By all good estimates and circumstantial evidence, my silly puppy Kate is now a year old!  Coincidentally, around the same time last year, someone else named Kate got married.  (Who knew?)  Since Kate was adopted at the local animal shelter, her origin story has been constantly revised, at least in my telling of it.

The story began in late April of 2011.  A rather large dog gave birth to a litter of "Labrador Retriever mix" puppies.  I don't know if this mother was a street dog or someone's pet, but most of her litter probably found a home...somewhere...

...except a scrappy, feisty, spunky female puppy with a wishbone design on the back of her head.  Maybe she was too energetic, compared to her siblings, to find a home right away.  At around two months of age, this puppy ended up in an animal shelter.  Her cellmates were similarly-sized puppies of likely the same litter.


The animal shelter identified these puppies as "Labrador Retriever/Cocker Spaniels."  At first, we thought Kate was one of them, even though she was listed only as a "Labrador Retriever mix."  However, as photographic evidence shows:


A tall ten-month old puppy that weighs a proportional 70 pounds probably has no small or medium dog gene (i.e., Cocker Spaniel or whatnot) in her DNA.  Kate is definitely made up of all kinds of large dogs, smashed into one bundle of silly--and sometimes crazy.  In any case, I hope all those aforementioned Spanadors found great homes, like Kate did.

Anyhow, the entire month of April was Kate's first birthday.  We played fetch.  And more fetch.  She ate some Beggin' Strips.  And Milkbone biscuits.  Then played more fetch.  The last of her winter coat was shed and clogged various vents.  Good times were had by all, in my estimation.

Kate's first birthday got me thinking the sad thought that dog years go by so quickly.  When the "future" comes, I'd totally be tempted to clone this crazy dog and start over.  (The firstborn clone would be named K81, or Kaighty-one, and so on and so forth.)  Then again, there's this whole dilemma of the ethics of dog cloning, and the treatment of a clone litter's surrogate mother.

So to sidestep human-canine morality for the time being, and to magically freeze Kate in a non-photographic moment of time, I just bought a stuffed animal that kind of looks like a two-month old Kate:


Happy 1st Birthday, you silly puppy, you.

I totally did not follow through with whatever I wrote last month.  Since it's the last day of March, I thought I'd check in here once again.  I've been so busy creating that I apparently lack the time and energy to document (read: brag about) what I've been creating.  I guess I also currently lack the time, energy, and desire to rant about things going on in the world today.

Anyhow, I could go into detail about this or that, or you might want to click away at some websites (by other people) that might have some pertinent information in the future:

www.fallingupdoc.com
sevenminutesilence.com

As far as my websites go, I definitely need to update them!  I'm taking about updating both content and design:

deramosmusic.com
deramosmedia.com
ryanderamos.com

And finally:  No, I did not win last night's gigantic Mega Millions jackpot (or any lesser prize).

Happy Presidents Day (or Washington's Birthday)! Back when I started DeRamos.org in 2007, I was mostly focused on the then-upcoming 2008 Presidential elections. Fast-forward to 2012, and we are again with a similar situation.  If time and energy permit, I will blog my often irreverent and irrelevant thoughts on the current campaign season.  I try not to totally tow the party line, but inevitably, my biases will be evident in what I write.

Unlike much of what I've found in political blogs, I like to differentiate between fiscal matters and social matters.  (Of course, overlap occurs when social matters use government funding.)  When it comes to fiscal conservatism vs. fiscal liberalism, I think it would be better to fluctuate (to a certain degree) as is wise for the current situation.  That is to say:  Sometimes the Federal government will need to spend money on Interstate highways, and sometimes not.  Sometimes a state government won't have the money to fund college grants, and sometimes a state budget will permit these opportunities.  The same goes for local governments.  Money matters should always be up for debate.

As far as social matters go, you can't stop the flow of history.  At the same time, human beings seem to be hesitant to rapid change:  Humans can't handle too much, too soon.  An abridged social history of the United States of America, from colonial times to the American republic, could read like this:  From religious persecution to a new land of religious freedom, from monarchical colonial rule to independence, from slavery to freedom, from a limited electorate to suffrage, from Jim Crow to civil rights, and beyond!

Note that the above took around 400-plus years to accomplish.  Along the way, there were a lot of hesitant forces to slow the flow of history.  Even today, there are politicians who want to legislate human reproductive issues.  There are factions in the United States who don't want committed couples to file joint tax returns (because that's what Federally-recognized "marriage" boils down to)!

I'll elaborate more on these issues in future blog posts, with a lot of silliness and a dash of reason to support my opinions.  If the comments section is open, feel free to comment, just don't be a douche.  (Since this is my blog, I'll be the judge of that!)