So, in no particular order here be some things going on around these parts:

• Uschi had her yearly eye exam. Aside for being watery for no reason we can determine her eyes are completely healthy. The eye doc didn’t seem any more concerned than our vet about the watery thing since her eyes aren’t irritated and the discharge is clear. I was told to come back next year unless something changes. This was so much like my own eye doctor visits I had a moment where I thought perhaps I broke reality.
• I finally broke down and read some of the DCnU comics. I am totally underwhelmed. What I read (mostly the new Batgirl, some Nightwing, Batman and JL) wasn’t bad. It was just…well, lacking.
• I also watched Young Justice. Um. That was a mistake. I mean, it’s not as horrible as I thought it would be and I probably am not as disgusted with it had I watched it live. But much like the DCnU it has a lot of potential and it’s so not living up to it.
• If that wasn’t enough to make me miss the DCAU something hard, I also discovered the new Batman series coming in 2013. It physically pains me to think about.
• I’m taking Japanese this summer. The announcement of this on Facebook was met with far more intensity than I thought it would. I’m still not sure why. As it stands right now, I feel buried under the work. Probably because I’m currently a week behind. Oops.
• I have been watching a lot of anime and reading a lot of manga, though. I count that as classwork even if no one else does.
• Went to two cookouts this weekend. I think I’ve eaten my quota of food for all of June. Also, Uschi broke herself. And then got sick. But otherwise it was totally awesome.
• A bird built a nest in the wreath on my front door. I was going to evict it, but then I discovered eggs and I couldn’t kill the unborn baby birds. All bets are off if any of them take a crap on my head, but so far they seem totally unfazed by the fact that their home randomly moves a few times a day. Uschi is mildly intrigued by their presence, but the bird hasn’t been stupid enough as yet to get close to her. It did fly in my house one day, though and that caused something of a crisis trying to shoo it back outside.
• My dissertation has a due date. *panicks*
• Oh, my birthday happened. I was commandeered by some friends and had activities and foodstuffs thrust upon me. I also might have gotten a bit drunk. I don’t remember the drunk part so much, but the activities included a showing of Avengers and the foodstuffs were yummy. Then I came home and there were flowers waiting for me. All in all, it was pretty fun and it was a most gorgeous day, too.

My back is starting to make it known that I’ve been sitting here too long so I’m going to have to end this babbly stream of consciousness. I fully intend to post something proper one of these days, but when that might be is anyone’s guess.

Bye for now.

Truly, even keyboard-mashed words cannot begin to express my excitement.

Comment on this post with “I love libraries” and I’ll give you seven things I want you to talk about. They may make sense or they may be totally random. Then post that list to your journal with your commentary. Other people can get lists from you and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

Scroll down or follow the jump for my list and responses. GSDs
Prior to working with a guide dog, I never gave much thought at all to specific breeds. I grew up with pet dogs and most all of them were varying degrees of indeterminate mixture. I do feel strongly that not every breed is for every person, but I don’t really feel like there’s a perfect breed for me. At least not in terms of a pet dog.

Working with a German shepherd, though, is very different. I truly can’t imagine partnering with another breed. I enjoy their ability to focus and that for as social as they sometimes can be, they only truly bond with one person, i.e., me. I often find it exhausting, but more often than not I count on the drive they have to work. It’s a great motivation for me to not sit around the house and there’s something uplifting about a partner who never doesn’t want to go out and do stuff. (Except if it’s raining.) I think my favorite thing about the breed is that they thrive on mental challenges. One Fidelco trainer told me once that you don’t train a GSD to do a task, like you generally do with a dog, but you have to teach them why they should do it. The most entertaining thing for me has been to watch either of my girls problem-solve their way through a game of fetch. As a blind person it’s often that my aim goes awry and any other dog — who isn’t OCD about fetch — would give up when their toy is out of reach. A German shepherd is content to spend all afternoon working out how to get that same toy . . . or might invent a whole other game out of this!

