Harvest Moon

I actually took this photo at the September full moon, but liked it so much I thought I'd share.

I Can't Stop! I Can't Stop!

I can't stop knitting these felted dog toys! Here I've finished 8, and #9 is on the needles already.

It all started with the kit from Bully Woolies, which I picked up at a local yarn shop's going-out-of-business sale. (Rest in peace, The Stitching Mantis. We all miss you.) I opened the kit, realized that the yarn inside was my very favorite felting yarn (Lamb's Pride), and went to work.

These are knitted in halves on size 10 ½ DPNs; you knit the first half from middle to top, pick up stitches for the botton half, and leave a giant buttonhole in the bottom half as you knit. Everything shrinks a bit when you felt it, but you can still get the squeaker and stuffing inside. Stitch it closed and voila!

The original toys made from the kit are the orange-and-green one and the fuchsia-and-blue one. The rest come from leftover yarn in my stash. I bought bags of squeakers on eBay. If you're looking for a quick charity knitting project or a fundraiser, need to whittle down your stash or get rid of some leftovers, or even just like the idea of making your own dog toys for just pennies using leftover yarn from other projects... well, here's a project for you. Bully Woolies has kits for other felted toys, including cat toys, on its website — or ask your friend Google to help you find some free designs.

Once I've made even a small dent in my Lamb's Pride stash, I'm planning to try the pattern with other good felting yarns, such as Cascade 200 and Kureyon. I knew I'd saved all those leftovers for something! Watch for the next batch to appear on this blog once they're done.

This Dog Climbed Mount Washington

That's Badger Blue in the photo, on the trail leading through the Alpine Garden on Mount Washington.

This adventure took place on Labor Day, when other folks are holding backyard barbecues, hitting the sales at all the stores, or leaning on their car horns while stuck in zillion-mile-long traffic on the southbound half of the Turnpike. (I would have voted for hitting the sales, myself. Our TV is showing signs of giving up, and I've been looking at bedroom furniture sets so I can get rid of that crappy old futon once and for all.) Greg had been talking about the two of us going for a hike -- and then we decided to take Badger along. Badge is Greg's hiking buddy on all of the short-haul hikes, so it only seemed right to enjoy the trek with him.

We had a great time. We drove up to the head of the Hutchinson Trail (I think) and hiked down from there into the Alpine Garden and across. This is what the Alpine Garden Trail looked like from up above...

...and from where we stopped in the Garden itself for a picnic and the view.

Badger was content to hang out...

The trip back was a little hairier than we'd intended, at least for a short distance. Climbing up is generally easier than coming down, which is why we began the climb from the top. We drifted a couple of yards to the left of the actual trail, though, and the "stairstep" rocks turned into a series of boulders and small moving rocks that Badger found hard to negotiate. I had to lead him over a few and lift him onto a few others, but conditions improved markedly for all of us when we realized our little mistake and moved back to the actual trail.

Badger was happy to see Greg's car again...

...and snoozed contentedly while we admired the views and took some more photos.

I often say that "the best kind of dog to have is a tired dog," but we were all pretty tired dogs by the time we reached home. Greg and Badge recovered quickly, but my out-of-shape quad muscles threatened to secede from the rest of my legs for the first couple of days that followed. Still, we managed to get to the mountain on one of the few perfect days we've had this summer. I guess I can always hit the sales later.

Soggy Doggy Fun

Yesterday, Greg and I loaded Charlie and Dinah into the Subaru and drove to Belfast for their annual Celtic Festival. Our friends Bill and Cathy live there with their Beardie and Bouvier, and I had never seen the new place -- plus the Festival offered a showcase for Celtic dog breeds. Why not?

We encountered typical weather for this summer -- gray, alternating between rain and mere drizzle -- and ended up looking mighty bedraggled by the time we made it to the exhibition tent to give our little spiel. Charlie had a fine old time flirting with the Lassies...



When it came time for the Beardies to give their spiel, we stepped up on stage and delivered the usual stuff. I was particularly tickled that people asked questions about the AKC Canine Good Citizen program when I mentioned that Dinah was my demo dog. Of course, we fielded the usual questions about how much they shed, how much they eat, and so on. (My sister has threatened for years to make me a T-shirt with all of the standard answers to the standard questions. "Yes, we know they don't look like Lassie...")

After we finished our portion of the program, we browsed the other vendors and picked up some absolutely wonderful pulled-pork sandwiches from the BBQ vendor (whose stand kept wafting glorious scents in our direction as we waited our turn in the Celtic dog breeds demo). Greg tried the cornbread and pronounced that wonderful. We had a delightful old time, sharing beer, BBQ, and Beardies and Bouviers with a couple of my old friends. I'd never seen their Belfast house, though I'd been to visit them when they lived in Owl's Head.

