Spot’s first walk around Luang Prabang

I didn’t plan on falling in love with Spot, but he’s my best friend now. He follows me around everywhere. He’ll scratch at my door to let him in every night and gets really jealous if I give affection or food to his sister or any of the other dogs at my apartment.

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The first couple of days we went on a walk it was just Spot and I. Now it seems all of the dogs in the neighborhood follow us around. There’s an ATM across the street where I live. There was this old man with the scariest-looking eyes I’ve ever seen and two of his young punk-looking friends who seemed like they were about to jump me when I got some cash out at 1 am. When I did my best dog bark, all of the dogs in the neighborhood came running to me and surrounded me. At first, they looked at me like a dumb white boy they were about to rip off, but when all my dog friends showed up, they just smiled and went away.

Spot found this bug. At first, I thought it was a child’s toy. Then I thought it was like a royal cockroach or something. I think it’s some type of wood beetle. I don’t know, but it looks cool. Do you know what it is?

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Spot followed me around town for about 10 km. He was very good about staying on the sidewalk and not running into the street, but I did have to carry him across a few intersections.

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Spot likes temples. He’ll lead the way in, look around a bit, then leave. Maybe he was a Buddhist in his last life.

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I gave him plenty of water along the way, but at one point he just wouldn’t have it anymore. He laid down near a bank to cool down in the shade and close to the cool air-conditioned air blowing out the door.

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I remember when I was a kid it seemed like everybody had these old World War II Army jeeps. This one is US Army, USMC, and Laos. Is this even a US Army version? It looks a little off to me. I think it’s a Russian or Chinese version but painted like an American one. They still look cool today. Imagine how cool they looked back in World War II.

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This is Mano Temple about halfway to the center of downtown Luang Prabang.

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One of the things I’ve loved about living here is that for all of 2020 and until now, nothing was shut down. They didn’t bother with restrictions except for closing down the borders, but recently everyone’s gone paranoid. All the restaurants and dance clubs are shut down because an American and Korean have died of the virus.

I love the bamboo barricades they’ve all put up here to protect their neighborhoods. It reminds me of when I was a 10-year-old boy with a fort in the woods and a sign that said, “No girls allowed!”

I was a hotel manager before the virus came. Now I’m just a Hive blogger and the guy who hangs out with the dogs all day. It’s sad to see these nice hotels being neglected like this. A lot of my friends who worked at the hotel with me are now delivery drivers. I can’t wait for this stupid virus to end and the world to come back to normal.

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The first bath we took together Spot was acting like it was the greatest injustice in the universe. Whenever you give a dog a bath you have to be very careful never to get the shampoo or water in their eyes or nose or they’ll have a very bad experience and won’t ever want to take a bath again. Now he will stand up on the toilet and let me shampoo him without moving. I just have to say the same thing several times. “Don’t move!”

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Why do dogs love getting up on the bed? I don’t like him doing this because he is a tick magnet. Can you see the guilty look on his face? I feel sorry for Spot because it’s so hot outside, so I’ll let him stay in the room to enjoy the cool air while I’ll walk to the shop to get a beer. He knows it’s wrong, but he’ll always sneak up there when he can.

I’ve been a gamer since 1984, but getting GOLD everything in Mario Kart 8 was the pinnacle of my gaming journey.

My life was perfect as a young kid. Everyone felt sorry for me being a bastard so it was like having many dads. My grandfather, I called him Granddad, was the best though. He was a fighter pilot in Vietnam and after retiring from the Air Force he opened his own general aviation airport in Spearfish, South Dakota. He was my first best friend. He would take me everywhere with him. He taught me how to fly when I was just two years old. I have so many fond memories of him teaching me about avionics, flying the pipeline, and proper radio etiquette.atari.jpg

My stupid-ass mom and step-dad forced me to move to shithole Seattle with them in 1984. I remember kicking and screaming and being forced into the truck for the two-day journey west on I-90. I still hate her for it. (I joined the US Army when I was 17 just to get away from her.) My dog and Granddad died when we were there. I fucking hate Seattle. All it does is rain. I would slit my wrists before I ever went back there again. If it got wiped out by a nuclear bomb I’d be so happy.

I remember my step-dad asking me how old I was on the way. I told him, then asked him how old he was. Nineteen was his answer. I remember thinking that was a really big number compared to my four. I also remember going to his uncle’s house on the way and getting bullied for the first time by his kids. It wasn’t that bad. They just said that the sucker they were eating was my soon-to-be-born baby sister. I knew they were joking, but I kind of wished it was true. If it weren’t for her, we’d still be in South Dakota with Granddad and my dog. They didn’t let me play, but I remember they had an Atari 2600. It may look lame today, but it was like a magical box then. They must’ve gotten a newer console because we brought that one with us. I remember playing Pong and some crappy racing game. They were really fun, but when the Nintendo Entertainment System came out, everyone had or wanted one. It was so amazing. I remember playing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt for years. I didn’t clear Mario until 1989, but by then everyone was like, “Who cares?”

