Stefrobrts View

The Jungle Book

2012-02-16T23:25:00.000-08:00

No pictures today, I haven't had much time for photography lately. One thing I have been doing a lot of is reading. With a 45 minute bus ride before and after work, there's lots of reading time! One thing I have quickly discovered is that the classics are classic for a reason - many of them hold up just fine as excellent, entertaining reading, even a hundred or more years after they were written!

My favorites so far (in no particular order):

Jane Eyre (1847)
A Princess of Mars (1912)
The Jungle Book (1894)
War of the Worlds (1895)
Treasure Island (1881)
anything with Sherlock Holmes (1887)

All available on Project Gutenberg for free!

I thought I would share this little piece of The Jungle Book. BTW, there's a lot more to this book than the Disney movie - especially the story of Riki Tiki Tavi - I have happy memories of watching the cartoon when I was a kid.

Here Mowgli has returned to the world of Man, and is put on herding duty with the other boys. I think this passage particularly shows why a well written book is such a joy, and a peek into another world, another life, described in such detail that it can make you hate to turn the page and leave it behind:

Then Mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept while
the buffaloes grazed round him. Herding in India is one of the laziest
things in the world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move
on again, and they do not even low. They only grunt, and the buffaloes
very seldom say anything, but get down into the muddy pools one after
another, and work their way into the mud till only their noses and
staring china-blue eyes show above the surface, and then they lie like
logs. The sun makes the rocks dance in the heat, and the herd children
hear one kite (never any more) whistling almost out of sight overhead,
and they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kite would sweep
down, and the next kite miles away would see him drop and follow, and
the next, and the next, and almost before they were dead there would be
a score of hungry kites come out of nowhere. Then they sleep and
wake and sleep again, and weave little baskets of dried grass and put
grasshoppers in them; or catch two praying mantises and make them fight;
or string a necklace of red and black jungle nuts; or watch a lizard
basking on a rock, or a snake hunting a frog near the wallows. Then they
sing long, long songs with odd native quavers at the end of them, and
the day seems longer than most people's whole lives, and perhaps they
make a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and
put reeds into the men's hands, and pretend that they are kings and the
figures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped. Then
evening comes and the children call, and the buffaloes lumber up out of
the sticky mud with noises like gunshots going off one after the other,
and they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village
lights.

Trailer Cover

2012-01-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

A couple months after a storm shredded the last cover, the Caravel is now snug and dry under a new cover.

_

A pack of eskimos!

2012-01-22T11:18:00.001-08:00

Our friends took a little trip south to warmer climates this week, and left us with two extra eskimos – what could be more fun?!

Oh the insanity! Crazy eskimos, ravaging each other out in the yard!

Sake, Sitka, and Navi get into it and wrestle and chase a LOT. Barclay is a little stand-off-ish for some reason. He mostly watches. Maybe now that he’s 4 he’s too dignified for these shenanigans.

There, Barclay decided to join in a little.

Ooo, panning shot! Navi & Sitka race around the yard!

Then they take a water break.

Sake

Barclay

Back inside for treats, Navi thought she’d get a leg up on the competition…

Oh Barclay, you’re so patient with your ‘pesky’ little sister!

Good dogs!

Good news, and a new lens!

2012-01-14T17:59:00.001-08:00

I got good news on Friday! My boss said they’re going to hire me on permanently before the month is out This is awesome news, because I really like the place I’m working at, I like my co-workers, and I’ve been working my fanny off to absorb every bit of info they’ve thrown at me, hoping to prove myself worthy to step up from being a temp. I had a feeling I was a shoe-in all along, but it’s good to know it’s for sure now! I’m still getting used to having so much less time at home, but Dave is keeping after the household chores so I don’t have to, so that makes it all easier.

I do feel a bit like I’ve traded work for just about everything else I enjoy, so I decided to reward myself with a little treat. I felt there was a gap in my lens kit for my Nikon D50 DSLR. I have a nice Nikkor 28-80mm f3.3-3.5, which takes very sharp pictures in the ‘kit lens’ range. I have my Tamron 18-200mm 3.5-6.3 zoom which is a nice all around zoom. Not as sharp as the ‘kit’ lens, but very nice and it has a nice reach. But I wanted one more lens for portraits, one that would work well in low light, and one that would have a wide aperture to get that lovely blurry background that makes the subject pop out. After much research I chose the Nikkor 35mm f1.8 – and I have been watching them come and go on Craigslist for months. This morning I went and met a guy who had one for sale and handed over the cash.

I was not disappointed.

This was before I discovered I had a setting on my camera that had it stopped down two steps in Aperture Priority mode. Still, the sharpness is there.

I love the whispy hair and the detail around the eyes in this shot. It looks much better to get the nose at an angle in line with the eyes, compared to the next shot!

Because the focal depth is so shallow, I have to be careful to control where the camera focuses – or I’ll just get a sharp nose! (Which is kind of cute, in it’s own way…)

The eyes have it…

Not having a zoom takes a little getting used to – I had to get right in the animals’ faces to get the shot framed. Navi wasn’t willing to stand still for it – she hardly ever stands still anyway! Cats are good subjects for this though!

Mouse

Mighty

I’m pretty blown away by the quality of shots I’m getting from this lens. It just goes to show, even with an older DSLR, lenses make all the difference. I think I’m going to be happy with this setup for quite a while.

One other thing, the guy who sold me the lens was really nice and recommended a photography book he thought was really good, The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby. I checked out the reviews and saw it was only $9 for the electronic format, and bought it. It’s full of good tips and tricks for getting the most out of your DSLR! Hey, for $9 – if it helps me get a few photos here and there I might have otherwise missed, it’s totally worth it.

New Toy - Kindle Fire

2012-01-01T09:43:00.000-08:00

Now that I'm riding the bus for about an hour and a half each day - 45 minutes morning and evening - I have been getting a lot of reading done. I've already read Silas Marner, and am working my way through Age Of Innocence. I have a whole list of classics I've never had time to read I would like to get to. As much as I dislike being away from home so much, I kind of enjoy my downtime on the bus, and it's nice to have time to read without feeling guilty that there's something more important I should be doing. On the bus there's literally nothing else to do!

Watching the other passengers, I've seen how they spend their time. I've seen a lot of iPads and Kindles, lots of people hauling big heavy books along with them as well. Some people surf the web on their iPads or phones which are connected to the web via data packages. At first I was thinking it would be pretty nice to be able to do that - I could do all my email and blogging and stuff while on the bus. But looking into the price put an end to that - there's just no way I could spend that much money on entertainment! I've bought cars for what that would cost in a year! I'm pretty happy with my low-tech flip phone which doesn't do much other than make calls, and it's on a cheap by-the-minute plan, which is just how I like it.

So I bit the bullet and spent a bit of my hard earned money on a Kindle Fire. Super neat little device, works on wi-fi, can do a little surfing. Best of all, I immediately loaded up about ten classic books I want to read - like Age of Innocence, Robinson Caruso, Treasure Island, Little Women, and some I'd like to re-read - Sherlock Holmes, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights - all for free! FREE! There's plenty more too, I just didn't want to get greedy.

I'm looking forward to hitting the bus on Tuesday with my new toy. Hopefully that will make the commute just fly by as I get absorbed in another world. Sometimes I like to sneak in a little reading at lunchtime too. I think this little device is going to make life away from home a little more pleasant.

_

Barclay’s Birthday!

2011-12-31T23:43:00.001-08:00

Beautiful Barclay is 4 years old this year (his Birthday was on Christmas Eve, when I took these pictures). To celebrate we went out and played stickball and played with the hose to cool off when we were done. Not that it was hot, it was like 50 degrees out, but the dogs love to play hard, and cool off in the trough!

Stickball is Barclay’s favorite game in the world – basically a ball on a rope on the end of a stick. He’s nuts for it!
The crazy aerobatics are the best part – watch out for flying eskimos!

Navi isn’t quite as insane for the stickball, but she’s getting better at it. She even gets it away from Barclay once in a while, but he’s the champ!

Barclay always gets the ball back in the end.

Barclay never wants to give the ball back, though he knows chasing it is the best part.

Navi took a dip in the pond and then got back in the game

Then it was time to cool off. I love Barclay’s look – that totally says he thinks she should get out of the way and let him have HIS hose!

Bark bark bark – give me MY HOSE!

Finally!

Then Navi gets good and wet…

And gives everyone a shower!

Happy Birthday Barclay!

Downtown

2011-12-31T18:17:00.001-08:00

Part 2 of my ‘where I work’ post will include: where I work!

This is the historic Postal Building in downtown Portland. Built in 1901, it is on the register of historic places.

It is a lovely building. The offices are all around the outside of the building, and there is a big open atrium in the middle, with a glass skylight in the roof and an elevator in the middle. I try to take the stairs whenever I can for extra exercise!

Our breakroom has a view across the street, where we can watch the goings-on at the offices in the Dekum, another historic building (1891) with a really neat exterior with lots of carved details.

We can also see creepy Santa from there, he’s motion activated and turns his head to follow people, and dances.

Luckily creepy Santa retired after Christmas!

When I get off work it’s dark out, but it’s in a pretty populated part of town, so it feels pretty safe. I only have to walk 3 blocks to catch my bus.

I walk by this neat gearhead bar with a cool old Indian bike in the window.

I was catching the bus for two weeks before I turned around and noticed this was next to the bus stop – uh oh, hold on to your wallets!

That’s the total of my adventure so far. I have been hit up by panhandlers a lot, and the only problem came when an aggressive panhandling lady asked me for change from behind me (at first I didn’t even think she was talking to me), and I wasn’t going to turn around and acknowledge her, so I just kept walking, and instead of going after someone else she followed me for a block and a half! I pretended to be deaf, while she was shouting obscenities at me. Luckily she went away finally, I never even saw what she looked like, she was behind me the whole time. I hate situations like that, but it hasn’t happened again. I guess I just need to stay alert and try to walk with the other commuters. When I get off the bus I just try to go the direction the majority of people go and head to work. It’s only two blocks, so how much trouble could I have?

I want to take my camera back soon when we have a nice day of weather, and go out at lunchtime and take pictures. The entire area around my office is historic building, including an historic carriage house building, which I see from the bus. I want to walk over and get a closer look at it sometime.

My Morning Commute

2011-12-21T22:24:00.000-08:00

At 8am I head off to the 'park and ride'. Today Dave drove, but usually he stays home.

Onto the freeway. Our home in the country is a half hour from the nearest P&R...

Where I catch a bus. Vancouver's C-Tran has very nice buses, at least on the express route.I suspect the in-town buses aren't quite this nice.

If I get the Express we go straight to Portland, but if I get the 'Sort of Express' we make a few stops along the way, and then we cross the Mighty Columbia into Oregon.

The Fremont bridge is the first big bridge we see - it's at the North end of town. The bus goes over it on the way home in the evening, though sometimes they surprise me and take other routes to get around the traffic.

It was pretty foggy, couldn't see much of downtown Portland,

Finally we cross the Willamette River and into downtown.

More tomorrow, because Blogger is being a bear about loading pictures for some reason today.