After lunch, Greg and I decided to explore the rest of downtown. I LIKE Belfast. It still retains a little of its old "real Maine" funkiness along with all the boutiques and galleries. It definitely reminds me of how Portsmouth and Newburyport looked before Starbucks and The Gap came to town.

I sacrificed a week's worth of Weight Watchers points for a frozen yogurt in a homemade waffle cone (still warm!). Greg asked the nice woman at the counter about gelato. "Oh, we've run out," she said, "but we've just started making more in the back." They make their ice cream and gelato as well as the cones! I want to move into that shop.

(Oh, and I did find the yarn shop downtown. Great place -- small, but amazingly well-stocked, and with enough room for three regulars to hang out together and knit. They even stock local yarns!)

This Week in Web Stuff

I'm feeling a little bit better in general about my post-employment life as a freelancer these days. I'm still not earning squat, but I do have to keep an eye on what squat I do earn. Unemployment has an upper limit on the amount of money one can earn while still collecting.

The client whom I thought hated her site actually liked it a lot, but wanted to meet in person to trade thumb drives of photos and other stuff. She asked me to create another page and move some stuff, and she's actually delighted with it. I won't hear from her for a little while -- her "high season" started last Friday, and she's going to be out straight for a while.

With Greg's help, I also managed to get the site that wasn't working to run the way I wanted it to. Now that it's actually useful and usable, I've been making behind-the-scenes tweaks and additions to get the other stuff I promised online. This makes me happy.

I'm ready to start another site for a friend of mine, but she's been a bear and a half to track down. I've called, I've emailed, and I would send snail mail if I had her address. At least she doesn't appear to be in a rush to get the work done. I'll just move on to some site updates for another client and a mini-site for some friends-of-friends who really just want something simple.

I really love the work. I just wish I could make enough to live on -- I would walk away from technical writing forever if I could. In the meantime, I'm still seeking out and applying for the few jobs that are available, all of which are located in some other city where management really only wants people on-site, and less-expensive ones at that. One recruiter keeps sending me announcements of every job in Maine that he can find. He means well, but I don't think he's read my resume. Otherwise, he might think twice before sending me announcements of jobs for QA engineers in Augusta. The entire state of Maine is right next door, right?

Your Call Is Important To Us

This too shall pass, but today I think I've reached my volunteering limit. The problem with being at home, having a computer which you haven't broken yet, and belonging to any organization is that people constantly badger you for free, immediate technical support. I am currently ignoring two phone calls and an email demanding my immediate attention. It wouldn't even be so bad if I could just fix the damn problem and get off the phone, but I'm just not ready to invest a couple of hours in listening to someone else's life story AND trying to sort out their computer issues -- particularly when people aren't really interested in learning how to do things for themselves, so the phone will definitely be ringing again shortly thereafter. Sometimes I think that people should have to pass a test before buying a computer.

On top of which, I just plain got annoyed at a couple of emails I received this morning. One demanded that I sign up for yet another work detail for our National Specialty (to which I really wanted to reply, "I've been working on this show all year, too. Pick on someone who hasn't done dick yet."). Another email remarked that no matter what our financial circumstances, we ought to attend at least one of our desperately-overpriced banquets to show our support. The only way I will be able to get to the show in the first place to work all week and attend numerous lengthy and dead-boring meetings is to carpool with other people and minimize my expenses. Comp my effin ticket and I'll think about going. Otherwise, no. Ask someone else to volunteer for a change.

Bounce!

Every year, we look forward to the BCCME Beardie Bounce & BBQ at my friend Val's house. We set the Beardies free to romp in their big fenced yard with a couple of dozen of their friends, grill up some burgers, smooch some puppies, and see friends we haven't seen in ages. When the weather is good, it's very, very good. When the weather is bad, we try to muddle through.

Last year, we not only had to contend with rain showers, but a tornado (or a facsimile of a tornado) had visited the neighborhood only a few days before, ripping up trees, wrecking fences, and smashing a hole in Val's roof. Through the herculean efforts of Val and Pat, several family members, and some hired guns, they managed to get the yard ready for a Beardie invasion... but we still couldn't fix the weather. I've decided that I just don't enjoy holding a meeting with rain running down my back.

This year, Mother Nature did us a solid by giving us a lovely sunny day — maybe one of the two or three we've had in this region since the solstice. Apart from the fact that the winds kicked up and actually bent the legs on one of the EZ-Ups (it was tied to a tarp that tried to set sail for Portugal), our weather was perfect. It wasn't too hot, it wasn't too cold, and it wasn't too wet.

We had so much junk to bring that we barely had room for Charlie (Dinah was in the crate). He had to endure a ride sandwiched between coolers and plastic storage bins, but he refused to stay behind. I only wish we'd been able to bring all four pups, but Seamus and Badge would have had to have ridden on the roof rack or in the glove box. Every cubic inch of the Subaru was already stuffed full.