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I’ve had every Nintendo system over the years, even the Virtual BoyNintendo never had the most powerful system (except for the Nintendo 64), that thing was on another level, but they always seemed to make the best games. Mario Kart is by far the best game franchise to have ever been made in my opinion. I’ve been playing it since the Super Nintendo days.

When I was a teacher in Bangkok I had it made. I owned my condo free and clear, had zero transportation costs because I rode a BMX everywhere, and seemed to have money and pussy falling from the sky. I was a single dad but didn’t start work until 5 pm, so I would bring my son with me to work every day after he got out of school. My teenage students would take him shopping and to restaurants while I was teaching. I also had a Nintendo Wii U and a Playstation 4. I earned the nickname “GTA Teacher” from my students because we had so much fun killing cops as Michael, Trevor, or Franklin. I would invite fellow teachers over to my crib after work and we’d BBQ, smoke weed, and drink lots of beer. We’d play a bit of the new PS4 games, but everyone always wanted to play Mario Kart 8 together. My two buddies, Danie, Jim, and I played it online so much that we memorized every track and were probably in the top thousandth players in the world at the time. We had a technique that would help us defeat the A.I. too. We would play two players against the A.I. and had a rule, whoever won first place on the first track was king. The second player would serve as a bodyguard and this was enough to overwhelm the A.I. even though it loved to cheat with the “Blue Shell of Death” on almost every track. If the bodyguard had it, they would only fire it if the king fell back from first place.

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Living in Bangkok was wild. We would go to strip clubs and see hundreds of beautiful naked women on stage, go dancing all night long, or just enjoy the best food and vacations, but to this day we all still smile whenever anyone mentions Mario Kart 8. It took a few months of grinding through all the tracks to get perfect runs, but we eventually earned the golden wheels, then the golden hang glider, and eventually golden everything. It really was a superior vehicle. My son recently got the game on his Nintendo Switch and I had one question for him, “Have you earned the golden kart yet?”

Image Resources:

http://cognizantgamer.com/?p=143

http://www.soicowboy-bangkok.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/18-12-2017-mario-kart-8-deluxe-how-to-unlock-gold-mario-and-stop-blue-shells

Can Vaseline get your dog’s ticks out?

I’ve really bonded with Spot here. He’s very intelligent which makes him hard to handle. My neighbor said they tried to adopt him, but he wouldn’t listen to them. Since he’s half husky he has way too much fur for this hot climate. He’ll be the happiest dog in town for about two months in the winter, but his summers won’t be fun. Maybe I’ll take him somewhere cold like Colorado. It’s a beautiful thing when a husky sees snow for the first time. It’s like the wolf takes over and they go wild running and jumping around. It never snows in Laos, so he sadly may never know the feeling.

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The way we adopt and raise dogs in the west is all wrong. We should see which dogs we naturally bond with, not just buy ones we think are cute. If they follow you then they follow you. If they don’t, it wasn’t meant to be. I think leashes are disgusting. How would you feel if someone dragged you around everywhere in chains like a slave? Would you really love them or would it just be a love born from fear? Spot trusts me and follows me everywhere, even across this scary bridge. I’ve had to teach him to never go in the street and he is super afraid of heights, but he’s a brave dog. Except for being aggressive and pooping and peeing inside, I just let my dogs do whatever they want. If they want to smell weird stuff all day or run into the bushes, they can have at it. Just be prepared for those annoying sticky plants and ticks if they do.

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Here’s our first selfie together. I don’t think he’s ever seen himself before. He was quite fascinated by his image on the phone. I’ll have to show him a big mirror and capture his reaction. I don’t know how many months old he is. He is half Lao dog so I don’t know if he gets way bigger or stays small. Either way, he will grow up to be a beautiful boy.

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He just wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to use the tweezers to get the ticks in his armpits out. Maybe he’s ticklish. I remember a doctor telling me when I was a kid that you can use petroleum jelly to get ticks out. Even though their head is in the skin sucking on blood they still need to breathe and the jelly will cut off their oxygen supply and they will pull their heads out gasping for air.

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I usually avoid cheap brands, but this one costs one-third the price. 7,000 kip is less than a dollar.

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I didn’t time it, but the ticks pulled their bloody heads out themselves after about a minute. I didn’t get a chance to take a shot of any of the nasty creatures because Spot ate them including a bit of jelly. Fair enough. They were eating him, now he ate all of them and got some of his blood back.

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Go back to sleep baby. Thank you for reading. Vaseline or petroleum jelly does indeed help remove ticks. You just need to use it liberally.

OCTOPIDER

You may be thinking that a spider already has eight legs, so why Octopider? For one thing, the Octopider is much larger than a spider, closer to the size of an octopus. Its legs, although they can scurry like a spider, are actually the tentacles of an octopus. In fact, this monstrosity has nearly all the most terrifying features of both spiders and octopi. The Octopider can move easily in water or on land. Whenever threatened, the Octopider disappears into an inky, venomous cloud. They say the Octopider was a grotesque creation of the Gorlodon, a famed monstrous dark sorcerer of the deep water.

