Some Apples to Other Apples

In the past few weeks my whole family has been putting efforts forward to train our new puppy, really working on it to stop several of the bad misbehaviors that she has. And what we have learned is that she is a very intelligent animal, where at the very small age of three months she has already started picking up on several things. For instance, she will let us brush her now without biting at the brush, she has become better with the leash and will walk longer distances before putting up some resistance and fighting, and she has completely stopped biting all of us. Again, this is still a really young canine, so it is surprising how quickly she is picking up all of these things!

But there is one habit we cannot seem to break her of no matter how many different ways we try and no matter what amount of effort we put into it. You see, little Indigo has a fond love of the taste of fruits and will stop at nothing to eat any fruit she can get her paws on. At first it was strawberries that were obviously bad and other assortments of fruits we would toss into the garden to mulch. We stopped throwing those in there to stop her from eating them (plus we read online that strawberries are one of the worst things for a dog to eat). Then she started picking up cherries off the ground from the remains of our old cherry tree, which there would be no way for us to pick up all of the cherries. Fortunately, the cherry season ended and the birds pretty much pick the cherries clean, leaving Indigo with just the pits to indulge in and that was not the part she likes. So that stopped.

And then she moved on to the apple tree, which is currently still in full bloom with tons of apples as they turn from green to red. For reference, we know that there are more than five-hundred apples on the tree, a fact we discovered after picking up over three-hundred off the ground in a couple of days and still seeing tons more on the tree. Well, our little puppy learned very quickly that she likes apples and would run over to the tree and start searching the ground for the fruits. Usually we would see her run back from the area after successfully picking out one of the smashed apples off the ground and then she would start to munch on it. At first all we did was take away the fruit and throw it out, but she became smarter than that and started playing keep-away (a game which we cannot encourage, so we stopped chasing her). So the next best thing we could do was pick up all the smashed, rotten, and disgusting apples off the ground. To put these into retrospect, these are not the apples you buy at the store that look ripe and delicious. Instead, these are the underdeveloped remains of apples that the squirrels have picked off, taken a bite or two, and then tossed to the ground. They are covered in dirt and grime, bugs roaming all over their outer coating as they turn the sweet fruits into food, and something that most other animals would sniff at before walking away. And like I said, we have picked up hundreds of these to stop her from eating them. Side note, her favorites were the ones that were already smashed open and usually the ugliest, unhealthiest ones of the lot.

As soon as she became aware of the task that we were doing, the tossing of her delicious apple snacks, she also became smart enough to know she could just grab a few while we were picking them up and go munch on them quickly. So we would see her come over, grab one while we were taking dozens of them away, and then go to the center of our yard to eat them. But her learning did not stop there. Instead, as she started to realize that there were less and less apples each day for her to eat, she started grabbing what she could and then hiding them around the yard. She was stock-piling the apples from us, keeping a secret stash for later. We never found that secret stash, but we did continue to pick them up and off the ground.

Well, being the clever dog that she is, she has moved onto the next level of apple eating. Now not caring about the ones on the ground, she instead ventures right over to the tree and will get up on her hind legs and pluck one right off of the branches. And she seems to have a very peculiar taste too, always heading for exactly one instead of heading for the easiest pick. Sometimes, that means she will even have to jump up and grab one off of the tree. In honesty, watching her is quite impressive as she takes them down. Still, the main point is that if we do not want her eating the apples now, we will have to pluck every apple off of every branch up to approximately four feet or more. That is not going to happen. On thing that my Mom noted as we watched her was that at least she is getting better apples now, instead of the ones that have been in the dirt and covered with God knows what.

What We Retain

I am sure that there are a lot of people with memories that challenge mine, those with photographic memories that only need to see something once before they can recall it. Still, I consider my memory to be one of the best when it comes to learning new things and recalling moments in time.

