Sunday Best

I was pondering today how wearing different clothes can affect my outlook. I only have a small sample set for what things can make me feel differently. For example, yesterday and today, the particular t-shirts I was wearing have this effect: yesterday I wore the "I Survived Barrens Chat" t-shirt, which is a World of Warcraft reference, today the Final Fantasy concert t-shirt. The common theme is not actually the one which causes any perspective change, rather it's that both shirts are actually the right size (in that they fit snugly but not too tightly), as opposed to my usual t-shirts which are two sizes too large.

I feel a lot more self-conscious when wearing these t-shirts, as it is a lot more obvious that I'm pretty much a stick figure. Sometimes I also feel sexier when wearing them, but that comes and goes pretty much evenly with the self-conscious bit.

Maybe I'll expand on this topic some time, it seems fairly interesting.

Future Selves

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if a future version of myself could come back and tell me things. Today I realized that I was that future self, who could go back ten years and tell my past self all the things that were important, things I should have worried about but didn't, and things that I was way too concerned with, that would work out anyways.

I was going through a lot of stress back then, and there didn't feel like many ways to cope with it. I ended up coping with it by seeing a counselor, and doing a whole lot of gaming. I was told many things by many people, but always discounted them as coming from someone else who didn't know my position. The closest I came to listening was to my counselor, as she didn't try to tell me how to change, she listened to what I was going through and offered support if I wanted it. Still, it was a tough time and looking back with my experience now, I see it could have been a lot worse without the support I did have, and could have been a lot better if I'd let my own perspective change.

My question to myself is this: If my future self had shown up back then, and told me of his experience and how things could work out, would I have listened? What if there was another person with the same experiences, would I listen to them?

I know I would now. But I still don't know if I could listen back then.

Doctor's Office

I get nervous about the doctor's office. Or the dentist's, or sometimes even the emergency room/waiting room at the hospital. I don't think it's something about the waiting room though, as it didn't happen when I went for an eye exam, or in the waiting room for a psychiatrist, which are very similar situations.

I'm not sure why it is. I haven't really had bad experiences at the doctor's, or the dentist's. And while I have had bad experiences at the hospital, it was the particular affliction I was there for that was the bad experience, not the environment. One guess I have is that maybe I'm visualizing or empathizing the pain of other patients, or imagined patients. Or maybe I'm nervous that it's going to be me that has horrible problems, rather than the usual check-up in the office which says everything is ok.

In any case, I am nervous, I'm going in to the dentist's office again tomorrow.

Swimmingly

A long time ago, I used to really like swimming and going to the pool. Then my teenage years came around, and my really bad acne and I got very self-conscious and didn't like going to the pool, mostly because I would have to not wear a shirt and then people could see the scars on my back from the acne, and my thin arms (which I don't mind, but tend to get a lot of comments. Hence why I usually wear my jacket, which hides them.). I'm not sure why this bothered me so much, I know it seemed very important to me at the time, even when I wasn't really self-conscious about most other things. I think perhaps there was some disconnect between physical appearance which bothered me, and social interactions of other types which did not. Regardless, I didn't like swimming for those reasons, even though I always really liked being in water and diving and swimming underwater and so on.

I haven't actually been swimming much since then. I can only think of a few times in the last few years, mainly at gradiators and once or twice otherwise. I do however like going into hot tubs. It doesn't really feel different, but I think there is a difference. Notably, when I go to a hot tub, it's inevitably with friends, and there aren't usually many (if any) outsiders there who I don't know. That environment really changes how I'm self-conscious. Sure, the scars are still there, I'm still scrawny-looking, but since I'm with friends, that doesn't bother me (it doesn't bother me in normal situations either. If people can't accept my physical appearance, that's their problem. Just in the beach/pool environment that doesn't seem to apply). They accept me and there aren't many people I don't know there, so I don't feel bad about it.

