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Dearest Ruby,

You know, you were a pain. You pee’d and poop’ed everywhere, and you seem to always get into things that we always told you never to go into. You barked loudly at practically anything and everything. But you were family and despite all of this, we all loved you dearly.

I can’t believe you’re gone.

I still remember the day mom and dad brought you down when you were still a puppy. I remember the first time that mom and dad tried to cut your hair. We have that in common, at least it wasn’t a bowl cut and during your high school like mine (granted I did volunteer for that).

In the past few months, you and Java have gotten very close. A part of each other’s pack. I think Java is wondering where you are. He sits there waiting on the couch, and I don’t have the heart to bring myself to tell him. He will miss you the most I think. It kills me that my children will not know you. A dear and immediate member of our family.

It happened so suddenly. Cheryl was walking you, Java with Mackenzee in her red wagon when that rottweiler took you away. A small part of me believes that you put yourself between that dog and my family to protect them. If you did, thank you.

Wherever you are, I hope you’re in a better place eating all the people food you can eat and surrounded by immense love.

Love,

Ritchie, Cheryl, Mackenzee, Mom, Dad and Java

I recently went on a mini-vacation. I was out of the Internet for about a week. During that week, I went to a place without my laptop (but I took my iPad). As you probably could’ve seen, my website went away. For a small (brief) second my email went down as well.

You know what I learned?

Nothing died and the Earth continued to rotate on its axis. The world didn’t come to an end. I was still able to get really important emails, and I got a lot done. I didn’t stress out about updating this website but I did think about it once in a while. It changes your perspectives a bit. I really enjoyed the online disconnect. There is really a lot of noise out there, and I think I needed some perspectives around sifting through it all.

Social media. Meh.

I don’t usually post about other people in here, but this really just irks me to the core. As most of you know, we’ve recently moved over to our new house. Our new house has big windows which are really a good thing, except when it faces neighbors like these.

Our big kitchen window faces south and into an alleyway. This morning, we noticed a car in the alleyway, 4 people came out, 2 went into the house, while the rest were left behind. Loitering is not really a big deal to me. However, it becomes a huge deal when the people who were left went into the back alleyway, pulled down their pants and pee’ed onto the side of the garage. I mean, serious? Where are we? The Philippines (and even there, it’s not ok)?

So their neighbor (a nice older Chinese man) must’ve seen them and came out. He talked to them and while I couldn’t hear what he was saying, there was a lot of finger pointing (at the pee area) and finger wagging (culturally a sign of “don’t do it again or I will cause you physical discomfort because what you’re doing is really socially unacceptable”). I mean, not to mention that my whole family staring at him with our jaws dropped to the floor. It’s not like he can’t see us, our windows allow for a pretty clear view from the alleyway.

Both guys eventually go into the house but 20 minutes later, they come out and do the exact. same. thing.

So dear readers let me ask you: what is the recourse here? The alleyway smells, and we will be parking in that area. It’s unhealthy (germs! Ew!) for baby.

This is so brilliant! Spare the 5 minutes, and watch the YouTube video below.

I have to admit that the most recent tear-jerker that I’ve seen (or in this case re-watched) is that scene from Dumbo that Colin Firth talks about. Why? Well, you see Cheryl sings that song to Mackenzee when she goes to sleep and I didn’t know the song. So I looked it up, and saw that scene where the mother elephant tried to reach for Dumbo, because she sees him reaching for her through the window. Then she can’t reach him because she’s all chained up *ZOMG! I’m tearing up just writing this!* but instead reaches through the bars and rocks him *cue music*. Then cut to the montage of all the animal families rocking together, but not Dumbo and his mom.

Ok, serious! You have to have a pretty black heart to not be touched with that scene.

So tell me what movie recently made you cry? And also, if anyone can understand Mark Ruffalo’s mumblings. Can you let me know what movie he was saying in the comments?

It’s been a while since I’ve actually blogged about anime that I’m watching or have seen. As much to my parent’s dismay, I haven’t stopped watching. There just haven’t been much to talk about. I’ve been watching some great ones, like the latest iteration of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Which not only was a reboot with the same characters but a great story line that a larger amount of people would like (the first one was more traditional anime but still great).

I’ve discovered Crunchy Roll and I think finding it now (at this point in time in my life) where I’d rather pay for a service rather than hunting subs down via newsgroup or torrent is a welcome change in my anime watching routine. I’ve been rewatching a lot of the old arc’s from Naruto, Naruto Shippunden and Bleach. You know, before they got too dragon bally and started becoming more powerful than last week’s story line.

There really hasn’t been much good anime lately. Anime took this turn where they’be been doing this horror stuff and through netflix I tried to follow Hell Girl and since me and horror don’t go well I’m going to stop talking about it (because I scare the ish out of myself too easily). So I’ve been avoiding some of it. Admittedly, I’ve been watching a lot of anime that is out of my own character. I usually stick to Robots (Mechas), comedy and action. I tend to avoid the school kid drama, and ones that focus too much on the fan service.

So what have I been watching? Sadly, Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls seem to be interesting. The visual style of the anime is great and although it does have a lot of fan service; the story and action is really getting interesting. And hey, split personalities with one of the main characters always seem to make a series more interesting to me. K-On!! (notice the two exclamation marks) is really good, and if you ignore everything else the music is awesome. Bunch of high school girls start a club and drink tea. And for some reason their teacher dresses them in cosplay outfits before every concert. Simple, fun and nice background noise.

Ok, really. I took the images from other places like wikipedia, myanimelist and random curiosity. Why? Cause they have awesome-er screen caps than anything that I could’ve produced.