Hawaii photo selected for guide

Got an email today that my photo (posted on Flickr) of the moon over the Kohala coast on the big island of Hawaii was selected for the Schmap Hawaii Sixth Edition.

I've added a cool widget to the sidebar too.

Hawaii dreaming on a cold day ...

Airport reunions - caught for the news

Two of my sisters waited for a third Wednesday night at DIA. A local news team from Fox was on hand and asked Annie who she was waiting for at the place where the trains empty out. She pointed to sister Maggie and said, "ask her." Maggie sniffled a bit and said she was waiting for her twin Sara from Albuquerque, whom she only sees a couple times a year. They showed her waiting and then the hugging as Sara and husband Aaron came up the stairs. Even the newscaster was verklempt. She called Sara when she arrived at the gate to tell her there was a news team but Sara didn't believe her so she was quite surprised to see the real cameras when she came up the stairs.

See the story online.

Fragile, please mangle with care

Have you ever noticed that packages marked "Fragile" always look like they've been attacked by a school of piranha? Lately all packages seem to have a mauled appearence but the ones marked Fragile are the worst for wear. The Fragile seems to irk those in the package handling business. Maybe it's not Italian but a secret, package-handler language that means "please use package for bowling."

Viva la Vida

Coldplay was in town last night for our first concert in almost a year. It was nice to get out but we were sleepy (busy week, we're old, we're parents). We also had the really scary seats -- nice view but I was getting vertigo. The show opened with a band from east Texas, Sleepercar. They were new to me (I joke that I get all my new music from Grey's Anatomy or One Tree Hill, but it's true). They were pretty good.

Coldplay, however, was fantastic. I really like their music. Someone made fun of me a couple of weeks ago when I excitedly mentioned that I was going to the show. This person accused them of being a U2 soundalike. I haven't yet bought the new Coldplay album but have heard a few of the songs. I heard more last night. Funny, to me, they sound like Coldplay!

One of my favorite parts of the concert was when they released all these colored bits of paper (like leaves, or really more like snow) and then turned on the black lights. Very cool.

Cat Food

I'm in the cat food aisle the other day picking up dry food. Our two boys get a mix because one kind is never good enough. So I pick up Indoor Cat, Hairball Remedy, and Urinary Tract Health varieties. I usually add a senior variety to the mix -- since Sebastian is almost 17 and Toby is 12. The food has names like "Active Maturity" and "Vibrant Senior". This describes Sebastian pretty well.

But they don't have "Throw Rug" and "Lazy Lump of Fur" varieties for the lazy one. Oh well, maybe the Active Maturity will get Toby moving more.

After all, he's a model now. Catch his beautiful mug as Mr. June in the 2009 Denver Dumb Friends League calendar. (The picture above).

Duke Gary Winston - we will miss you...

When it comes to our pets, life is really too short. In our Duke's case, it was shorter than most. Just 16 months ago, Mark and I rescued Duke from a local animal shelter. He was a beautiful chocolate brown German Shorthair pup about 8 months old. We got to be with him for about half a day before we handed him off to his new family: my sister Sara, her husband Aaron and their English Pointer, Mollie.

On Wednesday, Duke developed GDV (known as bloat), and his stomach flipped with his intestines twisted around it. They tried emergency surgery but this morning discovered the stitches wouldn't hold. They tried to repair those with a second surgery but he didn't make it.

He joins our Flounder in the land of the slow-moving squirrels, as well as his predecessor Gunner, who died of cancer a month before we rescued Duke. He also joins another sister's two dogs Max and Paisley, whom we also lost this past year.

As hard as it is on all of us, it's probably hardest on poor Mollie who lost two of her companions now.

We'll miss you Duke.

(Belated) Happy New Year

I don't really have a list of resolutions this year. This year is going to be the biggest change of my life so pretty much am going to just take it as it comes. But as usual, hoping to be more organized, set priorities, clear out the clutter, and have fun. :-) An easy list...