_

First week in my new life

2011-12-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

Well, I survived a whole week of work! I didn't think I would ever say this, but so far I really like work. I am still in training, but I really like what I see. The company is well organized, and very disciplined. They have well laid out policies and people have well defined jobs. I'm a software tester/specialist, so I've been primarily learning about the systems and layouts, and hanging over one of the other tester's shoulder and watching him work, and I really think I will have no problem handling the work, once I figure out where all the databases are located! But for now I'm just soaking up everything I can and learning, learning, learning.

As far as the company goes, I would say they are nicer to their employees than any company I've ever worked for. They brag to their customers that they have only a 5% turnover in employees over the 20 years they have been in business! I can see why. They have bonuses, a generous time off policy, free coffee and cocoa, free pop, bowls of fresh fruit, and a friendly atmosphere. This week they had everyone trying on shirts to order company logo shirts - everyone gets three, and they wanted us to pick our favorite colors and try them on to be sure they'd fit so we would actually wear them :) You might not expect the friendly atmosphere, because the business is very strict in some ways. Because it is a high security company, everything is in lock down, everyone has security passes and they are used to unlock doors between offices, and everything is tracked. The email is for company correspondences only, and all conversations are saved, same with IM. Phones must be on vibrate in the office, but can be checked and used at breaks and lunchtime. The internet is for business use only, and I'm sure it is tracked as well. There is no private use of the internet, even during breaks, because it would look bad for a customer tour to come through and see Facebook up on a computer!

Even with these restrictions, people are really happy there, and very hard-working. Everyone has their nose to the grindstone. In IT, as in all IT offices I've ever worked in, things are a little more relaxed than down in production where they are trying to meet performance goals. In IT the productivity is measured differently, and sometimes a 15 minute report ends up taking two hours when things don't turn out to be as simple as they appear. But still, not like any office I've been in before. These folks are hard working, well paid, and happy to do it. I haven't heard anyone say anything bad about the company.

And I have to say, it's contagious. I was really dreading going back to work, but I'm actually enjoying it. It's kind of nice to be away from the farm and around new people and new situations. I really enjoy trouble shooting and problem solving, and so software testing is right up my alley!

Years ago, I traded money for time at home, and I quit my job and came home and we tried to make it on the toy business and starting a little farm. The farm didn't work out, and the toy business got pummeled in the economy, so I had to go back to work. But it's hard to go from complete freedom to 8 hours a day away from home. But that's the way it is, and most of the rest of the country does it too, so I just have to get used to it. Only seeing my husband and dogs for a few hours before bed, and an hour in the morning is pretty tough. Luckily they expect this job to transition to telecommuting eventually, so I'll hold onto that hope!

The commute adds a little over an hour to each end of my day. Half an hour to drive to the bus stop/park & ride, and then 30-45 minutes on the bus. I like riding the bus though, I can't imagine getting downtown any other way. I just sit back and nap or read a book, and they do what they have to do. In order to get around the traffic as much as possible, the drivers talk to each other over the radio and figure out different routes to take. I have been on the bus reading and looked up and found our bus in some surprising places, but the bus always gets us where we're going, and pretty much within the right time, so I have no complaints. Since these are commuter routes, there's no shady characters like I used to see riding the buses downtown when I was a kid, just regular working folks, relaxing and reading their kindles or iPads. I bring a book.

So I'd have to say my overall impression is 'so far - so good'. I can't believe I'm working in Downtown Portland! I spent a year looking for a job, and most of the time I restricted my search to Vancouver, because I didn't want a long commute. But I'm glad I extended my reach a bit. I'm getting in some reading on the bus rides, and I'm kind of star-struck being in the BIG CITY! There are skyscrapers there, for Pete's sake! Bicycle messengers, bums, Pioneer Square, every sort of person you could imagine, all the lights and colors and sounds. I'm looking forward to taking my camera along and getting some pictures soon! It's like a whole different world!

_

Oatmeal, Peanut Butter, Chocolate Chip cookies

2011-12-09T22:08:00.000-08:00

I believe I have discovered my favorite cookie - ever!

Oatmeal - Peanut Butter - Chocolate Chip Cookies

I found it in my old Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook, which I have had since striking out on my own as an adult, but I never ran across that recipe before. I pulled the book down the other evening, looking for an easy cookie recipe I could do with items I already had in the house and there it was. What a wonderful idea! All my favorite cookies rolled into one!

And oh man, are they good...

But not too good. You wouldn't want to sit down and eat a whole tray of these - which I always want to do with chocolate chip cookies, and peanut butter cookies never last long at our house either! But the oatmeal in these make them filling so one or two little cookies, and you feel satisfied, and you've had your little sweet-tooth fix. They're perfect!

Last time I made them I saved half the dough for later, but it was very hard to work after having been refrigerated. So this time I made the extra dough into ready-to-bake portions on parchment paper, and froze them.

It was a little hard to do in my tiny side-by-side freezer compartment, but I fit them in. Once they've frozen I'll bag them up, and then they'll be ready for when I just want to pop a few in the oven for a quick dessert - because there is nothing better than a soft, chewy, warm golden-brown and delicious cookie right out of the oven.

Go make some, you know you want to...

Mouse!

2011-12-09T17:09:00.000-08:00

I saw Mouse sitting out on the front porch and stopped to snap some shots of her. I can't decide which one I like the best. The last one looks the most like her, kind of pissy with her ears back.

Mt St Helens and Fall Colors

2011-12-08T16:12:00.000-08:00

It's December, but I'm still finding beautiful fall colors to photograph.

I love the dark red color, and the texture on this one! And those shadows - would you believe it was noon?! The shadows are long here all day this time of year.

Mt St Helens, our local active volcano, sleeping peacefully under the first snow of winter. Barely even covered her up! I keep telling Dave if we get a house with a view of the mountain, I'll never get tired of looking at it. He thinks I will, but I know I won't. It looks different all the time, different light, different clouds, different snow cover. I'd be photographing it all the time.

I found a bird nest that had been hidden in the leaves of this tree all summer,

Not so hidden now! It's the only thing left in the tree!

I just liked the shadows on the white bark of this tree.

All of these pictures were taken from this sidewalk. I even thought the sidewalk itself made an interesting shot.

Good News at last!

2011-12-05T12:08:00.000-08:00

Finally, something good to say! I have to say I've been feeling a bit depressed lately, as our financial situation was getting worse and worse, and I sent out resume after resume (my goal was to send out at least one resume a day to something I reasonably thought I could do - even if it was minimum wage) either to hear nothing back, or to get an interview that went nowhere - and I've been doing this since the beginning of the year. Our lives are suffering from deferred maintenance in nearly every way, from a leak in the porch cover roof, to the shredded canopy over the trailer, to our own needs we can't afford to meet - like simple trips to the dentist or annual exams. In fact we've been lucky just to afford gas and food to keep ourselves going. Starting three years ago when we had to cut back by giving away the sheep and goats, and then clearing out my fish room to save on the electricity and water, to giving up the chickens this year and finally giving Jack away, we have been tightening our belts tighter and tighter, and eventually there's no more room to tighten. We have hung onto the trailer all this time in case we end up needing to live in it with our dogs and cats, since I'm sure no one would rent to us and our remaining menagerie, and I would rather live in a trailer with my dogs than give them up. When you've given up all you can stand, you have to draw the line.

So I'm relieved to say that Friday I got the call I needed. It started Tuesday with a call from a company I had applied to in Portland. She gave me a quick interview on the phone, which I stumbled through like an idiot, answering simple interview questions like 'what would you like to be doing in 5 years' - to which I drew a blank, because all I could think in my stressed out state was 'working'! When I got off the phone I thought, well, I blew that opportunity, but later that afternoon she emailed me to come in for an in-person interview on Wednesday. Wednesday I went in and met a guy who questioned me about my experience, and this guy was pretty IT savvy, so I felt comfortable, I was more in my zone. I thought that went well, and he invited me back for another interview Friday with the head of the department I'd be working in. So I came back on Friday and had an interview with the first guy, the department head and the president of the company, and then we moved to the HR/operations supervisor and talked to her for a bit. It took an hour and a half, and I was almost afraid to get my hopes up. Everyone seemed really nice and the company sounded great, stable, the job itself sounded interesting and right up my alley - a combination of design and testing and troubleshooting, and these are some of my favorite things when it comes to software. So they said they'd call and let me know one way or the other that day.

So I went home and moped around the house the rest of the day, waiting for the phone call, afraid to so much as walk out to the garage for fear of missing it. Finally 5pm came and went, and I thought that was it, I'm not going to hear back from them today. Then 6pm passed on by, and I really figured it was over. So by then I'd settled down on the couch to catch up on some CraigyFerg, when the phone rang, and it was my new boss telling me I'd got the job! They were worried I'd get burnt out on the commute, but I have no problem with it. There's an express bus that goes downtown from the North end of Vancouver,and drops off just a couple blocks from work - it doesn't get much easier than that

I'm oh so happy to finally have someone give me a chance! Ten years ago I left my last computer job on friendly terms, and came home to work on our toy business and our little farm. I had a chance to try out my dreams of having a CSA and raising chickens - and now I know all sorts of reasons for why it really doesn't work in our situation. I'm ready to go back to a stable job, where I can use my software skills I spent all those years building up. And this job even wants people to telecommute once they get the hang of the job, so maybe I won't be spending all my time downtown. I think it's the perfect job for me. I can't wait to finish jumping through the hoops to get started.

_

Tough times and cute Santa/dog pictures

2011-11-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

I had another job interview last week, only the fourth one I've managed to score this year, and the answer was a no. So close. We continue to plug along. At least the toy business is starting to pick up for Christmas, so that makes things better for a bit. Still, we've had real estate agents out to appraise the house and talk about selling the little farm, and we've put in for a modification - if we can hold out long enough to get it.

To cheer myself up I did a photo session at Everyday Dog for Christmas. What could be more fun than photographing dogs on Santa's lap? Most of these folks were our friends from training class anyway, and it's always fun to photograph friend's dogs, since we know them so well.

This is the 'Everyday Dog' family - Blaze, Figgy, Kiwi, and Chunky

And my favorite of all the pictures was Santa trying to hang onto the wiggliest puppy I've ever seen!

What a great day! All proceeds went to benefit PUFA, People United For Animals, which offers low-cost spay & neuters.

_

Time for a new canopy cover

2011-11-23T18:04:00.000-08:00

Had a little wind/rain storm, woke up to find this!

These vinyl covers deteriorate in the sunlight, and tear apart about every year/half. I knew it was coming, but I hoped it would hold out through the winter.

_

More fall colors

2011-11-19T17:25:00.000-08:00

Maple in the parking lot at the grocery store

Leaves on the ground. Valentine's Day colors!

Oil in the parking lot.

Buddies

2011-11-19T17:21:00.001-08:00

Under my desk...

2011-11-16T20:44:00.000-08:00

Navi & Barclay are snuggled up together, keeping my feet warm.

Last week we sent Jack off to his new/old home. I contacted his previous owners, the ones who'd given him to us two years ago. They had said they wanted to know if we ever needed to rehome him, so I dug around and found their email and contacted them. They were delighted, because they had just moved into a home with a fenced backyard, and their daughter had been wanting a dog, and missing Jack ever since they gave him away! So I was happy to hand him back over to them. They seem like super nice people, and Jack was in their family first to begin with. That seems like a happy ending. Life is much more peaceful around here with only two dogs to care for, and I can give these two more attention. I think everyone is happy.

