Poodle party

Meet Lucy and Jackson. Jackson is 4 months old. Lucy is about 2 years old. They are my cousin's dogs

Lucy and Jackson play well together.

Jackson is very cute, being a puppy and all.

But can his cuteness persuade Leo to drop the ball?

Well, no, not really.

But there were enough other balls around so it was OK.

(Note how Jackson is very "paw-y." Poodles tend to use their paws a lot like cats do.)

Sophie and Lucy romped a little, too.

Many more dog park photos are here on Flickr.

Foxy

I keep seeing foxes in my alley or in the neighborhood when I come home from work late in the evening. They're always too quick for me to get a decent photo, slipping away under a fence or around a corner.

I had a moment of hope again the other night when I pulled into the alley and saw two pairs of glowing eyes just past my garage. But it was only two cats, pitching woo.

I had better luck – indeed, most excellent luck – last spring, when I woke to find a pair bedded down in my backyard in broad daylight:



Too bad about the not-so-great camera plus window screens making for poor photos, but really, how cool is that?

(It also led to an awkward moment when I called the teenage boy who lives next door and blurted out "Are you in your bedroom?" – his window looks out on my backyard.

He thought the foxes were awesome, too.)

A shout-out to my Peeps

Free samples of marshmallowy goodness!
The chocolate ones aren't bad at all. I didn't try the sugar-free ones made with Splenda. Or the green ones. Maybe tomorrow. I'm sure they'll still be there.

Peeps are much maligned, but I love 'em. You can send me yours.

Along with all your black jelly beans.


Are Peeps really "perishable"? I think not.

The mean streets of Denver

When the streets are better suited to four-wheeling, you'd think it might be best to leave the $70K sports car in the garage.

This one was completely blocking the street, high-centered on its right side, with no owner in sight. (Probably somewhere trying desperately to raise AAA on the phone.)

A few cars came down the street. Each crept close as its driver contemplated the wisdom of trying to squeeze between the pricey Porsche and the parked pickup. On solid, well-rutted ice. All chose instead to back up and find another route.

I'm reminded of a joke: A broke and desperate woman was trying to find work in a wealthy neighborhood. She knocked on the door of a fancy house and told the man who answered that she would be willing to do any odd job for $50. The guy, a real skinflint, saw his opportunity and said with a sneer, "Fine, you can paint the porch. There's paint in the garage."

About 20 minutes later, while he was still chortling and congratulating himself on getting such cheap labor, there was another knock on the door.

"I'm all done," the woman said, "but I have to tell you, that's not a porch out there, it's a Ferrari."

What I'm reading:"Oracle Bones" by Peter Hessler

I read Hessler's "River Town" a while back and enjoyed it.

After a stint as a Peace Corps teacher in China (the subject of "River Town"), Hessler got a job as a news clipper for The Wall Street Journal in Beijing, and also wrote freelance for numerous publications. This book looks at life in China from his perspective and that of the people he meets, including his former students and newer friends. Their stories are interspersed with snippets about Chinese history that place events in context.

It's quite an engaging read, and lends itself well to reading in short bursts, as I have been doing lately.

Sunny yesterday, snowy today

It was a lovely day Friday to hit the slopes.

And now, because it's the weekend, it must be snowing. Sixth week in a row.

Or, as Sophie says, sixth week in arooooooooo!

Skiing by day, hockey by night

Sticks n Stitches night at the Colorado Avalanche! They're playing Phoenix. Phoenix? Not the first place that springs to mind when you're talking hockey. Knitting, though . . . totally hockey.

Goody!

Hey look! I won a goody bag from my friend's blog, Covetable. A drawing courtesy of BussBuss. A t-shirt, bikini, scarf, camo leggings, jewelry, hand lotion, magazines. Fun! I particularly like the scarf. It's got nice colors, and one can never have too many warm fuzzy scarves. I'll be interested to see how well the bikini fits, too.

A walk in the park

It was a little windy at the park today.
We met some other poodles.
After the introductions, the oodles of poodles all ran around.
Lannie and Leo engaged in their usual mock battles.

And Sophie practiced walking on air.

Call me Sisyphus

Get up! Get up! Get up!

An hour ago, a certain someone (I'm not naming names) was very insistent that I get my butt out of bed.

Ahem. An hour later, who's sacked out?

So much for debate

The domain was available!

