fat hound blog

2008-05-31T14:12:00.001-04:00

Back from Ecuador - an incredible trip, as well as exhausting, frightening, inspiring, uplifting and life-changing. I need more time to process everything, but here's a very short run-down of our 20 days of madness.

We spent time in the capital city, Quito, before and after the other segments of the trip. Got to see a lot of the city, and it's a pretty awesome place. Dirt cheap, too, which rocks for a grad student on a budget. We went to the local markets and I got some great fabric, jewelry and art, toured around the historic district and saw the Virgin of Quito (a huge statue that looks down on the city from the top of a huge hill) and the churches, ate lots of great food. Even took a salsa dancing lesson and it was awesome. Apparently I'm a rockin' salsa dancer. Yeah, you know it.

We also went to the jungle, to a research station called Tiputini (if you Google it, you'll find its site). To get there we had to fly into a tiny tiny tiny airport, take a boat down the Rio Napo, drive in the back of a truck along an oil company road and then take another boat down the Rio Tiputini. It's pretty remote, which suits me just fine. The getting there was, in some ways, the best part - I loved being on the rivers.

The jungle was intense and really demanding, physically and emotionally. It's a hard thing to be so far out of your comfort zone and I was definitely light years away from feeling "safe," for lack of a better word. But we had an amazing guide who I would follow to the ends of the earth, so even though I struggled when he said everything would be OK I trusted him. He was a machine. He'd tell us, "we're going for a little walk," and five hours later we would stagger back into camp, covered in mud and sweat and barely able to stay awake to eat.

We saw so many birds and plants, slogged through knee-deep mud and slid down embankments where paths used to be. This is a hardcore place that's generally used by researchers, no coddling of the soft Americans. I even climbed 42m up into the canopy to a viewing tower (scared out of my mind) and then the next day went almost as high along a series of rope bridges (even more scared, which I didn't think was possible). I ate ants, shared a breakfast table with a cricket the size of my hand, saw anacondas sleeping on branches, got hissed at by a gang of giant otters, watched birds of all colors. There's something about South America, in the jungle as well as in the city - you just don't see colors like that here.

It was demanding and sometimes really upsetting, but I look back on it now and feel so blessed to have been there. It left a huge impression. Nothing else in my life has been like that.

Almost immediately after getting back from the jungle, we took off for the Galapagos Islands. We had visions of laying on the beaches with cocktails and taking long afternoon siestas, but it turned out to be just as grueling as the jungle. Every minute of our time was scheduled, every day it was go go go, see this, do that. By the middle of the trip we were all pretty much fried, ready to go home. Didn't help that our guide was kind of a prick and no one could stand him. Well, some people could. But not me.

It was a rough transition from the jungle to the islands. The jungle is remote, quiet, secluded - we didn't see anyone but the station staff and a handful of researchers while we were there. The islands, though, is a tourism machine. We were always surrounded by other boats, other groups of tourists. You can feel the industry there, everything exists for us, to take our money. It was a big production all the time, especially with our guide. His fake-nice act was just that: if the tourists think he likes them, they'll want to tip him more. I've never been in a place so devoted to tourism like that. It's not how I like to travel.

That's not to say it was all bad, though. The natural landscape was stunning. The animals are varied and fascinating. They don't view people as threats, so you're able to get extremely close, even to nesting birds or animals mating (lots of sex on the islands). We snorkeled almost every day, saw all kinds of fish and swam with sea lions and fur seals and SHARKS (reef sharks and hammerheads - omfg) and sea turtles and penguins and rays and even an eel one day. Birds everywhere, gulls and blue-footed boobies and red-footed boobies and albatrosses and frigate birds and finches and mockingbirds that are totally fearless and will practically hop right into your lap. There's nothing like it in the world.

And now...Pittsburgh. Great to be home, of course. I was completely spent and ready to come back. But I do miss it. It feels like a much longer trip than it was, because we did so much.