_

Canned Chicken Soup

2011-11-15T20:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we went grocery shopping and got a good deal on a half dozen bone-in chicken breasts. I brought them home and de-boned them, and froze most of them, and then I roasted the bones with some onions. When those were good and browned, I put them in a stock pot with carrots, garlic and some dried herbs. I let them simmer until after dinner, about 6 hours later. Then I cooled it off and popped it in the fridge over night.

This morning I skimmed off the fat and heated the stock back up, and added diced carrots, onions, garlic, corn, and more herbs, until it tasted good. I also added two chicken breasts, cut up into small cubes. Once that was all cooked through I hot-packed it into quart jars and pressure canned it using instructions from the University of Georgia So Easy To Preserve book. UG is the nations testing kitchen for safe home-preservation recipes, so I know that's a good book to work from.

This was my first attempt at pressure canning soup. I decided to try it because a few weeks I made some soup that came out fantastic, and I froze it and enjoyed it for several lunches, so I thought canning some homemade soup would be just as nice. I canned 7 quarts, and one didn't turn out, the lid didn't seal for some reason. The rest all turned out ok, so I have 6 quarts for the cupboard, and one in the fridge. I can't wait to try them out and see how they taste after being canned for a while.

_

More pictures of fall

2011-11-01T19:21:00.000-07:00

I liked the heart-shaped leaf behind this one...

Bamboo doesn't care that it's fal. I liked the way the wind rustled the leaves when I snapped the picture and made them blurry in spots

Autumn leaves

2011-10-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

Oh the times, they are a-changin'...

_

The Silk Tree

2011-10-27T16:28:00.000-07:00

The front of our house is dominated by a Silk Tree (Mimosa) planted in the front courtyard

When we planted it many years ago, it was a sad little twiggy thing that needed to be protected in the winter.

Over the years it grew big and strong, and entertained us with it's beautiful pink and white flowers, and it's funny little leaves that close up at night. We're pretty fond of the tree.

Over the years it has also insisted on leaning TOWARDS the house, which is odd, because that means it's leaning AWAY from the sun, and I would expect it to do just the opposite. But it has been growing up over our sunporch walkway, shading it and causing moss to grow there, dropping leaves on the roof, and leaning on the gutters. We hate to intervene, but it was time.

So Dave bravely climbed up on the roof

He cut back the branches with a sawzall, until nothing was hanging over the roof, and then he cleaned up all the moss, scrubbing and brushing until the roof as as clean as he could get it by hand.

Then he cleverly used a ladder to scale the steep garage roof so he could reach over the top and fix a vent that had blown off earlier this summer.

When he was done, the front deck was covered in a HUGE pile of silk tree branches,

And our pretty silk tree really looks none the worse for it's 'trim'.

Learning to use Photoshop - and Fetching Photos

2011-10-26T23:14:00.000-07:00

Original

After a couple hours in Photoshop, the fences are gone, the electric wires overhead are gone, and the horses are a darker sillhouette against the sunset. Not bad for a first try! I can see why this Photoshop thing is so addictive!

Also, notice the watermark, made by my brilliant friends at HappyPupDesign. This is going to be the name of my photo studio. 'Fetching Photos by Stephanie'. I'm working on setting up the website now.

_

The Girl And the Horse

2011-10-24T20:34:00.000-07:00

Fall colors

2011-10-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

Our driveway has it's fall colors on...

Petsitting for Sit & Stay

2011-10-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

In our area there's a petsitting company called Sit & Stay. They are a locally owned small business with a small number of petsitters scattered around the county. I just joined with them to cover my neck of the woods! I think this will be fun, as I love animals, and I love seeing what other people's farms look like. I've been doing some petsitting on the side for friends for a while anyway.

Dave took a nice picture of me to put on their website. I think it turned out pretty good, and I usually don't like pictures of myself. I wanted to get more than one dog in the picture, but Barclay was the only one who would hold still, and just barely!

Horses at sunset

2011-10-18T20:20:00.000-07:00

On my way out of the barn this afternoon I saw this and knew I had to immediately pull the car over and get the shot.

Canine Nose Work Trial, Clackamas, Oregon

2011-10-16T23:05:00.000-07:00

I drove down to Clackamas today to photograph a Canine Nose Work Competition. I volunteered to do the Exterior Element, because it was my first time doing something like this and I hoped it would be technically easier than photographing inside or the vehicle search. However, because it was a cloudy day, and we were in a very shady place under the trees, it turned out to be more challenging than I had hoped for! Fast dogs and slow shutter speeds don't go together very well! But I got a lot of good shots, everyone there was friendly, the competitors were having fun with their dogs, and overall it was a really well organized competition. I would love to train one of my dogs to do this and go back as a competitor next time!

This is the trial area. The judge is standing about in the middle, and I am near the starting line. The dog and handler are behind a tree at the far end of the field.

To start the day a dog and handler team came to try out the element. They headed out into the field...

The dog sniffed around a few seconds and made a distinct U-Turn and headed right to the hide, and gave his owner the signal that he had found it...

And she fussed over him and gave him his reward - happy dog! This was how it went all day, happy working dogs, and clearly devoted owners. One thing I really enjoyed about the competition was the teamwork, and how each owner's love for their dog came through loud and clear. Unlike competitions where the owner is ordering the dog around, in this competition the owner has to let the dog do his work, and guide them and watch their signals. It was beautiful to watch!

We saw dogs of every size and shape...

I expected to see lots of beagles, but this beagle mix was the only hounddog I saw!

All excitedly exploring with their noses to the ground...

But even if they didn't find the hide, the judge guided them to the right place and they let the dog find it and get his reward, so the dogs had fun whether they were successful in the competition or not.

This gentleman and his dog were one of my favorites! The dog was raring to go as soon as he saw the field.

He made short work of it and took his owner to the hide,

They were a fun team to watch!

That's just a few of my favorites. I ended up taking over 250 pictures! A few came out blurry, but sometimes that worked depending on the shot. A lot of competitors requested no photos because their dogs were distracted by the clicking and people standing around. They did their best to give the dogs the opportunity to be successful by being flexible to their needs. Since they encourage reactive dogs to participate, they go to great lengths to make sure each dog is kept separate an never sees another dog, with visual barriers set up, and volunteers guiding dogs in by one route and out by another, and then if necessary they moved people around at the element so as to be the least distracting to the dogs that were 'people reactive'. So the dogs stay relaxed and just have a good time doing their work. This was really a special event, and I hope someday I can go and participate, but I'll definitely go photograph again!

_

Bathroom fish

2011-10-09T23:02:00.000-07:00

We are going to be selling our '3 Happy Acres' and moving to something smaller and closer to town. It's just too expensive to live out in the country, spending so much money on gas to run into town all the time, and then having to take care of 3 acres between the two of us. We're looking forward to a smaller house payment, and less to mow.

So I'm working on cleaning and de-cluttering the house. I started with the bathroom, because the walls were covered with my vintage 'bathroom fish' collection.

My favorite, with rhinestone eyes!

The bottom one is actually a glass tray with a neat printed fish scene on it. I love all this stuff, but I won't have room for so much of it where we're going, so I put them up on eBay.

Lapfull of Barclay

2011-10-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

Dave with a lapfull of wiggly, smoochy Barclay!

Barclay has such a big personality, I think of him as a big dog, but then I see pictures like this and realize how little he is! He's just big in spirit!

_

Horses

2011-09-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

"Grader", relaxing in the afternoon sun.

A boarder's Mustang, taking a stroll...

_

Rainy Day

2011-09-17T19:09:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of fall. Rain and cloudy grey skies returned after a too short summer. I hope there is a little more summer yet to come! But I took advantage of the weather change to take pictures of the remaining flowers around the yard covered with raindrops.

I played with Picasa's center tint function to highlight this dark red rose.

Following directions - green tomato salsa

2011-09-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

Last year my favorite thing of all the food I canned was the green tomato salsa. It was seriously YUM - and I just finished my last jar of it, so it was the perfect time to make more. There's no shortage of green tomatoes right now either.

Lots of green tomatoes! Don't worry, there's still plenty left to ripen (if they ever do).

I spent a couple hours chopping all the onion, peppers, garlic, and tomatoes, in fact I spread the job over two days! Finally, I had it all in the pan, with the liquid - a mix of lemon and lime juice, and spices.

I boiled it, meanwhile I boiled the jars, and soon it was all ready to put together. I was following a canning recipe exactly. I had a little assembly line set up. I thought I had it all but I forgot one really important step! After you fill the jars you're supposed to use something to gently get rid of the bubbles down inside the jar before processing. I realized just as I put the last filled jar into the water bath that I hadn't done this! I pulled the jar back out and looked at it, and sure enough there were big air bubbles throughout the jar. I was really disappointed in myself - I'm supposed to be a master food preserver, and getting out the bubbles is basic stuff! I went ahead and processed them.

The trick is that if you realize you screwed up within 24 hours, you can reprocess the food safely. I had Dave pick up some more jar lids, and once it was cool enough to handle, I opened all the jars. I noticed the salsa was pretty chunky, and I remembered my teacher saying it should be kind of thin, so I dumped the jars, two at a time, into the blender and gave them a quick spin before dumping them into a pot.

While that heated to a simmer I washed the jars and got them heated up in the water bath again. Then I refilled them with the blended salsa. This time the salsa was so thin there weren't any air bubbles to worry about. I lidded them up and processed them like before.

There are very few small bubbles visible in the jars after processing, but that's ok. It was worth the time to reprocess these. All I lost was a few lids, and that's better than having to throw out spoiled salsa a few months from now. I think I will be enjoying these until it's time to make more next year!

_

Canning Stock

2011-09-07T15:54:00.000-07:00

We went grocery shopping late Labor Day evening, and ran across a pleasant surprise - the store had roasted too many chickens and was clearing them out for $3.50 each! What a score! You can't usually buy a whole chicken for that price, let alone roast it yourself! We bought two, brought them home, and picked all the meat off them, and threw the bones in the pressure cooker. I also got a deal on a package of 6 half breasts, so I de-boned those and threw the trimmings into the stockpot and froze the meat for later. Then I threw in all the onion and carrot trimmings I'd saved up in the freezer, along with some garlic and celery, and I let the pressure cooker do it's thing, and by evening I had a giant hot pot of stock.

The brilliant part is that my last batch of stock was packed in the freezer, so I took it out and dropped those stock ice-blocks into the pot of strained stock, and as they melted they cooled off the new batch, and within minutes the whole thing was ready for the fridge. I thought that worked particularly nicely! After a day in the fridge I skimmed off all the fat, and it was ready to can.

So today I spent my morning pressure canning 17 pints of stock. It took all day, because it required two batches. I should have done quarts, then it would have only taken one batch, but I usually use it a pint at a time. The pressure canner wasn't as nerve-wracking as last time. I've used it to pressure cook stock a couple times, and this is my second time canning. I think it gets easier the more times you practice.

Beautiful!

Garden Update

2011-09-05T13:25:00.000-07:00

I am finally reaping the rewards of having a garden!