In spite of the uncomfortable ride, Charlie had a fine time.



So did Greg and Dinah Moe.



The canine guests ranged in age from 15-year-old Raleigh (who proudly sported a tam o'shanter in the Royal Stewart tartan) to 9-week-old Archie (whose paws rarely touched the ground because everyone wanted to pick him up and smooch him). Sadly for Charlie, we had no kiddie pool this year — the old one sprang a leak.

Charlie and Tucker Ashworth did set up a browns-only clubhouse in the absence of a pool...



One tradition we've continued through the first three Bounce & BBQs (this is our fourth) and all other BCCME events is the offer of free lobsters for all Beardies. A few years ago, I managed to score some of the last boxes of the old PetEdge "Daily Catch" lobster toys. Little Denbigh Marshall, who was born in Ohio and who recently moved to New England, was quick to embrace our Mainiac traditions...



The club's chefs did themselves proud by covering a groaning board with multiple fabulous hors d'oeuvres, munchies, salads, and desserts. Oh, the desserts! I probably blew my Weight Watchers points allotment completely by indulging in a single delicious homemade strawberry cupcake, but it was sooooo worth it.

Eventually, we sent home a couple of dozen tired Beardies with their people, packed up the leftovers, and declared another successful Bounce. We're fairly sure that a good time was had by all...

A Dozen Years of Chuckles

Charlie (WayToMe Midsummer Knight, HIC) is 12 years old today. It hardly seems possible that my little brown fuzzball could be a canine senior citizen. It wasn't that long ago that he was jumping four feet straight up to pull the babies off my spider plant and hanging on to Doogie's ears for free rides from room to room.



His name was Charlie long before he was even a twinkle in his sire Jamie's eye. Since Beardies are Scots dogs, I was possessed of the deeply non-original idea of naming my next puppy after Bonnie Prince Charlie. Little did I know that I'd end up with Good Time Charlie instead.

Charlie might actually be my first "slacker Beardie." Maybe that's due to the experience of having shared a household with Duncan, the Border Collie in a Beardie suit, the canine A student. Maybe it's because he's brown. (In the ancient Beardie lore, the brown Beardies are the troublemakers, the dirt-rollers, the silly ones, the ones who don't play by the rules. It's part myth, part self-fulfilling prophecy, and part spot-on description.) Anyhow, Charlie was always destined to go his own way.

I tried every activity in dogdom with Charlie, looking to find something he and I could enjoy. He enjoyed puppy-K and basic obedience classes, but more for the social aspect than for any genuine educational value. Sure, he did what he was asked and looked really cute in his POC mortarboard, but he made it clear that obedience just wasn't his thing. At the Canine Good Citizen test, he jumped on the examiners -- but passed all of the other, harder tests. He didn't want to be seen as an overachiever.

Herding was my first love as a dog sport, and Duncan lived for it. I started taking Charlie along to herding lessons. He half-heartedly moved the sheep around a little and then went off to splash around in the stock tank. Although he did earn an HIC (Herding Instinct Certificate) from the BCCA, he never really thought much of sheep. The stock he was given to work in his instinct test had been ripped on all day by at least a dozen Malinois, and it was the hottest day of the year. No way were they moving for anybody, least of all a Beardie puppy. The passing score was more or less a gift. (Not that Charlie can't herd. He's tried it since as an adult, and is good enough at it. He could just take it or leave it.)

We tried agility for a while, too. He would run the course perfectly and end up at the door. "All right, I've done this. Let's get out of here." He did enjoy flirting with the pretty Rough Collie babes, so at least agility class had a few perks. At agility trials, he'd run the course, head straight for the kiddie pool, and start splashing.

Next, we tried tracking. Charlie actually did a brilliant job and found all of the objects on his trail. He also found the swamp closest to the tracking field, plunged in, and emerged grinning, looking like The Creature from the Black Lagoon's dog. People recoiled at the sight of him.

Charlie loved many activities in his youth, however -- and he still does. He's always enjoyed hiking, and is far more obedient off-leash than he has ever been on-leash. Most of his favorite activities involve dirt, water, or a combination of both. At Beardie Bounces, the hosts always filled the pool for Charlie. He'd spend the day in it, and would invite other Beardies (preferably clean, well-trained ones) to share it. No matter the season, he'd never pass up a chance to jump into the waves on the beach and lie down to let the surf roll over his back. To this day, he's never so happy as when he's running on the sand and splashing in the surf.



He also possesses a great fondness for rolling in stinky stuff, a habit he learned from his dad Jamie. Be it big or be it small, he would never pass up a chance to roll onto -- or in -- something smelly. He'd try to roll on dead earthworms in the driveway. He'd roll in deer and fox poo on the trail. His ultimate score was the very, very dead seagull he once found on the beach. If I could have, I'd have driven the car home with my head out the window.

These days, Chuckles presides over the household as elder statesman. From the age of about 9 months, he held the post of alpha dog of the pack. Although it appears that Badger might want to take over the day-to-day operation of running the dog pack, Charlie still surveys his domain like the king he is -- even if he is King of the Slackers.

Happy Birthday, Cheeseball, and here's hoping for many more!

If It Weren't For Twitter, I'd Have No Blog at All

It seems like forever since I've taken the time to update this blog. Sorry for the long silence! If it weren't for the Twitter stream on the right side of the page, there would have been no signs of life here. Because spring is here and the show season won't be too far behind, I started by updating my other blog.

In my own defense, I did have some sort of flu for the past week or so, and was too busy coughing to blog about it. Greg had it first, and the two of us are still coughing some. Aside from getting tired easily, we're both over it at this point.

We did get some spring cleaning done, so to speak. Dinah went to the groomer's...



And so did Badger. Doesn't he clean up nicely?



Then Seamus and Charlie got all spiffed up...



Brief Man Update

The Man's Sax Quartet has reached the final stage of editing, and will be released shortly. We heard it last night, and it never fails to amaze me how much depth and color a piece gains when you hear it played by real instruments for the first time -- even if you know every note of the MIDI version by heart.

Likewise, we're still waiting on the release of the Water Suite and the String Quintet, but those should happen Any Day Now.

Greg isn't actually composing anything at the moment, but he's been buried deep in his study of harmony. He has also been taking on more piano students, plus one adult organ student. He's pleased to discover that he actually enjoys teaching children, and he has a small herd of kids to teach now.

And In Yarn News...

One of the red Happy Feet socks is now complete. Once I've finished the pair, they'll go to Jody (who loves red) -- just in time for flip-flop weather (timing was never my strong suit). Happy Feet is such a pleasure to knit with, and it creates a terrific fabric. I might have to knit a pair in every color!

Not content to cast on just one, I'm also working on a pair of blue, black, and white socks for my friend Lynne, who put me up on my trip south to pick up Badger. I had some Sock It To Me yarn that was looking for an excuse to get made into something, and so I'm working on cuffs as my current "idiot knitting" project.

As far as non-idiot knitting goes... I'm still taking my Wednesday morning knitting class. This time I've tackled a more complicated (but still simple) lace project, and have finally mastered it. Lace knitting requires decent light and concentration, so it's highly doubtful that I'll ever be able to do any here at home. When I do take the time to count everything correctly, though, it's fun to see the pattern emerging.

Other Stuff

Job hunt: Don't ask. I'm still trapped in a horrible inertia as far as updating my resume goes. Now that the severance has come in and I've been well and truly set adrift from Sun, I have to get working on it. Maybe I'm just having trouble working up the enthusiasm; I don't know.

Little House on the Glacier

Winter got an early start on us this year. Not content to wait until the actual solstice to start inflicting cold and misery on us, Mother Nature dropped a horrendous ice storm on our unsuspecting heads in the wee hours last Thursday night. We awoke to find the power out and everything coated in at least half an inch of ice. Since losing power is nothing out of the ordinary here in the hinterlands -- the power goes out here every time a cloud passes across the moon -- we simply waited for the lights and heat to come back on.

Only it didn't. We and about 220,000 of our neighbors in Maine alone got smacked by the storm, and the power company had all it could do to try and restore electricity by working around the clock and calling in the cavalry from places like Ohio, Maryland, and Quebec. In the meantime, we froze and our food thawed. At one point, it was warmer in our fridge than it was in our house.

At least the doggers enjoyed the weather...



...which is more than I can say for ourselves. We did explore the deeper meanings of what it's like to endure three-dog nights, since we happen to have exactly three dogs and they all insisted upon sleeping in the bed -- and on top of me. I can report that bedtime was about the only time I was warm -- well, then and dinnertime, when we made the pilgrimage to the Panera Bread in Biddeford for hot soup and Internet access. Some friends of ours in Scarborough invited us up on Saturday night for showers and a hot meal, in that order.

If we hadn't been freezing all the time and in the dark for half of it, it might almost have been a nice change. Greg got some reading done. I made significant progress on my dad's socks -- finished the first one and made some headway on the cuff for the second. The quiet was astonishing -- not just the lack of traffic noise, but also the lack of electrical and appliance hum inside the house. We could hear for long distances, and could tell which neighbor's generator was on by its distinct sound. Although our crank-powered lanterns could get AM radio, we abandoned all sound from it except for the weather report. It might have been restful at a warmer temperature, and with hot coffee.

We finally managed to buy one of the last available generators in all of southern Maine last Sunday, approximately 5 minutes before I started to crack. I'd called around to various hardware stores and big-box outlets and had located a source of generators in South Portland -- but by the time Greg got there, they had sold out. He decided to stop by the Biddeford Home Depot on the way home, even though I'd already called there and been told that the only generators in the area were in South Portland.

