Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Yay Sugar Gliders..... In honor of Chewy

Over a decade ago I was working at a job in Colorado Springs. It was a long commute and on my way home one night I was listening to the radio. My favorite show at the time was called The Sports Zoo, and it was a Zoo with a bit of sports worked into it. As I drove the hosts were interviewing a fellow that was selling sugar gliders at a local sports show event. He described them and how they were so small and cute and friendly and could soar through the air.

Right after the segment ended my cell phone rings. It is my wife.

wife: "Do you know what a sugar glider is?"

me: "Funny you should ask because I just found out about them myself you must be listening to the Sports Zoo."

wife: "I want one!"

me: "Are you sure? they sound all cute and fuzzy and all but....."

wife: "Oh it will be mine, I will feed it and take care of it you will not have to do any of that."

By this time I am thinking that my wife had regressed into a 6 year old wanting a puppy.

wife: "well I want one."

I get home and suddenly we are headed into downtown Denver for the Sportsman's Expo to check out sugar gliders. We get there pay our 20 dollar entrance fee and spend the next hour or so wandering around asking random strangers about sugar gliders. Most of them look at us like we are insane but we did find... the glider man. He had Shakespeare in his pocket, no not a long dead English writer, but a small gray animal that was jumping between him and delighted children.

Most sugar gliders are grey, 6 inches long with another 6 inches provided by a fluffy tail. they have big eyes and big ears and very very soft fur. They are adorable and charming little critters that we were assured were easy to care for and lots of fun after they bond with you. My wife cooed over little Shakespeare.

"I must have one" she stated, so we asked the glider man how much. He said that a glider joey, gliders are marsupials so their young are called joeys just like kangaroos, and cage was 400 dollars. My wife panicked. We were short on cash at the moment and tomorrow was payday. She asked the glider man if he would take a check. The glider man did not accept checks. I went home with a very sad wife.

The next day I get a call at work.

wife: "I have 400 dollars!"

me: "How did you... No I do not want to know."

wife: "I want a glider!"

me: "Are you sure...."

wife: "Yes! yes! I am sure! I will be responsible for him and take care of him and feed him. You will not have to do anything. It will be mine."

me: "Ok if that is what you want."

Once again we head back into Denver on the train and hand over another 20 dollars to access the expo. she runs up to the glider man and hands over 400 dollars. In return we get a 3 foot by 3foot by 3 foot metal cage, a cloth bonding pouch, some glider kibble, glider propaganda, a cdrom about gliders, an exercise wheel and she is directed to pick out her joey.

The glider man picks up a small cloth pouch and inside are several very small sleeping grey furballs. The wife sticks her hand in and all hell breaks loose. There is a sound like a dozen chainsaws and she pulls out a squirming and screaming bundle of fur and she puts it in the provided bonding pouch and proceeds to suck on her bitten and bleeding finger. The glider, who the wife will happily name Zathras is in the pouch making an ungodly mechanical whirring chainsaw sound that we will find out later is called crabbing.

It is at this point where I should say that when people find out we have sugar gliders someone will speak up and say "My daughter wanted a sugar glider so we....." They get this far in the story and I am laughing so hard I can barely see knowing the tale of pain and terror that is coming.

It is February in Denver Colorado, sugar gliders are from Indonesia and Australia so we head as quickly as we can for home, Zathras needs to be kept warm. Because the wife has the little whirring wee beastey in the bonding pouch around her neck I have to care for the cage on the the train ride home. Every few minutes Zathras would quiet down and the wife would get worried about him open the pouch and stick her hand in. Zathras would crab "NEE NEE NEE NEE NEE" and proceed to try and eat my wife. The "NEE NEE NEE NEE" is at a sound level like standing 30 feet away from Air Force One taking off and yes the other riders did notice that something was up.

We get home, Zathras is ok, and the wife is more or less still intact but the bandaid box will not survive the night. We set the cage up in the bed room. I attach the bonding pouch and set up the exercise wheel, a dish of water and another dish of glider kibble. The wife is busy with the glider brochures and all that kind of stuff when she says that there must be more information about them and directs me to do research. Zathras is now mostly quiet, he is sticking his head out of his pouch and looking suspiciously around. If he sees us, he dives back into his bag with a sharp NEE NEE NEE!

