Doggie Reiki

My piece on pet Reiki ran in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Many thanks to Jen Whitleigh and Mike Pasquarello, the owners of Cafe Lift, for letting me observe their dog get Reiki'd.

If you're interested in reading more about Reiki energy healing, you may want to check out Kimberly Fleisher's web site for the Reiki School of Philadelphia.

Other holistic pet resources in the Philadelphia area:

Animal Healing Center
Deva K. Khalsa, VMD, FBIH
1724 Yardley-Langhorne Rd.
Yardley, PA 19067
215-493-0621

University of Pennsylvania Animal Hospital
School of Veterinary Medicine -University of Pennsylvania
3800 Spruce Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-898-4685
www.vet.upenn.edu/contacts/

Chic Petique-- shopping, rescue, resources
616 S 3rd St between Bainbridge & South Street
1040 N 2nd Street in Liberties Walk
215.629.1733

Natural Pet Expo-- an annual event devoted to holistic and natural pet resources in Philly

A few years ago, I wrote a story about the bones and raw food diet for pets, a.k.a. the BARF diet, at a shop called the Organic Doggie Deli. Though the shop has since closed, you may want to check out BARF World or google 'barf diet' for more info. (Curiously, the first links you get are all related to pet food-- not bulimia.)

Click Here

Today, I simply have a suggestion for a site to visit. John Aboud wrote a hilarious piece for the Encyclopedia of Exes; you've seen him and his parter-in-crime Michael Coulton on VH1's Best Week Ever. They are v. funny.

In other news: I have a cold. I am packing up my house to move. Both things suck.

Robot Suit

Here at Chez Mer, we're obsessed with Flight of the Conchords on HBO. Our favorite part so far is when Jemaine and Bret make a folk-rock parody video about giant robots taking over the world, and they parade around in homemade robot suits.

Because of all the robot love lately, I was delighted to find a set of instructions for making a robot suit on Instructables. Good work, obsessive robot DIY dude. Good work.

Big Fish Part 2

More on man vs. nature: here's an article from today's NY Times about the jumping sturgeon problem in Florida. Collisions between sturgeon and people are so common there is a technical term for it-- "sturgeon strikes."

The best line in the article reads, "with traffic growing on the storied [Suwannee] river, sturgeon are joining alligators and hurricanes on the list of things to dread in Florida."

Bubble Chair

Design Within Reach is having their summer sale, and I am totally craving this Philippe Starck molded plastic armchair for my new deck. In my fantasy, my deck looks something like this:





In reality, I will be lucky if I manage to grill on the new deck without burning down the new house.