August 2005 Archives

School started yesterday. I usually give a brief description of my classes and how I think they'll turn out, but for some reason I'm not excited about them yet. Well, except for Japanese, which is really fun and interesting already. I just spent the past couple of hours making Hiragana flash cards. We have to learn to write 46 syllables in three weeks, and then from that point on, all the lessons are written in Japanese. Goodbye a, b, c, and d.

I have to take Kory to work in about twenty minutes. Do you think there's any chance it will finally stop raining within that time? There's nothing I like better than driving down a scary dark road covered in construction barrels on a dark rainy night!

The only two people I remember having as friends when I was younger were Heidi Rost and Aaron Costello. They both lived next door to me, first Heidi, and when her family moved out, Aaron and his family moved in. I can't remember how old I was, but I think Heidi's family moved out when I was around 5 and Aaron's family moved out when I was like 10 or 11. So here are some uneventful memories I have of our friendships:

Heidi

• We used to call Heidi "Little Heidi" because my sister's name is Heidi.
• I used to go over her house and her mom, Kathy, used to make us alphabet soup which I ate (drank) with a straw.
• I think I was very pushy and controlling, while Heidi was really shy and reserved. You would think that it would have been opposite judging by how I am now.
• I can remember being down in Heidi's basement with both of us trying to figure out what to play with next. If Heidi suggested something that I didn't want to do, I would start to walk up the stairs and say something like, "Well, if you're going to play Candy Land, then I'm just going to go home." Heidi would of course quickly give in and we would get to play with something I wanted to, like the Lite Brite.
• Heidi and I played soccer together for a couple years. Our team's name was the Pink Pizazz (apparently this can be spelled three ways). I don't think we were very good. I just remember riding to games in Kathy's brown mini van and eating lots of oranges after games.
• One time we were playing in my front yard and I said, "Hey! How about we play with my farm?" "Ok, that's a genius idea, Amy!" So I ran inside to get my little plastic farm. It took a few minutes to find, and when I finally got back outside, Heidi was gone! I found out later that she got stung by a bee.
• Not related to Heidi, but one time my brother Kevin was playing with a Pogo Ball and he flipped it up behind him and accidentally hit Heidi's sister, Molly, in the mouth and knocked out her front teeth. Good times.

Aaron

• Aaron and I had a very competitive, love-hate friendship.
• We used to play basketball all the time. There was almost a constant game of PIG or HORSE or whatever going on in his backyard. This is the reason I won the free throw contest later on in a high school gym class. I won a candy bar! I also won the attention of all the other girls, causing them all to ask me to be on the girl's basketball team. "Sorry girls, skaters are too cool to play sports."
• We also used to play a lot of video games. I remember watching him and his dad play Super Mario World the first day it came out.
• I had a Scotty Pippin basketball that I got from Big Wheel* because Scotty Pippin was the best, duh. One day Aaron and I were fighting about something and he took my Scotty Pippin ball and hid it in his garage! I remember refusing to talk to him for a few days, and one day I found the ball just sitting in the front lawn. He probably gave in because he realized he didn't have anyone else to play with. (*I don't know if anyone else knows what Big Wheel was, but it was pretty much like a Wal-Mart before they came onto the scene and started appearing on every block. Big Wheel was the place to go when you needed special things like dress clothes and Scotty Pippin basketballs. You couldn't buy fancy clothes from the Drug Mart across the street.)
• When we were stuck inside because of weather, we used to sit in the basement and play dumb boy games like Fireball Island.
• We used to line up all of his action figures (about a million) in his driveway and then roll baseballs and basketballs at them to see who could knock over the most.

Here are some digital photos from the weeding day my mom and I had.

They are also up on Flickr along with a few extras.

