But first, a poodle

Sophie went to the chop shop yesterday. Here she is before:
And after:

Before the storm

"Is that tear gas?"

"No, ma'am, it's pepper spray."

"Can you hold it up for me?"

(irritated, go-away look) "No, ma'am."

I have a bunch of photos of DNC stuff, including the evening roundup of protesters, but I don't have time to get them all up with a coherent narrative right now. You can check out Alice's excellent photos at Denver Stuff in the meantime.

Good times at the DNC

A bit of excitement downtown tonight. More pictures later.

Edit: One picture is here, and more here.

Turn around, dummy

The big blue bear was looking for celebrities.
Had he looked the other way, he would have seen Ted Koppel.

Watching

This week, street fixtures include riot cops.

Silly kitchen gadget No. 18

Maybe you tea-drinkers can explain this one, because I can't figure it out. If you make tea with a stringless teabag, or add anything to your coffee or tea, you need a spoon. That I understand. And at first it seemed kind of cute and clever to me, this spoon that is bent so that it can be hung on the lip of a cup.

But think about it. Would you drink your tea with the spoon still hanging there? I don't think so. You'd risk it falling off into your lap, or dripping tea on your nice white dry-clean-only blouse. Probably right before an important meeting.

So you'd use it to fish out the teabag and stir your tea (or coffee), and then you'd set it on a saucer or napkin just as you would any ordinary spoon that doesn't have a bendy bit and cost $5.

So ... why?

Bug-eyed

Do I attract interesting bugs or am I just really attuned to them?

No one could help but notice this fellow, seeing as how he was really large and bright green against my living room wall. He was at least three inches long.

He moved quite slowly, too, gingerly stepping one skinny leg at a time up the plaster, and not too concerned about my lens so close. Which was good, since the light was not great and I hate using flash in a situation like this. I didn't want to wash him out, and I was afraid it would frighten him off. I braced the camera against the wall and set it on a long exposure.

Click on any photo to see it larger.
After he meandered around for a bit, I put a plastic cup over him, slid some paper over the top and put him outside on the honeysuckle vine.
Do you know what kind of bug he is? He looks like a leaf-hopper on steroids.

Edit: Answered my own question by image-Googling "big green bug" and poking around a bit. He's a katydid. Sometimes called a long-horned grasshopper but more closely related to crickets. We have quite the chorus of them these days! They're not known to be particularly destructive in gardens, so I'm glad I didn't hurt him.

Amusing times at the DNC

Guess where I got to go last night?
A journalist friend got me a of couple tickets to the Democratic National Convention's media party at Elitch Gardens, a big amusement park in the middle of Denver, next to the Pepsi Center, where the convention will be held. This is probably the closest I'll get to Obama all week. The guy above was painting the portrait as we watched.

The party was not just for media, but for the delegates and VIPs and anyone else who could wrangle a ticket. There were a lot of hangers-on like us; people whose friends or spouses work in media or PR or politics or hospitality. Hospitality was the operative word of the evening.
Free mojitos! Or cosmos, or wine. Lots of great food, too.

And friendly people! I went with my friend Beeb, who is a lot more celebrity-savvy than me. While I'm a lot bolder with my camera (especially since she forgot hers). It was a combination that worked in her favor. "Look! There's the governor!" she'd say, or, "Hey, it's the mayor!"
Picture time! That's Beeb with Gov. Bill Ritter on the left, and Mayor John Hickenlooper on the right. They were good sports.

Later we saw them on the stage (with Sen. Ken Salazar and City Councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth, chairwoman of the DNC Host Committee), welcoming everyone.
While they were talking, all the photogs rushed up close to the stage to take pictures and video. So I trotted up there, too. Why not? It was fun to take pictures of the picture-takers.

After the speeches were over, the lights went down and the Flobots came on stage. They're a local band, and play a mix of classical and hip-hop. They are involved in a lot of activism, too. Good music!

Note all the lit-up cellphone screens. Barb was saying, "It used to be lighters."
Then we headed out to the midway. There were acrobats from Cirque du Soleil all over doing mini-performances, and the midway games were giving away prizes freely. Some people were hauling around huge stuffed animals. I opted for a goofy pink monkey that would fit in my bag, at the booth where they try to guess your age (and not very convincingly).

But Beeb really wanted to go on the rollercoaster.
Here's a blurry shot of our feet as we go up. It's called the Mind Eraser, and you are suspended under the track, with your feet dangling, and at some points you are upside-down. This is the only shot I got, because HOLYSHIT! it is insane! I nearly lost my glasses, so I spent the whole ride trying to hang onto them by one earpiece and screaming my head off.

	Then we rode the Tower of Doom, a much simpler set-up that drops you in free-fall for a split second. I left my bag, shoes and glasses on the ground for this one. It's totally awesome. Then I had some cotton candy and another drink.

Everyone we met was having a great time. There were people from all over the country, including these two delegates from Detroit, all shwagged out.
After the crazy rides, I wanted something a little mellower. The ferris wheel appealed.
We rode it with a couple of students who were doing volunteer work at the DNC. The view was great! From the swaying car this was the best shot I could get with a long exposure.
When we landed, it was time to head home again. I was glad we had taken light-rail and didn't have to drive. I confess I'm a little hungover today! But it's a good hangover.

Sad, sad day

I actually saw this ad before I knew, and thought, "How sad. And how coincidental that the herd is the same kind of goats as mine."

It wasn't a coincidence.

Though the farmer lives in the country, and everyone has horses, cows and chickens, the covenants bar goats and swine. With better neighbors, no one would have cared, as everyone bends the rules in one way or another. But one asshole neighbor complained. A lot.

