I'm all of a Twitter

I've been on Twitter for a while now and it has been entertaining, hilarious, as well as heartbreaking, and sometimes just downright odd.

Here are some of my observations:

• Wil Wheaton really is just this guy, you know? And proof that nerds can be popular!
• Brent Spiner pretty much wrote a very entertaining short story/elaborate April Fool's joke 160 characters at a time throughout April,
• George Takei doesn't say much,
• William Shatner doesn't say much either, but does some self promotion,
• I unfollowed LeVar Burton because he was just too religious and not very interesting,
• Anybody else seeing a pattern here?
• The Bloggess is just as hilarious on Twitter as she is on her blog, if that is possible (I'm kind of surprised she hasn't been arrested, because that much hilarity isn't generally allowed in Texas),
• The Bad Astronomer is actually quite good.
• Stephen Fry went to film on location in Malasia and tweeted and twitpic-ed it all.
• Al Yankovic? Yep, still weird.
• I don't know how PZ Myers finds time to tweet anything what with all the blog posts he does. He must not sleep.
• The Onion and NPR tweets can be virtually indistinguishable sometimes,
• I even follow a fish. Erica's fish.

I have also found several bloggy friends there. Andrew was the first person to ever comment on my blog, and we've commented back and forth periodically on our blogs, as well as on Atheist Nexus. He and Stephen got into Twitter swine flu pun wars the other day (really, really bad puns - Gammontee, Andrew? Please!). Luckily nobody else was around to hear me giggling.

Anybody who's read my blog for any length of time knows Mr Farty. I won a competition on his blog over a year ago and he sent me a VERY nice set of coasters imprinted with Scottish words such as eejit, crabbit, and numpty, and their definitions. I put them in our curio cabinet, which Mr Farty thinks is just plain odd. He obviously doesn't have a house full of teenagers where things get moved and disappear never to be seen again. Currently he's changed his picture (avatar? icon? I don't know either, Lesley) from a flaming fart to Robbie the Robot. Now he's being stalked by all the zombie robots on Twitter. At the time I was typing this, both he and Andrew were commenting on the same TV show. Something about #eurovision?

Lesley from Um..What?? was my first Twitter follower. My big fluffy, and fairly young cat, Isis, (the one whose photo I used to use for this blog) died suddenly of diabetes (which caused a cascade effect of liver and kidney failure) last month, and Lesley was one of the first people I told. She sent me a tweet because she was concerned, and as she was the caretaker of a diabetic cat, and she is just a really, really nice person, I knew she would understand. My grandfather died the next day. It was a very bad week. I, unfortunately, understood completely when her Moses the Cat suddenly became ill and died less than a month later. Sorry, I wasn't planning on turning so maudlin...

There are numerous other interesting people I follow, for instance Lesley's best friend Mo (The Daily Snark), Debra (iamdebra), Steph (quirkyblogger), although I'm not so sure about Clay (mayopie). Oh, all right. He's interesting, too. Liza (wickedlibrarian) just got a cute haircut I might have to copy once the temperature here reaches over 100 degrees. Oh, wait. It's 98 right now. I might need a haircut sooner than I thought.

Oh, and I don't like to brag, BUT Barack Obama is following ME!

So remember:
You're no one if you're not on Twitter
And if you aren't there, you've already missed it.
If you haven't been bookmarked, re-tweeted and blogged,
You might as well not have existed.

Brilliant post. Did I say brilliant? I meant boring.

I haven't posted recently, and I think that, along with Mr Farty, this may be my crappiest post ever. Not that Mr Farty's post was crappy. It was totally awesome! It said so in the title.

Right now, I could either be sewing my pirate costume full pirate regalia for an upcoming Flying Spaghetti Monster party, or writing this post, or sleeping. I've had a couple of gin and tonics, and if I can do this:sober, imagine what I can do completely drunk slightly tipsy. (Sorry for anyone who already saw this on Twitter (Hi Lesley!!). Strike while the iron is hot, unless you're ironing suedecloth. That works better on medium. (Speaking of Twitter, as soon as I twittered about male and female strippers, The Bloggess started following me. I'm just sayin')

[WARNING: Completely arbitrary change of topic]
Remember the post about Twister the one-eyed wonder horse? You know. The post before last? Someone (named David) pointed out to me that perhaps Twister is NOT soaking his hay to soften it up, but is, in fact brewing his own alcoholic beverage. A sort of hay beer. He does occasionally bump into things, which I attributed to his blindness, but maybe he's just tipsy.

She blinded me...with Science! She was not blinded because she was wearing her 3D glasses.

If you don't read Um...What??, specifically this post and this post including the comment sections, you COMPLETELY will not understand this post and think that I have perhaps entirely lost my mind (very likely true, but that's beside the point). Note to all my hundreds of both my faithful readers (Hi Pater and Kia!)(because most of my friends, my mother and my brother all refuse to read this blog)(Except David, who DOES read this, and he's my ex-husband! AND he's gay! Which has absolutely nothing to do with anything): GO READ Um...What??!

