That's (a poorly focused picture of) Ripley sitting in the same cat trap.

It seems they work.

I was just reading a book which said that "robot" came from a Czech word meaning "serf." I was curious whether that was true and so looked it up. Looks like it's not 100% accurate but pretty close.

I had a lot on Connect but, since switching to Piefed, I've lost most of them. I'm curious if there are any new ones I should save!

This dog was supposed to be a purebred Chihuahua, but that didn't really pan out.

(Everyone in this photo has been gone for a long, long time so I'm not worried about sharing faces.)

I took this picture with my first digital camera and I've always loved it.

I recently posted this picture of canines in my yard in a comment.

It's not a good picture. There are two animals who were both at least slightly moving and the photo was taken by my phone at a distance. My wife thinks they're foxes but I'm not sure.

That said, whatever they are, there's a cub in the background. It's pretty cute. A friend of mine described it as "aww, little blurry guy." They weren't wrong.

In the end the question is, were they foxes or coyotes?

Four years ago, I broke my ankle really badly. Possibly relatedly, though no one has been able to confirm, almost a year ago my spine started degrading. I was incapable of leaving my bed to go much further than the bathroom - and even that was iffy. As a result, my wife has been doing most of the physical stuff required to take care of the house and our kid. And me. I am very grateful to her - the demands made of her were unreasonable but she handled all of them.

After I spent eleven days almost unable to move, my oldest friend traveled 350 miles to attend my kid's birthday and basically bullied me into agreeing to see a doctor. The next day I trembled and whimpered my way down my stairs and into my car and my wonderfully accommodating wife drove me to a walk-in ortho. They prescribed me gabapentin and suddenly I was able to do things like take a shower. It was nice not to smell my own armpits every time I shifted.

For the next ... Fairly significant time period, I was still limited, but semimobile. I underwent a whole battery of tests and let me tell you, MRIs and X-rays SUCK. They all want you to get in a position that hurts and then stay still.

Finally, almost exactly a month ago, I had a surgery on my spine. There was a noteworthy recovery period and I have some scars that might mess up my back tattoo, but yesterday I was able to take my trash and recycling out. If I had tried that any time in the last year I probably would have collapsed in the middle of my driveway.

I'm lazy, but in all sincerity, being able to contribute to my household in even a fairly minor way was so rewarding.

edit: I showed my wife the comments on this post and she said "I like that everyone is agreeing with me."

I still love the monkey. Oh, and the wife.