The goats left today. The farmer is heartbroken, as am I.
One saving grace: the buyer runs an "urban farm" for disadvantaged kids to come learn about animals and agriculture. Cutie, Sweetie, Lafawnduh and James, along with the little girl goats whose names I never knew, will get lots of petting and love in their new home.

The chickens will stay, as they are allowed. Some of them look pretty silly. I'll go back and see them again when they start laying.

The cows are staying for now, but the farmer is waffling on keeping them, as it will be another 10 months at least before Annabelle/Daisy May will calve and start milking. Dozer may stay only long enough to do the one thing he's supposed to.

It costs a lot to keep a cow, especially ones that aren't producing, and the goats had to be sold for much less than they're worth.

I'll miss the critters. A lot.

Missing limb restored

Hooray! I am camera'd again. After being forced to pay overnight/Saturday-delivery shipping charges because the stupid camera store screwed me up.

The story is complicated and boring. But I'll tell it anyway. I ordered an exact replacement of my old camera, a 5-megapixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX7 at the store. I was told only black was available. But the store's website said there was also a brown, 7.2-megapixel DMC-FX07 available for the same price.

(Yes, the DMC-FX7 and the DMC-FX07 are different cameras. What the hell, Panasonic? Would it kill you to number your models in a way that makes sense to us mere mortals?)

It turns out the store and the website are two separate entities. But Mr. Commission at the store failed to get back to me with that information despite repeated phone calls, until yesterday when I talked to his boss. So I paid more for shipping (needed the camera today!) and I have to go back to the store for a refund on the one I ordered there.

The DMC-FX07 is usually $300, but was on sale for $170 because – get this – nobody likes brown. Well, I do!

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, you just might find ...You get what you need!

(There must be a website somewhere with celebrity look-alike produce. Can you find it for me?

Hmmm, or maybe eBay ...? Hell, yes! Here's the listing!)

Outside the cabin

More scenes from the cabin. The driveway is open and welcoming. It used to be much more wooded, until a tornado marched right down the middle. Thankfully the storm hopped right over the cabin.
The back of the cabin faces the driveway, so it doesn't look like much as you enter.
But I love the stairs leading to it. I could run up these stairs in my sleep. In the winter they make a great sled run.
On the way up the stairs there's a welcoming committee of turtle and toad:
The front of the cabin faces the lake.
Perhaps most important are the stairs to the beach.
If you're lucky, thimbleberry season isn't over yet. The berries grow wild on the slopes near the beach, and also along sunny verges. I haven't seen them anywhere else. If you find a lot you could make jam, but usually there's only enough to eat them one by one. They're more tart than raspberries, but of the same family. The leaves are much bigger, and they have no thorns.

If the water is calm, you can take a kayak out. But I usually prefer to stay on the beach, wading in the shallows and looking for pretty rocks.

Cooped up

Went to pick up milk today. Suddenly the little girl goats who used to be shy or indifferent were eager to get some attention from me. You can see from my hand that they're still pretty small.
I wish the photo were better, but I'm stuck using my phone until my new camera arrives. There's been a little snafu with that I'll post on once it's resolved.

The chicken coop is finally completed, too:
The farmer got two small shipping containers to use for storage. They're set against the hillside with a space between them, which was roofed over and enclosed in front. The biddies should be safe from nighttime predators now. Hawks are another story.

Chipmunk whisperer

I posted a photo of me at 12 taking photos of chipmunks at the cabin. I found one of the actual snaps I took then, but I know I have a better one in an album I can't find (in a box, I'm sure). Meantime, I found this one of me at 19, when I'd just come back from working in France (I can tell by the jacket I bought in Paris.)

In the spring, the chippies emerge from semi-hibernation and are ravenously hungry. If you have peanuts, you can tame them easily just by sitting still. They carefully stuff three whole peanuts in their fat cheeks then run off to hide them.

The chippies we tamed were always very gentle. Sometimes they would mistake your finger for a peanut, testing it with their teeth, but they never bit down, just backed off and kept looking. I don't recall ever being bitten for real, and I handled a lot of chipmunks.

OK, it was bugging me that I didn't know where that album was, so I went in search. It was in the next logical place. Kudos to me for being organized! (I haven't always been.)
Sometimes we would put peanuts in a milk bottle. A chipmunk would go in, stuff his cheeks, and then be too fat-faced to get out again. You can only do this once with each chippie, though, because he'll figure out pretty quickly how to push the peanuts out one at a time and then carry them off.

Have you ever tamed any wild critters? How did you do it?

Some things I love inside the cabin

Bear with while I try to stretch out my vacation with a pictures I didn't get to post earlier. Here are some of the things that make the cabin special.

My brother and I used to bicker over who got to sleep in the window bed, until he got too tall to be comfortable in it. Small wonder that the window seat in my house was a big selling point when I first saw it.
The fireplace kept us warm on winter visits and on cool nights the rest of the year. (No one winters there now. When I was a kid we would haul our stuff in on skis and sleds; there was no running water and we had to use the outhouse.) I hardly remember what picture used to be over the fireplace. Mom's seagulls fit there perfectly now. On the mantel there's always a collection of interesting odds and ends. Candles, pictures, driftwood ...
The built-in shelves still hold an assortment of books from my grandparents' days. Including some Reader's Digest condensed books. Are those even printed anymore? And rocks with kids' names painted on them.
The door to the cabin is a Dutch door. You can open the top when you want a little air in the kitchen.
And the door handles throughout the cabin are of a style I've never seen anywhere else. If you need to "lock" the bathroom door, you can just stick a toothbrush on top of the bar to keep it from lifting up.
Have you ever seen door handles like these?