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This week’s challenge theme looks super scary. Imagine the horror as this monster sucks your face off while its tentacles squeeze you to death! Luckily, it’s just an NFT. It has a ranged attack of 3 right from the get-go at level one. The demoralize ability kicks in at level three. This will reduce the melee attack of ALL your enemies which is very useful. At level seven it has the ability to blind making it more likely your enemy misses you when attacking. This is a cheap, but must-have card in my opinion.

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My first battle was a victory thanks to the Haunted Spirit’s ability to self-heal. The OCTOPIDER wasn’t exactly the MVNFT of the battle, (Is Most Valuable NFT a word? It is now 😉 so I battled again.

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This was a good ranged -vs- ranged battle. The OCTOPIDER with its ranged attack of 3 was the heaviest hitter on the battlefield. Thanks for the victory OCTOPIDER, you scary-ass spider of an octopus NFT monster.

My battles:

https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=4e9c32af978f08015b7c260dba0b02cce170aa85&ref=jeremiahcustis

https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=27e7907844ba2fd9cc31a0e3d97776e8e2027e15&ref=jeremiahcustis

This week’s challenge:

https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@splinterlands/share-your-battle-weekly-challenge-octopider

SILVERSHIELD BARD

Bards of the Silver Shield have extremely loud voices, and they are not afraid to use them. In battle, the Bard’s song can unify and hasten a team, and their maximum volume has the power to scare away possessing spirits. In the University of Illumination, these musical enthusiasts are trained and ingrained for years in the official sanctioned Lore of the Silver Shield. What they lack in vocal talent, the Bards make up for in storytelling, humor, and wit.

This week’s battle challenge was fun. The SILVERSHIELD BARD, like any other 1 mana card, is a must-have and a keeper of an NFT. If she can survive the battle with her limited health, she’ll remove any negative effects the enemy has caused your front monster.

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As you can see, she’s not that expensive. This isn’t financial advice or anything, but I guarantee she will be worth over a dollar one day. It could be a year or longer though.

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My enemy used the hard to beat Living Lava, but we were still able to earn a victory. My SILVERSHIELD BARD served as empty bait for their Serpentine Spy. Although I was happy to earn a victory, I really wanted to show this card in action so I played again.

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This time her ability was useful. She removed the Pit Ogre’s stun on my Sacred 🦄 Unicorn so we could win again.

Great service

Splinterlands is a great game but they also have some of the best customer service I have ever seen in my life. My student who’s good at the game, but doesn’t own a PC, wanted to sell some DEC and invest in CUB so I told him to send it to me and I would take care of it. Something went wrong when I tried to use the bridge to the Binance Smart ⛓️ Chain. I didn’t know what to do so I emailed customer support at Splinterlands. To my surprise, they had replied within 5 minutes and fixed the problem. Here’s what they said in the email,

I am very sorry about that, it looks like there was an error with our BSC bridge. The DEC tokens have just been sent back to your account in the game and the issue with the bridge should now be fixed so you can try withdrawing them again and please let us know if you run into any other issues.

I was so impressed with their speedy resolution that I sent them a thank you email and they replied with this,

Well, we fixed the issue with the BSC bridge as soon as we were alerted to it, but it looks like we didn’t see that you had a failed transaction until you contacted us. In any case, we do try to resolve any issues around failed crypto transactions asap and we make sure that no one loses any tokens or assets as a result of our systems.

In this day of age where most companies use cookie-cutter copy and paste fake email replies, it’s really nice to actually have a human take the time to understand, use proper grammar, and fix the problem within minutes. Thank you Splinterlands.

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My battles:
https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=165d9d12a1a47bd2f8410a0781f2c8f86cf354be&ref=jeremiahcustis

https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=aaf92a9a837d6f835a51bfa02cea216653181328&ref=jeremiahcustis

This week’s challenge:
https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@splinterlands/share-your-battle-weekly-challenge-silvershield-bard

PEACEFUL GIANT

There have always been stories of Giants in the Splinterlands, but recently they began to arrive. They bring tales of a home far across the water that they had to flee from a terrible threat. Luckily, these refugee Giants mean no harm to the Splinterlands. Most of them arrived by swimming across the entire Outer Ocean.

The giant may be a pacifist, but he’ll help you win when used at the right times. If you’re a strong magic or ranged player, he’ll work well as a shield in the front or the rear. We sadly killed all of the Earth’s giants after they built our pyramids and won our wars. I miss them. Shame on us for their enslavement, extinction, and cover-up! At least they peacefully battle on in the Splinterlands. For now… Can NFTs go extinct?

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Oh no! I got a rich Gold carded higher-level enemy. I sometimes feel like the game’s AI has a conspiracy against me and always gives my enemies a bunch of misses. Not today. I was lucky and got way more misses and won this battle. Much thanks to the Peaceful Giant. He gave his life for our victory today. All of the DEC earned in today’s battle will go to his family. There aren’t that many giants left. Maybe we should refrain from using them in battle from now on…

My battle:
https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=30fd0c092367a496d695f48e18668650042aeb8e&ref=jeremiahcustis

This week’s challenge:
https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@splinterlands/share-your-battle-weekly-challenge-peaceful-giant