![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arguchikREADING: Mostly I've been reading student papers lately. I'm still working my way through Stegner's The Spectator Bird. Strange that I'm not done with it yet--it's a short book, but I have been reading it in bits and pieces, here and there. I've kind of stalled out on Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' The Hidden Life of Dogs, mainly because it started to annoy me. I think she's an incredibly irresponsible dog owner. She lets her dogs run around loose--and while I might wish that domestic dogs could have a free-roaming life, the fact is that it's not safe. Sure, sure...life isn't safe. I get all that, but the kind of "not safe" I'm talking about here is the truly bad kind. At one point in the book, she describes watching the dog cross a major highway, and "somehow, miraculously" he avoids being hit by a car. OK, great, so this dog has learned how to cross busy streets without getting hit. This is fine, as far as it goes, except that Marshall Thomas completely ignores the danger that the dog's presence on a highway presents to everyone else: drivers who don't know the dog is fine crossing the road may swerve to avoid him, thereby putting themselves and other drivers in danger. Then there are those drivers out there--and don't tell me they don't exist, because I have personally observed this behavior on various highways across the country--anyway, there are those drivers who will actively try to hit an animal they see on the side of a road (i.e. instead of swerving to miss a dog, they would actually swerve to hit it). How would this dog's keen road-crossing sense deal with such an eventuality? And that's just concerning this one dog. But in the same section, Marshall Thomas also describes letting her other dogs roam, and contrasts those other dogs to the main dog she's trying to observe: the other dogs aren't good at crossing roads. Then there are the encounters she observes, between her dogs and other dogs, between her dogs and people...and I'm sorry, but she just loses me here. I can't romanticize this situation with a flip "Dogs should be free!" It is scary to encounter a stray dog when you're out walking; as a former dog owner, I can also say that it's even scarier to have such an encounter when you're out walking your own, because you have no way of knowing if that stray dog is friendly, if he will attack your dog, or if he carries diseases that your dog might catch, etc. The dog she's writing about--the main dog she's observing in the book--is a large, alpha male (not neutered, as far as I can tell) malamute. How would you like to come face to face with that dog in the middle of the night (when most of his wanderings take place)? How would you like to have to break up a fight between your leashed dog and such a stray dog? Nope. Sorry. Bad stuff.
WEARING: At the moment, I'm wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and my ancient green-teal-gold-purple paisley Patagonia fleece. I bought this right after I moved to Vermont, in 1994. Remember in the early 90's, when green was all the rage? Yeah. It's like that.
PLANNING: Going to Tacoma tomorrow for a friend's jewelry show. No plans yet for Sunday. I'm excited to have a whole week off, thanks to Veteran's Day.
KNITTING: I am almost done with my second Lace Ribbon Scarf. I have also started knitting the cardigan I've been planning to make for my mom. It's my own design--so exciting! Nothing earth-shattering (and really...are there that many ways to shatter the earth with a sweater, and still have the thing be wearable?). It'll have a fishtail lace "skirt" and a smooth stockinette body and sleeves, with picot at the sleeve edge. I'm aiming for it to be about hip-length, with a wide-ish crew neck and buttons down to just below the sternum, where the lace starts.
HAIR AND SKIN REPORT: So far my experiments are going really well. I haven't touched a bottle of shampoo in 3 weeks. The baking soda wash + vinegar rinse is working really well. My hair is clean, and it looks a lot smoother and shinier than it used to, plus it has body and actually behaves itself most of the time. It feels a lot nicer too. The only thing I don't like is that, like happened yesterday, when I get caught in the rain I can detect a faint odor of vinegar from my hair. When it's dry it just smells clean and...like hair; it's just when it gets damp. I have been using my Bumble & Bumble conditioner after the vinegar rinse, too--the ends were starting to feel like they needed a little extra moisture. Oddly, they feel a little bit drier since I re-introduced the conditioner. I think I'm going to cut it back out again. My face is also doing much better. Using the Oil Cleansing Method is still a little weird to me, but I'm having really good results with it. My pores are actually shrinking, and my skin feels smooth-smooth-smooth. The best part is that it never feels greasy like it did at the end of the day while I was using cleanser. I should say that I have continued to use a face mask once or twice per week, along with a glycolic acid cream once or twice per week (I was using both of these things before, too, and they seem to be more effective now for some reason).
WEARING: At the moment, I'm wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and my ancient green-teal-gold-purple paisley Patagonia fleece. I bought this right after I moved to Vermont, in 1994. Remember in the early 90's, when green was all the rage? Yeah. It's like that.
PLANNING: Going to Tacoma tomorrow for a friend's jewelry show. No plans yet for Sunday. I'm excited to have a whole week off, thanks to Veteran's Day.
KNITTING: I am almost done with my second Lace Ribbon Scarf. I have also started knitting the cardigan I've been planning to make for my mom. It's my own design--so exciting! Nothing earth-shattering (and really...are there that many ways to shatter the earth with a sweater, and still have the thing be wearable?). It'll have a fishtail lace "skirt" and a smooth stockinette body and sleeves, with picot at the sleeve edge. I'm aiming for it to be about hip-length, with a wide-ish crew neck and buttons down to just below the sternum, where the lace starts.
HAIR AND SKIN REPORT: So far my experiments are going really well. I haven't touched a bottle of shampoo in 3 weeks. The baking soda wash + vinegar rinse is working really well. My hair is clean, and it looks a lot smoother and shinier than it used to, plus it has body and actually behaves itself most of the time. It feels a lot nicer too. The only thing I don't like is that, like happened yesterday, when I get caught in the rain I can detect a faint odor of vinegar from my hair. When it's dry it just smells clean and...like hair; it's just when it gets damp. I have been using my Bumble & Bumble conditioner after the vinegar rinse, too--the ends were starting to feel like they needed a little extra moisture. Oddly, they feel a little bit drier since I re-introduced the conditioner. I think I'm going to cut it back out again. My face is also doing much better. Using the Oil Cleansing Method is still a little weird to me, but I'm having really good results with it. My pores are actually shrinking, and my skin feels smooth-smooth-smooth. The best part is that it never feels greasy like it did at the end of the day while I was using cleanser. I should say that I have continued to use a face mask once or twice per week, along with a glycolic acid cream once or twice per week (I was using both of these things before, too, and they seem to be more effective now for some reason).
Tags:
