Trying to stick with this this year. My other resolution is to procrastinate less, so aaahahahahahahahahahahaaaa *snort* we’ll see how that goes. Anyhoo, photos for days 1, 2 & 3 of 2016.
1/1/2016: Yeti Feet! (Barbered soon thereafter.)
1/2/2016: Dumplingpalooza!
1/3/2016: Random photo of orange piping.
I haven’t been very good at photo-of-the-day-ing, but here’s a winter photo dump. Mostly dogs. Preview:
When I found this in the middle of the kitchen floor this morning, my first thought wasn’t “ew!” but “that will be an excellent photography subject!”
The culprit is undoubtedly Holly, our year-old Golden Retriever, who has proudly retrieved — and often attempted to eat — sticks, mulch, a bird, a plastic box containing mouse poison,* and a four-foot length of plastic piping that was only recently an integral part of our sprinkler system. I guess the fact that she retrieved a tissue-thin wasp’s nest and deposited it in the middle of the kitchen floor shows she can be very delicate — the “soft mouth” so valued by hunters. Given her soft mouth, excellent retrieving skills, and laser-like focus on the squirrels, rabbits, and birds that frequent our backyard, I fear she’s wasting her true talents with indoorspeople such as Tim and me.
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* After a quick trip to the vet and a couple of induced pukes, it was determined that she only ingested a couple of shards of plastic, and no actual mouse poison.
Saguaro refused to go out in the below-zero snow in his bare paws. Much happier in boots.
Photobomb by Holly’s paw. She’s my toughdog — no boots required!
This is brilliant!
(h/t The Mahablog and my mom.)
However, I do have to point out that we were there first!
(Cross-posted at CREECblog.)
Saguaro catching tennis balls on a nice fall afternoon.
My favorite – should have Jaws music:
Isn’t he gorgeous?
With her friends Quince
and Mocho
And my attempts to coax her to swim. (Thanks for the photos, Cara!)
“Come, Holly! Come on! Here! Give it a try.”
“Aw, geez. You’re a retriever for Pete’s sake.”
“See: all these other dogs like the water! [And the treats I was trying to bribe you with.]”
“Let’s try this pond . . . and a leash.”
“Good dog!”
THE END
Last week, our sweet little puppy, Holly,
hunted down, killed, and partially consumed a bird. So while that photo may look cute, it’s really a MUG SHOT. This has predictably caused stomach problems of the kind that has me running after her with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Nature’s Miracle.* The problems became serious enough by yesterday (I’ll spare you why) that we took her to the vet, who asked, “how long has it been since her dietary indiscretion?”
Which means, apparently, “how long since she ate weird shit.”
But I love the new terminology! Here, I’ll use it in a sentence: “No, I didn’t eat the entire bag of potato chips. I merely committed a dietary indiscretion.”
The term could be especially useful for Tim, who regularly commits dietary indiscretions by pouring A1 sauce — often followed by hot sauce and salad dressing — on random food: pasta; salad; cereal. (Love you!)
So while few of us are indiscreet enough to prey on innocent but apparently disease-ridden birds, I thought the term was useful enough to escape its veterinary origins for wider application.
Holly is now on the mend on antibiotics and a “bland diet” which is vet-speak for “foul-smelling glop in a can.”**
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* While this may sound like something that cures cancer or allows humans to fly, it is in fact just a cleaning fluid that removes dog poop stains and odors, which is, indeed, sort of miraculous when you have a puppy.
** Originally typo-ed “fowl,” which would send Holly all the wrong messages in this situation!
In trying to get this photo
I got this one first, which I was going to discard but which I’ve decided I sort of like:
I got to do one of my favorite things on Friday: talk about the ADA to a bunch of disability rights advocates. Even better: the advocates were with the Southwest Center for Independence, and were in Durango, Colorado. I had the choice of six* hours of driving (each way) through the amazing Colorado countryside, or an hour (each way) bouncing over the mountains in a regional jet. I chose the drive without a second thought.
So Friday morning early, I lit out for Durango and because Holly still isn’t fully house-trained, and thus can’t stay alone with Tim, I brought her along for the ride.
It’s almost as if I bought the CRV with the dogs in mind! Oh, right. Turns out it has an added feature I hadn’t even known about. For those awkward moments when she poops in the middle of a scenic overlook that lacks a trashcan:
Always pack out your trash!
Anyway, I chose the southeastern route in the map above — down I25 and across Route 160 — because I’m not a big fan of pass driving. Google Maps helpfully sets out various routes, and then lets you choose your mode of transportation: car; bus; on foot. To accurately calculate our time, however, they need another option: traveling with puppy.
We stopped every hour and a half to two hours to find Holly a grassy spot. Besides that slight inconvenience, though, she was the perfect traveling companion.
Driving in Colorado: breathtakingly beautiful.
Breathtakingly scary:
Breathtakingly . . . obvious?
Got to Durango without a minute to spare before the talk. That is, though I didn’t have any minutes to spare, I spared a couple, and ended up about 5 minutes late. It was my favorite kind of talk: with interested advocates who had great ideas and great questions.
After the talk, Holly and I set out to explore Durango a bit, and found a path by the river that was perfect for a post-driving-trip stroll.
Obligatory “Holly Posing Because She Knows Just How Cute She Is” photo:
Dinner was yak stew — a first for me! — and lamb dumplings at The Himalayan Kitchen, then back to the hotel, where Holly checked out the accommodations.
For the drive back to Denver, I chose the more direct route — in blue in the map above — that took me on Route 160 as far as Del Norte, and then Route 285 northeast through the mountains. There were a couple more passes, but either they were relatively easy passes or I’m finally getting use to pass driving. Or possibly exchanging the 1988 Accord for a 2013 CRV just makes the whole thing feel safer. But I also took the time to stop for photos. These first four were processed in HDR:
Wildlife!
Colorado life!
Uh oh! Better behave myself!***
I arrived home, tired and happy, yesterday afternoon, very grateful to live in a state of overwhelming natural beauty and kick-ass disability advocates.
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* Actually, I have to confess, when I first learned I would be going to Durango, I thought, “it’s in the same state; how far can that be?” Having grown up out east**, I assumed that anywhere you had to go within a single state couldn’t be more than a couple of hours’ drive. Soooooo it turns out they make states bigger out here. So the six-hour drive was a bit of a surprise, but ultimately a pleasant one.
** I’ve been overthinking the phrases “back east” and “out west” recently. I use the phrases mostly because they reflect my path. I started life on the east coast, and I’ve migrated out west. But it occurs to me that these common phrases are not only sort of east-coast-centric, but also reflect a European-American-centric path (my peeps mostly entered the U.S. from the east coast and headed west) as opposed to an Asian-American path, as many Asians entered the U.S. from the west coast. So I thought I’d try “out east” for a while and see how it sounded.
Thought Snax 