This is not to say that there aren’t qualities of the breed that I find less than ideal. Shepherds are very vocal and it’s quite common for them to groan and whine. (Yara is an especially big whiner. Uschi on the other hand apparently missed that bit when reading the breed standard, though she makes up for it by being super obnoxious with noise-making toys.) They’re also very oral and as such are big with chewing and mouthing. And while the breed itself is praised and coveted for its intelligence as I mentioned above, they are sometimes too smart for their own good. A common feat amongst my girls is their penchant for problem-solving their way through things that I’d rather them not, like how to open the front door when it’s bolted shut. Also, they shed. A lot. Like metric tons of fur a lot.

Multiculturalism
I think preserving and promoting one’s cultural background is a vital aspect of learning about oneself. There’s a foundation in our heritage that makes us who we are and understanding that is a mark of respect to those that came before us and the beliefs we hold dear.

I have a bit of a mental block with the concept, though, and I am certain that it stems from growing up with a parent who was a Jehovah’s Witness. While, I have very strong feelings about diversity, I have a lot of trouble with people separating themselves as a group and specifically those that remove themselves from society. I understand the desire and I even respect the idea, but I find it very flawed.

This was my undergraduate thesis, by the way, so I have many long-winded thoughts on it.

Cell phones
I have a love-hate relationship with my cell phone. I can’t imagine not having one and it’s been a lifesaver in many ways. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone that doesn’t drive can survive without one because I’ve been stranded a fair number of times and been quite glad for the ability to call for help. (I’m sure the reverse is true for those that do drive and have gotten stranded via their vehicle breaking down but I can’t relate to that for obvious reasons.) For a long time I was very much against upgrading my cell. I wanted it to make calls and I didn’t care for any of those extra frills, especially since it seemed that making — and keeping — a call was a pretty tall order. I thought text-messaging was about the stupidest thing known to man. And if I wanted to take pictures I had a perfectly fine camera for that and a computer to browse the Internet on.

I’ve had a smartphone of some sort for five years now and I think I feel even more strongly about this than I did before because I have gone from the person that needed a phone for any emergency to someone who is physically dependent on my phone. A phone, I might add, that cost more than my last laptop and my Kindle combined. (Not that I actually paid that, but the point remains.) Considering I drop it far more than either of those other things, this is beyond horrifying to me because I never thought I’d be one of those people who was literally attached to her phone.

I’d be disgusted with myself, but I’m generally too busy playing Angry Birds.

Fave space to be in
I suppose I have the nesting instinct because without a doubt that would be my house. Not only is everything here all mine and where I want it to be, but it’s warm and cozy and safe. And even when it looks like a German shepherd hurricane ripped through it and all I can see are the 10 million things that need to be done, I’m still utterly content here.

Fave food(s)
I’m quite fond of Italian food in general, but my absolute favorite thing is lasagna. If I had to live on just one thing for the rest of my life, I would be fine with lasagna. That is until I went into anaphylactic shock from my allergy to cow’s milk, which would certainly kick in eventually. Actually, there’s not much that is made with cow’s milk that I dislike. (I’m particularly fond of ice cream and cheese.) It’s probably a psychological thing since I really couldn’t eat anything with cow’s milk in it until I was about 5 and even then it had to be in very small quantities and I paid for it with a terribly itchy rash. (As a byproduct of having so little cow’s milk as a child, I’m also a bit lactose intolerant which is not, contrary to popular belief, the same thing as being allergic.) There was a few years during college that I thought I had outgrown the allergy, but it came back with force about ten years ago and for the most part I have cut it out of my diet.

Pictures and composing them
When they coined the phrase “point and shoot” for cameras, they may not have been thinking of people like me but it is no less accurate. The not-so-well-kept secret is that most of the time I can’t see what the heck I’m trying to take a photo of and so for any one photo I actually share, there’s at least 50 I threw out. Sometimes those 50 aren’t even of the thing I was trying to take the photo of but rather some other thing about three feet to the right. Or some unidentifiable blurry thing that may or may not be my finger. Also, when I say 50, it’s really more like 200.

All joking aside, you’ll probably notice that most of the photos I take aren’t outside because I literally can’t see a thing when I’m out in the sun. Not that they don’t exist of course. But when I can sort of see something I tend to stick with a more macro/up-close approach. It’s vaguely reminiscent of how I see except that I don’t have depth perception so where things grow indistinct (i.e., the background blurs in a photo) I just don’t see it. I also tend to offset the focus, generally to the left, since I don’t have any usable vision in my right eye and that makes centering stuff virtually impossible. So, if there’s a style and method to my photography it’s mostly through trial-and-error and less artistic genius.