I took a bazillion pictures (literally thousands), so it will take me a bit of time to sort through everything and get them uploaded. I still have to write two papers about the trip and those take priority. Hope you don't mind waiting! :)

2008-05-08T23:57:00.001-04:00

Leaving On a Jet Plane

Tomorrow I leave,
Probably to be eaten
By spiders with fangs.

Seriously.

2008-05-04T23:53:00.001-04:00

Priorities

Crinkle of wrapper,
Enough to wake any hound...he
Can has burrito?

Home again, spending time with my hound and family before my South American whirlwind tour. I'd forgotten - living with lazy cats as I do now - how handy a hound is to have around. Drop a little something on the floor? No problem, he's got your back. Don't want to finish that sandwich? Hey, he can help. Yes, it is a true blessing.

2008-05-01T00:23:00.001-04:00

The Passing of a Good Fish

He was so small, so
Full of wrath. Fierce, you might say,
As he glared you down.

Yes, friends, a sad time for us all: on Sunday, I went to feed my dear Tyra his dinner and found him un-living. In these current times of feline multiplication and a lack of my roommate to torture, Tyra chose to die as he chose to live...grumpily, angrily and intentionally on a day that, by all indications, should have been Very Good.

I miss you, dear fish. My world isn't the same without your terrifying, unblinking eyes.

R.I.P Tyra -- Dec 2005-April 2008

2008-04-26T01:04:00.001-04:00

Celebration, of the Graduate Student Variety

It's over! It's done!
With my hound, I would share some
Belly rubs of joy.

And thus, my first year of grad school comes to a close. Now I get a week or two to sleep and then it's off to Ecuador to chase giant turtles and run from equally giant spiders.

In other news: we got a second cat, and it makes me miss my sweet, mellow hound all the more. Can you believe the cruelty of my parents, who keep him from me?

2008-04-18T11:26:00.003-04:00

FYI, quick photo update:

Cemeteries album updated with photos from the Antrim City (?) cemetery in North Michigan (summer 2007).

Keep an eye out for more summer 2007 updates, they're getting looked at, slowly but surely.

Also...archive links finally work! Yay!

2008-04-18T01:48:00.002-04:00

Drama, of the Graduate Student Variety

End of semester
Draws near. Sleep: little. Fun: less.
Too late to drop out?

O, the workload. O, the stress. Woe is me! Woe is my woeful life! Woe, I say! I miss my long, lazy afternoons, spent watching America's Next Top Model reruns or leisurely cruising the blogosphere. What happened to those days of yore? Will we see them again in this lifetime?

Alas - I fear not.

2008-04-16T14:34:00.002-04:00

Guess what happened yesterday?

The Six Sentences book came out! Yes, that's right, a book, from Six Sentences! And did I mention eighteen sentences by yours truly appear within said book?

Books of flash fiction make great gifts, you know...

2008-04-01T03:05:00.002-04:00

Happy 10th Birthday, Rocky

There has been, on this
Earth, one full decade of this
Hound. Rejoice, rejoice!

Yes, it's April Fool's Day again and that must mean it's everyone's favorite April Fool's birthday. And another birthday spent so far away from my beloved hound. Trying not to be melancholy - this calls for celebration!

2008-03-30T20:26:00.002-04:00

Today marked the bittersweet passing of an old antagonist.

My grumpy, aged laptop, Computron, was laid to rest in favor of a younger, faster, more eager-to-please model. While I'll miss the uneasy truce Compy and I struck, I have to say I'm pretty excited to use a computer that isn't out to kill me.

Still: a moment of silence for the old bastard.

OK, now that that's out of the way, here's the real reason I'm posting. I wanted to save Computron's hard drive, which is proving to be much harder to be than anticipated (even in death he can't make things easy for me!), and removing said hard drive necessitated completely dismantling his innards. If you've never taken a power tool to a laptop, I highly suggest it.

I made sure to document the carnage.

(click img!)

Also today, I took some pictures of my fleece jacket. Random, sure, but I'm not completely disappointed by the results.

(click img!)

See, FHD isn't dead yet at all.