Flounder

It just isn't fair, is it? The time we get with our four-legged friends is terribly short.

Our black labrador (a "blabrador" we liked to call her) left us today. It was so quick that I'm not sure it really has sunk in. The last two weeks she had started to slow down, more than her usual arthritic self. Today really wasn't any different. She went out this morning for an all-neighborhood dog emergency bark and seemed a little peppy. Besides the new slowness we attributed to a cut on her leg, nothing really seemed out of the ordinary.

But then she got sick. And in a short time after that vomited blood. We took her to the emergency clinic. In what seems like an even shorter time (although in reality was several hours), she worsened. Her organs started to fail. She went into cardiac arrest in front of me and was brought back.

Then came that inevitable decision. What do you do? Of course, I wanted her to be around for another 10 years. I wanted her to be happy, pain-free, healthy. But there were other plans for her. In the end, we had to let her go. She was too weak for surgery, which only had a slim chance of telling us what was wrong, much less fixing it. It was her time, even if we weren't ready for it.

I knew this was coming someday but didn't think it would be today. Although my intuition was that it would be sooner rather than later. In May, as we crossed the finish line of the Furry Scurry, I felt this overwhelming grief that was her last one.

As we said our goodbyes, my husband through sobs said she was off to the world of slow-moving squirrels, a place she will be very happy.

Now to go on with this huge hole in our lives. I have to tell myself she lived a wonderful life. It may not have been as long as I wanted it to be but it was good. I have to tell myself I made the right decision to let her go. The vet was honest and experienced. He gave us all the options and suggestions. I have to tell myself that people go through all sorts of loss and are able to continue on with life. I have three more furries here with lots of love and a non-furry on the way.

But right now, I just miss my baby girl and the smell of her head.

Rest in peace, Flounder. We love you.

Ms January!

My 2008 Denver Dumb Friends League calendar arrived today. My Flounder is Ms January!

The photo was shot last December after our first big blizzard. Sarah-Dog also is in the calendar on one of the collage pages.

Lost reference in Chuck

One of my new favorite shows is Chuck on NBC. He's a regular Joe, a bit on the geeky side who accidentally downloads government secrets into his head. In Monday night's episode, he is being tested by a doctor to see what he knows. He starts spouting off various secrets and one is "Oceanic flight 815 was shot down ..." which is a reference to the flight that crashed in Lost. Pretty funny (especially since they're on different networks).

It's very unique

I read in the paper about a "blog" on "unnecessary" quotation marks -- ones that are grammatically incorrect but have been added for some strange reason. It's hilarious and oh so sadly true. I work with words all day in many languages and see way too many over used quotation marks.

I was thinking about grammatical things that bug me. One is the use of over, instead of more than. "The committee raised over $2 million." To me, the word "over" means a state of being, such as "the balloon hovered over the field." When we talk about something that can't physically be over something else, it should be "more than."

Another is the word unique. The definition means one-of-a-kind or unparalled. So when someone says "that's very unique," he or she is adding an unnecessary modifier. It's already one-of-a-kind, it can't get more unique than that.

And sometimes plans change

Thankfully our Hawaii trip is flexible (using miles and timeshare, etc) as we now have to postpone it to later. Plans have changed -- mostly for the good but will be better when I am not so sick!

Baby butter bean is what is making me so sick. She doesn't like anything I eat. I have a few more weeks of this and can't wait to be past it. Uhg! Why can't I have the pregnancy you see in movies? These people are hardly sick! Instead of morning sickness, I get 24-hour sickness.

Oh baby butter bean, you better be cute. I'll be reminding you how sick I was every year on your birthday (and probably will have a fun labor story too).

Hawaii on $20

I love it when a plan comes together.

In my crazy frantic last couple of months I began to stress over getting our annual Hawaii trip together. We have a timeshare week this year. I also realized that we both had enough miles for a place ticket each.