Tomatoes! Fresh tomatoes make it all worthwhile! Almost every year for the last ten years I've tried various types of gardens - container gardens, square-foot gardens, a big garden in the ground in freshly tilled pasture, and last year a lasagna garden, which was my biggest success in terms of big healthy plants, but because of the weather I only got green tomatoes. This year has been iffy - cool and wet - and I'm finally seeing some rewards - big yellow tomatoes! They are so soft and sweet, I can't believe it, I just want to gobble them all up fresh off the plant! The varieties are Azoychka and Taxi, and Black Cherry tomatoes. The Azoychkas are particularly nice!

I got some squash, but my results there are hit & miss. I think slugs have been dining on them, since they are so close to the ground. The parsley was destroyed by some digging rodents, and the same with the cukes (luckily I already picked some and made my pickles for the year).

Also on the counter is some rosemary I trimmed off my little rosemary bush which seems to be happy out in it's container in the garden. I can't believe how good it smells, I've never gotten any from the store that smelled that strong! I think I might need to roast a chicken tomorrow just to use some of that Rosemary!

_

TFM Promo Pics

2011-09-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

Dave is directing the next play at Magenta Theater, Talent for Murder, and I am his assistant director. I also am the photographer for promotional pictures. Last night we had our photo shoot with the cast. On the way to the theater Dave and I were brainstorming ideas of what sort of shots to take. They need to be interesting and have some action in them, and hopefully if someone sees the picture in the paper it will catch their eye and capture their interest.

The play is about a rich old woman and her scheming children who are trying to split up the estate and get their inheritance before she's gone.

Dave wrangles the whole cast together and gives them the plan.

And, many shots later...

Then we had a little fun with the 'kids' fighting over the treasures

And with the 'scheming' angle...

So this was a pretty fun shoot, and I think we got some good shots. Hopefully they'll end up in the paper and get us a little publicity!

_

Portrait Studio - Sitka & Sake

2011-08-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

Today I wanted to get a good photo of our houseguests before they go home. Trying to take pictures with five dogs milling around was complete chaos!

Sitka in the chair, everyone else wondering how to get in on the treat action...

Navi in the chair, Sake peeking in...

My assistant bravely risked his fingertips to try and help get them in position.

Hmm, not bad, if they weren't both so white. Can't tell where one dog ends and the other begins...

Looking everywhere except the camera...

Blurry! Sit still!

Perfect!

And then Barclay snuck up for a shot.

Playing in the water

2011-08-26T18:15:00.000-07:00

It was a hot day, so this afternoon I pulled out the little water fountain and set it on low. Navi sat with the fountain between her paws and growled at anyone who got too close :)

Eventually she let Sake come play too...

Sake got good and wet

Barclay stayed dry far away from the fountain

Sitka only got a little wet, mostly from wrestling with the wet dogs!

Urban photography

2011-08-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

I love looking at urban photography, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for yet so it's hard to do myself. Whenever we go into town I like to sneak in a little photography if I can.

Don't see many like this in downtown Vancouver.

While wandering down the path between two condos I spotted a cloud reflected in this bench and thought it would make a nice picture of Smith Tower. I wish there wasn't all that junk in the middle though.

I liked the shadow thrown by this bike rack.

Back at the theater, I set the camera up on the light booth and took a long exposure of the empty auditorium. I particularly liked the diffraction spikes coming off the ghost light.

Dave's Leverage episode

2011-08-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

Dave has been doing some work as an extra on Leverage, which is filmed over in Portland. He put together a bunch of screenshots of the episode he was in, '"The Boiler Room" Job'. He's in a blue jacket, in the backgrounds. It's fun to play 'spot the Dave' when the episode first airs! He's got a good extra part in another episode coming up later this year.

Eskimo Games

2011-08-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

We have houseguests staying with us for the next week...

Navi, Sitka, Barclay, Sake & Jack (love that look on Jack)

I love having these guys over, even if it is a little extra work. They all have so much fun together!

Sake & Barclay

Navi & Jack

Jack about to bite Barclay (I think) in the pantaloons!

Sake, Barclay and Navi - I think!

Navi & Barclay

Sake & Sitka watch while Barclay holds Navi down!

They're so much fun to take pictures of!

And they're so graceful looking with their fluff blowing as they run...

Navi

Barclay

Sake

Glad we got all this out of the way early, it's going to be hot today! I think they'll be inside with the AC on until this afternoon when it cools off again.

Barclay stays cool in the shade...

Doubt

2011-08-19T08:37:00.000-07:00

Our theater company is doing a one-night-only staged reading o the play Doubt, and they asked me to come photograph it. This turned out to be more challenging than I expected, because the lighting wasn't particularly bright, and everyone was wearing black against a black background (it was a minimalist set). But my new understanding of camera settings allowed me to compensate pretty well. The only thing I didn't understand was why the black robes came out looking red/brown.

I am usually pretty reluctant to move around too much because I don't want to disturb the actors (this was a final dress rehearsal), but I moved around the theater during the performance and tried getting shots from different angles, just for fun and visual interest.

I took almost all the pictures at 1/25 sec exposure, f8 for good depth of field, and ISO 1600. This allowed me to get many good shots, with a few discarded for being blurry. I took about 450 shots! Trying to make sure I got a few good ones in there.

Of course my favorite shots were ones that weren't part of the play. Like the Director, Matt, onstage before the play while they were practicing lighting cues.

And one of the actors, Tony, came out and found himself left hanging because the actress who was supposed to be out there was having a costume problem off stage, so he was stuck waiting a few minutes while trying to stay in character.

I like this shot with the lights above.

_

Yard work

2011-08-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

I should have taken a before picture, but once I get it in my head to get to work, I dive right in! Today we spent about three hours working in the yard. Dave used the string trimmer to knock down the weeds around the chicken run, I took the loppers and the sawzall and trimmed low hanging branches off the cherry tree and cut down all the volunteer saplings coming up in that area. We went and pulled up tansy that was coming up around the hidden areas of the yard. Then Dave went and sprayed round-up on the blackberry bushes. This is supposed to be the perfect time of year to spray them, and they will take it into the ground and kill the stuff underground - we'll see, I'm a bit skeptical about it! The blackberries are so hard to kill, and they come up all over the place, I sure would like to see them gone. I'm trying so hard to catch up all around the yard, and this year I feel like I'm winning!

_

First canning session of the year

2011-08-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

I pulled out the turkey fryer (electric water-bath canner) and got ready for a marathon canning session today. I found a bucket of pickles out in the garden!

Some were really big, and some were just in the 3-4 inch size. I decided to slice up the little ones into spears for dills, and slice up the big ones into chips for sweet pickles.

8 pints of quick pack kosher dills...

And 8 pints of sweet pickle chips - yum! I was down to just one jar left from last year, so the timing was perfect!

Then we went to visit a friend who has a blueberry farm! We all chatted and picked a bush clean, and came back with a bucket-full of delicious blueberries. 12 quarts! I cleaned some and put them in the freezer, and more went in the fridge, and then I mashed some up for jam.

This may have been the most work I did all day!

Ah, the fruits of my labor - filling the pantry until next season!

_

Garden Update

2011-08-13T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long cool summer here, with frequent cloudy days and surprise rain showers. That has led to a late planting window, followed by an invasion of slugs like I have never seen before. Every year I learn something new about gardening, and I think this year I learned to just relax and let it go, because whatever is going to happen is going to happen, and there's only so much you can do when you're fighting mother nature!

In the background you can see the neighbor's humongous shop, still in progress! This view shows the stuff that's doing most of the growing this year. Big healthy cucumber plants, and tomato plants, and some good sized herbs and onions.

This row is mostly onions and leeks, and a couple broccoli plants hanging in there. Mostly invasive grass and weeds I've been fighting all summer.

Big squash plant, but I'm having a hard time getting any squash off it because the slugs start munching on them before they are ready. I need to get out there and prune it back. In front you can see my very yellow parsley plant. I was puzzled, because just last week I went out and clipped some parsley off it for dinner, and I was really happy with how it looked. Looking closer, I see there are holes under it and some critter has clearly burrowed under it and killed it! Give me a break!

This row has two pickling cucumber plants, and a volunteer chives in the very front. I found a lot of cucumbers under those leaves, but I'll save that for another post.

I stepped past the next two rows to shoot them from the other side, because those are my 7 tomato plants. They are pretty large, and seem to be growing fine, but they are loaded with green tomatoes. No telling if they'll turn red (or yellow), but we'll wait and see. I have a feeling I'll be canning green tomato salsa again this year.

The only tomatoes turning ripe are these black cherry tomatoes, and only a few of them.

Although this isn't garden, it's my pasture, and it looks beautiful. We had a neighbor come spray it with WeedMaster this year to kill the invasive weeds, and it looks like it did the trick. Dave mowed it last week and found more grass growing where there used to be lots of weeds. They aren't gone, but their numbers are down!

The hill looks really good. It usually is very scrubby and covered with daisy, but it looks very grassy now.

_

Pictures around town

2011-08-06T10:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a lovely sunny afternoon, and we were downtown so Dave could do a skit at the theater for an Art-Walk type event that was going on. I hung around the theater a bit, and then went over to the park in downtown Vancouver,WA (Esther Short Park) and took pictures around there.

My main goal was experimenting with my camera, taking all my pictures in manual mode and playing with aperture and exposure times.

First we had to get into town, since we live way out in the boonies...

I'm not sure what this sign was for, but I liked the color!

This is the clocktower in the park. I was trying to get a picture of it with flowers in the foreground, and have good focus across the whole picture. I felt a little weird squatting behind a big flowerpot trying to make that happen, and I felt a little nervous because people kept looking at me funny.

The moon was up, but this was the best shot I could get. If I had been willing to climb into the bushes for a minute, I could have lined it up so it looked like the fish was eating it, but I decided I was attracting enough attention as it was.

Different angle on the tower...

I liked the texture of the pavement under this leaf

This is one of the tallest buildings in downtown Vancouver. It's a home for low-income seniors. My uncle lives there. It was built specifically for that purpose, and those guys have the best view in town because it overlooks the river and the I5 bridge!

Back at the theater, I got this shot of one of the actors waiting to go onstage. High ISO, and a long exposure because it was so dim. I like the shot, even with a little motion blur.

The skit they were doing was a silly little thing full of puns and sight gags. It was about a 15 minute show, and they did it every half hour for 3 hours! It was like a little marathon! That's my handsome hubby holding the paper up :)

Then came the curtain call. This was another tricky shot to get because of the low light. I have to say though, I'm much happier with the quality of picture this camera can do with high ISO settings. That's a big difference between it and my old Powershot, which had terrible picture quality if you bumped up the ISO.

On the way home I played with long (3 second) exposures (I wasn't driving), and discovered that if I took them as we passed under the intersection signals I got really cool rays of light. This was my favorite of that bunch.

So that was my fun afternoon with my camera. Every picture taken in Manual mode after carefully considering what settings I wanted to use based on the light, and what I was going for. It was a great learning experience! Of course I took about a hundred pictures, and these were my favorites. I'm so grateful for digital!
_

Dave

2011-08-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

Just a couple pics I snapped of Dave while we were at the theater yesterday

Dang, he looks good in a suit :) For this picture I had to use a high ISO setting, and still had to wait until he was relatively still to avoid motion blurr. It was good practice taking pictures with manual settings and unusual lighting conditions.

He was wearing sunglasses for the skit he was in, so we were playing around with the down-lighting from the tracklights overhead in the waiting area. I liked this shot especially - how'd I get so lucky as to have a good lookin' guy like that!?

