What There's Time For

Snow

Just about dinner time, a light rain turned to snow. Shmoogie rushed out to see for herself, then back in to report with a grin that, "It's really cold outside!"

She was barefoot.  "Did you go out there in bare feet?" I asked in alarm.

"No!  I wore my boots!" her tone indicated how dense she thought I was, "That was a good idea, Mommy."  Definitely a better idea than barefoot, but socks might have been nice, too?

She and Mr. P ran out again and again, coming back in for a moment to say, "It's so cold!" (they wore no coats) and, in Shmoogie's case, "Feel my hands!" which were red, ice-cold, and totally thrilling to her.  

Alex loves snow as much as he loves sand, which is a lot.  A fluffy white mop of a dog frisking around in a crazy spring snow is hillarious, but hard to photograph.  I'm glad he stood still for me for a second!

The Taming of the Fluff

His first official Sealyham strip! Mr. P laughed and said, "His ears are pink!"

Happy Birthday!

One year old today! Even with help from Shmoogie, it was nearly impossible to get a birthday hat photo-op. He was happier when we let him carry it off to chew. :)

Mush!

Mr. Pants wanted to take Alex for a "walk" yesterday, to which Mr. Right said "yes" and then barely contained his laughter when he saw Mr. Pants, carefully holding the dog's leash, drag a little cart out of the garage and sit down in it, still holding the leash tightly and expectantly waiting to be pulled somewhere.

After going nowhere for a while, Mr. Pants came in for materials to implement some optimistic engineering improvements.  "Sweetheart," I broke it to him gently, "Alex is just not going to be able to pull you in that cart.  He's a little dog, honey.  He's not strong enough."

"What could he pull me in?" he asked immediately.

This is how parents get themselves in trouble.  Because if there's no good answer to a question, but there are lots of funny answers to the question, sometimes a funny answer comes out of your mouth before you've really thought it through.

Which is why right at that moment I heard myself saying, "I think we'd have to get you a hovercraft."

His whole face lit up.

Who am I kidding?  His whole body lit up.

"A HOVERCRAFT?!  I want a hovercraft!  Can we go get a hovercraft, Mommy?"

I did finally manage to convince him that we couldn't get him a hovercraft, but not before he was already forming sentences beginning with, "When I get my hovercraft…"

Baby Monkey

When Shmoogie started talking about her "baby monkey" a few days ago, I figured she meant the smaller of her two stuffed monkey toys.  It was missing, and she was pissed.

This morning, though, she looked into the toy room and gasped, "Oh!  Look!  My monkey!"

"Great," I said, and turned my attention to the next detail of getting out of the house.

Soon, she came walking carefully back out of the toy room, her hands cupped in front of her.  "My baby monkey!" she beamed.

Her hands were empty.

Huh, I said to myself.  That's interesting.

Fast forward to nap time, after school and after picking up a slightly sedated Alex from the vet (he's perfectly alright, and definitely, despite Mr. Pants's vehement assertions, not "sad because he can't have babies").

Anyway, naptime.  I was carrying an actually sad (because she still has to take a nap) Shmoogie up the stairs when her minor anti-nap protestations turned into wails — "My baby monkey!  We have to go get her!"

Me, thinking I'm so smart, I shift her weight onto one arm, still climbing the stairs, put my other hand behind my back and then pull it out, carefully cupping the air, "Ohh!!  Look what I found, Shmoogie!  Your baby monkey!"

She swatted at my hand, "Tha's not her!"

Hmmm.  Well, it was pretty silly to think she would fall for such a simple trick, just plucking an invisible baby monkey out of the air from behind my back like that.  How unrealistic.

I set her down at the top of the stairs, still crying, and excitedly "found" the baby monkey behind her bedroom door.

No dice.

Eventually, after a trip to the potty and a general calming down, Shmoogie was thrilled to show me she had finally found her baby monkey… somewhere generally in the right half of her crib.  "Oh!  There she is!" I gushed, "Can you pick her up?"

"No, I ca't.  You do it."

I gently scooped some piece of space from the surface of mattress in the general area she was pointing at and Shmoogie solemnly accepted "her" from me.

The rest of getting dressed and reading books, etc. was punctuated with concerns over keeping track of the baby monkey until, finally, I put them both in the crib and spread the blanket over Shmoogie… which she immediately flipped backwards with a scowl, as if I was trying to suffocate her baby, "My monkey!"

Oh, my.

Fuzzy Logic

Alex is settling in very nicely.  Definitely living up to the two major selling points of his breed (Sealyham Terrier) — "the couch potato of the terrier world" and "doesn't shed".  :)

And why a Sealyham Terrier?  Mostly, because Mr. Right was starting to fall for Bernese Mountain Dogs (they're really BIG and SHED LIKE CRAZY) and I figured I'd better make a more reasonable choice before the choice was made for me!  In principle, we believe in adopting from a shelter, but Mr. Right visited the shelter recently and they only had Pit Bulls.  Also... well...

Whatever, we're trying out the pure bred thing and Alex is a great one.  :)  Sealyham Terriers have become so rare they're considered an endangered breed, anyway, so perhaps he qualifies as some kind of rescue?  I don't know why they've fallen out of favor.  Very cute (unless groomed into ridiculousness) and such a charming disposition.  He's better than a cat.

Only failing so far — he shows no interest whatsoever in the graphs I painstakingly drew* of various methods for evaluating implication in fuzzy logic.

 

Cool, right?  Alex doesn't see it.  Mr. Right attempts to look interested, but I'm not quite believing it.

Any fuzzy logic enthusiasts in my audience?  Can you tell me why there are so many implication equations and why you'd choose one over the other?  Zadeh's Max Implication looks the most reasonable to me, coming from plain old classical logic, since it directly equates to "(not p) or (p and q)", but there has to be some reason for the others?

*Only to discover just after finishing them that I could have gotten them out of "Fuzzy Logic: A Modern Perspective" instead!  Honestly, I think it's a little ridiculous that none of other masses of writing I've waded through so far has had diagrams like this.  Pictures make things so clear!  People who want to convey information and increase understanding should use pictures.