It is said that when they handed out the cuteness at the creator’s forge, Andy here kept getting back in line for more.
Category: aminals.
Baby snek
This is Cinnamon the corn snake, child #2’s new pet. A friend of mine said that this shot should be on the r/accidentalrenaissance subreddit.
If the progress bars on the right are moving a little slowly right now, it’s because I took on another super-secret project that has a tight schedule, so I had to bump it up ahead of everything else on the production schedule. Can’t say what it is just yet (and probably not for a while) or whether it will pan out, but if it does, I’ll be sure to tell you all about it. Rest assured that it’s super cool and awesome.
Klohund training
This is the tip bowl we keep on our bathroom counter.
Who needs a tip bowl in the bathroom, you may wonder, and why is it filled with cereal?
Well, imagine you have a dachshund who is scared of the shower, and getting her bathed is always a stressful endeavor for both parties. One day, you get the brilliant idea to desensitize her to the unpleasant environment, so she’ll start associating the shower with positive things and stop being anxious about her baths. And because she’s a dachshund, the logical positive reinforcement is food. You keep some cereal in the bathroom and occasionally throw a few pieces into the empty shower stall when she’s around so she can go in there and get a free snack.
Now imagine you’re so successful that the whole approach backfires, and the dachshund gets so used to the routine that she follows you into the bathroom every time to collect her “tip”.
In the public bathrooms in Germany, they usually have a (generally female) bathroom attendant out front who has a little plate on a table for a small customary tip. Colloquially, they’re known as “Klofrau”. Well, we managed to train ourselves a Klohund.
On the plus side, she’s much better with baths now.
(The cereal is a high-protein, grain- and sugar-free alternative, not grocery store sugar bombs, in case you’re wondering about the health aspect, and she only ever gets two or three little pieces at a time.)
17AUG23
I don’t have much to report because I am busy pushing this draft along (as you can see on the progress meter in the sidebar), so have a picture of a Dinky Dog in her favorite habitat–a cozy dog bed in a kitchen where there’s food preparation in progress.
I’m a slow correspondent at the best of times, and I am downright neglectful of my email inbox in the middle of a draft, so if you have sent me anything lately, please don’t be surprised if the reply (if applicable) takes a while.
Boneless Andy
Dog broke. Please advise.
Worst criminal ever
I don’t think I need to hire an investigator to find the identity of the culprit who stole a handful of animal crackers from the low table next to the recliner.
Insta-tired
Dinky of House Doo, first of her name.
I still have an Instagram account, but it has been getting increasingly annoying to be served with stuff that has no connection to my friend feed, things that Facebook/Meta thinks I should see. Every time I check Instagram these days, I see two or three posts from friends, a long string of some of the dumbest, low-effort garbage from accounts I don’t know, and several friend notifications from obvious catfishing accounts or crypto bots. It used to be kind of fun, and now it’s not. I’ll keep the account on life support but I think I’ll post more stuff here instead, where there’s no algorithm using my content to sell ads.
The greatest evolutionary success story
Behold the Great Northeastern Snuggle Otter in his natural habitat: a private recliner.
Mr. Floofy
I know it’s high time to groom and trim Andy A. Doodle when he starts to look remarkably like British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
(The butterfly is a paid crisis actor.)
Took a walk to my favorite pond the other day, and this shot turned out pretty all right:
With the world the way it is at the moment, I am happy to be in a place where I can just walk out the door and be at this sort of place within ten minutes of leisurely walking. I’ve never been a big fan of exercise for the sake of it, but walking out in nature never fails to improve my mood…unlike reading stuff on the Internet, which never fails to make me anxious. However the next year or two are going to go, I’ll probably be doing a lot more of one and a whole lot less of the other.
Walking is also great for listening to audiobooks or letting your brain resolve plot knots with its background processes. The Internet is useful for a lot of things, but for me it’s mostly great for realizing it’s 5pm and I got very little done because I hopped on the information overload train all day.
My favorite season is just around the corner, and I have a plan to walk a few miles every day to really squeeze the most from autumn this year. I feel like I spent most of last year’s autumn cooped up inside because I had a novel overdue (like so many other writers in 2020.) This year, it’s all mine.