montecristo

Shannon's birthday was Sunday. I called to say hi to her on Saturday and wish her happy birthday. I knew that I wouldn't catch her on Sunday. She had a couple of friends over on Saturday night. I suppose that Shannon was regaling them with tales from the anime convention that she went to in Bakersfield a couple of weeks ago. According to Crystal, her friends are into it just as much as Shannon is. I knew we let them watch too much Sailor Moon when she and Jackie were little.

Her mother got her an electric guitar for her birthday. Now she's set. Crystal sent me a picture taken with her phone in the hall outside of Shannon's bedroom showing Shannon and her new ax. The guitar really made Shannon's day. She named her guitar something in Japanese that means "Blue Knight" (Night?). I think it's funny that she names her guitars. INFP's are so anthropomorphic-minded. She's coming to spend Labor Day Weekend with me. She's promised to bring it with her and play some tunes for me. She plays a lot of Greenday tunes. It's a good thing. She's got a good ear and a pleasant voice. This is also good because if I didn't like the music I wouldn't bet on being able to talk her out of putting the guitar away for the duration of her visit here. Heh.



I got a text message from Jackie this morning. She needs my help to pay for some of her school books. Apparently, her mother is tapped. She's taking the last of her high school courses this semester via independent study. She's out with a lot more credits than she needs in December. She's got government, creative writing, and algebra II. She's also taking Spanish at a community college up there in Sacramento.

Last weekend she found a stray dog. Apparently, it's a mutt — a cross between a german shepherd and a golden retriever, mostly. Jackie spent most of the day Saturday picking, cutting, and brushing burs out of her coat and bathing the dog and applying flea and tick killer. She told me that the dog was really friendly and well-behaved. I think the two of them have really taken to one another. She had Crystal print up lots of "found" fliers and she went around the neighborhood hanging them up. Crystal figures from her observations that the dog has been living with people previously and that she probably hasn't been "in the wild" for more than two weeks or so.

This evening, when I called to talk to her about the books she needed and the money to get them she told me that she took the dog to the vet today to get her checked out. She sounded really down and when I asked what was up she told me that the vet told her that the dog has cancer. Apparently, there are tumors on the dog's right side. Jackie's going back to the vet to talk to him tomorrow about the prognosis. She's looking for options, probably prohibitively expensive ones for her even if there are any but I suspect that it doesn't look good even though the dog doesn't appear to be in any pain or having obvious symptoms, yet. I further suspect that whoever had the dog before abandoned her when they found out about the cancer.

About a month ago I was over on my friend shanmonster's page and saw that she was pimping for a local Canadian band called Johnny Hollow, even got injured while doing it. At any rate, I checked the Johnny Hollow MySpace page and I liked the four tunes I found there. So, I bought a copy of the CD. That was back at the end of July! It just got here today. The good news is that it was worth the wait. I like it! I love the voice of lead vocalist Janine White. The music is electronica and kind of dark but very intriguing. I can think of a couple of my friends who would likely be intrigued by it as well.