Speak Dog. Speak.

When my dog is barking at me through the window when I’m leaving in the morning, I sometimes wonder if rather than saying, “Mommy, don’t leave me!”, what he’s really saying is “God, your butt looks really fat in that outfit!”

Flux

My life definitely seems to be in flux this year.  Lots of big changes.

Everyone in my house is on a diet.  Well, o.k. the cats are on weight loss maintenance since they achieved their weight loss goals last year.  However, Pugly was told by the vet that he has to lose 4 lbs — 1/6th of his body weight!  How do you explain to a Pug, who thinks he’s starving 24/7 on any given normal day, that he has to cut back on his in-between meal snacking and meal portions?

Meanwhile, I’m doing Weight Watchers@Work with 23 other hapless souls.  Since I managed to lose 55+ lbs on WW back in 2002/2003 rather successfully by applying strict OCD methods, I figured I can manage to lose the 45+ I regained living in Maine.  Actually, I’m trying to do it without the OCD part as that was a bit scary — no weighing myself 3 times a day for instance.  I’ve lost 6.2 lbs in 8 weeks so far, which is pretty healthy and I’m mostly feeling good about the choices I’m making about what I eat.  It’s much easier to follow the program during the work week however with all the cult members around.  That’s exactly what we’re like with our bags of baby carrots and our navel oranges and our discussions of Points and Lean Cuisine — which I don’t eat, by the way.  It’s very hard to find a variety of vegetarian frozen dinners that aren’t over -salted to cover the lack of flavor and under-sized.

So that’s body.

My house is going through a lot of changes too.  The roof suffered some damage from the Winter weather thanks to all of those back to back storms this past year.  Ice dams also did some inside damage.  So, I’ve just hired a contractor to do $5,000 worth of work.  It was really hard signing those papers.  However, the main house will be getting a new roof, there will be a steel door between the dining room and the garage, there will be drywall repair in the bathroom, kitchen and living room, and all three of those rooms are getting painted new colors and even the kitchen cabinets are getting repainted so no more awful green — and green is one of my favorite colors but that was just ugly.  I’m going for toffee orange in the kitchen and living room since they have an opening to each other and Cayman blue in the bathroom.

I’ve also finally bought a nice plain dining room table but no chairs.  I plan to strip the awful color on the front stoop and just stain it a natural weather-resistant wood color and I’ve been working in my garden, planting flowers and wildflower seeds.  It doesn’t look like much yet, but I have a botanical dream.

The biggest change is going to be the switch from oil heating.  I was getting physically ill at the thought of next year’s heating bills.  Last year’s bills of $600 a month were just horrible and that was before this latest daily increase in oil prices.  Then I got my letter telling me that I needed to lock in my discount rate for next year — the one I get as an employee for my work through my oil company — $4.59/gallon, a full 30¢/gallon cheaper than everyone else.  My brain might have actually melted.  For the year 2007, I used about 850 gallons of heating oil and my usage for the first 4 months of 2008 went up about 30-40% due to the harsh Winter.  Despite having been a math minor, the daughter of a CPA, and an IT professional, my brain simply couldn’t even begin to do the math; it simply couldn’t face it.

But I got to thinking about my options and I remembered hearing about Les Otten on NPR and the local news.  Otten is this crazy guy who was trying to get the state legislature to give tax credits to people who bought furnaces that burned wood pellets.  Well, I know a couple of people who recently bought wood pellet stoves but I’d never heard of a wood pellet furnace so I looked it up and it turns out that it’s a European thing.  Mr. Otten is bringing the first 100 wood pellet furnaces to Maine this summer and promising to have them installed by Winter.  He’s hoping to convert 10% of the Maine homes currently burning oil (that’s 44,000 residences) to wood pellets in 5 years.

Four out of five homes in Maine are heated with petroleum products, the highest share in the country.

By switching to wood pellets, Otten calculates, the average Maine home could be warmed for half the current cost of oil. If 44,000 homes made the switch, residents could save $78 million a year on heating bills, based on current costs. [Home Heating: Otten bets Mainers Will Warm to Wood Pellets]

So, I checked out his company’s website: Maine Energy Systems.

And let’s face it, the first thing I checked out was the cost and most particularly, the cost comparison between wood pellets and heating oil.  Let’s assume I use 900 gallons of oil and I’ve locked in my discount rate at $4.59/gal; that’s $4,131 for a year.  Apparently the equivalent amount of wood pellets would be 6.73 tons and MES’ rate is $250/ton, so that comes out to $1,684.  That’s a huge difference — $2,447 annual savings.  (O.K. I’ll be financing the new furnace but still.)