Dogs & Cats

2011-08-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Navi & Mighty, to be exact - my most co-operative models!

With my new understanding of exposure/aperture settings, I decided to set up the studio for a bit more practice. Navi was first up on the stool since she recalled getting lots of cookies there!

I WISH this shot had not been blurry - it would have been awesome!

Later I caught a few shots of Mighty on my desk. This gave me a chance to play with exposure, and since she doesn't move much (unlike the dogs, who can't hold still), I could do some longer exposures on her (since the room was dim) and still get sharp pictures.

I used f/4.2 on this one and focused on the eyes to make the face sharp and the paws and body soft.

Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson

2011-08-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

After our discussion of depth of field last week, the lady who runs our photo club suggested we get a copy of Understanding Exposure, so I went right out and ordered one. It's a fantastic book. Within the first 20 pages I at least doubled my knowledge of how the camera works. It is setup with lessons and exercises, so I was playing along with my camera, figuring out how the settings work as I went.

Barclay and Navi were hanging out with me in a shady part of the yard, making for some challenging shots, but the techniques in the book all made sense. The hardest part was getting the dogs to sit still long enough to change the settings.

Barclay is a lot of help! Note the one ear turned in my direction. He's an expert at ignoring me!

Pretty Navi!

After dark I headed out to take some night pictures. Last time I used a higher f-stop, thinking that would be correct for depth of field, but it didn't gather enough light to get any results. My camera is limited to a 30 second exposure. So this time I used the smallest possible f-stop, which leaves the aperture wide open, and that did much better.

This is the constellation Lyra - with the brightest star in the summer sky.

This is part of Pegasus (he's upside down from this angle - the big quare is his body). The label points to the fuzzy blob that is the Andromeda Galaxy.

Here's a closeup of that section

And this is Cassiopeia Rising behind the tree in the backyard. This is one of my favorite constellations because it's so bright, I could easily find it even from the light polluted city where I grew up!

So I was pretty happy with my results for my second night out with the new camera. There are a lot of techniques to use to get better shots of the night sky, many of which have to do with creative post-processing. I guess I'll have to work on that next.

_

Roses - playing with focal length / aperture

2011-08-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

Our camera club assignment for this month is to try and build a better understanding of focal length, and using aperture to get the results we want in our photos. A better understanding of this would have helped my portrait photos last week!

Using my 28-80mm lens, I went out to take some pictures of a beautiful rose I spotted on the bush out in the dog run.

Wide shot in 'auto' mode - camera chose F9, lens at 28mm

Zoomed in to 60mm, exposure: 1/4000, hand set f-stop at F4.8 - low as it would go. Just the central part of the flower is in focus, and the rear pedal is soft and has no detail

Still 60mm, exp: 1/800, changed f-stop to f8, regained some detail on the rear pedal, and the leaves in the background are more in focus

Still 60mm, exp: 1/400, upped f-stop to f25, more detail on rear pedals, and leaves behind are in focus. Because the f-stop is a larger number, the aperture (the opening in the lens) is smaller, so the picture is a little darker - less light was let in, even though the camera compensated by upping the exposure. But it can be brightened up in editing.

Brightened up using Picasa. If I had a tripod, I could set for a longer exposure at this same f-stop and brighten it without editing tools.

Slightly different angle, zoomed in to 70mm, exp: 1/500, f18 to get detail on the rear pedals, brightened up in Picasa

The Flowers and the Bees

2011-08-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

I spent a bit of time outside this morning learning more about how my camera works, trying to do closeups of flowers and bees. Playing with the f-stops and exposures. - I have much to learn! My DSLR has so many buttons and modes and settings, it's a challenge!

I think this was my best attempt at getting the bee in focus and letting the rest of the picture be soft.

Bees don't hold still as long as I'd like!

Queen Anne's Lace

Closeup on a daisy

Ran this one through a couple filters to B/W everything but the center and then blurr the pedals a bit.

Sunset at the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge

2011-07-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

Busy week

2011-07-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to take a dog or two to the park every day. While there I try to get in a little jogging on the trails. Since I have been doing most of my running on the treadmill, I need to work on strengthening muscles the treadmill misses, and the only way to do that is to run on the ground more. It's slow going, but I have faith it will continue to improve.

I've also been playing tennis every other day with Dave, which is great fun. And I've been trying to do strength training every day. Sore abs! But it's a good habit. Yesterday I got hit int he eye by a ball at tennis while playing with Dave and Sherry (Sake & Sitka's mom). We were doubling up on Dave, and I went to pick up a ball and he didn't notice and hit a ball over - what luck! So today I have a headache still and my eye is a little swollen and blurry. Much better than last night, so I'm sure it will be back to normal soon.

_

Pit Bull Rescue Photo Day

2011-07-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

I had a great time at my first photo session - taking portraits of dogs to benefit the pit bull rescue.

I was setup inside the Everyday Dog training center while the rescue had a BBQ going on outside, so it was nice and peaceful inside. Everyday Dog is where I take my dogs for training, so I felt right at home :) I had made a PVC frame for the backdrop, and everything else was really portable anyway, so it was an easy setup. I started out with a few test shots of the owner Alison's dog Figgy.

Some of the dogs were pretty nervous at the idea of being asked to sit still for a picture, and the lights, and being in a strange place. We only had a few customers, but I made everyone happy, so that's what counts.

Getting two dogs to sit still without one being blurry was really challenging - but this was close enough!

This hyper black lab was another one that required a LOT Of shots to get one that wasn't blurry - thank goodness for shooting in digital!

Once the time was pretty much up I invited the rescue folks to bring in their foster dogs for a shot so they could have them to use for publicity.

The last one, was there with her sister, who already had a home, so they wanted a picture of both of them together.

So that was my photography day. Lots of fun, great dogs, nice people, and a lot of challenges I hadn't quite planned for - like taking pictures of two dogs, or dogs who didn't like the stand and wanted to sit on the floor. In those cases I had a little trouble hiding the back light, and I didn't have enough fabric to cover the floor or hide all the cords. Getting one more piece of that fabric to put on the floor would help.

Everyone was friendly and patient. The hardware all worked perfectly, I downloaded the pictures to the laptop, flipped through them with the owner looking for the best shot that they thought really captured their pet, printed it out on a 4x6, slipped it into a paper frame with a thank you sticker and my info on the back, and away they went. So it was a good experience and I learned a lot, and I can't wait to do it again!

_

Much harder to light two at once!

2011-07-22T22:06:00.000-07:00

Beware the Two-headed hell-hound!

Sure, they look cute now...

_

Home Studio works on cats too!

2011-07-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

The home studio works on cats too!

Particularly if you give them a little scratch on the head...

But they still reserve the right to look annoyed!

Thanks, Mouse!

A good time at the barn

2011-07-19T23:02:00.000-07:00

This evening the barn held a session for volunteers to get together, socialize a bit, and then get some lessons on handling the horses. We got a demonstration on working with the horses in the round pen and 'joining up' with them, and then we got to try it. I got to try it with Ashley, one of the horses I work with regularly. Then another volunteer got to do the same with her, and we could see the difference in how she reacted because of the differences in the energy we put out - I'm a very calm and quiet person, and she reacted differently to that than she did to the young man's higher energy motions.

Then we got longe line demonstration, and talked about handling the horses on the ground. It was all very good stuff that I hadn't heard before, so I was paying close attention. Then we all got a chance to ride. I sat out the first round to let the teens go first, and most adults rode the second round as well. I got to ride a horse that was new to me because he belonged to one of the staff, and he was just visiting to help out with some big events they were having this week. I had a bit of trouble getting him trotting - his mom said he was lazy - but once we got him going I really enjoyed it, and felt like I was starting to get the hang of riding the trot. I wish I could have kept at it! But since the horses had already worked all day toting kids around at the ranch, we didn't ride too long before giving them a break, cooling them off, and sending them out to pasture to relax for the night. They have a full day of work to do tomorrow :)

__

Portrait Studio - blue backdrop

2011-07-18T12:42:00.000-07:00

Today I sewed together my blue backdrop and tried it out. I think I like it even better than the neutral/grey one.

(And Yes, Barclay is just as huggable as he looks!)

Only problem today was getting them up on the stand one at a time, because they were all clued into the fact that whoever is up there gets the most cookies!

So the other two got to practice down-stays while I worked with them one at a time. I need a wider bench for them to sit on, and try to get all three up there at once for a group photo!

_

Portrait Studio

2011-07-17T13:37:00.000-07:00

A friend who is involved with a local pit bull rescue, Diamond Cut Loyalty, invited me to come to a fundraiser they are having next weekend and take pictures for donations. So of course I said yes, because it's a good cause and they are good people, and I LOVE to take pictures. However, I don't have any proper portrait studio equipment, so I had to get something set up.

So I went to the fabric store and bought some neutral looking material. When I got it home I cut it and sewed it into one big piece. While measuring and cutting I had some 'help'...

Thanks, guys!

I also went by Home Depot and got a couple clamp lights and some fluorescent 'daylight' bulbs. I wanted light I could leave on, but that wouldn't get too hot.

This one is a single bulb for lighting up the backdrop.

This one has a splitter so there are two bulbs in it, for lighting up the subject.

And all together it looks like this:

And with the lights on and a willing participant (with the help of cookies), it looks like this:

And the first test shots look like this:

Couldn't get Barclay to hold still!

I'm happy with the results so far, I just need to experiment more with positioning the light to see what works best, and I think moving the stool out farther from the backdrop so it will be a bit more out of focus. But a good start.

Update: A few more shots

Barclay and the bird

2011-07-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

This morning the dogs alerted us to something exciting going on outside, and we looked out in the backyard to see Mighty slinking past the back door with a freshly caught bird in her mouth - one of those little purple swallows. Bad cat! We thought she was taking it to go eat it, but a few minutes later Barclay went trotting by with the bird in HIS mouth! Apparently the cat had brought it into the dog run, and Barclay took it.

So now Mr B was running around the house with a bird sticking out of his mouth. We conered him after a short chase, and I took him to the bathroom where we could discuss this without the other dogs involved. Dave brought in the best treat we had to offer - sandwich meat.

He held a big wad of sandwich meat in front of Barclay and said 'Ok, Barclay, drop it and you can have this. Who wants some lunchmeat?' and as if to say 'I do!' Barclay snatched the meat out of his hand - WITHOUT DROPPING THE BIRD! So now Barclay had a mouth full of lunchmeat and bird (which he was pretty happy about) Dave was standing there shocked and lucky to still have all his fingers, and I was laughing so hard I about fell over! Luckily when Dave offered him the rest of the lunchmeat, Barclay went ahead and dropped the bird so he could eat, and we snatched it away. Poor bird! But I'll never forget Barclay snapping away that lunchmeat without giving up the prize he already had in his mouth - what a determined pup!

_

My favorite picture from todays 4H meeting

2011-07-10T14:35:00.000-07:00

Not even posed, I just happened to see him smooching his llama and caught it on film :) I think I've found my 'interaction' picture for Camera Club!

Here are some other pictures I really liked...

Last night and my telescope

2011-07-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

I spent last night at an astronomy meeting. I dragged out my telescope, barely knocked the dust off of it, and headed out to the meeting, a bit shy and not sure what to expect. My scope is big, but it's nothing fancy. Here's an old picture of us at Table Mountain Star Party a few years ago.