I think part of the issue was how women who didn't know me might judge me based only on a meeting at a pool or beach. I think I was fairly concerned about this, as I was still single and really wanted to not be dismissed outright for my appearance as a suitable friend/boyfriend/etc. I think that was a silly concern now, but my perspective has changed a lot.

Anyways, where was I going with this? Well, Frances mentioned that we should bring swimsuits when visiting for Em's graduation, because there was a pool and a hot tub at her place. Saturday night we actually went to the pool. I wasn't feeling very well (had a headache that grew pretty bad before I could take any excedrin for it), but I didn't want to not go. So we all went down there (Jonathan, Frances, Emily, Mom, Lorian, Uncle Dan) and they all hopped in the pool while I sat on the side to try and let the excedrin work and feel better. I spent a while thinking about it while sitting on the side of the pool. After a while, I realized something. I didn't really have a problem with pools any more. Sure, the water is usually too cold for me which means I'm physically uncomfortable, but I didn't feel self-conscious. If anything, I was happier that way, I was there with L, who I know likes me and my physical appearance, I got to watch her play around in the water, which was a definite bonus, and I really didn't care what other people thought about me in that environment. Not that there was anyone but our group there, but when I thought about it, it wouldn't really have mattered to me if there were others there I didn't know.

After that, I felt a whole lot better as it was like a problem that I'd had sitting around in the back of my mind had just gone away after so many years. Eventually my head started feeling better and I sat in the hot tub for a while, then got dragged into the frigid water of the pool and really had a lot of fun playing around in the water.

Lord Cao Cao

Finally we arrive at the post for the fifth rattie, the smallest but not the least, Cao Cao. Cao Cao was the first named, along with Lu Bu, for he was a mighty rat even though he was also really really small, with Lu Bu weighing in at nearly 50% more. He's still the smallest rat, but he's also the most active one as well.

We got a nifty rat wheel, featured in this picture:
It's an enclosed wheel, with the openings on the opposite side from that seen in this picture. Playing nearby are Blue and Scotty, with Lu Bu watching. All new things you introduce the ratties to naturally brings a certain amount of skepticism from them, which usually means that eagerly waiting to see how they will interact with a new thing usually brings disappointment as they ignore it. Cao Cao, however, figured out right away exactly what the rat wheel was for and immediately ran like crazy in it. And ran like crazy when we were trying to get to sleep, and then taught the rest of them how to run like crazy on it so that they could continue running while we tried to sleep even after Cao Cao got tired.

Here we have a good picture of Cao Cao:


He's a siamese coloring, which is basically a pure white with grey-brown hints on the ears, nose and tail. He's also the only one with the red eyes, the rest having the more usual black eyes.

To round out this description of Cao Cao and his personality, we have a photographic sequence, which I'll just notate with various bits about him. (Does anyone know how to make stuff on blogger appear only after a link? "below the fold" as it's usually called. I'd like to do that with the extra pictures here so it doesn't get too weighty.)

Cao Cao is a natural acrobat:
Yep, that's a three feet on the cage, one foot on the clothes hamper, getting set to jump over.

If you start taking pictures of rats, they come to see what all the flash is about.

But sometimes they get distracted and instead show off their balancing skills.

The next sequence shows off a particular trait we've seen in the ratties: they get into trouble. For some background, L went to a huge amount of trouble to buy some really nice cable organizers to stow all the power cables, network cables, etc, to keep them out of the way of the rats (who like to chew), so that we could at times let them run around the bedroom. Naturally, this doesn't work terribly well, as evidenced by the following behavior:
"Who, me? Play on the neatly organized cables?"
"Ok, enough posing for the camera. Now, what can I do while I'm up here?"
"I wonder where this cable goes?"
"This looks promising." (This is actually how he got over there, that black cable his front paws are resting on is the power cord from one of my monitors, he climbed over on top of it.)
"Changed my mind, it's climbing time again!"
"You know, this place looks pretty familiar. Where should I go from here?"