Eventually I'll move this blog to www.kittalog.com. But probably not for a while.

For now, the domain will forward to here.

So I'm debating ...

Should I change the name of this blog? It's evolved beyond knitting, and the addition of "& Other Bits" is kludgy.

I want something that's just one or two words, easy to remember, and somewhat distinctive. I was thinking "Kittalog" might work

Any other suggestions?

The truck's tale

Remember this firetruck? I posted a photo of it a while back as a neighborhood curiosity.

Finally ran into the guy who owns it. In Germany, firetrucks have to be decommissioned after x number of years, no matter what kind of shape they're in, so these things turn up on the market once in a while, he told me.

(Oops, a discovery: hitting CTRL-S in Blogger automatically publishes your post! Even if you're not done with it!)

So anyway, this guy found the truck online and bought it for $6,000, then paid another $2,500 to get it shipped to Baltimore, then drove it across the country until it blew a valve in Kansas, then had it towed the rest of the way. It's a 1978 truck, with 23,000 miles on it.

He was going to use it as a workshop (he said it's quite roomy inside), but now he's thinking of turning it into party central for ski and snowboard events. He's a former pro boarder and former DJ, so he's thinking of mounting some giant speakers on top and getting corporate sponsorships. He's got one already from Never Summer boards, and is looking at Red Bull and the like.

He also wants to put it on a Unimog drive train (that's one pictured at right), which will raise it up and make it a better vehicle for mountaineering.

"Duuuude!"

Winter antidotes

Yep, another week, another snowstorm. I'm guessing this one dropped about 8 inches throughout the day. Sophie, of course, enjoys it. I don't mind walking in it, and shoveling's not that arduous, but boy, are the roads treacherous.
A good antidote (despite the white-knuckle drive there) was a pedicure accompanied by chitchat, People magazine and good coffee.

It may be winter out, but my toes say summer!

I had just enough time afterward to white-knuckle it home again, shovel, boil some pasta (isn't bow-tie pretty?) and get to work. I'm sure glad I made that sauce last night! It turned out quite tasty.Yum.

Stick-to-your-ribs sauce

It's supposed to snow more tonight and tomorrow. (Will it ever stop?) Lacking a nice thick bison steak, I opted to make good cold-weather, meaty spaghetti sauce. I use Mark Bittman's basic recipe for Bolognese, but with double the meat, pretty much. Packaged, ground beef and pork at Safeway is a pound per package, and I don't feel like messing around with repackaging leftover raw meat just to use the 1/2 pound of each that Bittman calls for.

My house smells divine.

Bison auction video

Yakkety Yak

I'm sorry this first photo is blurry. Nice yaks.
Awwww, baby yak.
Just look at those eyelashes!
This is Shirley.
Shirley likes me.

Buffaloed

A lot of people are interested in the bison auction. First the winning meat bison are sold off. These are animals that were raised for meat, brought to the slaughterhouse at Greeley, and had their carcasses judged for qualities such as fat color, muscle and size of ribeye. The "gold medal" carcass, all 760 pounds of it, went for $10 a pound to Ted's (as in Turner) Montana Grill. That doesn't include processing and packaging.

Some of these folks are bidding on meat. Others are waiting for the live auction.These guys are also waiting for the live auction. They send the bison through a series of chutes, one at a time.
The bison end up in the auction ring, and they're none too happy about it. Everyone's careful to stay behind the reinforced gates or up on the podium (it's higher than it looks).
The champion bull and champion cow (pregnant) each went for $14,000.

I shot some video, too. I'll post that later.

These dogs have drive

I always do go the last weekend of the National Western Stock Show to catch the stock dog trials. Usually I watch the sheepdogs, but managed to catch the cattle dogs this year.

The dog has to take three (mutually unacquainted) steers between two barrels to his owner, then away from his owner through a chute, then into a pen at the far end of the arena, then get the steers into a trailer. The owner has to stay right by the trailer the whole time, either whistling or shouting commands.

Taking stock

Welcome to the National Western Stock Show. You can see mules on parade:
Take pictures of the kidlets on a steer:
Let them pet exotic critters such as piglets, goatlets and Labrador retrievers:
See the culmination of countless 4-H projects:
Or buy everything you need to kill things:

More photos to come. Next year I really must get to the show sooner to do a comprehensive survey, instead of waiting until the last weekend.