I shouldn't have worried. Everyone was really nice, and we all had one thing in common - a love of the heavens. Everyone enjoyed looking through my scope (yay - something new!) just as much as I enjoyed looking through theirs, most of which were as big as mine, and newer and fancier. But my old scope has excellent optics, which is all that matters, so even if it looks a bit funky, it still does the job just as good as the new scopes.

I have been out of it a long time because of my 'cold allergy' but now that I have that pretty well under control with Zyrtec I want to get the scope out more and enjoy the dark skies we have at our house. We also used to do lots of school science fairs and 'sidewalk astronomy' with it, and it's always great fun to give the general public a chance to look through a big telescope.

_

Around the house

2011-07-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

Barclay!

Sake, watching a bug!

Still watching the bug...

One of those swallows like the ones in our chimney, nesting in the birdhouses I gave them...

Takeoff!

Sitka & Sake

Afternoon snacktime! From left to right - Sitka, Jack, Navi, Barclay (back to the camera), and Sake

First 5k!

2011-07-02T13:57:00.000-07:00

Me, Sandy, and Heidi

Last week I celebrated being 40 pounds down from the beginning of the year! I am really happy with my progress! Thanks to the tools and advice on SparkPeople and my great husband who has been so supportive of healthy meals and getting out and exercising more, I'm certain I can meet my goal to be 60lbs down by the end of the year. There's still more to lose after that, but that's a great start.

I am still working my way through the Couch to 5K running program, and today I had my first 5K race. I signed up for it months ago, and I wish I'd have known I was going to pull a muscle in the back of my leg last week playing tennis, because I would rather have not done this today. But it wasn't so bad, and after I got warmed up it didn't bother me much. I couldn't run far though, so this turned out be a 5K walk.

My friends Sandy (one of our 4H moms) and Heidi (from our theater group) also signed up, so we could walk/run together. The race was in Yacolt, WA, which is a tiny town right up the road from me, for their 4th of July celebration. We got there and there weren't a lot of folks there, which was nice because I hate crowds. By the time the race started there were maybe 100 runners - probably more like 50. Lots of friendly volunteers helping. The race was out and back on country roads. It was a beautiful sunny day, not too cold, not too hot.

At the finish line!

I think we finished in 47 minutes. Heidi and I walked at the same pace, so that made the race go faster and took my mind off my pulled muscle. The organizers had water along the way and snacks (like fruit and bagels) waiting at the end. All in all, I was really happy with my time, and I'm looking forward to doing one again - hopefully one I can RUN next time! It's really not that long a distance (3.1 miles) so there's no reason why I can't get to the point of running that far.That's one nice thing about getting in shape, there's always something to work towards.

Yay - survived my first 5k! Still Smilin'!

Swallows in the chimney

2011-07-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

Every year brings something new and unusual. This year we have swallows nesting in our chimney! The little purple guys who flit back and forth over the pasture every summer (and who I built a nice set of bird houses for over the garden after the old martin house they'd been using since before we moved here fell over) have set up a home in our chimney, apparently right on top of the closed flue, because we can hear them loud and clear in the living room. In fact we first noticed the occasional chirping a few weeks ago, but now the chicks have hatched, and every 20 minutes we here the raucous calls of the babies crying 'FEED ME! FEED ME!' when Mom and Dad come back.

Yesterday evening I sat outside watching the chimney hoping to get a picture of the parents coming back to feed the kids, and this shot of a parent leaving to hunt for more food was the best I got. I'm going to go try again tonight, because they make an amazing big loop and swoop straight down into the chimney, which is pretty cool looking.

After the chicks are out and on their own we'll have to see about getting the chimney cleaned and replacing whatever is supposed to be on the top to keep birds out, so next year they'll have to stay in a bird house like the rest of the birds!
_

Puppy-sitting!

2011-06-30T22:04:00.000-07:00

We have company!

Yup, Sake and Sitka are back, so we now have FOUR ESKIMOS for a couple days - poor Jack is SO outnumbered!

Well, we know he really loves it!

Time for a water break!

Oh, Barclay's got his eye on the next target!

Run, Navi! Barclay is going to get you!

She can protect herself!

Sake gets into it by grabbing his brother by the tail!

I love this shot of Barclay.

And this one of Sake!

Sitka couldn't hold still for pictures, he was too busy!

And off they go again!!

Busted, again

2011-06-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

Our 'new' lawnmower had a catastrophic failure a couple days ago. It started by throwing a belt. I replaced the belt and couldn't see anything wrong, but when Dave took it for a test run it started making horrible noises, so I took another look and found the bearing had blown apart on the big double pulley that runs the deck.

That assortment of bearings, snap rings, and spacers on the floor is what used to be the bearing assembly. The pulley itself got pretty chewed up too, so I ended up buying a new pulley as well. A bit of shopping around on the net brought the price from about $175 down to $120. I just have to figure out how it all goes together when the new parts arrive.

Just one more thing to keep me from working on the pony...

_

Fluff and Fangs (but it's all in good fun)

2011-06-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

Barclay, the great white shark

2011-06-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

I was playing fetch with the dogs, when I held the ball over Barclay's head and he gave me this hilareous look, with his eyes rolled back and his tounge lolling out to one side, and I thought - that would make an awesome picture, I'll go get my camera!

Things are never that simple!

Ball thrower in one hand, camera in the other, ask Barclay to wait, navi is in the background doing that super loud, super high pitched bark which means THROW IT THROW IT THROW IT THROW IT!

** CRUNCH **

Drop it! Now, WAIT!...

** CRUNCH **

Now, wait...

** CRUNCH **

The picture I was trying to get?

Sorta like this...

The Birds and The Bees

2011-06-22T13:07:00.000-07:00

Just having a little fun on a sunny morning, laying on my tummy in the grass taking pictures of the bees visiting the clover. Of course the dogs kept wandering by and interrupting the bees, or trying to eat them (now that would have been a great picture) or licking me on the head while I was busy looking through the camera, but it wouldn't be the same without dogs helping, now would it :)

I took a LOT of shots, but none were quite what I was looking for. Bees have a tendancy to be facing the wrong way, or fly away just as you hit the shutter!

And with so many clover flowers, it's hard to get the shot where you can make the bee stand out in the field.

This turned out to bee my favorite of the lot...

I got this shot of a rose, straight out of the camera without any messing with the colors - wow!

And our big locust tree against the cloudy sky.

And these tiny, tiny little flowers, hidden in the grass - these flowers are about a quarter inch across - so tiny!

Barclay, hanging out by the fence. They are so happy to have access to the backyard now that the blackberry vines are gone and I'm not as worried about coyotes hanging out back there, lying in wait.

Navi, digging a hole. She stuffs her face down in the hole and snorts :)

She's happiest when she's getting dirty!

_

What to do with those giant brush piles I made

2011-06-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

The backyard was full of giant prickly brush piles after all my work last week clearing blackberry vines. Now we need to get rid of them. We don't like burn piles, so we prefer to haul them away, but to do that, we have to move them around front. First, get a tarp, and tie it to the tractor. Oh, and a husband is handy to have around too!

After letting the piles dry a few days, they are fairly easy to move. Kind of like velcro - they all stick together. If you're lucky you can just about roll the whole mess onto the tarp.

Away we go! I follow behind and grab the back corner to steer it a bit if necessary, or use my pitchfork to push stray branches back onto the tarp.

All the way around the house and shop...

Line it up with the pile on the driveway, and lift up the tarp to throw the new load on.

And off he goes for the next pile. I think we moved 5 or 6 piles of brush this way, and now there is a very big pile on the driveway. A friend offered to let us use their farm truck to haul it away, so that's the next step.

It's sure nice to have the back yard all cleaned up and mow-able again!

_

The weather is bugging me!

2011-06-20T17:04:00.000-07:00

This is the 'weather bug' from my desktop. I saw the symbol for tomorrow and actually thought 'what the heck IS that?!' - I guess that tells you what kind of Spring we've been having!

_

The Camas Camera Club

2011-06-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to the first meeting of the Camas Camera Club. Camas is a small town about 15 miles south-east of here. It was held in the library. A friend of a friend started it, she's a professional dog photographer, and my friends encouraged me to go. There were only five other people there, but it was the first meeting!

Everyone was supposed to bring two pictures, but I couldn't decide and brought three.

It was fun to see the other pictures people brought. Some of them are quite accomplished professional photographers, people who have had exhibits, stuff like that. I think being able to learn techniques and get critiques from people who know more than I do will be good for improving my skills.

We started out with an assignment to come back next meeting with a new picture of an 'interaction' - our choice on how to interpret that. It has already energized my picture taking, I'm eager to get out there and try something!

_

Clearing Blackberries

2011-06-16T16:17:00.000-07:00

This has been a particularly wet and cool spring, which has been perfect for blackberry vines. They have been growing up everywhere around the yard. Over by the trailer, next to the chicken coop, and a massive wall of them towering across the backyard, threatening to creep over the deck and moving ever closer to the house.

I should have taken a 'before' picture - this was after we'd already spent a couple hours cutting them back a good five feet from where they had been. To cut them back required several tools, including my new Stihl electric weed trimmer (which I LOVE), loppers, hedge trimmers, and my scythe! Last year I used the scythe on grass and I wasn't too impressed with it. I knew it was a brush scythe, but I thought, if it can't do grass well, how can it do anything else? Turns out I was wrong, it cuts through blackberry vines like butter! But it's tiring to use, and extremely sharp and dangerous, so I'm very careful with it. But it certainly has a place in clearing vines.

And after a couple more hours of work (over a couple days) we had beaten them away entirely, and we could see the rest of the backyard again!

It seems like everything in our backyard is out to hurt us. The Blackberry vines are covered in these awful little thorns, and of course you can't cut them down without a few whipping around and hitting you.

And the trees are Thorny Locusts, which have these terrible stiff thorns on them which will go through anything - pants, leather gloves, lawnmower tires. And the locusts send up little baby trees all over the yard so there are lots of tiny saplings mixed in with the blackberry vines, just waiting to jab you!

The chicken coop/shed was about to be swallowed up again by vines, even though I had beaten them down just a few weeks ago.

After an hour of lopping, scything, and raking back the debris, it's looking good. Nothing to do but figure out where to haul the debris to.

Winning the blackberry war is just one of the projects I am using my new-found energy on (yay for weight loss). Another is reclaiming the planting beds around the house.

When we moved here there were planting beds extending out from the foundation for about 4 feet, but the grass has invaded and taken them over. I sprayed roundup today to try and reclaim them.

The other project is refinishing the decks, but I'll save that for another post.
_

Dogs and the wheelbarrow

2011-06-16T14:50:00.000-07:00

So the other day I heard some barking, looked out the office window, and grabbed my camera - because I saw this...

I had left a wheelbarrow full of planting soil on the front deck after I finished repotting my tomato plants, and Navi was in it, and Barclay wanted in on that action, but she was hogging it! I went to the front door to watch.

Yup, nothing unusual here. No sir-ee, just business as usual.

Barclay tried some barking...

A little bitey-face...

Then he tried his passive stare-down technique...

That did the trick, Navi jumped out and the went back to racing around the yard!

Crazy dogs!

