After enduring Parker chomping on my office rug for half an hour, I finally took him for a walk. First, he hates the Halti, so instead of doing his business on the grass he tries to get the Halti off:
Oh it looks cute, but when you know he has something better to do on the grass, it's kind of frustrating.
Then there was the stop at Whole Foods. I was inside for—no kidding—four minutes. I heard him crying all the way over at the checkout counter. Then, when I put my food out of his reach so I could un-clip him from the fence, I ran into a difficulty:
He had to climb up a 50 cm (20-inch) wall and then get over the fence, all for a green salad.
And yes, I probably should have gotten him out of the flower bed immediately instead of taking a picture, but come on. Even when he's a brat he's criminally adorable.
The weather this weekend has obviously helped the CTA. Already by 9 this morning they had almost completed the Church St. viaduct replacement:
Also, a few days ago I posted a photo of the ivy on our building. Two days later, the leaves had fallen. Before and after:
Must be autumn.
Parker and Jackson got a good workout yesterday:
They played for about three hours, half in the morning and half in the afternoon. Right now he's asleep on my office floor. What a great puppy.
In today's FoxTrot strip, Jason reveals a truly scary Hallowe'en costume. (The strip is now shown as Flash so I can't steal post it here for you. I'll update the link tomorrow.)
The CTA is replacing a 102-year-old viaduct in Evanston this weekend. I think the process is kind of cool. They started Friday evening and they'll finish Monday early in the morning, in time for the Purple Line to take people to work. I suppose it helps that they have an extra hour to work tonight.
This is the result of their first 15 hours or work:
And here's the "before" picture (from mid-August):
I always get a little nervous when the bridge is held up by chicken-wire.
Congratulations to Anne's home-town team, the St. Louis Cardinals, winning the World Series against the team that the Cubs last played for the same title. As a Cubs fan, I had some difficulty rooting for the Cardinals (the teams' rivalry goes back to the beginnings of professional baseball in the 1880s), but since the Tigers are in the American League I managed to do so.
Also of note to St. Louisians, it was on this day in 1965 that engineers completed the Gateway Arch.
We're trying an experiment. Parker is spending the whole day at Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters.
Also, just because this came out the way it did, I challenge both all of my readers to provide an appropriate thought balloon for the hardly-working office puppy:
I must say, also, that the experiment has gone very well today. So far, he has barked precisely once, and that was because I had a raisin bran muffin that he felt was rightfully his. He lets me go out of the office now (before he would whine as soon as the door closed), and none of our neighbors even knows he's around until they see him. The landlord, Charlie, also doesn't know Parker is here, more to the point, though on the two occasions when we've run into him in the atrium in the past week, Charlie has also expressed surprise at how quiet and well-behaved Parker is.
Charlie has not seen my office rug, of course. He might have a different opinion if he did.
Cintas, a uniform company (they make and launder uniforms for nurses, security guards, etc.), has decided to follow a DHS proposal—it doesn't have the force of law—that encourages employers to fire workers who have Social Security-number mismatches or in other ways fail to re-verify that they are authorized to work in the U.S. The effect of this action will be to intimidate immigrant workers, legal or not, and help them keep their payroll costs down.
The thing is, this is none of the company's business. The affected workers may have legal problems with the IRS or with ICE, but for all practical purposes this doesn't affect the company one way or the other. I don't think Cintas can make a straight-faced claim that the legal status of a minimum-wage seamstress or launderer threatens their business. On the other hand, if their workers worry that in addition to having an expensive and frightening experience with Immigration they also might lose their jobs, they'll be a lot less likely to agitate for a living wage or safe working conditions.
One of my long-standing clients, a labor-rights organization, has documented so many of Cintas' anti-worker policies (starting with poverty wages) that this is really only the latest, not the worst. So if you ever have to rent uniforms for your business, don't use Cintas.