I start researching and the more I research the more I begin to dread what we have brought into our house. Yes, yes sugar gliders can be fun and charming but to get to the fun and charming part of owning sugar gliders you have to get the glider to bond with you even though you are not small and floofy with big eyes and ears. If you happen to be small floofly with big eyes and ears you should see a doctor.

It takes months to bond with your sugar glider. It takes many boxes of bandaids to stop the bleeding as your small furry but surprisingly loud ninja tries to eat you. Gliders are also a lot more work than the glider man let on. they have a special diet consisting of mostly chicken baby food, yogurt drink, honey, hard boiled eggs, and grain cereal with calcium supplements. The glider kibble Zathras was sent home with is not an acceptable food for gliders. Now for the quiz. Who as two thumbs and was immediately tasked with preparing the glider food, feeding the glider, watering the glider, cleaning the cage etc? ... yea that would be me.

We found out other things about gliders.

1. single gliders do not do well, they are colony animals and need other gliders for emotional health. - we now need a second glider.

2. The 3 foot by 3foot cage was way too small for a glider - we now need a bigger cage

3. Once your glider is bonded they absolutely live to poop and pee on you. It is their greatest goal in life. - more laundry

4. some states do not allow you to keep sugar gliders. - Colorado allows people to own sugar gliders

5. oh and they throw their food.... everywhere. baby food, yogurt, and honey is sticky.

Over the next couple years we increased our colony. We added Chewy. The wife declared that Chewy was my glider so I could no longer bring up the "you promised to take care of them" defense while cleaning the cage. Next came the sisters from a glider rescue place... Lilo and Nani. we added Gabby, another rescue who had her tail chewed off before she came to live with us.

Yes gliders are fun, and cute and cuddly, once they stop trying to eat you. Playtime is always great, after they poop and pee on you. They love toys and a well bonded glider is a great thing to have. I would however never suggest that gliders are good pets. and they are definitely not good pets for children.

A well cared for glider will live for over 10 years. some will live to be 12 to 15 years. They are a big responsibility. You have to feed them the correct food. You need to find a vet that will not look at your glider and go "what the hell is that thing?" They need lots of space, they make messes. When your wife leaves the cage open they get lose and jump on your face in the middle of the night.

Over the past couple years we lost, Lilo, then Nani, then Gabby. Zathras died last year in my hands, he was old. Chewy was just rehomed with a glider rescue group here in Denver. He was very lonely with out his buddy and it was best for him.

Most people get gliders without knowing much about them, Yes my wife and I were one of those people. If you want gliders.... Do research, lots and lots of research find a local glider rescue, too many people get gliders and can not take care of them so they give them up. They need good homes.

PS. Got a note from colorado suggie savers regarding chewy. He is healthy and was integrated with another glider his age. Chewy now has a glider buddy and is doing very well and is happy.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

I need a theme....

Not just a theme a purpose.... maybe even some encoragement in regards to my blogg.

I have one... now what the hell do I do with it?

I can not eat it... *throws some salsa on the screen and tries to nibble on it*... nope still can't eat it.

I do not want this to be a place where I rant and rave. I work in customer service so I have truckloads of stuff to rant and rave about. some of them are even funny. Is that what you guys want from me? I hope not you can get that stuff elsewhere. Plus if my employer found out I could get fired. I may not be all that thrilled with my job but it is mine and jobs are hard to come by these days.

blogg about my cats? well Mins is 14 and spends her day sleeping, begging for food, eating and vomiting. Not much there. Catzilla just lays around and is all floofy all day.

Politics. Meh yes I vote. yes I care but I really do not want to blog about it. There are enough blowhards out there.

Indian stuff? well there is possibilities in that but there are things that are so personal that I will not tell complete strangers and the last thing I want is a bunch of ruck rubbing bliss bunny crystal twinkies drooling all over my blog. New Agers make me want to kick kittens, they really do.

I need something different, something new and fun.

to my friends out there... what do you want to hear about? what do you like? with what I have done so far? what do you hate?

help.

Please comment... let me know you are out there.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Is it Art?

