The GirlAlive Blog

Hamsters

When I did the last post about guinea pigs, I promised that I’d do one about hamsters too. But then I got sick and then I lost the pen for my drawing tablet and then my husband found the pen but I was still too sick to draw anything. But now I’m a little bit better. I have laryngitis and a bad sore throat, but it seems to be getting better.

Anyway, our primary hamster is Jayne. She is named after the character of Jayne Cobb from Firefly. But that Jayne is a guy, and our hamster is a girl. We purposely got a girl hamster because we heard that they’re more active and that they don’t stink as much as boys. (Plus, our previous Syrian hamster Binky had a disturbingly huge scrotum, and he used it as a beanbag chair, so we wanted to avoid that.) Jayne is bright orange. She also drinks (water) constantly. So we refer to her as “Irish hamster”. She climbs the walls and begs for peanuts. Also, she has never figured out how to use her wheel. She stands on the raised area of the cage and paws the wheel with her front paws instead of running inside it. She’s already lived longer than Binky, and she still runs around and climbs the walls like always, with little sign of slowing down.

Our other hamster is a Chinese dwarf hamster named Dru. She used to have a partner named Fred, but they eventually started fighting, as evidenced by the fact that Dru is missing half an ear. Fred passed away when she was only a few months old, from birth defects. Now Dru has a big luxury cage to herself. She used to hide in her coconut house almost all the time, but lately she figured out that if she climbs the front of the cage early in the morning, my husband will give her peanuts. She loves burrowing under the bedding. She also doesn’t get taken out of the cage much because she’s a bit bitey. She is convinced that fingers might be edible, if anyone would ever let her keep chewing. She’s over 2 years old now, and she also shows no signs of advanced age.

Both hamsters love peanuts. They climb the sides of the cage and beg for them. Dru will take half a peanut and then run around the cage looking for a place to hide her precious treasure. Jayne, on the other hand will immediately stuff the peanut in her cheek pouch and beg for more. She looks at you like, “I didn’t get a peanut. Where’s the peanuts? There’s nothing in my pouches. I need a peanut.” She’ll keep doing that until I stop or until her cheek pouches explode.

The Guinea Pigs

My husband keeps telling me we need to get more pictures of the rodents to post here, but I’m no good with a camera. So I have made some drawings.

First we have Fudge. Fudge is special. He does not get along with other guinea pigs at all. He’s so stupid that he forgets that he already established dominance over them, and humps and fights all the time. However, he loves people. Especially my husband. He sits curled up in his arms and falls asleep almost immediately. Sometimes he nibbles the husband’s arm hair, trying to groom him. He is also huge. He weighs about half a pound more than the other piggies. He is like a furry football with feet and ears.

After Fudge we have Elvis. Elvis is a fluffy little idiot. We think he might be half siren. He always leads the screaming for food in the evening. He doesn’t like being held. He makes more noise than any of the others when he’s drinking. It’s like he’s trying to wrestle the water bottle. He hogs the little wooden house in the cage he shares with Spike. The good news with Elvis is that he is cute. Just deeply stupid.

Last but not least we have Spike. Spike is a year older than the others, and has a bit of a grumpy old man personality. He has a neurotic habit of chewing the fur off his stomach. When husband holds him, he likes to sniff his face and lick and nibble his lower lip. It’s absolutely adorable. Like Fudge, Spike loves the husband completely, and flops over and falls asleep in his arms a lot. Spike is also a pellet junkie. As soon as either of us is near the cage, his paws are on the edge of the food bowl and he’s staring at us, and then the food bowl and then us again, as if to say “Are you going to put pellets in this thing or what?”

So there are our guinea pigs. They’re awesome and I wish I was not allergic to them. I can’t really hold them or play with them, which sucks. But that’s why we have hamsters. I’ll draw some pictures of the hamsters sometime soon too.

Happy Easter to everyone, in case I don’t post again before Sunday.

Asian Supermarket

There are two major Asian supermarkets in Edinburgh, and they’re both on Leith Walk, and one of them is okay and the other one is awesome. Last Saturday my husband and I went to the awesome one to do some shopping. I saw things and learned things and it was fun.