Proof positive that scientists DO wear 3D glasses. See?
You: Say, aren't those Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D glasses from the DVD?
Me: Uh.......no?
You: Then why do they say Journey to the Center of the Earth on the side?
Me:........... Hey! (pointing) Look over there! Isn't that Wil Wheaton? He's just this guy, you know?
Also, you can tell from these photos that, not only do scientists wear 3D glasses, they never wear any makeup. Female ones, anyway. The male ones might, if they're English. Oh, wait. That's just women's clothes they wear (will this prompt my British scientist father to comment? Probably not. Maybe Andrew? Great. I've probably just insulted half my readership. I'll just hope that Mr Farty never sees it).

The only real makeup I have is from when I got married and two of my friends M took me to have my makeup done, so its about three years old now (married to Bill, not to David - that makeup would be 22 years old now)(Note to self: Find out if makeup ever goes bad).

Then there's the professorial look:
(Note to self: Make sure you clean your lunch debris off your computer desk prior to any future photo shoots. Oh, and put some makeup on, will ya?)
Like my Hallucigenia mug from Charlie's Playhouse?

Special thank you to the Wildlife Forensics Lab for the loan of the lab coat and glassware (yes, really - you don't even want to know what smells occasionally waft down the halls at work. You should have been there the day the guys in my office accidentally left a net they found that had contained three dead otters ON MY DESK!!! (yes, there are evil people in the world who do nasty things to poor innocent wildlife, but that's for another post). The guys had been out counting salmon carcasses (the salmon died of natural causes) and APPARENTLY COULDN'T SMELL IT which was almost completely unbelievable to the rest of us standing in the hallway - because you couldn't actually go into the room without vomiting gagging. They figured that it was OK, since they had taken the otters out (I am really, really glad I have my own office now).

I would also like to give a really special thank you to my friend S who enthusiastically took the photos.

UPDATE: On reading through this again, I think I could almost rival (((Billy))) the Atheist for number of parentheses. Almost.

Twister the One-eyed Wonder Horse

WARNING: IF YOU'RE SQUEAMISH ABOUT EYE-SOCKETS, DON'T EVEN LOOK AT THIS POST

UPDATE: Apparently, don't look at it if you are squeamish about the trots, either. (No pun intended)(Okay, I lied. Pun intended)

Yes, I have one of the smartest horses in the world, and I'm not the only one who says that.

A little bit about Twister: He's about 25 years old, and we've had him since he was 18 and William was 12. Come to think of it, Bill and Twister came into our lives right around the same time.William and Twister's first 4-H competitive trail ride. Third place!

As I've said in previous posts, he was born with a huge cataract in one eye, and developed equine recurrent uveitis, aka moon blindness in the other. When we got him, he had had recurrent infections for many years, and his eye was very scarred and caused him constant pain. It was very light sensitive so he kept his eyes closed and fell asleep a lot:About three years ago it abscessed and I had to have it removed (and not put back in like SOME people). He's been MUCH happier ever since. Interestingly, Twister isn't the first blind horse I've had. Paleface, the Pony of the Americas I had when I was growing up also went blind due to moon blindness. He also adapted and lived for many years after. (Yes, the common denominator seems to be me, but Twister had it well before I got him)

Other problems we've dealt with are: mild arthritis, mild navicular, occasional very painful hoof abscesses, and a leg wound that didn't heal for well over a year. Oh, and his teeth are almost worn down to nothing on one side, and not much better on the other, so he can't chew his food properly. I am an expert at bandaging legs, packing hooves, putting ointment in eyes (the left one, anyway), and giving shots. He also had almost constant diarrhea, for which I took him to the vet several times. They just told me that he's an old horse and there wasn't anything I could do.

What's this banana slug photo doing here? Oh, right. I'm a biologist.

Last summer, I started noticing that his poop (yes, this is a technical term - if you're a sailor) was more horselike and less cow patty-like (a scientific description). The ranch owners and I also started noticing that his water was full of hay, disgustingly stinky (another scientific description), and had to be cleaned out far more often than all the other horses. I thought he was just drinking with his mouth full, and dropping some hay in. We also thought he might be accidentally pooping in his water - after all, he IS blind. Well, turns out he's blind but he's not stupid.

One day, while I was cleaning his paddock, the ranch owner came around to feed. While we were chatting, Twister grabbed a huge mouthful of hay, carried it over to his water trough, and dropped it in. The owner and I looked at each other. Did he just do that on purpose?

I went over, scooped it out and said, "Twister, don't do that, you idiot!" He immediately sniffed around, picked it up and plopped it back in. He then spent the next few minutes slurping it off the surface. He went back over and picked up another huge chunk of hay, carried it over and dunked it in the water, and then happily slurped it up. I couldn't believe it. He was softening it up so he could chew it. We were astounded. We watched as he did this with the rest of his hay. He must have originally done it accidentally once or twice, and discovered the hay was softer and easier to chew when soaked for a while. I would never have credited a horse with the reasoning abilities to connect the dots.
And because he's able to digest his food better, an added benefit is that he managed to "fix" his own diarrhea problem.

I just have to clean out his bathtub trough frequently. I might think it stinks, but Twister's next door neighbour, Spicy, thinks it's delicious when I drain it. After:Is that a smart horse, or what? Handsome, too.