The Meet and Greet on Sunday for Greyhound Gathering was just great. Especially after reading so many books on greyhounds and reading about them online for so long. It was really amazing to actually see them in person. The highlight of being there was meeting Ivan and Bev, this amazing couple who currently have 3 greyhounds (Caramal, Hannah, Griff), 1 foster greyhound (Kirk), a whippet (Dewey), and a toy poodle (Gypsy). They were the nicest couple ever and Ivan talked to Kory and I pretty much the whole two hours we were there. He even let me walk Kirk (the foster), even though Kirk did not want to walk with me! Kirk is a very shy dog, and Ivan said when they got him two months ago he was 100 times worse! Like a lot of other greys, Kirk probably had a male trainer at the track that treated him like garbage. But with the help of Ivan and the other greys, we walked around the store and later on we took them outside for a potty break. Before we went outside Ivan said, "Now make sure you have a good hold of that leash! We don't want him getting loose because I don't want to chase him down!" You see, greyhounds should never be off leash unless they are in an enclosed area because the instant they see something moving (rabbit, squirrel, etc.) they are gone! So we walked all the dogs out to the grass in the back, and the three of us were just standing around talking while the dogs did their thing, and all of a sudden Kirk ran forward and nearly ripped my hand off and knocked me over! It caught all of us totally off guard, we're still not really sure what Kirk was going after, but it's a good thing I had a good grip on the leash! Great first lesson for a girl who has walked a dog like twice in her life!

After the Meet and Greet was over, Ivan and Bev invited us to come back to their house to see the greys in their environment, so we followed the purple minivan (covered with greyhound stickers and decals ) with five hounds piled inside back to Massillon. Bev let the dogs into their fenced backyard and took their leashes off and out came the personalities! Kirk ran back and forth and barked at me and Kory the whole time. (Greyhounds are known for being very quiet dogs, and Ivan said that he thinks Kirk just barks because he's scared of everything.) Hannah ran up and down the fence chasing a guy on a riding lawn mower, and sweet little Caramel just stood there, didn't run around at all! A few minutes later we went inside their house to see what I assume everyone who has 5 hounds house looks like. We walked into the living room and the open space that wasn't being taken up by couches, the tv, etc. was completely filled with 5 huge Orvis dog beds. And on top of those dog beds were 5 tired and lazy hounds. It was so funny! That's the first thing they did when they got in, ran straight to the living room and plopped down on their beds (Griff is so big that he didn't even fit completely on it). 45 mph couch potatoes!

We ended up staying for about 2 hours, talking to Ivan and Bev about everything from greyhounds to veganism to Ivan's battles with two bouts of cancer, both of which he won! Needless to say, Kory and I fell in love with all of Ivan and Bev's dogs. Gypsy, the toy poodle, who sat on my lap the whole time wanting her belly rubbed. Poor Kirk who had such a terrible life at the track and needs lots of love and patience to introduce him to the real world. Griff, the biggest grey I've ever seen, who is a huge whiner and needs to sleep with a night light on. Caramel, a beautiful fawn girl who sheds like crazy! Hannah, the cutest little grey with the softest fur ever who hates lawn mowers and bikes! And of course, Dewey, the sweetest little whippet, who Ivan says used to be a terror, that curled up on the couch next to Kory!

Anyway, it was one of the most eye opening experiences I've had and I couldn't thank Ivan and Bev enough for being so kind to us and letting us into their home. I just think everyone who fosters retired racers is amazing, and if you ever go into PetSmart and see them, you better donate some money because everything they do is volunteer and non-profit! Ivan said that he and Bev have fostered somewhere between 60 and 70 greyhounds in the past seven years - that's just crazy! It was funny because while we were waiting around outside after the Meet and Greet, he would point to all the other greys as they walked out and say things like, "Oh yeah, that brindle right there...that's Daisy, we fostered her a few years ago." I bet they fostered over half the dogs that were there!

I have to admit that when I used to look through Petfinder.org at all the available greyhounds in Ohio, I generally didn't pay as much attention to the greys from Greyhound Gathering just because they didn't have very much information about them and they didn't have a website. Much ignorance on my part! Greyhound Gathering is a great adoption group, and they deserve as much attention as any other group. I wish there were more opportunities to spread the word about adopting retired racers, and I certainly wish I could help. If Greyhound Gathering asked me to build them a site I would do it in a second!

I also want to say that I think it's great that Ivan and Bev strongly oppose greyhound racing (not sure about anyone else in Greyhound Gathering, but my guess is that they do). I'm sure many people don't know how terribly the dogs are treated while they're at the track, let alone how many thousands of dogs are killed each year after they're "not good enough" to race anymore, or were "not good enough" to race in the first place. I didn't know how bad it was until I researched and learned more. Please go read this site. More people need to be aware of atrocities of this "sport".

