Retirement Travel and a Weird Mix of Other Stuff
This picture, which was sent to me by e-mail by my cousin last week, pretty much sums things up.
Family photo day was fun. Actually, the photo shoot was a ruse. My mother in law got some old 8mm film converted to DVD and she wanted the family to see it together. It was lots of fun.
First, Mike’s family are coming to visit for a family photo shoot. His Mom likes to do that once a year. The cool thing is, we’ll be having a huge lunch with it (always a plus). And, the family will get to meet Belle.
Second… Ravens football.
Image courtesy of wallpaperbase.In case you live under a rock and don’t know this, the Ravens play the Steelers this afternoon for the AFC Championship. The winner goes to the Super Bowl.
We want the Ravens to win, of course. Because having your own team in the Super Bowl just makes the whole thing so much more fun.
So, go Ravens!
She the cutest and sweetest little dog in the world. Now, I realize I say that a lot, but she is. She’s very smart, too. She’s got The Nose Game all figured out. Both the afternoon version (you can see Meg and C playing if you followed that link) and the before bed version where we hide little pieces of treats all over the bedroom and they hunt them down before going to bed. It’s like an Easter egg hunt every evening. Hubby gets the credit for inventing the doggy games by the way.
Belle’s not only adorable, she’s got spirit, too. She keeps Meg on her toes. Meg is so much happier having a doggie girlfriend around. Even if Belle does run circles around her. That frustrates Meg, and tires her out, but I can tell she’s glad to have a doggie companion.
They still are working on the top dog thing. It’s a complex hierarchical thing. Cesar Milan always refers to it as being the pack leader. It’s little stuff like who goes through doors first, who eats first, who gets pick of what toys, etc. It’s also referred to as dominance. The leader is sometimes called the alpha dog. Some overly dominant alpha dogs will kill to protect their position. Not Meg. She’s just stubbornly dominant. She won’t kill, but she isn’t giving up quietly (Meg’s always been a growler).
It’s fun to see them playing/wrestling. The one who is in the higher position is typically the dominant dog. A dog trying to exert their dominance will stand taller, or put their head or feet over the other’s back, or (gasp!) mount the other dog. There’s been no successful mounting yet, but take a look at the cool action photos I snapped yesterday and tell me who you think is alpha dog at the ToadMama abode.
Belle gives Meg the evil eye to get her to play.
Meg vocalizes her frustration at Belle’s quickness. Belle not only runs fast, she’s got lightning-fast reflexes, too.
She’ll jink this way, feint that way, and literally runs circles around poor ole Meg.
I watch them very carefully to make sure they don’t get carried away. I know they’re not really trying to kill each other because of moments like this when they’ll stop completely, mid-tussle, because they either caught a whiff of something or saw a bird/squirrel/bunny nearby.
The expressions on Meg’s face in these pictures crack me up.
Much to Meg’s chagrin, more often than not, it’s Belle who has the upper hand.
Belle is just too darn quick for Meg.
Meg isn’t giving in easily, though.
She’s trying her darnedest to keep up with the super-fast little Tinkerbelle, who you can see almost always looks like she’s in motion.
Just when I think they’ve had enough, when I think Meg is really getting pissed off and irritated with that fast little shit (what I imagine Meg thinking), I yell for them to stop.
And this is what I get. Take a close look at those faces.
I imagine Belle saying, “What? What’s wrong? We were just playing.”
And Meg thinking, “Aw, Mom, c’mon. Let us stay out a little longer. Please?”
Belle has been a wonderful, welcome addition for all of us.
Just watch the video. Okay? It’s definitely my kind of inauguration celebration. And I am totally jealous of the guy who gets PAID to engineer it.
Back to Thirsty Third Thursday… I really wanted to take pictures, but I didn’t. When Shannon, Amy and I get together on a monthly basis, we’re just too darn busy chatting and catching up on the happenings in each others’ lives to do much other than laugh, drink and laugh some more. Between the three of us, we usually come up with some pretty good stories.