He actually did several loops around like that and then used the power cord to climb back over to the desk. I think he just likes the climbing around. Of course, once he arrived on the desk, this is what happens next:
After an exhausting trip, he naturally had to have a Dr. Pepper. I'm just glad he didn't try to drag it off with him. There you have it: Cao Cao, adventure-rat.

Ship's Engineer

And now, the fourth in the series about our new ratties. This time starring Scotty, the illustrious engineer.

Scotty was named such because we didn't want to name him Sun Quan, for fear of the archers. Or at least, that makes a better story for how he got named that. Sun Quan was tossed around as a name for one of them, since we already had Cao Cao and Lu Bu, but we decided that Sun Quan would be entirely too much of a handful. "Spotty" was tossed around as a possible name for Scotty, as he is black with white spotted patches, but it didn't stick and Scotty was used instead.

He's sometimes hard to tell from Lu Bu as they are both black and white, but Scotty has much less white on him overall, and very small spots, where Lu Bu has a gigantic white blaze on the forehead. Scotty is also the second largest of the rats, starting out a decent bit smaller than Lu Bu but he's been trying to catch up since. Scotty is the mountain climber of the group. No peak is too tall for him. His default direction of travel is upwards.

At this point, Barrick tried to help write the description of Scotty. L says: "He's probably going to put propaganda like 'pees on his food'" Bad Barrick, go hide in the corner.

Anyways, Scotty is very energetic and interested and tends to always be exploring and finding higher spots to climb to. He's pretty calm as far as petting goes, but has a low threshold for duration and will start squirming pretty quickly. He doesn't seem the dominant type either, not really going out of his way to tussle with any of the others, but he doesn't do badly when he does.

Finally, a pictorial comparison of Scotty and Lu Bu, to assist in telling them apart:













This is Scotty! He is being very annoyed at me for holding him still for this picture.














This is Lu Bu. A bit darker of a picture but the difference in coloring on the forehead is really apparent when comparing this to the previous one.

Brooding Prince

That would be Barrick, one of our rats. It could possibly refer to my mood today, which was terribly bad. Not far any good reason, just felt like I got nowhere except in planning stuff out at work, kept getting interrupted in whatever I was doing and nothing I did want to do turned out well. Except the Braves game, which we won vs the Mets, that'd be the good bit. Though I had to miss about half of it for group meeting.

Anyways, going to briefly talk about Barrick and his personality. He's very distinctively marked - mostly white, with a black ring around the neck, and some mottled black splotches elsewhere. This type is usually called possum marked, or possum hooded. He's right in the middle as far as weight goes, being around 310g.

Barrick doesn't like being around people. Or rats. Or anything, really. He's the most antisocial of the bunch and will dart away from hands that might want to pet him. When placed on a shoulder, he'll leap down. Doesn't care about safety, just wants to get away. This hasn't really changed much even though we try to pet him a lot and get him more well adjusted. He will hang out with the other rats and usually is one of the ones sleeping in a pile, but occasionally when they are all awake he'll be the one off in a completely different part of the cage pretending to nap. He does tussle with the others a decent bit, and I've been trying to figure out if he's ending up as the dominant rat. Probably not so far, but it's possible.

A good example of Barrick's shyness is the story from the previous post. Yep, he's the one who didn't even escape the cage after a door had been left open. He was probably happy to be left alone by the rest. Barrick does have a favorite thing to do though: burrow in the blankets/sheets. He will spend long stretches of time sneaking around under the blankets, only to poke his nose out in a completely unexpected spot to see whether anything interesting is going on outside. Not that he tends to go out, but he will get interested sometimes, at least as long as we're very careful to not startle him back into the covers. He is a very picky eater, and does not like taking medicine unless it's really diluted with some food he likes (usually sweet potato baby food). Lastly, Barrick was named for a moody prince in the Tad Williams series Shadowmarch (i'd just read the second book in the series, Shadowplay), mainly because he shares many of the same traits with that prince.