But just for the fun of it, I sometimes like to see exactly what I do recollect from the wide variety of subjects and situations that I have been in. That is to say, I will lay in my bed and stare at a ceiling, the lights off and the window covered to leave me staring at a fairly black scene. Take it or leave it, but this is a game about memory and objects are known to trigger thoughts. Anyway, as I lay there with my whole body as straight as an arrow I will think of a subject I have not done in a long time and just see how much of it I can recall and how much more I can recall as I start to think about it. Or maybe I'll look up and think of a time years ago when I was with friends and try to think of the little details in the rooms and what our conversations were about. In this way I can sort of gauge how my memory is doing. And from completing these recollections I have learned that there is an astounding amount more I can remember than I ever thought I could. 

Listen to This: A Dream Within A Dream

Album Artwork for Drink The Sea by the Glitch Mob

The following post if both a review as much as it is a story I want to tell, but only because something amazingly different happened to me today. So let me start at the beginning of my story and then show how perfectly it relates to a song. This morning my parents woke me up at what would be abnormally early for someone like me and told me I needed to watch the puppy while they go to the vet with one of our cats. If you are curious, the orange tabby needed some blood work to be done because we think he has a failing kidney. Anyway, I was extremely tired and almost unable to get out of bed, but I managed to get up and go downstairs.

After grabbing a cup of joe and taking the puppy outside, I sat and waited for my parents to return. When they finally did get back, and my coffee cup was completely empty, I did not feel like I had to sleep anymore. So I went upstairs and started writing another blog about learning French. I did not finish writing that blog (though I am working on it still). Instead, I ended up falling asleep about an hour later, completely passing out in the darkness of my room.

My dream felt real, like I had not gone to sleep and was just lying in bed not doing anything. So I got up and walked downstairs and talked to my Dad, to which I have no idea what our conversation was about and because it was a dream my mind just accepted that the thoughts were exchanged. Then I went back to my room and just lied in bed because I was so tired.

I fell into a second dream, a dream within a dream exactly as the movie Inception would say and exactly the title of the song. I was outside in the bright sun, the rays coming down and heating up my skin, and the new puppy was there. Then my Mom came into view, we were playing with the dog and having a good time. I felt that I was still not dreaming, but that the feeling of being tired had just passed away; yet at the same time I also felt like I was just barely asleep. It was surreal, it was weird, and it was different.

Suddenly my Dad was being real loud in the real world, his voice booming to my ears. It passed down through my dreams, through my thoughts, and reached me at the second level. I woke up from one dream and was in the darkness of my room. It was as if the vision of me being home was completely masked by the dream, I actually felt like I was there. I walked out of my room, which happened with surprising ease after just waking from a well-needed slumber, and walked down the stairs. No one was home, no one was there to have made that voice, but I was sure that I had heard my Father. Then he shouted again about something, maybe just overly excited about a politician, and the curtain that had been covering my eyes as to where I really was came free, waking me again.

I thought I would bring up this because it was crazy, a sort of insane state to suddenly have to wake-up twice from the same dream and the same slumber. And I am fully unsure how I was even able to reach the second level of the dream state. But the minute I woke up, I could also hear A Dream Within a Dream by The Glitch Mob playing in my head.

I think the first time I listened to this song I might have skipped over it, thinking little of the beginning beat as it sent shivers down my spine. However, I ended up returning about a week later when I fell in love with the entire album this song came on. If you have not heard all the songs on Drink the Sea, go out and buy a copy right now. To put it in perspective, this is the music I play when I want to have conscious and consistent thoughts, a background sound I used to study because it provoked me to keep learning. I cannot say exactly why, but I highly recommend this entire album. And if you are curious, my favorite song is still Fortune Days.

But this review is not about Fortune Days, it is about A Dream Within A Dream. When I finally did get back to listening to this, I realized how very close to home the name of the song actually hits. This is a very fast-paced song, the melody repeating at parts and bringing about a sense of the impending aurora at the end of the night. And the beginning, the part that had originally pushed me away from the song, is actually a very much needed and strong piece that shows the passing from a state of clear consciousness into the realm of the other world. It is the key, the reason that we pass from the first dream to the second one as our eyes close and we fall asleep. You can see the solar system in this first scene, the way the darkness in the sky passes above, the calming sensation, and then the breath as the dream begin.

