Month: January 2007

I want more pets.

I was in the pet shop to pick up a rubber ball for the Booj, or Bozzio if we are being formal.
This was the small Pet land branch on Willoughby and Jay.Whenever I am on this street I can’t not think of the bounder in Jane Austen’s book.
Anyway I’d been in this store many times but never went to the back where they keep live fish,birds and furry things ..even salamanders…for me to see these is dangerous as I instantly become 8 years old and want to take them all home with me.
Especially the guinea pigs.I love them so.Here I am,36 and I have always wanted a guinea pig and it has never occurred to me that I could actually have one.I used to have cats and after they died I really really meant to go get another.But logic took over.I had a cat and the other came to me because she was left behind by a roommate.As they grew to be pretty old,they got sick.I was very poor at the time and wasn’t up to the vet bill costs.I know that if I had had the resources to ensure their health I would have done so.But I didn’t and they got sick and I couldn’t afford the 15,000.00 cost for a kidney operation for Lily.Alex was diagnosed with feline diabetes which meant I had to hydrate her with lactated ringer via syringe 2x a day.Lily died then Alex died and it was a painful experience and I went through it totally alone.
Lily was on her practical last day when I knew she was suffering and decided I had to take her to the vet, astronomic bill or not. I packed her into her carrier and was almost out the door when all the lights went off.This was the start of the blackout of 2003 in NYC.
I was more concerned with Lily,though so I decided to walk her up to the vet anyway,blackout or no blackout. 9th avenue was completely jammed.There were more people out on the streets then I had ever seen and I lived near Times Square…it took 4 times as long to walk the few blocks as it normally did.But I finally did make it to The West side Animal Hospital
The vet took Lily in. I signed the forms.I paid about 800 dollars in the end and that wasn’t the entire bill.
I was foolishly under the impression that this being a hospital meant that someone would be around to take care of the animals after business hours. This was not the case.Lily and I had been together for over 10 years and with hardly any time spent apart and certainly never her left all alone.They kept her for 2 days before they told me it would take the kidney operation to save her life but that of course wouldn’t guarantee she would still live.
I had adopted Lily from an art school acquaintance who told me she was 2 years old.Those 2 years plus the 10 I’d had her put her at 12,I thought.The vet said no, she was not a day under 18. 18! Healthy as a horse until the last 6 months…not bad.Lily had had only one previous hospitalization: When I’d only had her for a year or so I came home from school and found her almost dead from being poisoned…But afterwards she came right back and for 9 more years was illness free.
I have always loved animals but it pained me so much to think that my pets wouldn’t get proper health care because I was poor.And this was why I never got another cat.
My boyfriend got me a dog for my 35th birthday and he is the sweetest dog.But he is such a people whore! Just like Lily was.She loved everyone and jumped on any one’s lap.She had none of those weird kitty “rules” such as biting you if you pet her in a certain place–like a lot of cats I’ve met.She never scratched,she never hissed.She was a total dear.And of course really good at catching mice.
So at the pet store I did go to the back.I saw the guinea pigs, and the birds. I called my boyfriend and asked him if he minded if I bought one.They had a pair of Diamond doves,so beautiful.And they don’t make the incessant bird chatter that my boyfriend thinks would be prohibitive to having a bird in the home.I am determined.

Still making those lame mistakes in CSS and HTML

I think the best way to to keep learning is to not be afraid of making a mistake.
I was never that happy with the footer of a certain page design so I just spent about half an hour switching style sheets or combining style sheets to see what would look nicer.
The footer hopped about,up or down and then when I added a style sheet, the pages became so short that the content ran off it far down below the footer.
oops.The style sheet I added had a container division height xxpx attribute that worked for the specific page for which it was written, but had very bad results for the page on which I was currently fucking up.
The truth is that even after all this time working with CSS&HTML I still make mistakes.
But I don’t mind it because it forces me to keep learning and figuring things out by trying out a lot of different solutions. My last project forced me to try for the 1st time the float: left or right and also clear: both.The float is really good for images and text and if you get the margins and padding right it looks even better.

Currently I am no longer as satisfied with this page’s design as I was,once. Now to me the sidebar containing all the links looks too wide,too dark and doesn’t look that nice where it’s positioned.
Clearly it’s back to the drawing board.
If you must know what I’m talking about go to the Stone Street Press link on this page.

Being Rude.

Or trying not to be rude.
I am reading the book Talk to the Hand by Lynne Truss which is about the rudeness rampant in modern life.
She serves up her arguements for a better planet via less rudeness in a book divided into 6 chapters all to do with her Reasons to stay home and bolt the door,chapters 1 through 6.
Although she goes on and on sometimes and mostly with rambling theories of the effects of cellular phones on us all as a society,
she makes a lot of sense.
This book gave me a heads-up about saying excuse me if someone is in your way or has a purse on a seat you want to sit in- instead of (my hopefully former passive aggressive habitual method) staring at them until they get the message.
I’m afraid that it’s true that hooligans in NYC don’t much respect manners.I was a very polite type of person when I moved here from “out West” as a teenager.And now instead of always being the one who steps aside for an oncoming fellow pedestrian,I find myself playing that manhattan-centric game of sidewalk chicken.In which we come as close as we possibly can to knocking each other over if one of us chickens won’t get out of the other’s way.This game can also be played with umberellas, your umbrella spoke putting out an eye wins you much street credit.
I had the “excuse me” beat out of me by almost 20 years spent in NYC.
Saying excuse me was ridiculed by the exact folks Ms.Lynne Truss is now dressing down.
Though they aren’t the sort who’d read her book anyway.
I found her book very entertaining if longwinded.I am longwinded,too, so glass houses.
Ms. Lynee Truss’s most famous book is Eats,Shoots&Leaves.