2008-03-29T21:26:00.001-04:00

Firefox has this neat little add-on that allows you to update your blog without actually having to log into the Blogger system (pain in the butt). Pretty sweet, right? Right!

So this entry is just a test.

Oh, and a promise: FHD is not dead. Stay tuned.

Seriously.

2008-01-21T04:13:00.000-05:00

MLK Stands for Holiday, Right?

I like this man, this
Visionary, this smart dude.
...Whoever he is.

Hound dogs don't need to know the reason behind the day, I suppose. All they know is a long weekend means the happy presence of their people, more snuggles and especially more food.

2008-01-19T02:52:00.000-05:00

Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats (part 1)

Lazy day dogs are
The best kind of company.
Come here, you. Let's nap.

What good are cats, anyway? They come and go and can't just lay down and sleep through the night. Who needs that kind of high maintenance attitude? (Please don't tell the Striped One that we harbor such feelings...)

2008-01-17T15:43:00.000-05:00

The Idea of Snow
Snow is nice to think
About, but not to be in.
Too cold and too wet.

It's true. And it's not like the Hound Dog has to shovel anything or pick away at the ice. Nope, he has a crew to do all that nonsense for him. Must be nice...!

2008-01-16T23:34:00.001-05:00

Greetings from my second week of my second semester as a graduate student. I'm already starting to feel a little claustrophobic from the MOUNTAIN OF WORK that awaits me. Jeez. Why couldn't this be a cakewalk, like undergrad? Life ain't fair.

But I have good news! I'm being published!!

Yes, that's right. Our friends at 6S are publishing a book dedicated to the art of the writing the six-sentence story. I submitted three stories and...they were all accepted into the anthology. Hooray! More details on that when I get them.

For now, bask in my glory.

2007-12-17T01:30:00.001-05:00

So I had this great idea for FHD - how I wanted it to look, how I wanted it to operate, what I wanted to feature. Then I set it up and...I kind of hated it.

Welcome to Plan B, which I am much happier with.

As of this posting, everything is up and operational! If you run into links that don't work, please let me know.

2007-12-16T04:58:00.000-05:00

On Friday night, I saw I Am Legend at the local IMAX theater. To be honest, the real draw of going to see that movie at that location was the inclusion of the first six minutes of the upcoming Batman movie, but I didn't pay $11 just for six minutes of footage. I really did want to see I Am Legend.

Overall, those six minutes of Batman overshadowed the feature.

I like the idea of I Am Legend: last man on Earth, working to survive with only his faithful canine as company (naturally). Unfortunately, I think this movie had too many ideas and it was unable to figure out what to do with them all. Is it a character study of a man on the edge or an adrenaline-fueled fight to withstand the boogeymen? I don't think one is necessarily exclusive of the other, but I Am Legend failed to pull it off.

To be fair, Will Smith gives a great performance as a man struggling to keep it together. He's lonely and stressed out and clearly very close to losing it. But he's also a wanna-be action hero, trapping and killing and defending his territory from zombies. (Yeah, zombies; people infected with a virus that makes them hyper-aggressive - I feel like I've seen this movie before...) I can't decide if it's the action that disrupts and ruins the more meaningful slow parts or the slow parts that keep the action from being as good as it could be.

The zombies themselves were incredibly disappointing: fleshy, screaming CGI villains reminiscent of what we saw in The Mummy years ago. (I was waiting for locusts to come streaming out of their much-too-wide mouths.) Animating the zombies seemed unnecessary and overall unconvincing. In fact, a lot of the CGI was lackluster. The lions were clearly not lions, the deer seemed to be animated by someone unfamiliar with deer. Have I become spoiled by other movies with gorgeous, near seamless effects? You bet. Welcome to 2007.

There's a lot going on in the movie (solitude, zombies, trickery, mannequins, dogs, faith, experimentation, responsibility), and while nothing ends up a complete failure, nothing is particularly wonderful, either.

Ultimately, I Am Legend is miss-able. FHD gives it 2 kibbles out of 5.
(Don't take your hound to this one - violence against dogs abounds!)