_

All out of chickens

2011-06-14T23:47:00.000-07:00

Well, this has been a miserable week, going out and finding mutilated chickens every morning, and not having my favorite, Beautiful, clucking around under foot. I think the predator was sneaking into the coop while it was open during the day, bedding down under the nest boxes (there's a hidden area under there) and then coming out at night to terrorize the chickens. It ate one of the little chicks right before we left for Memorial weekend, and left two dead in the coop for me to find. Then it ate the other two while we were gone. Then it seemed to take a break before coming back for the massacre the last few days.

Unfortunately, I am in no position to spend a bunch of money on materials to build a secure chicken coop. I couldn't continue watching the monster pick the little guys off one by one. So I put out a call for help to the local chicken group, and people swooped in and took the chickens home. One lady took most of them - including the older hens who need a retirement home), a couple others went here and there. All nice homes, and I know the chickens are safe now. Hopefully the predator will move on once it realizes it's food source is gone.

I'll miss having chickens, but I wasn't interested in finding any more of my little feathered buddies torn apart in the coop. After the last kill some of the chickens didn't even want to go in the coop! But we got them put away and checked every corner with flashlights for any lurking predators, and then left them locked inside the secure coop until they left for their new homes. So that is the end of chickens for now...

_

Another one down

2011-06-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

I lost another pullet last night from my rapidly dwindling chicken flock. I locked the chickens up last night, and when I let them out this morning there was a bunch of feathers on the floor of the coop, and a depression in the bedding with one wing in it - ugh! One more pullet gone :( I don't know what is going into the coop and eating an entire pullet at a time (they are pretty big), but I don't want it hanging around and moving on to the dogs and cats. I'm considering getting rid of all the chickens. I don't want to keep opening the doors to find one more chicken torn to pieces every morning!

Update:

And by evening we were one more down! At sunset the white chicken didn't want to go into the coop. I got them all in and did a count:

7 chicks
3 buff hens
2 blue/gold hens
1 white hen

I came back later with a flashlight and found the missing chick dead in the coop, pulled back under the shelf behind the nest boxes. Dave helped me check all around and couldn't find any critters lurking in the coop. We caught the chicks and put them in the big brooder box, since that will be more secure, and closed it all up. We'll see if anyone else gets eaten before morning.

_

Jack won't go outside...

2011-06-10T15:01:00.001-07:00

Until he's had his breakfast! Until then he tries to distract me with tricks in a blatant display of passive resistance. Clever boy!

Chicken count

2011-06-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening after Beautiful disappeared, one of the young chickens got out of the run area and the dogs chased and cornered it. I rescued it and it looked ok, but it was dead in the coop this morning :(

I put an ad on CL to sell some of the extra chickens, and sold two adults, one buff and one blue/gold.

update: another lady showed up and bought two blue/gold hens and the baby rooster. Good day for selling chickens!

Current chicken count

9 March pullets
2 Blue/Gold Hens
3 Buff O Hens
1 Splash Hen

I think a coyote ate Beautiful :(

2011-06-08T19:20:00.000-07:00

So this year I've lost all 8 of the chicks that Mama hen hatched, I think one of the pullets has disappeared, and today I found LOTS of feathers in the orchard, and the only hen we couldn't account for was Beautiful, who's usually clucking around under my feet :( Not a good year!

As of tonight I have:

11 March chicks (10 girls and a boy)
5 Blue/Gold Hens
4 Buff O Hens
1 Splash Hen

_

The return of MudDog

2011-06-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

Sunny days mean going out into the pasture to enjoy the grass and the cool water in the swale, which means...

The return of MudDog!

I'm surprised Barclay would even let her stand next to his white coat!

Dogs on the bed

2011-06-01T00:46:00.000-07:00

This morning the dogs were hogging the bed, trying to push us off. I got fed up and said in my most stern voice 'Enough! Both of you OFF the bed right now!' and Navi sat up real tall, with her ears back, and gave me the most shocked look! Then she squinted and bent over for a good look at me like 'Are you ok? You never talk like that!' then both her and Barclay pounced on me with waggy tails and tried to lick me to death! Then they settled right back where they were in the first place! Intimidation FAIL on my part! I've told people that alpha-dog BS doesn't work on Eskimos :)

_

Memorial Weekend Camping - Day 2

2011-05-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

The next morning we all had a great breakfast together (I brought fresh eggs from our chickens) and afterwards someone had the brilliant idea to bring out a puzzle - which quickly became a community effort! I wasn't too keen on puzzles, but I found a piece and then it was addictive, I had to hang around and find a few more.

The dogs spent most of the time with us on leash, but occasionally they had to hang out in the yard while we were at meals.

I distracted them by giving them chewies to work on while we were having meals.

After lunch Dave got into a card game.

Eventually the dogs got so comfortable in their yard they started wrestling and playing - it was nice they had enough room to run around a little bit off leash!

Our van, along with several other large tow vehicles, were recruited as 'wind breaks' to help shelter the gathering area from the chill winds that were blowing through pretty much all weekend. That actually worked pretty well, and when someone had to move a truck to drive into town, we really missed it!

This was Navi's first camping trip, and she did great. We gave her dramamine before leaving, but she still threw up on the trip down. She was a bit nervous about all the attention, even though Barclay was setting a great example of how to schmooze people for treats and lovin', so she went with a 'bark first, ask questions later' policy. She did pretty good though, she just needs to get out more. For the trip home we gave her extra dramamine, and she still threw up. Poor pup! But she was such a good sport about the whole thing.

Soon, another great long weekend in our Airstream was over. Everything in the trailer worked fine. It's so nice that the trailer has finally gotten most of the bugs worked out. Once we got home it gave us a little trouble emptying the black tank, and the last night there we ran out of battery power, but all in all, it did really good, and like always, it was a comfortable place to call home base.

_

Memorial Weekend Camping - Day 1

2011-05-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

We arrived in beautiful Trout Lake, WA, at the foot of Mt..hey, where's the mountain?

This is our annual Memorial Weekend trip to meet our Airstream friends. This time we had about 10 trailers, which is a smaller party than usual. A lot of people had to cancel at the last minute.

Many of the regulars were there as usual, and brought instruments, because it just isn't a party until the music starts up.

We got our little trailer setup, along with the new 'dog yard'! This really worked brilliantly. The dogs enjoyed having space to hang out and watch the goings-on.

When we were just hanging out in the trailer, it made the trailer seem bigger because the dogs could be outside enjoying the sunshine.

The weather was kind of crazy. Storms kept blowing through, and it was one of the coldest visits we've had there! It's been a late spring all over in the NW, and this place felt like it could have snowed at any time!

Dave wanted to snap a picture of me and Barclay in front of the mountain. I tried to smile, I don't know why it looks like a grimace!

We spent downtime hanging out in the trailer until the storms passed.

When the sun came back out we took the dogs for a walk to see the stream where it crossed the main road. It was really high and roaring!

We got a glimpse of the mountain at last.

We cooked potato-dish for the potluck and then hung around the campfire, catching up with friends.

Even though it was cold, the mountain rewarded us with a pretty show at sunset.

_

Something killed a couple chicks :(

2011-05-26T17:30:00.000-07:00

I went into the coop this afternoon to gather eggs and found two of the mama hen's chicks dead in the coop. It looked like something had bit their necks. This was one of the gold ones, and Speckles :( The blue chick was nowhere to be found, so I guess whatever killed them carried him away. There are just two nervous gold chicks remaining. This is the worst luck ever. I started with eight, and I'm down to two! First time we've had any predation in the coop too. I've lost a few hens to the local hawks, but this was clearly something that went into the coop and attacked them while they were sleeping.

_

Where I volunteer

2011-05-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

They made this great video to help explain what they do for kids. I'm proud to be able to help out here!

_

Rode a horse today!

2011-05-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

Today Dave and I worked in the yard for an hour or so, cutting down blackberries, fighting with the lawnmower, and using the new electric string trimmer. So my back was getting tired by the time I left for the barn in the afternoon.

I got to the barn and no one had cleaned the stalls yet, so I got to work on that. My back was aching a bit, but I just remembered to lift with my legs. Cleaning stalls is good exercise! I got the stalls done just as my boss came out and she started sweeping up while I did the water buckets - more heavy lifting.

We got the stalls all ready and were waiting for the kids to show up for afternoon riding, and since there were only going to be two kids, and they already knew how to ride, she said we could ride with them and we'd just do some follow-the-leader in the outdoor arena. At first I was like, oh, I don't need to ride, but she encouraged me to give it a shot, so I said 'which horse?' She said I could use Ashley, because she is pretty big and stocky. Since I had been helping little tiny kids ride Ashley last weekend, I knew she was very mellow and well behaved, so I said ok. She said if Ashley senses you aren't a skilled rider, she just goes slower, instead of taking off with you.

Well, the kids didn't show up, so the four volunteers ended up just saddling up and heading out and riding around for about an hour. It was fun to just be free-riding around, doing figure eights and walking around the arena, watching the horses and cows out in the big pastures. I had to convince Ashley to trot, maybe she thought I wasn't up to it! I'd say that's good judgement on her part - I need a lot of work on riding a trot! But it was fun to try a little!

I took it pretty easy because the riding wasn't much easier on my back than the rest of the day had been! It was great fun, that's definitely a fringe benefit of helping out at the stables! When I'd had enough I let someone else ride Ashley and I took one of the other horses back to the barn and got her un-tacked and ready to go out for the night, then I helped bring in the horses who were going to spend the night indoors, and take food out to some of the ones that were staying outside. There's always lots of work to do, but it's fun too. All in all, a great day!

_

Working on the car!

2011-05-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

Working on my pony. I decided to stop ruining clothes every time I worked on it by buying the least flattering coveralls in the world. Well, what can you do, it's hard to look glamorous when you're up to your elbows in a greasy old engine! I do appreciate them when I have to crawl under the car though!

Today I got most of the hoses removed, along with the alternator. I got the fan shroud removed, but a hardline from the tranny to the radiator is holding up removing the actual radiator. I'm also still contemplating how to remove the power steering pump. I have the shop manuals for my car, but all the info on power steering says 'all except mustang' - that's helpful!

If I can get the PS pump and the AC lines out of the way, I'll be very close to being able to pull the engine. I'm thinking of pulling the engine separate from the tranny, leaving the tranny in place. My top secret goal would be to get the engine rebuilt and put it all back together enough to run and drive to the Mustang show at the end of July. Extremely unlikely, at my pace I won't even have gotten the engine out by then, but a girl can dream!

Jack has settled back in just fine

2011-05-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

Jack is pretty happy here. He's back to his normal self. I guess he's a keeper.

Family portrait! I liked this shot because I got three neat pictures out of it!

Cropped to just the eskies...

cropped to a strikingly symmetrical Barclay. Fun :)

_

Chicken update

2011-05-20T17:11:00.000-07:00

The little baby chicks I got in March are all grown up - half size, to be exact. Here they are in the back behind two of the full grown chickens.

Here's a couple of them roosting next to an adult hen. The chicks are very sweet, and I can pick them up without much fuss. They are going to be nice birds. I'm tempted to keep the whole group and have a nice flock of Buff O's next year for selling hatching eggs out of. Maybe I could put that giant incubator to work.