I love that the whole thing is automatic.  It just has to be cleaned once a year.  Plus, it’s environmentally friendly.  Most wood pellets are made from by-products of other wood manufacturing processes and the ash create makes excellent compost.  Plus, oil is not a replenishable resource and wood is, though it should be harvested wisely.

Anyway, I put my deposit down and now I’m waiting for that contractor to come out, have a look see at my current furnace with its big rusty hole and its current set up, and discuss the refitting so I can be one of Mr. Otten’s pioneers.

And now that my checking account is tied up for the rest of the year, I believe I’ll be sitting at home admiring the construction on my house and my wildflowers and my pitiful food portions and trying not to do anything else that’s going to cost anything.

When It Snows, It Blizzards

First of all, I want to assure everyone that I had an absolutely wonderful vacation visiting my family in New Mexico for the Christmas holiday and I plan at some point to muse over the events, observations and funny bits at some point, but I realize that I just cannot get past everything that has happened since Tuesday morning first. Part of me wanted to write everything chronologically but part of me is just a bundle of anxiety and exasperation. What else can happen this year? Already even!

Tuesday when I was traveling back from New Mexico to Portland, the snow storm caused my flight in Atlanta to be canceled. I, of course, couldn’t call anyone because my cell phone was dead and the charger was in my luggage (this will become important to the story in a bit). It took over an hour of standing in line with my stressed out dog in his carrier (despite tranquilizers) to get rebooked on a flight leaving on Wednesday at 12:30pm. Then Delta booked me a room at the Red Roof Inn for a rate of $56/night (they apparently got other people into the Hilton and the Hyatt for the same rate) which I had to pay myself because they don’t have to pay hotel stays if it’s an Act of God that causes a flight cancellation. Now, apparently, when they rebook your flight, they don’t give you back your luggage; instead, they give you an overnight kit which contains:

• a razor
• a thumb-sized container of deodorant
• a toothbrush and a small container of toothpaste
• a folding hairbrush
• a see-through white XL Delta t-shirt
• a packet of laundry detergent

I can only assume that the detergent is there so you can wash the clothes you’ve been traveling in but then you only have to wear the see-through t-shirt to wear to the laundry room in the hotel which seems a bit unseemly.

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Look At Me, Look At Me

Thirteen Things About My Pug, 18th

We always had a family dog while I was growing up, but he was never just my dog, especially when my great grandmother moved in while I was in high school and she literally stole the love of the family dog by bribing him with food and treats. When I moved out on my own, I had cats, because I always felt that cats were better suited to apartment life. Dogs, I feel, need yards to play in.

So that’s how I came to have two beautiful but insane cats. I love them, but it’s clear that their fondness for me revolves around the food and water dishes and the cleanliness of the litter pan. There’s definitely qualifiers and if I fail to meet them, there’s 4 a.m. cat torture techniques.

Last year, before I bought my house, I could wait no more. For my 35th birthday, the cats gave me a little Pug puppy. I don’t think the cats are too happy with their choice of present. Oh, well. There is just something about a puppy who bonds with you with unquestioning love. He’s my baby, my best friend, and I spoil him rotten because he brings me endless hours of amusement and enjoyment.

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Happy Halloween!

Puppy Kisses

Today I am grateful for my pager not going off during aqua aerobics, puppy kisses, my iPod having just enough power to make the drive home, writing a translator that worked on the first try, and electric blankets.

Coyote Scary

Today I’m grateful for the beautiful oranges, reds, and golds of Autumn leaves, walking the dog, sleeping late, eating breakfast at dinnertime, not being eaten by coyotes (which actually turned out to be the Pugs next door being walked in the dark by my neighbor — scared the shit out of me while I was walking Pugly ).

Pug Hugs

Today I am grateful for Pug hugs, caffeine, audiobooks, late-blooming sunflowers, tabbed browsing.

My Dog Ate My SecurID

You know those little techno-gadgets for IT folks, who work in high tech jobs or for bosses who want to pretend to be high tech, that have the numerical password sync’d up to a computer somewhere tied to your user name and the password changes every minute so it’s practically unhackable?  We have those at the hospital, which I sometimes think is a little much but I suppose in this day and age of patient confidentiality and electronic medical records, it’s a good thing.  I mean, you always hear about banks and cell phone companies having thousands of client records at risk to identity theft; even the government can’t seem to keep their personnel info a secret.  However, I haven’t heard much about hospitals getting hacked.  It probably has something to do with the fifteen times I have to log in whenever I need to log in from a remote computer…and the SecurID.

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