As he was leaving the store, a truck pulled up with a shipment of generators from the South Portland store. He managed to score one and called me to bring the larger car, since the box wouldn't fit in his hatchback. As he waited there for me, people offered him cash to give it to them so they could buy it. Everyone appeared to be reaching the frayed ends of patience and sanity by that time. That night, we enjoyed warmth from a space heater and light from a lamp in the bedroom for the first time since Thursday. Sweeeeeeet.

The next day, Greg experimented with the microwave and the electric teakettle while I drove to work. Since I couldn't work from home and I couldn't not work, I crammed as much productivity (plus a shower in the company gym) into that day as I possibly could. Saw my very first power company truck headed south on the Turnpike while driving south myself. Although the power company kept calling and leaving tantalizing "just checking to see if your power is on" messages on voicemail, we were still in the dark.

Our power finally returned on Tuesday night, just as I had resigned myself to another night of sleeping in four layers of clothing after watching a power truck drive slowly past the house and around the corner before it disappeared. Greg noticed my alarm clock flashing. "The power's back on!" It took me a few minutes to react. Did we dare to get our hopes up? It was with no small measure of gratitude that we turned off the generator and started turning on heat and lights in the house. The food in the fridge and freezer were losses, but we were back, baby!

This power outage is probably the most effective argument I know of against signing up for VOIP phone service -- it may be massively cheaper than maintaining an old-fashioned phone line, but when the power goes out -- and it does around here frequently -- then you don't have a phone. We at least had phone service while everything was out, and couldn't reach our friends with VOIP unless they also had cell phones.

The power crews worked almost around the clock to restore service, and some people in NH still don't have power. Let's hope they get it back soon!

The Princess

...enjoying a beautiful fall day.

How's About a Little Kiss?

Random Dog Photos

Charlie was uninterested in joining today's photo session. Anyway, Dinah and Seamus are enjoying the sunshine. Dinah is headed for a show this weekend, so she's sparkly clean from a bath and grooming... which is why she headed directly for the Big Dig to get dirty all over again.

A Little O'This, A Little O'That

Another shot of Dinah Moe on the agility course at York Days.

Ahhhh, Sunday mornings. I've always enjoyed being able to kick back on Sunday mornings and just take my own sweet time. Back in the olden days, I'd spend my time over the Sunday paper and a pot of coffee, either here or out at some little breakfast place in the area. These days, we no longer get a Sunday paper and I have rally-roo classes on Sundays during the season while Greg works at church... but on Sundays like these when absolutely nothing else is going on, it's just nice to stretch, pour another hot cuppa, and soak in the quiet.

In a little while, I'll need to dive into the small but important pile of Corresponding Secretary tasks on my desk: sending out welcome letters and packets to the new BCCA members and shipping off brochures and applications to people who have requested them.

Although I've only held the office for a short while now, I can already understand the idea that the Corresponding Secretary's work is never done. Around the first of the month, reports are due to the Board and the newsletter editor, and invariably there's a trickle of last-minute requests on the last day of the preceding month and on the first day. Since deadlines are my life, this makes me a little crazy -- but it happens with every professional deadline I've ever faced, too. Just a fact of life...

For the First Time in Ages....

Knitting news! I never did find another ball of that Gigli ribbon yarn, but I have some in another color. I'll probably have to cheat and add some of the new color on each end, then make it look as though I planned it.

Maybe I just needed a little vacation from knitting... I don't know. Anyway, the desire to knit socks has suddenly returned. Before my hair appointment yesterday, I popped into the Yarn Sellar just to say hello and have a look around. The friendly knitter who works there on weekends (and whose name I've spaced completely!) knits sock models for the shop and is as much of a sock-o-maniac as I am. She helped me adopt a pair of skeins of red Happy Feet yarn and some more Brittany Birch shorties (which now come 6 to a pack instead of 5 -- woohoo!).

I'm trying to finish up Jody's second Trekking sock before her husband comes out here for a sheep-herding clinic in October. Considering I've had these on the needles for over a year and it really only takes me a couple of weeks to make a pair of socks, what are the chances I'll be done by the time he's ready to fly home??

Of course, something has to give in one place for there to be time in another. I've spent minimal time in Second Life this week, which might explain why I've been able to get so many other things done.

Work That's Actually Play

I finished one Web site last week, for the Vacationland Dog Club. Eventually a club member will take this over, but I'm making the updates at the moment. FYI, for my POC friends and other local dog-club readers: the 2008 edition of Meet the Breeds is taking place in Scarborough in September, as part of Responsible Dog Ownership Day festivities happening around Maine. Here's the announcement. I'll be doing the CGC testing there.

