Daily Story 176 - Junodog's Guide to Happy Dining Hall Eating, Part 1

(Every once in a while I feel that there is a need for helpful PSAs on here. This one concerns a problem that has been evident for the majority of this year.)

To everyone who eats at my dining hall: please, please, please, please, PLEASE do not stop in the middle of the entrance to have a conversation. I don't like having to be on high alert just to avoid running into people who can't be bothered to pay attention in a high traffic area. Now, I know it might be hard for you to determine which areas are high traffic and which are generally okay to stand around in while having a conversation, so here are some basic guidelines.

One side of a large room: Okay.
At the entrance of a large room: Not okay.
One side of a wide hallway: Okay.
Middle of a wide hallway: Not okay.
Anywhere in a skinny hallway: Not okay.
Around corners: Not okay.
Middle of the food serving area: Not okay.
In front of the dining hall entrance: Not okay.
Near the card-reading machine or hand scanner: Not okay.
Near the place where you put your dirty dishes: Not okay.
Anyplace where lots of people tend to be walking with dishes in hand: Not okay.

In other words, if multiple people have to squeeze by you in order to get somewhere important, you are not in a good place to have a conversation. Please take two seconds to find someplace suitable, continue your conversation while walking, or hold off on the conversation until you are not in a crowded area that has a distinct disadvantage in its organizational structure that makes running into people an inherent risk to begin with.

Daily Story 175 - Juno Door Fail, Part 2

Unfortunately, the lesson of the screen door did not carry over to our walks outside of town when we'd drive to a parking lot at the beginning of a dirt road and hike in the semi-wilderness (semi meaning there were a couple houses along the road plus other people walking and some old mining structure that the hippies named 'the Gronk' for some reason) and we arrived at the car before Juno did (she's off the leash when we're not in town - more fun for her that way, plus it lessens the risk of her dislocating somebody's shoulder in her excitement to run around). We called Juno to come to the car, and she came running full-blast as my sister (the older of the two) opened the back door of the car. Unfortunately, the door was not all the way open when Juno tried to jump inside. In fact, it was hardly even open at all. She hit the car door and stumbled back, then gave us a look that said, "What was that for?"

I think she's learned her lesson by now but it's hard to be sure.

Daily Story 174 - Juno Door Fail, Part 1

My family used to live in a place that had a sliding glass door that led to a porch. It also had a screen door. We had a leash on the porch for Juno to spend her time outside and bark obnoxiously at dogs that passed by. One of my sisters was with us at the time (or maybe both of them, I can't remember) and we decided to test Juno and see if she understood the screen door yet. We opened the glass door and called her.

She did not understand the screen door, but she learned pretty quickly.

Daily Story 173 - Juno Hunter Fail, Part 2

Juno did not succeed in catching an animal again for several years until last summer, when she caught a bird right next to where my dad and I were walking on the trail and shook it so hard that we could hear the panicked, horrible tweeting of the bird that sounded all like tweettweettweetweetweetweetweeetweetweetweetweetwetweetweetweetweetweetweetwee until my dad commanded her to drop the bird and leave it. Thankfully, the bird was already dead when my dad checked it, so it did not suffer a long, drawn out death. However, these two incidents remain the only times in her 9+ years of living on the edge of the Colorado wilderness that she's ever caught an animal. The moral of the story is: my dog would not make a very good hunter.

Daily Story 172 - Juno Hunter Fail, Part 1

This one time my dad, sister and I were out for a walk with my dog Juno and having fun when all of a sudden we noticed Juno was digging furiously for something. We'd seen her do this many times before in an attempt to catch some wild animal, but she'd never been successful since she's loud and the opposite of stealthy (but we love her anyway) so we were just like "dude whatever you're not going to catch it so you might as well give up." Except she did catch it. Apparently whatever animal she'd found had been sick, and we watched in stunned amazement as she tossed her catch in the air. She seemed to be very happy with herself. She had finally succeeded. She tossed her catch up in the air with triumph and joy. The little critter eventually stopped moving. Juno was confused by this development. She stared at her catch and barked at it. She could not understand why it had stopped moving. She barked at it as though it was one of her owners and it was driving off without her, the way she did back in the days when she was newly adopted and had terrible separation anxiety. It was as if she were saying to the dead animal, "Why are you leaving me? I don't want you to leave me! I don't want to be lonely! Come back!" Apparently she did not understand that catching and tossing a small animal around in her mouth would end up killing it. She just wanted her new friend/toy to keep moving around so she could play with it.

Daily Story 171 - Excessively Descriptive Descriptions, Part 1

The man was tall, taller than a small bush with a lawn gnome balanced precariously on top of it but not quite as tall as a truck that would lose its top if it tried to drive under an 11' 8" train trestle, and about the same height as a door that went up to about three feet beneath the ceiling of a room that was ten feet tall. He had eyes that were so blue that they would have been a perfect match to a photoshop drawing that used 0, 0, 255 as the color value for his eyes. His teeth were so perfectly white that someone could use the white balance on them and only have a slight tint of blue that wouldn't even be noticed by most people, but if the video were to be presented to a bunch of people with extremely perceptive vision when it comes to white balance on a camera, it could easily be edited out in some film-editing program that allows for fixing white balance because it wasn't that big of a deal to begin with.

Urgh

Yes, I know I'm behind. I blame graduation.

New posts to come soon, I promise.