Little the dog

Last night some of the local kids (yes, the ones I'm always complaining about) brought a little dog to our door. They were accompanied by a parent this time, the first time I've ever met one of their parents.

They had found a little female jack russell wandering around the estate and she seemed lost and tired. Crucially, the kids didn't recognize her, and they know every dog in the neighbourhood. So Mammy had agreed that they could go around all the houses where they knew people with dogs lived and ask them if they knew the dog. But first they wanted to check with me that I would take her if they couldn't find anywhere for her to go by bedtime.

Nobody owned her, so now she's here. She's a sweet wee girl, and clearly very much a lap dog. She likes to be picked up and likes to sit next to people. We are very hopeful that someone in the estate owns her, or at least someone local. But if not, well, someone's going to get a lovely little dog soon.

I am calling her Little, for now. Because, you know, she's little.

MJ's will has been filed

According to the BBC:

"As we work to carry out Michael's instructions to safeguard both the future of his children as well as the remarkable legacy he left us as an artist, we ask that all matters involving his estate be handled with the dignity and the respect that Michael and his family deserve."

So, none at all then.

Poor Lulu

A few weeks ago Lulu became lame in one of her front legs. This necessitated a visit to the vet to ensure that she was fit for the Great Camping Trip to Derbyshire. Sadly, the vet recommended that she be left behind, in kennels, for rest, medication, and no exercise for two whole weeks. The vet suspected elbow dysplasia.

For a dog owner, the idea of dysplasia is bad news. It can mean years of medication, physical therapy, restricted exercise, arthritis, and general misery for the dog, and high vet bills for the owner.

Naturally, we wouldn't want anything like that to befall poor Lulu.

Fortunately, the x-rays we just subjected her to appear to suggest that she hasn't got it, or if she has got it, she's in the extremely early stages of it and a few months of gentle exercise could prevent it from developing. We won't know for sure until the radiologist has had a chance to look at the x-rays, and she won't be visiting for another two weeks. In the meantime, we have to proceed as if Lulu has got it.

That means that a dog who was formerly getting at least two hours of fairly vigorous exercise a day, much of it in the form of chasing a ball at high speeds and with much leaping, is now confined to three ten minute walks on the lead every day, and no more ball.

She has been home less than a week and has already eaten a book I was reading.

Except today, when she is the poorest yoke in the world, having been given a general anaesthetic by the vet. I don't know about you, but I find that when certain dogs come home after a general anaesthetic, they become tired and clingy, and don't like you to leave the room or they won't go to sleep. So instead of getting my afternoon's work done, I'm sitting in the living room with the dogs, or Lulu won't lie down, even though she looks as though she will fall down if left to her own devices.

Poor wee girl.

Hot town, summer in the, er, housing estate

Summer is the time for serious reading. Partly because the days are long and you can get away with switching on your, frankly, inadequate bedside lighting later and later, and partly because there's nothing on the telly.

I really want to read something amazing right now. I really want to read something that I love as much as I loved The Time Traveller's Wife, or Oscar and Lucinda, or Ahab's Wife. I want something with romance and incident and longing and great passions of all kinds, and an impossible journey, and long ago (although a lack of long-ago is not a deal breaker), and I want it to make me cry.

If I can't find a book with these things in it, I will just have to go back to reading some Patrick O'Brian. He packs many of those things into his books, although he's a little too light on the romance for my current requirements.

Or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Where are you, book I want to read? Come on, it'll be the solstice in a few days and I'll have to start lighting the lamps earlier of an evening.

Watching Glen Hansard write songs

I never saw Once before. It's very pleasant, except for the fact that Glen Hansard is a Grafton St. busker in it. I hate Grafton St. buskers. I never liked them much, even when I was younger and just used to traipse around Grafton St. for fun. But as I got older and often had serious business to transact on the street, they became a positive nuisance.

In particular, I remember going for some counselling sessions in a second-or-third floor office on Grafton St. and having to listen to buskers outside while trying to collect my thoughts and come up with something useful to say about my life and my relationship with other people and the world. I remember wanting to go outside after the session and shout at the buskers in frustration, because they just make so much bloody noise.

