Friday Miscellany

I know I will be there sooner than I like. I know that it isn't easy -- my father is fond of repeating (often) (way often) that "growing old isn't for the weak of heart." I am sorry the elderly are so easily confused, and so filled with aches and pains -- I can nearly empathize, fuck sake.

But when I see a truth, I have a compulsion to express it no matter how politically uncorrect, and, as god is my witness, going to Costco on a Friday afternoon is like visiting the set for Night of the Living Dead.

Think "shambling." Only instead of sticks and rocks, they use grocery carts.

Somebody is cloning dogs. The Koreans announced it earlier this year, but some Cali firm is gonna auction off five Clone Sessions, with starting bids at a hundred grand.

Scientists consider dogs among the most difficult animals to clone because they have an unusual reproductive biology, more so than humans. But the company behind the auctions, BioArts International, maintains that the technology is ready, and it is calling the dog cloning project Best Friends Again. It has scheduled the auctions for June 18.

That reproductive biology difference -- most female mammals go into estrus often. Humans, for example, do it roughly every 28 days. Some more often than that. And in most mammals, it's a regular, predictable thing. Not only that, but it can be hormonally induced. Dogs, however, go into estrus once every six to 12 months. It isn't regular, it isn't predictable, and it cannot be hormonally induced.

Kinda envious here -- a period only every six to 12 months?

Not only that, but when they got spayed, my dogs didn't get hot flashes. That is SO not fair.

Work: it isn't just for sleeping any more. I've changed my weekday morning routine. Used to be, in order to get a good hour of work-out in, shower, dress, eat and get to work at a time when traffic was most tolerable, I'd have to arise at 3:41 am. I'm an early person anyway, so this wasn't a terrible stretch for me, but it did mean that I had to go to bed while it was still light out, or suffer from sleep deprivation. My lifestyle just didn't fit with the whole bed in the daylight thing, so I opted for the deprivation.

That made driving home from the office really interesting.

I'd like to take this moment to thank all those drivers on the freeway and surface streets who avoided hitting me a few weeks back. Owe ya.

Well, it dawned on me when I got my bike: I cut back on my days in the office. I now work from home more days of the week than I drive in. So WTF was I still holding to the old commute schedule?

I now sleep an extra hour, cut my gym time down a bit (get the extra exercise on the bike, innit), and can just manage to make it to my first meeting of the morning -- still sweaty and stuff from the gym, but hey! They don't have to see or smell me, so ...

Have a great weekend, peeps!