I have three other sites in the works, one of which is a paying gig. One's a barter gig for a friend, and the other one's the site for the 2009 BCCA National Specialty. I've had that site in the work pipeline for a while now. The joy of working with CSS and XHTML is that you can code up the content even when you still can't visualize how you want the final result to look. That helps me feel productive even though I'm having trouble making up my mind.

Because I'm a visual thinker, I still have a little bit of a mental disconnect between the CSS coding and what I want the finished site to look like. It helps to have Dreamweaver so I can continually check my progress, but I'd be blind and lost without it. I understand the code well enough. I just haven't reached the stage where I can see the code's results in my mind.

Could use some more paying gigs these days. I'll just have to make time to go looking for them.

Look! Up in the Sky!

Dinah Moe did a nice job at the POC agility demo at York Days. Greg reported that when Dinah stepped into the ring, all of the kids at once whispered, "Ooooh, there's Shaggy."

Photos From the Homestead

Charlie enjoying his new summer buzz cut and the fresh-cut grass


Seamus with a little grass to decorate his coat


Dinah wants some company -- now get down here and throw that dumbbell!


The Lovely One Herself

It's Official -- He Really is Famous!

Create Fake Magazine Covers with your own picture at MagMyPic.com

Get MySpace Fame and see how famous you are!

Rough Masters and Masterpieces

Exciting Man News: After a wait of roughly 6 months, a copy of the rough master for the Water Suite (the one that was recorded in Prague last summer) has finally hit the doorstep.

We've been awaiting this recording with quite a lot of anticipation. Greg couldn't go to Prague to hear the recording session, so this disc was his first chance to hear the orchestral version of the suite. He ripped open the Airborne package, put it into the PC, and we sat... chills running up our spines. It's GOOD.

Of course, the final mix will sound a teensy bit different -- things will be balanced a little more, and there are a couple of extra sound effects (a clunk here, a knock there) that will be edited out. This isn't intended to be a live recording, after all. When it's done, I hope it blows people's socks off as it did ours. We know the piece well, and we still were amazed.

Speaking of recording sessions... looks like the one for the Sax Quartet is coming together for June in NYC. Greg doesn't have the exact dates yet -- or maybe he does and I just haven't heard them yet. The New Hudson Sax Quartet recorded Lukas Foss's quartet for the CD at his place in New York, and they've also done Mike Veloso's quartet. Now that those two are done, Greg's is the last to be recorded before production starts.

We have our tickets and our arrangements for the two ACA concerts on the first week in June. All I need to do now is make hotel arrangements for the pups. To be honest, there are a gazillion things I would rather do with my hard-earned vacation days than spend them in New York, but the concerts should make the rest of the experience worthwhile. I only hope I can find free wi-fi.

Greg's computer bit the Big Kahuna last week. One morning, it just refused to boot. We thought that it might be the battery or the power cord -- with laptops, you never know whether your problem might not just be a lack of charge. Anyway, Greg packed it down to MacEdge to have them look at it. They reported that it had pretty much fried -- the system board, the power supply -- well, it might be easier to list the components that didn't fry. They couldn't say exactly what caused the problem -- only that there wasn't a lot left to salvage outside of the hard disk and the extra RAM chips. The laptop was way out of warranty, so there wasn't much else left to do except take it out behind the barn and bury it. Fortunately, Greg has backups -- so he's up and running again on one of my old spare PCs. Now he can gripe about a different operating system.

Canine News (Ours and Others)



Charlie Brown turned 11 last week. It seems as though it wasn't so long ago that I flew out to Jody's house to pick him up. We went downstairs to the puppy pen, and I spied a little brown Superball of a puppy, bouncing up and down and up and down while his brothers and sisters milled around in greeting. "Guess which one is yours," Jody said.

It's still hard to believe that that little puppy is now a senior dog. Charlie's in great shape for 11, aside from a touch of arthritis in his left shoulder that is probably an artifact of his having had Lyme Disease some years ago. Half a Deramaxx usually takes care of things nicely, and he only gets that when he appears to need it. Otherwise, he's hale and handsome, and still can see, hear, dig, and eat dirt. (If anyone asked him what his secret for longevity was, he probably would answer, "Plenty of dirt.")

I did my second CGC tests this past week for my friend Mary's POC class. All of the dogs were adorable -- I particularly wanted to spend the rest of the evening smooching on Dewey the Boxer. Six out of our seven passed. Emma, the Springer Spaniel, was about as unhappy with the Supervised Separation exercise as Seamus had been, and squeaked continuously for her dad until we called him back to her. Dinah was the most distracted distraction dog in history -- not only did she not interact with any of the test dogs, but she kept her eyes focused on me no matter who was walking her.

My next CGC test would have taken place in June, but the date was moved to September to coincide with Responsible Dog Ownership Day/Month/Whatever. That works out nicely for Dinah and me, since it frees us up to attend a herding clinic on that weekend instead.


