Mortaine’s Blog

Vet - cat food and one pill to get Hammer to Saturday (after work)
Call dog sitter re: new invoice and saying goodbye
Send emails to friends re: Hammer, saying good-bye, etc.
Declutter
Pets notebook
Play some FFX-2 (reward for doing at least 3 of the 5 above items)

These are what I have in my audible.com list (already purchased, waiting to be listened to). Clearly, I have fallen behind in my “reading.”

Storm of Swords
Idlewild
No Way to Treat a First Lady
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Sammy’s Hill
Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell
Wizards & Glass (Dk Tower IV)
Evermore

So, which one to read first? I’m thinking Storm of Swords– always a good start to a new year!

Time to pimp a few communities, in case people are interested in starting some challenges this year. Feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments. I’m looking for a good cooking-related challenge, since I’ve resolved this year to cook at home more often.

: Read 50 books in a year. I made it to 53 last year, largely by listening to audiobooks during my commute. My posts are all Memorifyed here. This is a high-traffic community.

: Spend 100 days doing something. In 2003, I did 100 days of playing dulcimer– and made it. Last year, I failed to do cross stitch for 100 days, but I got a lot of pieces finished, at least. Very low-traffic community.

There are several book-a-month communities about. is one that I participated in last year, but is kind of low traffic. Also is another, with a lot more traffic (that may be more appealing to you or not).

is a semi-defunct craft-a-month club with monthly and seasonal crafting challenges. The challenges are usually something that you can do in any craft medium, like “make something involving flowers” or “garbage” or “coffee related.”

For the writers among us, is a community for those doing NaNoWriYe. is a community I just randomly found with writing challenges. Don’t know how active either of these are.

Hammer’s ear tattoos are 61A (born in June, 1991, 1st pup in his litter to be tattooed– which might just mean he was the first one they could catch!) and 5364. I looked him up online– his registered track name appears to have been JC’s Crossfire.

Greyhound-data doesn’t have any info on JC’s Crossfire’s racing career, but Rosnet does (reg. required, and Flash): 106 races between February of 1993 and July of 1995. Lots of place (2nd), especially early in his career, and quite a few wins. Mainly raced in the D-grade tracks, with times in his maiden runs in the early 30’s and in his last runs in the late 30’s, with a few in the 40’s. Ironically, his last race was July 3, 1995. We brought him into our home as a foster around the 4th of July, in 1998.

No idea where he got the name Hammer, though. Either the race track handlers called him that in the kennel (sometimes they pick a kennel name for the dogs), or his previous family (the one who had him between 1995 and 1998) named him that, for whatever reason (after MC Hammer, perhaps?)