Chicago in two weeks for a special two-night Decemberists show; they are playing two shows over two nights, one consisting of long epic songs and the other of their short, poppy tunes. I feel smarter and more pretentious just thinking about it.

I almost never talk about sports here, which is just as well, but I am actually somewhat of a fan of the manly art of college football. I also grew up in Omaha, which has cused me with being a fan of the deteriorating Nebraska football team. Luckily, I escaped Nebraska and am now in Lawrence, where new football powerhouse Kansas is playing. Every computer user knows the importance of a good backup, right?

So one thing you may have noticed is that I do not write as much here when I get very busy or life sucks more then usual, and the past month has seen a lot of suckiness. Most immediately, our dog Tova has been very, very sick, with nasty bowel-related ailments that are not easily diagnosable, albeit similar to another mysterious monthlong illness she suffered back in June. She is currently on steroids which have brough her bowels under control but have their own bad side-effects, most notably they have made her morose and sluggish as well as causing her to urinate like a puppy (frequently and often in the house). Having a very sick dog is awful, emotionally draining, expensive, and depressing. Tova isn't a kid, but she's the closest we'll ever come, and it sucks all around.

Speaking of dogs, our two neighbors, each two houses down on either side have perfectly healthy dogs, and I know this because they leave them outside, unattended all day long (and all night long sometimes) where they bark and bark and bark. We've called the cops, which has been worthless. The next step, as we have been advised by Animal Control, is to log every time when the animals are barking, then after a while, they can be issued a ticket and the log can be used as evidence. I've never understood why someone would get a pet dog and then keep it outside...people who keeps animals outside in a city aren't pet owners, they are farmers, and the animals aren't pets, they are livestock!