...And Still No Knitting Got Done

Geez, even my Second Life avatar gets more knitting done than I do! A friend of mine discovered a virtual knitting shop that sells animated knitting needles and tintable lace knitting projects. Of course, I had to have one -- if only so I can look like I'm doing some knitting.

In spite of the time I've been sinking into SL of late, I have been trying hard to get things accomplished, and am making a teeny bit of headway. I revamped Greg's Web site, keeping all the things he liked about the original while making the new one faster and more standards-compliant. Whatever he's been using to update the site re-declared the same font family statements every 4 words of every sentence on every page. That's a lot of Delete-key action!

The Hurrieder I Go, the Behinder I Get

"Don't look so happy, Seamus. You're the next one headed for the bathtub."

Sorry, gang. I didn't mean to be away from the blog for so long, but things have just gone from wacky busy to completely freakin' nonstop insane. Some days it's about all I can do to choke out a weak Twitter post (I cannot call them "tweets"; I don't care) or two before sprinting crazily to the next destination and the next task.

Not that it hasn't been more fun than a barrel of Beardies. We survived the local kennel club shows and the associated weather. My camera battery died about halfway during Beardie bitch judging on Saturday, so you'll just have to visit Sue's blog to see photos of the delightful Maine weather (and to congratulate her and Camille on earning two Rally Novice legs there).

I'm also deep-purple-envious of Sue for getting to the NH Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday. I had entertained notions of going over there today and dragging Dale with me, but I was just so fried after showing on Saturday and driving back late from my friend Daryl's house that I just couldn't move this morning. I never made to the festival or to rally class.

Not that I've been able to knit a single stitch in weeks -- maybe months. Between spending so much time in Second Life and rushing around in First Life, there hasn't been much time left over for just relaxing in front of a movie with the needles. SL has even managed to keep me from buying more yarn, which is probably another reason why Greg likes SL so much!

Guess who else showed up in SL last week: Dale! She's been wandering around with another friend of hers, seeing what she could see. It's nice to run into people you actually know in SL.

Meanwhile, back in RL (Real Life), Daryl had a surprise for me while I visited her down in CT. Her brother-in-law Keith and his wife Mary, both of whom I've known since just about forever, were up visiting from Virginia. They moved down there from the Boston area when the elder of Mary's two sons entered college down that way. I haven't seen them since sometime in the 1990s, so we had a huge amount of catching up to do and rehashing of old war stories. We're all a little grayer and a little heavier, but those two haven't changed a bit. Both of them are now online, so we'll be able to keep in better touch.

Now that the latest work deadline is past and the YCKC show is over, I hope to have a little bit more time to relax and make stuff. I've received my stewarding assignment (my first solo flight) for the Vacationland shows, and the chief steward was kind enough to put me next to the experienced steward who trained me. The Meet the Breeds event has been rescheduled for September in order to coincide with Responsible Dog Ownership Month, so another thing on my to-do list has slipped to a less stressful part of the year.


Fooled Around and Didn't Fall in Love

The company I work for has been redefining which devices are secure enough to work with our email service. Unfortunately, my beloved Blackberry turned out to not be one of them. We Crackberry-addicted employees may still use the devices of our choosing, but we need to pay for a third-party software program-cum-delivery service in order to maintain the requisite degree of security.

With all this in mind, I decided to upgrade to a device on the "approved devices" list when my contract with T-Mobile came up for renewal. I requested a T-Mobile Wing and was assured that I'd have two weeks to experience buyer's remorse.

The Wing was gorgeous -- even more compact than I thought it would be, with a slide-out keyboard, a beauteous display, and Windows Mobile OS. I played around with it, set it up to send and receive corporate email, and even enjoyed Twittering from it.

However, I made it about 48 hours before buyer's remorse set in. The Wing only allows you to set up six email addresses. Six are probably three or four more than most people need, but I have more of them. I was forced to decide which accounts I should check and which I should leave.

Also, I couldn't make that sucker synch with my Mac no matter how hard I tried. Yes, the Mac does boot into XP when necessary, but I am absolutely not going to drop everything in Mac OS and boot into XP just to synch my silly phone. Even ponying up the money for the Windows Mobile Edition of Missing Sync did nothing except cost me the price of the software.

Ah, the Wing was beautiful and I really wanted to love it, but it's headed back to T-Mobile as we speak. All I really wanted was another Crackberry, anyway.

Can the Equinox Be Far Behind?

Now that the snow is beginning to melt, Dinah and Seamus are finding all sorts of buried treasure in the back yard...



What a time for the camera on my cell phone to fink out on me! Last weekend at this time, I was sitting behind the backstop at a spring training baseball game in Phoenix, drinking beer in the sun and cheering for the Cubbies. (They lost in the bottom of the 9th.) Because I'd decided to travel light (and thus, not lose my luggage for a change!), I'd left my camera here at home. I figured that the one on my cell phone could do the honors... but no. It failed. Here I'd been hoping to capture some shots of saguaro cactus, red rocks, and baseball in the sunshine to brighten up my miserable, wintry blog.