Immediately after this introduction, the tune starts up as if you are somewhere you have never been, doing something you might never have imagined yourself doing. All the while it seems unreal, impossible in the feats that you accomplish, but they are still feats. And with the passing of time, it only seems to dive deeper into the dream-like state as you continue to be this magnificent heroine on some astounding, technological quest. And then you fall into the next level of dreams, spending the rest of the song trying to find your way out.

I think it is this imagination that really brought me to loving this song, the sense that I could see something that was not there even while only the music was playing. That is why I love this song. Add in a perfect back beat and some astounding repetition to drive home the thoughts and you get a golden song. And like I said, this is not even my favorite song on the album.

The Spotted Canvas uses the Glitch Mob music promotional media but is not endorsed or certified by The Gltich Mob. All of the The Glitch Mob logos and trademarks displayed on this website are the property of The Glitch Mob.

In the Dead, Boring Part of Night

I do not expect that anyone has seen what I made last night and added to my blog; mainly because for one I did not make a big post about it until now and for two I put it in a section that I am not forcing everyone to go over and look at all the time. Anyway, last night I was feeling rather bored and I wanted to take one of my photographs and transform it from a normal picture into something rather spectacular. I chose a photograph that I took within the last year while I was out walking, passing by a lake that was nearby my apartment. In the photograph there was a beautiful sun setting in the background, the colors a radiant red and orange across the lake. 

What I transformed the picture into was something much more than that, something with colors so uniquely different that it is hard to believe the original picture it came from. Out went the red, and with the swipe of a button everything was purple and blue. From there I focused on really adding in the space scene, adding astrological formations such as stars and the weird way colors seem to work as well with space pictures. And finally, I felt like topping the whole thing off with a planet to blend it all together. I just wish I could have added in a second planet in the upper left, one to balance out the first. The reason I did not add in that second planet was because I knew the only way it would look good was if it had a ring.

My Space and Mountains Photo Manipulation Picture

Now although the photograph looks spectacular, it is actually made up of fairly simple parts. With a bit of blending and a lot of previous knowledge of photoshop, I was able to quickly and efficiently take several different scenes from other photographs provided on google and morph them together. Sometimes I wish I would actually work to make my own backgrounds and work really hard to add in my own shooting stars, but it seems like a tedious task and the point of photoshop is to quickly take several pieces and blend them together or else make it all from scratch. Okay, I might have that idea wrong, but whatever. Anyway, staying up late has made yet another beautiful picture for my collection.

To Talk About A Puppy

Yesterday I was supposed to meet up with my friend for some coffee at our favorite place, Caribou Coffee. Unfortunately she did not wake up. And so no matter how many times I called or text messaged her, she was not going to be able to make it. Five hours after I first sent her a message she replied and then three hours after that she finally got back to me. The fact was we were not going to get our coffee no matter what.

Now I want to say before I continue that I know my friend can read this and a part of me sort of hopes that she does. Maybe then she'll understand why what she said upset me, bugged me so much that after a night of sleeping on it I still did not feel at ease about it. I know that I should try and let things roll off my shoulder, I know I should probably take words for the dime they are worth, and I have had some time to think this all over. Hopefully this will sort of bring up the issue a bit better or more clearly.

Maybe Play This: Black Ops

In case you are in the dark when it comes to Video Games, the sequel to 2010's major first person shooter hit is coming out this November. For those that care, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will premier in stores November 13th. But while there is still some time between the next game releasing and now, I thought I would finish up the single player campaign and finally give a review on the original Call of Duty: Black Ops. As of last night, I finally finished the campaign on the hardest difficulty.

Requested Blog: How I Am Driving My Father Insane

Today I did not know what I wanted to write about and I decided to take a request. So I went up to my Dad, who was sitting on his computer in our kitchen, and I just asked him what I should write a blog about. He said, "How about how you are driving you father nuts!" I thought about it for a minute, chuckling at the idea, and decided that it sounds like a great idea. I mean, sure, why not talk about how he is going crazy with me being home.