I am not an artist. I can not draw or paint. If someone held a gun to my head, put a pencil or paint brush in my hand and said make me a picture the blood spatter on the wall would be better than anything I could create with pencil and paper. I can not play a musical instrument. I tried back in grade school. I took up the saxophone with dreams of playing John Williams music stampeding through my young mind. I dropped it after a couple years of playing Mary Had a Little Lamb and Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater. The most interesting thing we go to "play" was Ode to Joy and we were not very good at it. with both drawing, painting, and music I will have to be content just looking at or listening to those that have far greater skill than I have.




I have heard a description of art being something that is beautiful but has no real use or purpose. I can create items of leather, beads, and feathers they are beautiful I am not sure if they are art.




I think I created art yesterday. I used fire, heat, and smoke to turn three racks of pork ribs into what I will happily call art. Now just throwing some mammal flesh on a flame pit and putting some char on it is an easy thing to do. Hamburgers, brats and hot dogs are child's play. Steaks take a bit more skill but it is essentially the same thing. Getting the items finished correctly and to order is a nice trick. My wife is easy she likes her hot dogs and brats dead... DED dead, I call them 3 Mile Island or for those of you a bit younger Chernobyl dogs, no matter what you call them the end result is the same.




I have a confession to make here. The first time I tried to make ribs on a grill I totally fubared them. I was a total neanderthal and had not discovered the properties of indirect heat. The recipe said to grill them for 45 minutes and that is what I did. I came back to a slab of charcoal that disintegrated into a pile of charred bones when I touched it.... It was a fail of epic proportions. My wife still brings it up to this day in an effort to embarrass me but I find the whole thing universally funny.




I have learned a lot since that evening. I have created cedar plank salmon. for some reason I cooked it till the cedar plank caught fire and to my wonder the salmon was perfection. I have also made a couple Christmas roasts on the grill. But even after all that it was an LP or natural gas grill. Gas is easy. The heat is steady and reliable, real skill comes with using live fire.





Today I have a basic yet classic Weber charcoal kettle grill. No more electric start or knobs to turn for heat control. Now it is all amount of charcoal and airflow. Yet I can do more with that kettle grill than anything else I have ever done.




Yesterday Jonette made the rub, a mixture of sugar, salt and home made chili powder and liberally coated the racks and then it was all mine... my show, my creation. I put 33 charcoals in the chimney lighter and waited 15 minutes. I poured the lit coals over a bed of unlit ones on one side of the grill and a pan of water on the other. sprinkled on some wet cherry wood chips, put the racks on and slammed the lid down.




With the help of an electric probe thermometer stuck into the top air vent I now regulated the temp between 250 and 275 degrees for 45 minutes. The only way to do this is by carefully regulating the airflow from the bottom vents to the top. More air = more heat, It can take some time but once you get it all is good. After 45 minutes you pull the top off, turn the ribs over and switch their positions and mop with a mixture of apple cider vinegar and apple juice. Unfortunately the act of doing that allows a large influx of air to reach the coals and you have to start again with adjusting the airflow.




After another 45 minutes I cheat... true BBQ masters will snarl at me for this but I remove the ribs and put them in a 300 degree oven to finish off for another hour and a half. Yes that is cheating and I fully acknowledge that. A couple more mops with the cider and juice during their stay in the oven and....







Now the reason for the smoke, and using the grill in the first place, only become apparent when you cut into the ribs.



The pink area around the edges of the ribs is the holy grail of BBQ. The smoke ring, that is what makes all the work worth while.

I think it is art, it takes skill, patience, and time. The results are beautiful but temporary they do not last and as much as something might be to good to eat. You need to just eat it before the microbes get a hold of it. No use letting something so good go to waste. I ate my fill last night and will eat on the rest of them all week long.

Some still say that art can not have a purpose and if that is the case then what I created is not art in the classic sense but you can not debate it is good. Something that could turn just about any vegan into a T-rex at 20 paces is a great thing. I like my art to have a use. And like any art if you try and put sauce on my ribs I will knock you into next week. You do not take a sharpie and draw a moustache on the Mona Lisa, that just ain't right.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Come on Down Everything is On "_________"

You know the word that is missing. You are human, and the goal of most humans is to fill the empty spaces of their homes with stuff. I do not have to spell it out for you, unless you are an animal and even the smartest animal can't read. If you are not human and not an animal but can read then you must be an alien. If you are an alien become a citizen, not only is it the right thing to do but it comes with some great benefits.... what was this post about? Oh yea.

