Morning time. What better time to go see another Harry Potter film than morning? I mean, just because you walk out of the theatre expecting cool and dark, and get hot and bright, doesn't mean you shouldn't go see Harry Potter at 11:30 in the morning on the company's dime.

Call it a reward for hard work.

I picked up Guy from his home (he deserved a huge bonus for all the hard work he's been doing around the house), picked up Doyle from the office, and off we went to the theatre, me in a huge panic because it's the day after opening day, and everyone knows that means full theatres.

Guy didn't think so. Doyle didn't think so. I had visions of young kids, out of school, swarming the theatre, making lots of noise.

I was so wrong.

When we arrived, there were four people in the theatre already. By the time the movie started, there were only about fifty. Certainly not enough to fill the theatre or cause the undue level of stress I felt.

The actual movie? Just like the book: lots of words and teenage angst.

Since she's been on antibiotics and in the cone, Annie, the walking antibiotic dog, has stopped gnawing at her leg. I started her on benadryl so that, come Tuesday, she could go on her all-day, off-leash hike. After three weeks in the cone, except for Ft Funtown! she's been in the cone and realy hating life. I can't imagine how sitting in a smelly cone all day, using it as a battering ram, could possibly not be the most boring life ever.

Well, off Annie went, and, when Kris picked her up, Amber, the dog walker, commented that yeah, Annie ran off, but well, Amber herself didn't really worry about the dog too much, as she always seems to meet back up with the group near the end of the walk. At one point, Amber was slightly worried, and was getting ready to radio to the following group behind her to watch out for Annie, when Amber, demonstrating for Kris, lifted an arm and pointed into nowhere, "saw her running in the distance."

That's Annie for you.

When she came home on Tuesday night, she was totally exhausted. She couldn't keep her eyes open and spent the whole evening sleeping. Since I knew she had ticks on her, I didn't let her into the bedroom on Tuesday night, and didn't notice anything unusual. Wednesday morning, as we were nearly walking out the door to head to VS, Kris reached over to pet her good-bye and she looked up.

Both eyes were livid red.

I don't mean albino red eyes, I mean her inner eyelids wouldn't drop, and both eyes were bright, inflamed, blood red balls peering back out of us.

"What's wrong with her?" Kris cried out.

I looked at her, in my vast veterinary experience, and concluded her inner eyelids weren't dropping. (Oh, amazing conclusion of mine.) One of her eyes opened, so I said it was okay to leave, I'd come home early and check her out in the afternoon.

Well, by the evening, her eyes were still inflamed, so I called the emergency vet. She said, if Annie wasn't scratching or clawing at it, waiting until the next morning to see our regular vet was fine. If she was clawing at her eye, then she probably had a foxtail in her eye, and she should come in.

She wasn't scratching at it, but I couldn't tell if that was because she was on benadryl, or because it just didn't bother her. Though, not being able to see out an eye would bother me.

Guy took her to the vet today, and sure enough, she had a foxtail in her eye. The vet pulled it out, "it was gross, but really cool!" according to Guy. The vet also found a cornea scratch on her eye with a black light.

And now, Annie, the walking antibiotic dog, has one more series of antibotics to run through. If she didn't love these offleash hikes so much, I'd consider stopping them. However, they tire her out, if only for one day.

And for that one day a week, she's actually a good dog.

"So, is there a default image to display?" I asked today at work. I was trying to finish up a set of dynamic pages for a client's website, and didn't know if there was a default image to display when a movie was supposed to load.

"A default image?" Mike responded.

"Yeah, a default image to display."

"Your butt." was Doyle's response.

"Really?" I was excited.

"Yeah."

"Cool!" I jumped up to take a picture of my butt. Camera out, camera on, butt out in pose.

"To display if they don't upload one? Make it of a triangle like YouTube." Mike answered me, looking a little concerned at my actions.

"Oh, not of my butt?"

"Aw, why does Mike always have to spoil our fun?" Doyle lamented.

Holy crap!

Nicolas Flamel was a real person!

I subscribe to the near-daily interesting tidbit site of KnowledgeNews. Once you have a subscription (or a lifetime one as I do), they send you an email detailing various interesting bits of knowledge, typically based on current events.

Today's current event was a discussion of the history of alchemy, inspired by the opening of the fifth Harry Potter film.

In particular,

In 1382, alchemist Nicolas Flamel insisted he had created
gold with the help of a mystical Hebrew text. Flamel was
full of it, but his contemporaries had actually begun to
discover something useful: nitric, hydrochloric, and
sulfuric acids--all highly corrosive substances with
serious scientific promise. And monks were tapping alchemy
for medicine, applying what they had learned while
translating alchemical texts to create herbal and mineral
cures.

Way cool, and quite entertaining.

I read a lot of magazines on my train ride back from my morning workouts with Kris. Today's magazine was this month's Health. On page 44, there's a statement,

"On average, female smokers die 14.5 years earlier than nonsmokers."

The source of the statistic is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fourteen and a half years earlier. Sure, that's on average, and some people smoke until their 90th birthday. If smoking is, however, the difference between living to 65 and living to 80, wouldn't that possibly be motivation to stop stinking by stopping smoking?

Not sure if most smokers know that they stink. As in really stink. As is, do you really think that by going outside, smoking, and waving your hands around, that I couldn't smell the stench on your clothes?

I suspect the quality of life for those extra 14.5 years is better for non-smokers, too.