Yesterday, the Surface Gods demanded a tribute every time we wanted to eat something — the floor, the counter, inside the microwave. One spill after another. Geesh! You’d think one tribute would suffice! But nooooo.

I didn’t get a lot of reading done. I’m reading about DNA forensics and, despite the fact that this subject totally rocked my socks in college, this chapter is killing me with boredom.

When I eventually went to meet The Frenchman in town for dinner and a play, I decided to chance the Evil Dog Road because my dress was too nice to put through the other path. And lo! I ran into none other than the owners of the Evil Dog and its companion, Wanna Be Evil Dog. The owners were walking on the path above and parallel to my road, when Evil Dog ran down to my road to confront some people walking their dog. Now Evil Dog was holding up foot traffic both ways on the road. The owners weren’t going to do anything except call to their stupid dog unsuccessfully until I told them “Excuse me, but there’s a toddler there, too.” They caved and came down to our road to control their stupid dog. I explained to them as best I could that their dog is too mean and sometimes prevents me from using this road. They gave me some lame excuses about the dog just protecting its territory. I asked them to keep the dog by the house and not let it wander into the road. Apparently, for reasons I couldn’t translate, they can’t do that. But they did hold the dog and had me pet it a couple of times. The dog acted like being petted was punishment. They told me how to talk to it when it’s being hostile, but I doubt that’s going to work. Evil Dog’s name is “Black.” Wanna Be Evil Dog was super friendly and sweet with he’s with his owners. I guess Wanna Be Evil Dog (whose name I didn’t get) just imitates Black’s obnoxious behavior. Doggy peer pressure.

And as a last word in this random post, I plead with you all to NOT use translation programs like Alta Vista. If you want to translate a French word, please go somewhere like Word Reference. just discovered that the French word for “pigs” (cochons) is translated in Alta Vista as “porc,” which is so utterly and flatly wrong it makes me shriek. Porc is the same thing as the word pork in English: it’s a kind of meat that you eat. Cochons, as one can see on Word Reference, means “pigs” and has various obscene and other slang meanings.

Merci!