Vacations
I admit I’m constantly craving one. I’d love to take time off to do nothing and I am equally interested in traveling and sightseeing. Except the moment I have the time to do nothing, it’s the most boring thing in the universe to me. And instead all my time is so filled up that I end up feeling like I need a recovery vacation from my vacation.

When I was a kid I used to say that my goal was to travel the other half of the world, since I’d already been partway from Korea to England to the US. So far I’ve only managed to go back the same direction a bit to Spain and I’m woefully under-traveled within the US.

Interestingly, I haven’t gone anywhere on vacation in over a year. Well, unless you count last Thanksgiving when I house-sat for my dad, but I don’t.

I can only assume that I’ve only just now received this “diploma” after such a lengthy wait because I didn’t attend last year’s walkathon and thus was not present for the graduation ceremony at the banquet as I was with Yara back in 2008. Of course, I generally think of my partnership anniversaries to be the date I’ve first been introduced with my guide dogs so I’m not really concerned with the delay. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure that I was going to ever have a certificate and thought they might be merely a part of the ceremony itself however informal they may seem.

However, I must admit that it does boggle my mind to realize that Uschi and I have been partnered for almost a year-and-a-half already. The time has truly flown by!

In an attempt to make up for this I present some photographic adorableness:

There’s also two solo shots of me . . . and last but not least, an outtake:

Having been one of those people that had no real knowledge of the GSD prior to my partnership with Yara I totally get it when people think that my girls are not shepherds but an entirely different breed or a mix of some sort. Given that I have the time, I’m always happy to enlighten people to the myriad of colors and patterns that German shepherds come in. That’s not what happened this afternoon at Price Chopper and so this particular interaction was simultaneously that much more hilarious and frustrating:

Stranger: *peering around my shopping cart to look at Uschi* That’s not a German shepherd.

Me: Yes, she’s a shepherd.

Stranger: A German shepherd? A purebred?

Me: Yes.

Stranger: No, that isn’t a German shepherd.

Me: Yes. She is.

Stranger: No. She’s a mix. *walks away muttering in another language*

Me: *dumbfounded* A mix of what?

At first I thought he just hadn’t gotten a good look at her given his odd vantage point, but this gentlemen didn’t offer any explanation as to why Uschi wasn’t a shepherd despite his firmness in stating that she wasn’t one.

As I stated above, the general public isn’t quite on the up-and-up with their GSD knowledge so I get a lot of questions about coloring and markings. And by “questions” I mean “thinly veiled accusations that I’ve somehow been duped into thinking my dog is a shepherd when she is obviously something else entirely.” I figure those people either take my word on the information or continue to think I’m a moron. Either way I don’t really care because there really is no harm being done and we both go our separate ways.

I find myself disgruntled by this random stranger only because he wasn’t merely alluding to my mistake but outright telling me Uschi couldn’t be a shepherd. He may as well have told me, a completely colorblind person, that the sky is purple because I’d have just as much ability to refute the allegation.

Mostly I’m amused by his obvious lack of knowledge on the breed juxtaposed with his staunch assertion on Uschi’s breeding. I can’t help but wonder where he sees the chain of information on my dog failed me and how a complete stranger’s comments trump my own sources.

Sadly, I’m pretty sure he’s from the same ilk that have no clue why a backyard breeder is to be avoided just as much as the mall pet store.

EDIT: I can’t believe I forgot about this, but I had another random stranger encounter earlier today that consisted of the person walking by me and stating to another person, “That isn’t a guide dog. It’s not wearing a jacket.” I was literally rendered speechless by that one.