I know it's the almost the middle of the week already, but I wanted to list some things that happened this past weekend. It's one of the best weekends I've had in a long time, I just haven't had a chance to sit and write about it yet. Oh, and since Thursday isn't the weekend I'll say here that my mom came down from Michigan Thursday afternoon.

Friday

• My mom and I woke up early and took RolyPoly and Chiyo outside for a romp in the yard, cleaned out the bunnies, and then started pulling all the weeds out of the front "flower beds". There were about a trillion weeds to pull out, so it took us probably a good two to three hours and we had three bags full of weeds! I call them "flower beds" because there is a huge lack of flowers and plants that aren't "weeds" for that matter. Pictures to come soon.
• Our wedding shower/party thing was later that night. It was great! It was so nice of everyone to come out and waste their Friday night being with us. There was a lot of sweating, good vegan foods, and fun of course! Here a couple photos that Kory's dad took.
• My mom left about 2/3 of the way through the party to go back to Michigan.

Saturday

• Kory and I went to the Akron Zoo and met up with Don who works there. It was a pretty nice zoo. Small, but sometimes it's nice to not be worn out after a day of walking around at the zoo, like the Cleveland Zoo. Anyway, it was really fun because Don took us behind the scenes and we got to see all the animals being treated in the clinic, all the animals on hold and in quarantine, and we even got to see the Komodo Dragons and they stuck their yellow tongues through the bars and probably wanted to eat our toes.
• We were planning on going to a Meet & Greet for the Greyhound Adoption of Ohio, but it was out in Willoughby and we ended up not having enough time to drive out there before it was over.
• We went to see Mad Hot Ballroom, which was fantastic. We also ended up with a free March of the Penguins decal that one of the managers pulled off the pretzel machine door for us!

Sunday

• In between services, we went to a Meet & Greet in North Canton for an adoption group called Greyhound Gathering. I'm not going to say much about it now because I want to write a separate entry for it, but it was amazing. If you ever see the greyhounds standing around at your PetSmart, definitely go talk to the people because what they do for those hounds is truly amazing.

Kory and I went to the Akron Zoo to visit Don today. Don's a keeper there, and he was nice enough to take us behind the scenes and show us around! And we even got in for free!

Here are some digital photos. There are also a few more up on Flickr.

I finally went up to the school the other day to apply for graduation. I've been putting it off forever because I really don't like talking to the advisors, but luckily I just had to fill out a paper. If things go right, I should be graduating next May.

I also went to the biology building to sign up for my writing intensive class. It's not really a class, just an extra credit hour to go along with a class I'm already taking. I think to "pass" this "class" I have to write a 14 page research paper on a topic we cover in class. Yuck! I wasn't sure which class to take it with, so I decided on my Environmental Physiology class because I have the same teacher that I had for Embryology, and he was really easy. I was considering taking it with my Wetlands class since that's more interesting to me, but I decided not to because I think writing a paper worthy for Ferenc to read would be impossible. I had Ferenc for Invertebrate Zoology and Entomology, so I know how much he expects out of the essays on tests, so who knows what he would want out of a research paper!

Sadly, Leigh is not listed as being in my wetlands class anymore! I know she was talking about how she might have to drop out so she could take classes for her teaching license or something, but now who will I swoon over Ferenc with?

I don't really have the energy to write an easily understandable paragraph, so here is a list of things that have been going on.

• Joe had an appointment at the vet's, but we never made it there because my car battery died while I was pumping gas. I had to have the car towed. Joe wasn't allowed in the tow truck so he had to stay in the car by himself, and I felt horrible for putting him through that. Luckily the nice lady at Tires & More was more than happy to let Joe inside, so I just sat on the couch and scratched his head through the crate bars while they replaced my battery. Yay for AAA and nice independent car shops.
• Heidi, Kane and the girls are in Kent right now, staying at Kory's hotel. Tomorrow they're going to Geauga Lake and on Saturday they're coming over to see the house and then we'll probably all go get something to eat.
• My mom is coming down next Friday so she can go to the party that Reita, June and Shelly are putting together for me and Kory. I'm going to convince her to move to Ohio and go be a radiographer with me.
• It's been really hot out recently, in case you didn't notice. RolyPoly just does this all day long.
• I can't stop thinking about these and these and both of them together.