The Doggy Diaries... gone to the dogs!

Salamanders Galore!

You'll never guess what I found in our yard this morning ... a little salamander!

I knew there were salamanders in our yard, but I didn't realize how many. When we first moved into this house, I was startled to find one while gardening in the front yard. It was living in a broken sprinkler system pipe that had been sawed off and then covered with two bricks to prevent someone from falling in the hole that was left. Travis and I would occassionally go out there in the early evening and check on our little friend. It was funny to watch it skurry back into the pipe each time we "discovered" it!

A few weeks later, we were installing a patio drip system on the back patio, and while moving a very heavy redwood planter box, we accidentally squished a salamander to death. I was so distraught. I thought we had killed our little friend from the front yard and was very, very sad. For the next two or three weeks, I went out every day to see if the salamander was stationed in her usual place under the bricks, but each day she was not to be found. I eventually gave up and convinced myself that we killed her.

Then one day, Travis was hanging out in the front yard waiting for me, and he decided to pick up the bricks. Our little salamander was back! Yaay!

A few months later, we were told that the front yard would be completely demolished, including all the vegetation and the existing (broken) sprinkler system. I couldn't bear the thought of the salamander being rototilled to death, so Trav and I agreed we would catch the salamander and keep her until they put the yard back together, then we could release her.

We were never given a date as to when the demolition was to occur, but two days after being given notice that the yard would be torn up, I came home from work to find a couple of men ripping up my front yard and tearing up the earth with a very large rototiller. I freaked out. Fortunately, they hadn't yet reached the part of the yard where "Sally" lived. I pulled up the bricks but couldn't find her. Not knowing how else to get her out of the pipe, I decided to turn the water on and flush her out. I guess I used too much force because the salamander came flying out of the pipe riding a rather large "wave" of water and smacked the side of the hole. I think the salamander was stunned by it all because it lay motionless for about two seconds ... long enough for me to scoop it up and put it in the only suitable container I could find -- an old fishbowl.

When Travis came home that night, we went to the pet store and purchased a terrarium, some moss, and sand. Travis put the terrarium together, and we even put one of the salamander's bricks in there to make it feel like home. Travis laid in some dirt from the salamander's original home, some sand we had purchased and then scooped out a channel in the dirt before laying the brick on top of it to create a tunnel. He filled the terrarium with moss and some rotting wood from our backyard. We caught some little grubby bugs from the salamander's hole thinking that would be an appropriate source of food.

We named the salamander "Sally," and she's been living with us for the last several weeks. (The yard is still nothing but a dirt wasteland.)

Fast forward to this morning. I had already learned my lesson about squishing salamanders, so even though I hadn't seen another one since that day, I'm always careful when picking up potted plants just in case. It was a good thing I was so careful this morning because low and behold, there was another salamander hiding under one of the containers!

I called Travis and asked what to do ... he suggested I catch it and put it in with Sally for company. So I did! We now have two little salamanders in the terrarium. Being nocturnal salamanders, they are both hiding out under the brick today and will probably emerge just after sunset tonight, as Sally usually does.

I'm thinking we should create a little salamander preserve in the ivy-covered flower beds surrounding our very shady patio. I could just release them back to the main patio area, but I worry that they'll be squished by accident at some point in the future if we don't move them away from the potted plants. Other than the once broken sprinkler pipe in the front yard, the patio is really the only place that's cool enough and shaded enough for them to survive. I'll have to see what can be done for them.

But for now, it's kind of exciting having these "exotic" little creatures living with us! They are called Arboreal Salamanders, and you can read more about them by visiting eNature.com's Arboreal Salamander web page. I guess we should come up with a name for the new salamander since Sally's already got a name. Any ideas?

Loneliness

I don't know of a nicer way to say it, so I'll just say it how I see it. ... This weekend really sucks! :(

Travis has had to work every bleepin' day of this weekend to get a project at work ready for another team to take over on Tuesday. Basically, I've hardly seen him at all for the last three days. Although I was home all day on Friday waiting for the refrigerator recycling people to show up, Trav didn't get home until 8:45 that evening. I had to start dinner without him because I was so hungry. I hate eating without him. I feel like I'm only thinking about me and letting him fend for himself when it comes to finding food.

Saturday was a bit better but only because we had prior dinner arrangements. He was home at 6pm to wash and get ready for dinner. Had it been up to Travis, however, he would have stayed at work until the other few men left. Now that he's a manager, it's pretty much his duty to stay with his team. Putting in even 1% less than the rest of the crew is unthinkable.

So today, he was up at 5am and out of the house by 5:30. In fact, he's been waking every day this weekend at our usual hour of 5am. It's now well after 9pm and I have yet to see or hear from him.

Once again, I've been alone all day. On Friday, I couldn't leave the house because of the refrigerator. I couldn't leave the house on Saturday because I had to wait for a Fed Ex package that never arrived. I did get out of the house this morning, but only to go to the grocery store and get a carton of oatmeal for breakfast. Yes, I could have gone out, gone shopping, or some other inane task, but I feel guilty about blindly spending money and wasting gas just to give me something to do. If I really need something, like the oatmeal, that's one thing. But just driving around and spending money to get out of the house seems rather stupid to me.

I imagine tomorrow will be the same story. Trav and I will be up at 5, he'll be gone by 5:30, and I'll be sitting here at 9pm waiting for him to come home.

The worst part about having a useless holiday weekend like this one is that I'm incredibly lonely. When times like this used to happen (and granted, there weren't that many of them), I had Samson to rely on for companionship and company. But Samson died last fall, and now I'm really starting to remember what it's like to be lonely. I don't like the memories or the feelings one bit. Of course I realize that what I'm feeling now doesn't even come close to the loneliness I felt while living in Los Angeles and San Diego. At least I know that at some point he'll come home, that I won't be alone for very long. Still, loneliness is a hard feeling to shake. If things continue on this path, I wonder how I'll cope, especially now that Sam-dog is gone.