• Still no conclusive answers on the pain issues I’m having. It’s the longest story ever and most of it sets my teeth on edge. But the good news is that I’m not in excruciating pain any more. Hopefully that will last and I wouldn’t complain if the pain disappeared completely.
• Discovered two sores on Uschi’s right front paw. Not sure if they are related to her skinning her pads, but the one looks pretty alarming. We have a vet appointment today.
• New job continues to be fun, though not without its own brand of stress. We have three sessions this weekend!
• Registered for the fall semester. Supposedly the last classes I’ll have to take for my program. If history is anything to go by this will change 100 times before the semester starts and I’ll have anywhere from a single class to an entire year left.
• Looking to have portraits done again. Bit up in the air as to when exactly what with the odd weather and my broken guide dog.

I’m basically recovering from yesterday’s incredibly full and long day. And by “recovering” I mean, “desperately trying to wake up enough to function.” Uschi’s not even bothering and hasn’t stepped one paw out of her crate even.

Anyway, I’m sure once I’m able to string together more than one coherent thought I’ll have far more to say about The Hunger Games and I might actually poke through the photos I took while at Crossings and can give a proper update on the laundry list of owies me and Uschi have. As well as several other related stories. For now, you can have this cute photo of the two of us.

One thing about Uschi that is both pathetic and hilarious is that she is absolutely a menace to herself. She consistently overdoes it when she plays and has wore herself out to the extreme on a couple of occasions. Yesterday at the park was no exception as you might be able to see in the above photo: she skinned pads on both her front feet.

We’ve got tons to do today including another trip to Crossings for work and a midnight showing of The Hunger Games, so unfortunately she isn’t going to be lounging around recovering. Instead she’s clomping around the house in her boots, which she’ll be wearing to protect her sore feet until she’s healed up a bit.

Isn’t it just so awesome and adorable? I was going to make it continue repeating a few more times but then I thought you all might get annoyed with that and honestly you sort of get the idea, don’t you?

Oh, and the header image is pretty cool, too. This incredible depiction of me and the girls is courtesy of the amazing and talented Jamie Marshall, otherwise known to the online world as Boots. I had a fabulous time working with her on this project and I’m terribly smitten with the end result. My “work” in this case was bombarding her with a bunch of rambling emails. My life is super hard, people.

If you’re into that sort of thing you can totally hire her! She mainly does graphic design and other artsy stuff, but she’s probably just as willing to take kindly donations in her efforts to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide. Don’t quote me on that, though. Oh, also, she sells t-shirts.

Anyway, if you weren’t around for the actual debate, the tl;dr cliff notes has to do with an alternate version of this lovely header image that is blue. It was an epic argument on both sides, but before lives were lost in the start of WWIII I put a kibosh on the entire thing by getting inebriated and then falling asleep. Your welcome, world.

I should first note that while I’m quite familiar with Alexander Dumas, The Three Musketeers is not among the many works of his that I have read. It sort of defies logic, but I don’t really have an excuse. Nevertheless, my point is that I’m rather unfamiliar with all but the most basic knowledge of this swashbuckling tale. Though, I’m not entirely sure that was a fault when it comes to this film. Certainly it was somewhat of an offset to all the negativity that greeted the film.

Personally, I think it would have been better received if it had been released a few months earlier as it’s the hallmark of a summer flick. All action and visual effects and very little substance. That isn’t to say there aren’t redeemable qualities and in fact the choreographed swordplay is quite exceptional. There’s certainly enough of it to keep the running time almost free of boredom.

At the very least your eyes will most assuredly never lack for stimuli. I’m not familiar with Paul W.S. Anderson at all, but I found this film almost nauseating in the amount captured on screen at any given time. There’s no one place for the eye to settle what with the gaudy wardrobe and sets that are littered with complex patterns and details to the point of distraction. I’m a great fan of period pieces, but this one is more a caricature of history than a romanticized version.

All the fussiness in the visual style does help alleviate the dreadfulness of the script, which has a grand helping of wretched dialogue and a plot that is simultaneously difficult to follow and completely transparent. I didn’t know such a thing were possible! And what the hell was up with all the accents?! There’s no point in expending the effort to bemoan the fact that no one sounds like they’re from Paris because not one person sounds like they’re even from the same place! I’ll give Orlando Bloom a bit of credit: he’s finally used a different accent than Legolas from The Lord of the Rings. But only to move so far into the stereotypical bad guy that his only misstep was to never twirl his mustache!