Ah, but it was freakin' sweet while it lasted. Spring training has been a sorta-biannual tradition for some years now. My friend Lise, a fellow Sox fan, and I get sick of winter at roughly about the same time, and we agree to converge on Scottsdale to visit mutual friends of ours who live there. Liz and Jim aren't into baseball, but they graciously allow us to crash at their place and soak up some sunshine for a weekend. We all get together in the evenings for dinner and to spoil their two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. (I'm not a small-dog person, but I LOVE Cavaliers. If I ever did have small dogs, I'd have them.)

We were just there long enough to get used to relaxing in the sunshine. We saw two ball games: Giants vs. As and Cubbies vs. As, in two different ballparks. We wore sunglasses, drank beer, and cheered.

Will the Real Maine Maple Sunday Please Stand Up?

Maine Maple Sunday is one of my favorite days of the year. It comes as a sign of hope that winter is on its way out, the sap is rising in the trees, and that spring is just around the corner.

Traditionally, this day falls on the fourth Sunday in March. Unfortunately, for the past few years, the fourth Sunday in March also turns out to be Easter Sunday. Some farmers want the day off, and some want to stay open. Some sugar producers decide to open for both weekends, since many of them derive most of their year's income from Maple Sunday sales.

Greg and I did our Maple Sunday rambling yesterday, since the weather was relatively nice and we didn't have any holiday obligations. I looked forward to the maple cotton candy, maple hot dogs, maple baked beans, and maple whoopie pies -- but by the time we got to the farms, they had all run out of food. They did offer us samples of vanilla ice cream with maple syrup and some pretzels with maple cream, anyway. I'm glad for them that they had so much business, considering that some of them will want to close for Easter.

The Man's Ticket to Tune Town

Greg has been spending Saturday mornings over at church, accompanying some of the singers and instrumentalists who were putting on a concert to raise funds for the church's youth group activities. He allowed himself to be talked into playing, but didn't have time to practice the piece he really wanted to do, Ben Folds's "Philosophy." He decided at the last minute to work up "Bohemian Rhapsody", with "You Get What You Give" for a possible encore.

He ended up playing both. Turns out that the concert was also a "Battle of the Bands," and Greg -- to his surprise -- came in third. He won a $15 gift certificate to Tune Town. Not bad for a day's work.

He has just found out that his two NYC concerts have been moved. One piece (the four-part choral work) is now the first piece of the first concert in the series. The second piece appears in the second concert, along with a work from a friend of his from the composers' forum in Eugene a few years ago. Of course we'll figure out a way for both of us to go, and of course I'm bringing knitting.

Speaking of Knitting...

The watch cap factory is up and running at full productivity, such as it is. I've finally hit on something that Greg likes and will use, so I'm sticking with a good thing for now. Cap #4 is on the needles now, and I have some skeins lying around that will eventually become #5 and #6 (and maybe even #7).

I also sneaked in another scarf for Susannah out of some fantastic reddish-bronze ribbon yarn I picked up at Marden's. If the label hasn't disappeared into the black hole in the living room (apparently we have one in every room), I'll have to dig it out and identify the yarn. It's pretty, anyway.

Time for some more doggie shots...

I like to call this one "Glamour Girl Meets Punk-Haired Boy."




Tug of War, take 2:

Guess Why We Call Her Dinah Moe!

Photo by Lynn Lepley-Boschert, Gone to the Dogs Photos.

Quiz Time!

What's cold, white, and enormously unwelcome right about now?

A. Karl Rove
B. the heating oil bill
C. last week's leftover mashed potatoes
D. This...



If you answered "D," you get 100%. Answers of "All of the above" are also acceptable.

Yep. We're right in the middle of getting smacked with another 8-12" of the white crap. We've gone beyond the "enough is enough" stage. I'll have to check the papers to be sure, but this latest snow dump has probably pushed our seasonal snowfall over 100". Whatever we have, it probably isn't a statewide record, or even a regional one -- but we're definitely having one of those old-fashioned winters that everybody seems to want so badly until we actually get one. Next thing you know, you'll be hearing about kids walking 6 miles to school every day, uphill both ways, and all of the other things that always seem to have happened "back when I was your age." Well, not my age. You've heard it before, though.

Right about now, there are only two things keeping me going:

1. My tickets to a couple of Spring Training games in Arizona next week (Cubbies at Ho-Ho-Kam! Boo-yeah!)

2. The possibility, however frickin' remote, that we might get one of those old-fashioned springs

Has anybody seen that groundhog? Oh, yeah, that's right. He's buried under 4 feet of snow, like everything else! Anybody for a little groundhog barbecue after this stuff finally melts?