I'm not often in a hurry when I'm in town these days, and I don't mind buskers so much. I'd mind them even less if they were all like the young lad who plays drums with a couple of plastic bottles.

Still not crazy about unsolicited music in some public places though. Particularly in the Long Hall. Fuck off with that shit.

The Office romances. (May contain spoilers for those watching on Comedy Central in the UK)

One of the things I love about The Office is that the characters in it who go out with each other actually like one another and have things in common. Just like real life! In most other sitcoms I have seen, not only are the friends constantly trying to fuck each other over in a way that makes you wonder how they ever became friends at all, but the couples have NOTHING in common. In fact in most cases it is from this lack of common ground that most of the "situations" that give rise to the "comedy" emerge.

The differences between Ross and Rachel, to take a popular example, are staggering. They're always trying to hide things from each other, get out of going to one another's work events, or avoid having to take part in each other's hobbies or pastimes.

Jim and Pam, on the other hand, support each other, laugh at the same jokes, and want the same things out of life. So do Michael and Holly, and Phyllis and Bob Vance. Even Dwight and Angela, when they were together (and they will be again) shared a love of Birkenstocks and being horrible to other people. Furthermore, the few times they have put incompatible couples together on The Office, it has worked out horribly, rather than with hilarious results. Mrmonkey still can't watch Melora Hardin in anything, because Jan Levinson gives him the fear so much.

Local election special!

So, having busted his ass and spent a fortune on getting elected as our local TD, why is Thomas Byrne now trying to get out of national government and into Europe?

To date, I've had approximately 14 pieces of election literature put through my door (including one from the terrifying-looking Joanne Finnegan, who is running as an independent now, instead of as a Sinn Fein candidate, as if we might forget she ever was one), and only ONE actual candidate/canvasser calling to the door. He is local Duleek publican Seamus O'Neill, and he is, so far, my number one preference. Why? Because he is not a member of a political party, he told me he has a woman lined up to work for him who has 25 years of experience in getting stuff done in politics, and when I told him the things I would like to see done, he wrote them in a notebook along with my email address and phone number.

He also had the good grace to laugh at my joke about the annual ritual of the Placing of the Bin on Laytown beach, which happens on the first Monday in May every year. A JCB comes along and places The Bin on the path leading down to the beach. The Bin remains there until the first of October, when it flies south for the winter.

Yes, okay, I'm easily pleased. But I have to vote for someone, and it might as well be him.

Dammit Jim!

So, after looking forward to Star Trek for months and months and months, myself and Mister Monkey snuck out the other week to go and see it. Well, it kind of felt like sneaking out because we probably should have gone into the city centre to see friends, and because we drove for an hour each way to get to Liffey Valley, which contains Ireland's biggest cinema screen.

It was completely worth the hassle. The film was AWESOME. The only reason I haven't blogged about it before now is that I don't really have interesting to say about it. I just sat there with a stupid grin on my face throughout the entire thing (except for that Willy Wonka bit with Scotty, that was just kind of annoying), which was exciting and fun and kind of sexy and... well, I have one reservation. And yes, it is a bit "Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film...", but I think it's valid. It was all a little bit gung ho, wasn't it? Just a tiny bit militaristic, maybe? The beginning, when all the cadets were getting on their different ships and they were all excited to be going out into space just seemed to be a little bit too much Starship Troopers and a little bit too little Wrath of Khan for my liking. I'm not saying I want 90 minutes of discussion about the Prime Directive in every single Trek movie, but it is that soul that has always set it apart from other sci fi, and I don't want it to get lost in among the frankly amazing action sequences and the whole, beautiful look of the thing.

Other than that, I loved it. Everything about it was bright and shiny and positive and forward-looking, and the cast was just wonderful, particularly Karl Urban as Bones. He really sets the tone for the others to follow, pitching the performance somewhere between impersonation and original interpretation. For once I even see the point of Zachary Quinto.

So yes. A resounding success. I welcome our new Trek overlords.