I finally captured Mama Hen's babies and put them in the brooder. She had completely abandoned them, and they weren't even feathered out yet! They were all huddling together out in the yard, getting rained on, and I decided enough was enough! I want to see these little girls (I hope) grow up, I'm particularly curious to see what 'Speckles' looks like.

About two weeks ago a friend gave me back a hen I gave her last year as a chick.

The hen is a Splash Orpington. My friend and I bought ten chicks last year to split, and I ended up giving mine to her as well. She raised them, had some trouble with coyotes, gave away the roos, and ended up with just this one splash hen left! Since she was switching her flock over to dark egglayers, she gave this girl to me.

The first day she was here, I got a call from the neighbors asking if I had lost a chicken. 'Maybe', I said, 'what's it look like'. 'It's white'. 'Yeah, I'll be right over'. Apparently the other girls had run her off, and she'd gone looking for greener pastures.

This morning I heard the dogs barking, and went out to see what was up, and she had jumped out of the chicken yard again, and apparently the dogs had chased her all over and finally cornered her under a bush. When I got out there Jack was watching, Navi was running in circles, and Barclay was barking at the poor chicken from about 6 inches away trying to get her to run so he could chase her some more! Her tail feathers were scattered all over! While I was rounding up dogs (calmly, and telling them how good they were for not eating her), Navi ran up to her and sniffed at her and ran away again. I was glad to see nobody was actually trying to kill her! Finally I got the dogs put away and got the chicken back in the yard where she belonged. She's lucky all she lost was her tail! She could have been doggie breakfast!

Little black kitchen ants

2011-05-16T12:25:00.000-07:00

Every spring our kitchen is invaded by little black 'sugar ants' - tiny little black ants that send their scouts in looking for any drops of sugary juice we may have left on the countertop. Usually these invasions are short, we wipe up the mess, keep the kitchen immaculately clean for a couple weeks, and when they can't find any food they go away, and we can quit obsessively sweeping up crumbs. I believe in 'live and let live', and the ants are really pretty harmless, so every spring I just wait them out until they move on to outdoor food sources.

But perhaps because of the long wet spring we've been having, the ants moved in to stay. They were here for over a month when we started to get really tired of them. They would find something to eat and lead the whole column back to devour it, or there would just be scouts crawling all over the place hoping to get lucky. We cleaned the kitchen several times, and they disappeared, only to turn up in the master bathroom - they had found an open bag of cough drops!

I got rid of the cough drops and cleaned the bathroom spic & span, and they moved back to the kitchen. There always seemed to be some little speck they would find in the sink or on the counter, and the invasion would commence once again. The final straw came when Dave brought home a milkshake and tossed the cup in the garbage, and the next morning the garbage was overrun with hundreds of them swarming all over the cup! Enough was enough!

So I looked up on the internet for ant remedies. I didn't want to be putting poison down that the dogs might get into. I didn't want to be spraying poison all over the place. I finally saw a remedy that looked pretty harmless - sugar and Borax. It said the ants would take it back to the hive and feed it to the queen, and that would be the end of the ant hive. Ok, I felt a little bad about that, but my kitchen was crawling with ants, and I occasionally spotted them in other parts of the house, just looking for more cough drops, and it was time to draw the line.

So I mixed 50/50 sugar and Borax in a small bowl, and sprinkled some on the ant highway behind the sink up against the backsplash, and put the rest in a tiny bowl under the cupboard by the garbage can. I never saw the ants go anywhere near either. However, the ant population in our kitchen dropped drastically and immediately. The next couple days I only saw an ant or two, and for the last week - not a single one! I would not have believed it would work so quickly or completely, and using stuff I actually had in the house. So, sorry ants, I hope it didn't wipe out the whole bunch of them, but if they don't come back next spring, it's not like I'll miss them!

_

Jack came back!

2011-05-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

Jack was so depressed at his new home, despite the constant attention of a stay-at-home mom and visiting grandkids, and daily walks, and a woods to explore, that he stopped eating! So they called me up and said they didn't know what else to do for him, he was so sad and mopey, and they just wanted him to be happy again. An hour later he was back at our house, bounding around and wagging his tail and playing with the eskies.

He's a nice dog, so I can't complain too much about him being back. I was really enjoying having only two dogs for a week there. One good thing is that I was finding I didn't want to take one eskie and leave the other one at home alone, and now whichever one stays home will always have company.

But I'm still trying to figure out how to take these guys camping at the end of the month.

Bird fight!

2011-05-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

I was sitting outside with the dogs when I heard a commotion and spotted a big Red Tail Hawk heading in our direction from the trees south of us.

Then I noticed he was being tailed by a gutsy little crow

They fussed and cawed and screeched as the crow chased and dive bombed the big hawk, until the crow decided the hawk was far enough away. The crow turned and flew home, leaving the hawk to do a few lazy circles over our pasture before heading off towards the hills to the north.

Flying dogs

2011-05-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

I was out having fun taking pictures of the dogs this afternoon.

I wanted to get a picture of them playing stick-ball.

That's their 'flirt pole', is a ball on a rope on the end of a stick. I swing the stick around, they chase it and jump in the air to grab it.

They do the most amazing, acrobatic high jumps snatching the ball out of the air, but it's really hard to photograph, partly because it happens so fast, but also because my hands are full with the stick! Barclay particularly does some incredible calculating to guess where the ball will go and is often hanging in the air waiting for it when it arrives!

After that catch Barclay got distracted by Dave coming home, which left Navi a chance to chase it without Barclay the Stick-Ball-Hog getting in the way!

But finally Barclay swept back in to show her how it's done!

Out with the old...

2011-05-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

The first pair helped me lose 33 pounds in 5 months, lets see what the second pair can do!

_

Working out at the barn

2011-05-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

I was planning to run a c25k routine this evening after I got home from volunteering at the barn, but instead I got some unexpected exercise. First I got there and got to clean stalls and refill water buckets, which I consider excellent strength training! Then I was helping a little 5 year old girl ride a shetland pony, Buttons, and instead of working in the arena, they decided to have class outside in the outdoor arena. Unfortunately we didn't realize until we were out there that it was pretty muddy in places, easily up to my ankles here and there, just a few inches in other spots, and you never knew from one step to the next if you'd be sinking in or not! I was glad I wore my heavy hiking boots!

So we started out walking around the arena, and here's something funny - we stopped because I saw something come shooting out of the grass in front of us and onto the dirt, and it was a 2 ft long garter snake, and it was chasing a bright green tree frog! The snake lunged and caught the frog by the foot, and the little girl was so surprised she dropped the pony's lead and ran to watch, and that snake swallowed that frog whole, and then slithered back off into the grass! I've never seen anything like it!

So we were walking around the arena and it was some hard walking for me, sticky mud and heavy boots! We got the girl mounted up and I was leading her, and then I unhooked the lead and my job was just to walk alongside her and make sure Buttons didn't take her for an unexpected ride. Well, she was a confident little girl, and about half the time she wanted to trot! So I'm jogging alongside trying to keep up, then we'd walk, then we'd trot, round and round for about 45 minutes! Towards the end I was thinking I had done about all I had in me, and I think the teacher saw it too and said 'lets just walk Buttons now so she can cool off before we put her away' and I was like 'thank you!' - we all had a laugh :)

So I think that was my intervals for the day. Running in that mud was SO hard! I thought about wearing my Heart Rate Monitor before I left but I thought, oh, I never really get my heartrate up just walking around the arena, so I wouldn't count it as cardio anyway - apparently I should have worn it, I'd like to know how hard I was working - my perceived effort says I was working pretty danged hard!

Afterwards we put Buttons in her stall and brought her some carrots and apples and I showed the little girl how to hold her hand out and feed her her treats, but she was scared and just tossed them on the floor for Buttons to eat. I fed Buttons a few treats out of my hand, and she was very gentle. What a sweet little pony! As always it was great fun helping a kid ride, and this time I enjoyed getting my exercise for the day too!

_

Dog Yard for the trailer

2011-05-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

We have a camping trip coming up, and I'm planning to take both dogs. I thought having a little 'yard' for them would be a lot of help. Our trailer is very small, and space around the door is crowded. So I took our X pens and spent most of the day making this:

I can make it bigger by adding more panels. Most of the time was spent figuring out how to work around the step.

I ended up cutting a panel in half, and then cutting one of the halfs in half again, and made this three piece panel to go under the step. I topped it with some flexible water pipe to protect our hands (you can see the pokey side on the right I have yet to do). This will make it so we can just open the trailer door and let the dogs out into the yard. That will be really nice for morning potty breaks! Also I won't have to worry about Navi dashing out the door running off to annoy the neighbors.

Barclay's ready to go camping. He's waiting in the van!

Jack moves on

2011-05-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

First off, I have to say Jack is a very nice dog. He's well behaved, and you hardly even notice he's around. He mostly sleeps and begs for food, and occasionally plays with the other dogs. His downsides would be that the baying really gets on my nerves, like nails on a chalkboard, and that he is kind of a third wheel to the eskimo antics that go on around here. The eskimos are in-your-face, lets go have some fun, constant interaction party dogs! They are always thinking of new things to do, and they want you to join in. They bring you stuff to see if you'll come play or try to get it away. They pretty much overshadow poor Jack in every way, and run circles around him in the yard while he races to keep up with the faster, higher-energy eskies.

So last year I started asking around to see if anyone wanted a dog. I was hoping I could find some friends who were looking so I could keep an eye on how he was doing (though I'm sure he'll do great wherever he goes). Our Eskie friend Sherry put up an ad for him on her bulletin board at work. But after not finding anyone interested, I had kind of given up and figured he was a permanent fixture now. In fact just a couple days ago I asked my friends on FB if anyone could dogsit him while we go camping next month.

Then yesterday I got a call from someone who'd seen the note on the bulletin board. He came over and met jack and they got on great. He was an older guy, getting up towards retirement. He and his wife had a new property with woods to play in, and he was ready to get a dog again. They have grandkids who visit a lot, and Jack loves kids. Sounds like a match made in heaven.

It was still hard to pack up his goodies and send him on his way, though he seemed happy enough about it. The house seems quieter, which is odd because he would have just been sleeping anyway. It will just take some getting used to, I guess. His new owner promised to send me an update and keep in touch, and bring him back if it didn't work out for some reason. I hope it works out great. I know he'll miss the other dogs, but he's such a good dog he deserves to get more attention, and not be the third wheel like he was here!

I'm looking forward to only having to deal with two dogs! That really should be our limit - one per person!

_

Mustang - getting started

2011-05-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

My poor mustang has been sitting ignored for too long, gathering dust and having stuff piled on it. So this week I have been cleaning up the garage, and working toward getting things organized enough to work on it. I set up shelves, got things stored away off the floor so there's room to move, mounted the electric heater back up on the wall. And now it looks like this:

The pile of garbage by the front fender will go away next week on garbage day.

Cleaner and more organized than it's been in quite a while.

My first project will be to get the rusty, oily, mess of an engine out for rebuilding.

Lap dance

2011-05-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

There, that title should get some hits ;)

Dave came in from mowing and sat down in the office, and immediately Mighty took up residence on his leg. Soon Navi jumped up in his lap, even though lap capacity is really only 1 max!

But that was ok, she just sat ON the cat!

So they re-arranged a bit (Dave looks thrilled)...

Hang on, we've almost got it...

Purrfect!