Oddly, the best place to get a lot of American food is the Asian market. The shop we were in was primarily Chinese, with all the other Asian countries tossed in. I was looking for interesting snack foods and some cooking ingredients. I’ve been hanging out at The Tasty Island blog a lot and drooling over all the awesome Hawaiian food, so I really wanted to make some Spam musubi.

As a small aside, when I got married, I spent part of my honeymoon at the Spam museum in Austin, MN. It’s totally awesome.

Anyway, I bought ingredients for musubi and snack foods. My cousin Erin recommended red bean mochi, so I located some and tried them when I got home. The flavor was okay, but the texture was a problem.

Then there was my favorite part of the store, the beverage case. They have root beer and pearl milk tea and aloe juice and all kinds of crazy Asian beverages. And did I mention root beer? I picked out a few interesting drinks to try at home.

I also got peanut butter crackers and saltines. They have saltines at the Asian store! And also chips that taste just like Fritos. I found out that the reason I can get my favorite American foods at the Asian market is because of the Philippines. Filipinos make saltines and peanut butter crackers and all kinds of great stuff.

It was a pretty good day, even though the bus ride sucked kind of a lot. Last night I made Spam musubi for dinner and it was one of the tastiest things ever. Husband doesn’t like nori much, so I’ll use less next time. But the flavor of rice, Spam and furikake all together is amazing. Hawaiians are geniuses.

I had a big argument with a family member this week because he thinks I never say anything about how I’m really feeling and I’m never honest about myself on this blog. I’m going to answer him directly and in more detail later, but let me just give the simple explanation of “Duh.” I don’t know half the people who read this blog, I once lost a job because I was too honest here, and I’m unemployed and don’t want the first impression that a potential employer has of me to be “neurotic depressive”. So no, I don’t pour out my guts here. If you want to see all of that, it’s on Facebook, but I won’t friend you if I don’t know you, and I won’t friend you if I work with you. Twitter is kind of my in-between where I’m a little more honest than here, but without as much detail as Facebook.

Oh, and also I totally love my new layout here. The old one was too classy and too pretty. It clashed with the lowbrow humor and always seemed a bit wrong. I hope you all like the new look too.

Alana

Argument

The following is the essence of an actual argument I actually had with a friend over the last few days.

So, yeah.

Who struck out?

In a recent radio interview, Jay Leno addressed the issue of people boycotting his show in the wake of the Conan O’Brien fiasco. He said, “You don’t boo the next batter up just because the last batter struck out.” Really? Let’s look at a replay and see how that game really went.

(Sorry, dad, but Jay keeps digging himself deeper and acting like an ass.)

Debating socialism in America.

I’ve heard that there are people in the US protesting the idea of the government being involved in health care. They think that the National Health Service in the UK is terrible and socialist.

But if you don’t want the government involved in healthcare, how do you support so much of the socialism and government control that already exists in America?

If you don’t want government healthcare, why do you put up with public, government run libraries? Free books for everyone? How is that capitalist? Privatize libraries and keep knowledge and information in the hands of the rich.

And what about firefighting? Back in the good old days, there were dozens of competing fire departments in each town, and they only put out fires for people who had paid for fire insurance from their company. If you didn’t pay, your family burned. Isn’t that a more capitalist way to do things? If you don’t have money, why should the rest of us pay to stop your house from burning?

The worst of all is public schools. Why should the government be deciding what your children learn? That’s why there are still private schools. But people who send their kids to private schools are still forced to pay taxes supporting public schools. And people without kids have to pay to educate other people’s children. If you can’t afford to educate children, you shouldn’t have children. Isn’t that more capitalist? I mean, it is extreme socialism to offer equal education to all children. If you’re against public healthcare, you should be equally petitioning to privatize all schools.

If you’re against socialist health care, why aren’t you protesting the other marks of socialism in America? You fight against equal healthcare, but you tolerate equal libraries, schools, police, firefighters, and roads for everyone. Seems hypocritical to me.