But for as dreadful as all that is what really bothers me is how entirely sick I have become of “bullet-time” like effects. I don’t necessarily mind the usage nor do I entirely despise these advancements being used to update these types of films, though I do admit to having a similar feeling of dissatisfaction with Sherlock Holmes. (Though, I actually liked that film.) No, really, it’s that I didn’t find their usage here enhanced anything. The fights would have been just as interesting without constantly slowing down and speeding up at random. In the end all it did was to make me feel a bit motion sick. Basically, it was like James Bond if it were a period film and lacking any British charm.

Truly, there are better ways to spend two hours.

Erm, anyway, so lots has been going on around here aside from the pain that has kept me from posting. The biggest news is I have a new job! For lack of an actual title I’ve dubbed myself the Website Guru and Resident Office Ninja for ICGOLD Photography. (All the awesome stuff is Cindy. Anything broken is my lack of genius.)

Mostly it’s a lot of what I do in my (nonexistent) free time, i.e., make websites, pretend I understand Photoshop even a little, and hang out on Twitter and Facebook. Except now I have to actually do it for a purpose other than avoiding my homework. I tell you, it’s a mad world.

Anyhoo, if you bothered to actually click the link, you probably recognize some of those photographs. It might come as a surprise since I’m the one poking at the code, but there was a not small amount of arm twisting to get me to not delete anything with my face on it. And I had a few issues with getting my heart to beat properly when Uschi was added to the available prints that are being sold.

I’m actually super proud to be doing this, though. And only a little light-headed. If you’re one of those people who cares about easing my potential heart failure, you can follow ICGOLDPhotos or like our Facebook page. (Or don’t, I’m kind of getting used to this talking to myself on the intarwebs thing.)

Here endeth my shameless plugging. I’ll prattle on about the other things occupying my time lately and the pain stuff soon . . . or eventually. For now? Bed!

Night, people!

There’s a few more cute shots on my Flickr stream. (This one is my favorite even though it’s random and blurry.)

1. I will make good on the posting thing, but aside from the actual difficulty of typing out a post because of the pain I’m also waiting to be out of the limbo state I’m in before I detail it out. Thanks much to everyone for the comment love on my last post. Sorry I didn’t respond to everyone. (I’ll get to it at some point along with the other bazillion things I’m behind on.)

I would blame the not really posting on the burnout from a year of daily posting, which is fair as I haven’t even wanted to read blogs since that’s been completed but I’ll get to that in a bit. I could also blame the not posting on having my time taken up by the massive amount of schoolwork being thrust upon me, but I haven’t been procrastinating on my work and it’s been quite manageable. Okay, I’ve procrastinated a little, but I’ve been surprisingly productive aside from that.

No, actually my lack of presence has been less amusing and completely out of my control. You might recall a brief mention of my ongoing pain issues that stemmed from a stiff neck. Well, that was three weeks ago and I’m still basically in agony and it’s not exclusive to my neck. As it is my hands are really bothering me and it is difficult to type, so I’ll save the meat of all the pain stuff for another post. I’m just slightly better after visiting a chiropractor yesterday, so while I may not necessarily be on the mend I’m hoping things will become more manageable and I can sit at my computer without wanting to sob piteously.

Anyway, my literal non-presence has left me quite a backlog of Internet-related things to catch up on. I am not even going to pretend that I will read all forty bajillion updates that everyone I follow has had. But it does seem that while I was ignoring all the goings-on everyone was suddenly bitten by the blogging bug and started updating more frequently (or, in some cases, period) and at least half of those people have relocated their web-presence. I just went through my sidebar and got rid of all the dead links and updated anyone with a new link, but that is merely a fraction of my RSS reader.

My back and hands are letting me know that I need to be finishing this up, so I’m going to end this with the one thing I always told myself I would never do as a blogger: a request that people leave a comment. For one, if you moved your blog/website/whatever I am likely to not know this until mid-July if my current rate is anything to go by. But as I’ve been absent, this place just seems oppressively lonely and far too big and it would be nice to know that I’m not the only person reading these words. Mostly, I would just like something to focus on that isn’t my constant pain, like cute puppy pictures or fun stories or just a “hello.”