A Mystery (Partially) Solved

Murphy has taken to apparently random woofing lately. I'll go check, and there'll be no visible reason for him to be upset. I think I've figured out what's going on, at least some of the time.

Lying down, sitting down, and getting up from sitting or lying have gotten rather tricky for him. In particular, sometimes in the process of lying down he'll get his hind legs into a bad position - e.g., both  legs on the same side of his body. When that happens, he can't get the leverage to stand up again, and he needs a hand - or, more usually, foot - to brace against. I think that's what he's asking for, much of the time.

That still doesn't explain the times when he's standing and woofing at me (or at least in some vaguely me-ward direction).

Suddenly, Next Summer

I was just invited to give a talk on classical Euclidean geometry at the MAA meeting in Madison next year. (This is a little exciting; I've never been invited to talk before!) I've thought of a good topic, so I'm going to accept.

The timing is interesting. The meeting is July 31 - August 2, and Denvention begins on August 6. So, I could fly up to Madison for the meeting (and maybe sneak in a MiniCon?), then fly to San Diego for a few days with the family before going on to the convention. That would be a nice little vacation.

Of course, everything is contingent on Murphy's situation, but I'm going to be optimistic about that.

:walks away humming:

Toys

Michael O'Hare has some thoughts on toys. I've been worried about similar issues for some time now.

As a child, I ran across a book entitled How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of print, but I think it would be a useful (partial) corrective to the problems O'Hare raises. I really enjoyed that book.