GINGER

I have a cold right now that I just can't shake. I took two days off of work but honestly, I could have stayed out today, too. I feel terrible. I try taking stuff to alleviate the symptoms now and then but all I really want to do is sleep. Which I did, for about 19 hours a day, three days straight. Colds in the summer are the absolute worst.

As I watched one of the vultures hover around some cars parked at meters, I realized there is one job I will just never, ever do: meter maid. So I decided to think of other ones I find just repugnant.

1) Parking enforcement
2) Any position in a slaughterhouse
3) Speed camera installer

There are more, I'm sure, but that's what I've got for now.

It turns out you're not supposed to just toss your dog in deep water to get him to swim. If you have a dog who is skittish around water, as mine is, I don't recommend chucking him into the rolling waves of the Atlantic on his first time around. Just ask the guy whose face he mauled sprinting over it on the way back out of the water.

Anyway, it's taken some doing getting him to go in the water again after that. In the spring one of my friends gently led him on the leash through some slow-moving, ankle deep water so he could get used to it. And he did, and loved to frolic, but I couldn't get him to go where he'd have to paddle.

Last night we were at a dog park with deep water and I kept throwing fetchable stuff into it, trying to get him to swim out and get them, but it just wasn't happening. I waded in deeper and deeper, but he wouldn't follow me. Finally I decided screw it, and picked him up and hauled him out hip-deep with my jeans on, dragging him around like a little kid in swimming lessons. Sure enough, those little toothpick legs started flailing and he was paddling! I let him go and he paddled straight to shore, but I could get him to fetch in deep water after that. I wouldn't say he LOVED it, but I did, and that's the important thing.

Now why this whole thing was so pressing to me that I would soak a pair of clean jeans in river water and traumatize my dog over it, I couldn't tell you. Perhaps yours truly could use a more constructive hobby.

Deciding ankle deep is deep enough.

I was using disposable cups for my coffee at work because my old jack-o-lantern cup broke, but I was feeling guilty about it. As far as I know, that styrofoam ends up in the ocean, where it is eaten by sea birds, and fills up some poor albatross's stomach, never to be digested, until finally it crowds out all the room for real food and starves the poor thing to death.

An albatross skeleton. Note the stomach contents from accidentally eating human trash.

So, thinking about that basically made me want to kill myself so there would be one less polluter, but instead I went out and bought this adorable coffee cup:

It's ceramic with a silicone sleeve and lid. Plus it's pink. Basically the best thing in the world.

As for those poor albatrosses, I'm also trying to drink zero bottled water and just get it all out of the tap. Cos look at his belly, lots of the trash they eat is bottle caps. And that way my water is fluoridated, and probably has plenty of hormones and cholesterol-lowering drugs leeched into it from all the aging baby boomers, so I can start my drug regimen early, too. Win-win.

I live in Virginia and work in downtown DC. When I talk to people from DC or Maryland, they got nothing but hate for VA. I once made the mistake of asking a DC resident if he lived in Virginia, which prompted a 15 minute tirade on how there was no point to living there, it wasn't any cheaper, it was far away from everything, and furthermore, the people that lived there were stupid.

I mean honestly! I live a 6 minute drive from DC, are we really that different? Man alive. People need to find something else to get all in a huff about.

I'll even admit that DC has much better night life. You'd never hear a DC resident say one nice thing about Virginia, though. The city doth protest too much, methinks...

I was listening to a radio show last night and a guy from Texas came on to say his house had been foreclosed on and sold on the auction block. Sadly, that's totally normal right now, but what isn't is that he owned his outright! What happened was, he was away in the war and his wife forgot to pay the HOA fees for a couple of months. They ended up owing maybe like a thousand dollars and the HOA went in for the kill. Apparently Texas law allows the HOA to foreclose on and auction off a house without even a judge's hearing. So when people are late on their payments, the lawyers swoop in and start proceedings.

The laws are skewed so in favor of the HOAs that a lawyer from Houston who tries to help people get their homes back says their best legal recourse is to "call and cry". Apparently there is a reform bill trying to get through Texas government that wouldn't let the HOAs come in and auction houses without a judge's hearing, but it won't pass. One of its most ardent opposers is a Texas lawmaker that owns one of the area's largest homeowner's associations. What a surprise.

Stories like this just make me so mad, these HOA lawyers know what they're doing can't be ethical - how can you take a paid-off $300,000 house when you're only owed $1200? I know it can be frustrating getting money you know is owed to you from someone you know has it and just refuses to pay it, but taking their whole house seems a little draconian.

I hate people who default, who won't pay their credit card bills or for work that was done for them. In this case, they were enjoying the services of the homeowners association without paying for it, which yeah, isn't cool. But why not try to get what people actually owe instead of 10 or 20 times more? Why abuse something that doesn't need to be abused? Unethical business people start it, but lawyers finish the job.