Hopefully I'll have more pleasant things to talk about tomorrow.

A Day Off

Somebody needs to explain to me why it is that just when you take a deliberate day off of work, the weather decides it doesn't want to play nice.

I had to take a personal day off work today in order to be home during a four-hour period when the refrigerator recycling crew was scheduled to come pick up an old, old refrigerator left here by previous tenants. Now, I normally don't like taking Fridays off work because they are too close to the weekend, and I end up getting used to being spoiled with three days of not driving in traffic, dealing with people that annoy me, and in general, spending 10+ hours doing work I feel incompetent at when I could be home taking care of chores I've got to do and living some of my life for me, doing things I want to do.

*big sigh* If only being a wife-in-practice, the family cook, laundromat, seamstress, cleaning crew, etc. etc. etc. paid something that would allow me to leave work and spend my time during the day doing the mundane household chores so that when I come home in the afternoon, I'm not still left with all that work to do before I feel unencumbered enough to do something enjoyable to me.

Getting back on track ... I especially didn't want to have to take the day off today because we've already got an extra day built into the weekend with Memorial Day on Monday. That means I've now got a four-day weekend, essentially, and it's going to be all the more difficult for me to go back to work on Tuesday. With all that in mind, you'd at least think the weather would at least be pleasant and provide me with a sunny day at home, where I most like to be.

But no. Oh, no. That just couldn't be arranged. We haven't had a drop of rain here in Northern California since March. So why does it now rain on the last Friday of May and the day before the official start of Memorial Day weekend? It's crazy I tell you. I think the weather gods have it in for me. I truly think they want to make every "hooky" day I take from work as awful as possibly can. Of course, on the days when I'm stuck in my tiny little 8'x10' office, it's as beautiful as can be outside and I CAN'T LEAVE! Grrrrrr ... I don't like the humor of these weather gods.

Is There Anybody Out There?

Well, I've finally done it ... I've finally taken the plunge and decided to launch The Doggy Diaries! I don't yet have any firm or concrete ideas as to what direction this blog will take. For the time being, it will be a place for me to keep categorical bookmarks of web sites I like, talk about whatever's on my mind at the moment, vent when I'm angry, and maybe even put up some "educational" pieces pertaining to anything I find interesting enough to pass along. Basically, it's my own personal forum, a blank wall, if you will, just begging for me to mark it up with my own style of graffiti.

As for a little background about the development of this site: I installed Movable Type 2.661 back in mid-to-late April, and I've been learning the Movable Type system ever since. At first, I just wanted to learn the basics so I could start typing up a storm here. Then, being the geekish computer nerd that I am, I started reading up on techniques on how to optimize your blog for a Google search. That led me to learning about the comment spamming that's become so prevalent on MT blogs.

Of course, for those of you who know me, I am an extreme perfectionist in many areas of my life. Web development and source coding happen to fall into the "it's gotta be perfect" category. I wasn't satisfied simply that the blog was functional and allowed me to start publishing my thoughts for the whole world to see. No, oh no. I couldn't stop there. I wanted to "trick out" the default MT installation files so the site would look just as I wanted.

First, I had to work up a color scheme. Browns and tans are very soothing to me, and they happen to be the colors that I've been doing a lot of decorating with lately, so they were a natural choice. But which shades? You have no idea how much time I spent playing around with RGB values to find just the right blend of colors that appealed to me.

Then I played around with the CSS stylesheets over and over again to make my site look "just right." Not only did I change around some of the physical layout properties of the default stylesheet, but I removed some of the CSS rules that had been defined for the default MT pages and created my own new classes and rules, as any good web developer would naturally do.

To shorten an already long story, just after I got the basic XHTML/CSS finished, I discovered a whole new set of issues to address before I felt comfortable taking my "less than perfect" blog live. As I said earlier, I wanted it optimized for Google searches. In the process of researching optimization techniques, I learned a few tips and pointers about how to structure my site for forward-seeking compatibility. I spent a bit of time deciding on and implementing a method for archiving all of my soon-to-be posts.

All of this research had thoroughly snared me into the guts of the Movable Type code. That's when I learned of the big problem presented by comment spamming. I read the horrific "war stories" of those who have already been blogging for quite a while and had to spend oodles of time cleaning up spam damage done to their blog by the SOB (I don't think an acronym definition is necessary for this one!) spammers and crapflooders out there.

My blog was still virginal at that time, and not wanting to go through what the "war veterans" had experienced, I decided to take a proactive approach and vaccinate my blog against a spam problem before such a problem would have a chance to take root. I spent at least another 1 - 1.5 weeks learning more about the Movable Type system, plug-ins that are available for MT, hacks that have been developed to combat spam, and other general spam-combating techniques. By no means have I been able to implement all of the suggestions I found; there are simply far too many.

However, I now feel comfortable enough that my blog is at least somewhat secure, and for the time being, I like its physical appearance enough that I'm willing to put it out for all to see. There will, of course, be the inevitable revisions and changes as my site goes through its growing pains. Plus, there are a lot more site tweaks and features I'd like to implement that I just didn't have time to research without extending the launch date another several months.

To be very honest, I'm somewhat nervous because I've got this nagging feeling that I've forgotten something or that I will have nothing to talk about. Hopefully, neither of those fears will be proven true. I'm looking forward to having fun with this blog and maybe, just maybe, sharing a few precious gems of information with all of you out there in cyberspace.

Thanks for stopping by! I plan on putting up new posts daily, so please feel free to stop by as often as you please. In the words of the famous Beverly Hillbillies Clampett family, "Ya'll come back now, ya hear?!?"