Garage Sale....

10 years ago my wife and I lived in a gigantic house. It was over 3 thousand square feet of living space, not including the 1,700 square foot unfinished basement that held 2 furnaces and 2 50 gallon water heaters. The two AC units lived happily outside. It was grand, I never ran out of hot water and the heat and ac were controllable on each floor. I could store sides of cow in the upstairs to train for my, never got off the ground, boxing career while living in tropical luxury on the main level. The point is that 10 years ago my wife and being human filled it up with stuff.

Well we no longer live in the Brown Eyes palace and are moving to a townhouse that is 1,200 square feet. I have spent the last two weeks filling a 3 car garage with 10 years of accumulated detritus that I now need to eject. There is some great stuff there.

Two very large overstuffed leather chairs and couch that have survived a constant 10 year assault by 4 fully armed and operational cats. I believe that they are completely indestructible and need a good home.

an ice cream maker that I have had for 9 years. I love ice cream and thought that an ice cream maker would be a great thing. I once had a friend who wanted to make chocolate, but he discovered that actually making chocolate was very expensive and time consuming and rapidly discovered that it was better to buy his Hershey's bars than make them himself. I have successfully created ice cream once and then decided that picking up a pint of Ben & Jerry's Phish Food at the local market was not only less time intensive but much cheaper than trying to make it on my own. I also discovered that my name is David, not Ben or Jerry and they are much better at making ice cream than I am. I took a big breath and blew the dust off the ice cream maker and it too was added to the mountain of stuff in my garage.

The mountain contains various decorative stuff, bowls, candles, candle holders, Fluuuufffaaaaaay stuff animals that just make you want to die, old tech, geeky toys, fake plants and ivy, 2 beds, an assortment of other small furniture, unused dish sets, place mats, a shocking assortment of implements used to extract info from terrorist prisoners or to make various bar drinks. I rarely ever drink so why do I have them in the first place? I do not even know what most of them are for. The mountain grows like my own personal Kilauea.

As the mountain of random cra.... err my wife says it is all good stuff and I agree that most of it is good stuff, I feel better and better. I am not meaning this to be a rant against excess but I guess it is. It feels good to buy things to fill up the space but it feels just as good if not better to unload all the stuff.

I feel lighter with every arm full I add to that pile.

The sale is next weekend. The good feeling is tempered somewhat as I look at the pile of stuff and realize that now I must sort, price, and stage it all. But the sense of lightening my load, will become even better when humans come to the sale to pick up stuff that they will use to fill the empty places in their homes. In time they will also shake off the accumulated possessions just as I am doing... It is, in the end, a grand circle....

pssst wana buy an ice cream maker?

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Attack of the Green Police

This morning I came into work and noticed that the trash can at my desk no longer had a liner in it. I figured someone took it or that the cleaning staff just forgot, no big deal really. I then found out that the entire building had initiated a mandatory recycling policy.

The "trash" cans at our desks are no longer trash cans but "recycle" bins. Only washed recyclable materials are allowed in the bins without liners. They have provided 4, standard desk sized trash bins for us to use for non recyclable material. There are over 100 people in this office who now have only 4 small trash cans. The amount of trash that will be in 4 piles around the office is going to be epic.

Now I am all for recycling, it is a great idea. However I do not like things that become mandatory. If they had put a green colored bin next to my desk with a note saying, "put recycle stuff here" I would happily put any scrap paper, plastic and whatnot in there. But this is " you will put recyclable material in the bins... you will wash or wipe out said materials before putting them in the bin" I don't like that.

Recycling only works if the process is made easy and voluntary. I had heard that a building wide recycling program was coming and was trying to figure out the best way I can participate. I thought they would provide a couple recycle bins for us to use but the actual program is the exact opposite.

It is too much trouble, and the implementation of a mandatory project is causing me to reject the whole thing. Is that bad? am I somehow broken that when someone says "You must do this" my first reaction is "fuck you buddy!"?

Now I have to train myself not to put everything in the bin. I am too lazy to wash or wipe everything out and I guess I will bring a plastic grocery bag from home to put my waste in and throw it on top of the inevitable trash piles that will form when the scarce trash bins overflow.

I wonder how long this will last. How many will comply? are there enough people who have reacted like me that this will be abandoned quickly?