Elaine-Ville

September 9, 2008

Tennis: Yesterday Ed and I signed up for a tennis class. I don’t know how to play tennis at all so I’m a true beginner. I can’t even hit the ball. Really. Well, we showed up at the specified time, met one other student and waited about ten minutes for our instructor. Finally the other student called the city recreation center and asked about it. Turns out the instructor cancelled all his classes yesterday for fear of rain. Indeed, there were storm clouds, but no real rain, at least not where the class was held. Ed and I went home frustrated. Hopefully he won’t cancel next week.

Vegan Potlucks: Looks like I’m going to become a real community organizer! A local vegan potluck meetup group’s organizer is frustrated that people keep canceling. So I’ve decided to step up to the plate and help out. I have lots of ideas for making these potlucks work out better. For starters, I plan to find a public location (probably a meeting room at a community center) and have regular potlucks once a month at the same location on the same day of the week and same time of day. Consistency is key, particularly when dealing with such a flaky community as Las Vegas. People come and go here often so it’s very difficult to build community. But if we do something regular and if a few people really invest their own time and energy, it can work out. I have hope. Besides, I worked as an event planner for a year so I have a few skills that might help out.

Our House: Well, it’s not company-ready yet because I haven’t gotten curtains and plants and whatnot, but it’s livable. I’m really enjoying the kitchen and I’m really enjoying living near Mary. We’re cooking for each other three times a week. I do a meal, Ed does a meal, and Mary does a meal. It’s nice to have some regular family dinners. And it’s a good excuse to try new recipes. Our neighbors are nice. I’ve met quite a few of the kids in the neighborhood because of Joey. A few have come over and played the Wii with us. Have I mentioned I can’t wait till Guitar Hero World Tour comes out? That will be a fun game for four players (since all our games are mostly for two players). The cats love the house. I’ve seen them in all the niche spots. And we basically gave them the guest room. That’s where most of their beds and plaything are along with the cat tree and the window seat. Cats love a good window seat, particuarly when pigeons like hanging out near the window ;)

Garden: Ed read Extreme Gardening, a book about fruit and vegetable gardening in the desert. He’s all gung-ho about turning half our backyard into a farm. I’m excited to see what he does with it. Already he’s got some wheat grass growing in a pot for the cats to munch on and he’s got baby dill and basil plants beginning. Oh, and he figured out the drip irrigation system and revived some of the bushes in the backyard and now we have flowering bushes! The backyard is is mostly rocks and is sort of a xeroscape, but has FIVE trees! That’s one reason we love this house, it came with some mature landscaping - desert style.

Ed & Poker: He’s still working on his fifth poker book and he still does his blog regularly, but there’s something new in the world of the Noted Poker Authority, Ed Miller. StoxPoker has merged with CardRunners. This is a good thing because it will likely improve the quality and consistency of the poker instruction videos at Stox. Moreover, it’s a bit of money coming our way, which means I can continue to live my blogger/activist lifestyle without having to get a real job ;)

Floyd: Our wonderful dog, Floyd will be taking another class come November. He really seems to enjoy these classes as they give him an opportunity to interact with other dogs and he gets tons of attention and treats. However, the last class we took of this type (Canine Good Citizen/ Therapy Dog) the instructor didn’t teach us and our dogs so much as she just set up difficult situations to test our dogs. It was supposed teach us how to teach our dogs to be polite in public settings. And even though Floyd passed the Canine Good Citizen test we thought he could work on certain skills. Instead, she just frightened poor Floyd by making tons of loud noises and coming at him aggressively. He was shaking in terror, cowering in the corner during the last class we attended. We dropped out of that class after that and haven’t taken another one since, even though we and Floyd thoroughly enjoyed basic obedience and agility classes. So, we signed up for another one. If the instructor isn’t a freak, we’ll stick with it. But if we get bad vibes, we’re dropping immediately. Before we adopted Floyd, I had no idea how many bad dog trainers and dog groomers exist. It just goes to show, once again, that a tremendous number of people in any given field are simply incompetent. And when it comes to dogs, people are even worse, because of the property status of animals.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Miscellaneous 

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Comments

1 Responses to “Elaine-Ville”

  1. Mike on September 10th, 2008 12:23 am

    I think I’m only of middling competence in my field, but then when I see the work others do, I have to wonder what type of drugs they are on, or if they have brain lesions, so I know what you mean.

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