The restaurant we chose last night, a funky little Neapolitan-style pizza eatery just steps from Shannon’s cool apartment called Iggie’s, has a Web page, but it’s not very extensive. By that I mean, not a lot of pictures.
Last night, we gorged ourselves on two pizzas, a Patata and a Verdura Fresca. They’re not your typical, run-of-the-mill meat and cheese pizzas. The Patata is a thin-crust pizza topped with potato, mozzarella, pancetta (that’s MEAT), and taleggio rosemary oil. The Verdura Fresca is topped with seasonal vegetables (last night was red onions…YUM), spinach, pecorino mozzarella and a balsamic reduction.
They were both, well, delightful. Although I didn’t take pictures, one other blogger did. So you can at least see how yummy some of their pizza looks (not the exact pizza we ate, unfortunately). Iggie’s was featured at least once in the Baltimore Sun, too. Since I added a link, I hope it’s okay that I borrowed this picture to share…
So, that was Thirsty Third Thursday for January 2009. It was fun. But, seriously, I’m way too headachy/hungover to write more. And I need to get to work. So I’ll leave you with this…
Happy Friday!
While the thought of seeing an historic inauguration live is tempting, the sane folks in this house will be watching on TV.
Driving in and around DC is daunting on a normal day. Traffic is always very heavy. And the grid, which was purportedly designed intentionally to confuse folks (the invading British), confuses even me. I’m one of those folks with a very good, built-in sense of direction. When I am going places, even if I end up on the wrong road, I generally get where I’m going ’cause I have a very good feel for places/directions.
Not in DC, though.
As one Web site explains: “The well-planned street system is an easy to comprehend grid that is often difficult to maneuver. The north-south streets are numbered and the east-west streets are lettered beginning at the Capitol and extending in both direction. You can have two 3rd streets (one to the east of the Capitol and one to the west), and you can have two “D” streets (one to the north of the capitol and one to the south). That is why the city is divided into quadrants. The intersections of 7th street and “C street” can occur in the NE, SE, NW and SW sectors. You must specify the quadrant to find an address. There is a series of broad avenues that radiate out from the Capitol like the spokes of a wheel. They produce some complex angular intersections that can baffle even the most experienced drivers.”
Although I do want to spend more time in DC before we leave the East Coast for good (no idea when that will be), I’ll wait ’til Obama is safely ensconced in office first. And then I’ll ride down on the train.
Back before we stopped living in Maryland on weekends, I used to spend a lot of time in the yard. I had bird houses and bird feeders. I even had a pond for a while until I got tired of cleaning out the black-water swamp every Spring.
Juncos are happy little birds that winter in these parts. They usually show up in mid-November and stay until maybe April or early May (can’t remember). There are lots of them at our West Virginia place, too.
I felt sorry for them. It was as if some of them were saying, “I know there used to be water here. Food, too.” So I dug around the garage for the birdbath heater. It was the least I could do.
I sat it on top of the ice, added some warm water, and weighted it down with a rock to speed the thawing. Before long, there was a big hole in the middle of the ice block, which made it possible for me to pick the chunk of ice up like a doughnut and toss it onto the ground.
The birds haven’t come back yet. But they will. And I figure they’ll not only entertain me, but the dogs and cats, too. Brittanys are, after all, bird dogs.
In the meantime, speaking of entertainment, when Belle stumbled upon the ice, you’d have thought she discovered gold.
Having her here is like having a toddler in residence. Every day, she discovers something new to be excited about. (You should have seen the look on her face when I gave her a glob of peanut butter to eat!)
She was so excited about the ice, she started carrying pieces around the yard.
It was rather comical to watch.
When she got tired of running with it, she’d stop and crunch on it for a while.
Here’s the now unfrozen birdbath. I’ll try to keep the camera handy to get pictures of the birds when they return. They will return. I guarantee it.