Potent Personalities for 200, Alex

Today's entry is a short one, but likely to be continued over the next day or three. I've been thinking about our new rats and their personalities, which leads to thinking about personality in general. So, let me tell you (the hypothetical reader) about the personality I've seen in our new rats, and perhaps once I finish describing them I may talk about the other thoughts.

Actually, I should mention one here. In a recent discussion about mental concepts of people (as in, what I think about particular people), I mentioned that I tended to store aggregated information - strengths, weaknesses, probable behavior in situations, that sort of thing. Another interesting approach to the same mental concept was to remember particular events involving that person, and when needing to make some conclusion about behavior to extrapolate from the remembered events. I find it interesting to note the two different ways, as in preparing to write about the rats I find that while I think of them as having particular attitudes and personalities, illustrating those to another person it feels more concrete if I can relate a story which exhibits those characteristics.

For this post, let me tell you about Lu Bu, the oldest of the five rats we recently adopted. First, the physical facts: he weighs about 360g, which is nearly 50% more than the lightest one (Cao Cao), and about 20% more than the average. So he's a big one, noticeably larger than Cao Cao. Very easy to distinguish as he has a large white blaze on his nose and forehead, and otherwise very smooth black fur with a white belly. I'll post a picture when I figure out how/where to post one.

Lu Bu got his name on the way home (as did all of them, though we weren't sure of some for a day or two), for he was the biggest and most demanding at the time. If there was food, he wanted it, but it couldn't just be left for him - someone had to hold it so that he could eat it with the appropriate style. It turns out that he's not really very combative (the rats tend to try and establish dominance by pushing the others over and grooming them), and I rarely see him actually start a fight, though he does tend to get picked on by the smaller ones (i.e. all of them). He is also the calmest around people, which is not to say that he will just sit around, but he seems to not mind petting and grooming, and tends not to get skittish. That said, he's also pretty fearless (I hesitate to say the most fearless, as Cao Cao seems to have a lock on that, but he's close). For instance, one day recently L had the ratties out of the cage and when putting them back in didn't notice that the lower door was unlatched and open. This was discovered a while later when Lu Bu revealed his presence in the living room couch, which L was sitting on. That is quite a distance from the cage, and our other rats have always been afraid of the hallway, as it is a long open space with nowhere to hide. For comparison, in the same time Cao Cao was playing in the clothes on the floor by the bed, Scotty and Blue were hanging out on top of the cage (having climbed the exterior), and Barrick was still inside the cage, just chilling. Or perhaps he hadn't noticed the door was open, or maybe didn't care.

Lu Bu appeared to get sick about a week after we'd brought the rats home, with a respiratory ailment of some kind (very common for rodents) that made him sound like a motorboat at times. He's now been to the vet and is on the usual combination of medications for it and sounds a whole lot better. I had thought perhaps he was calmer because he was having trouble breathing, but even with it sounding clearer now he's still rather calm - tonight, when the ratties were getting their medicine, he and Cao Cao had the privilege of getting to visit me on the couch while L tried to give the others their medicine. Which, translated, means that they were getting into trouble and probably trying to steal the medicine from the others. Cao Cao naturally was bounding all over the couch and trying his best to escape and play on the scrapbooking table. Lu Bu on the other hand explored for a while and ended up figuring out that he could climb down the sleeve of my shirt (long-sleeved, it was cold today). He happily played in there for quite a while, sometimes just sitting at the end of the sleeve, his head poking out just under my hand, and watching what was going on outside (pretty much nothing, I was attempting to read and trying to keep Cao Cao off the table). Very calm and he appeared to like the spot he'd found and was happy to sit there for a while.

So, what personality would I call Lu Bu? Friendly, exploratory, calm. Unafraid to win a fight when provoked, but not a bully.