Since we wanted to go in September, time was now to get the show on the road. First I called the owner services in Maui. The woman was awesome -- you have to submit your request in writing but email counts. She looked at the dates I requested (based on award dates available from United's site), told me there was a few left and to email immediately. I did and she confirmed it within minutes.

On to the United site, I found good flights for our time frame and booked them. Ends up it's on 35k a ticket for reward miles. We had thought it was 60k per ticket (it's this once the reward miles run out). So total for airfare - $20! So I used 70 of my 85k miles and we still have a whole trip left on Mark's miles.

I love it! I'm dreaming of the sea and sand already. :-)

The people you meet on public transportation

I took the bus downtown a couple of weeks ago to meet friends for an early showing of Harry Potter. While I was taking the 16th Street Mall shuttle, an older woman with a cane came on the bus which was on the full side. "Ma'am", I said, "would you like my seat."

"No, No," she insisted and proceeded to tell me that once she started taking seats then she'd go downhill fast. It was bad enough she had the cane but she was going to fight it. She was pretty feisty and spoke quietly so I only got a couple of words here and there. As my stop appeared, I thanked her for chatting with me and stood up. Then she said, "well, maybe I will take a seat now."

At the theater, friend Pam who recently returned from a trip to London and Paris. In Paris, they ran into a group of obvious Americans trying to figure out where they needed to go -- without a map. She was amazed that not only were they wandering around a place they were unfamiliar with sans map, but clearly didn't speak the language to read the signs (or understand measurements -- 300m is not "just over there.")

Later as the hubby and I made out way back to the bus station we encountered the self-named "Irish contingent" from the Microsoft convention in town. They were looking for the Celtic Pub and were hoping they were going the right way. I laughed and said, you come all the way to Denver and you go to an Irish pub? The woman understood the reasoning and said, oh, they had been plenty of local spots -- including Elway's for dinner. Can't get more local than that.

When Mel Gibson walks by you at work ...

Famous people never walk by my desk at work. Well, it's rare that anyone walks by my desk at work since my office is at home.

My sister Sara, a landscape architect in Albuquerque, was just plugging away at her cubicle when Mel Gibson walked by. It's funny to even write that line. If it were me, I would have believed I was just working too hard and hallucinating. (The working-to-hard part not too far from the truth.)

It seems Mr. Gibson is in ABQ to film his next project and would be using the company's studios for filming. He was touring the building when he ambled by my surprised sister.

Apparently the building layout is fairly open with cubicles and she said all you could hear was nervous tittering, giggling, and people whispering on the phone.

Wouldn't that be a hoot?

Wonder what they said when he left?

"Attention, Mel has left the building"

now *THAT* is the way to do a movie trailer

It doesn't give the whole story, the best parts, or splice together scenes that don't actually appear (at least so far)... it makes you go WHOA... (and boy, the pressure this movie better not suck).

1.18.08 - the Trailer

Ass Effects and other stupid commercials

I have the TV on a lot during the day while I work so I see/hear a lot of advertisements. There's a couple of ones that have made me laugh.

The mostly recent one is one for a new heartburn medicine called "Aciphex" -- said out loud sounds like "ass effects". Did these people not say it to one another before naming the drug that?

Another one that makes me snicker - -the paper towel one with the kid and the soda. He pulls a soda bottle out of the fridge and proceeds to shake it. The lid pops off and sprays his mother with orange soda. She yells at him "what are you thinking" and then grabs the water sprayer on the sink "this works much better" and they proceed to shower each other further. Yeah right. First of all moms everywhere are cringing with the message. It's going to take more than a paper towel to clean up that mess!

I'm melting!

As the temp hits 98 degrees ... thought I would post a reminder of six months ago today (Dec. 20, 2006 - the start of the first big holiday blizzard)...

The yard is full of collies

Early last Saturday morning, someone in my dream turned to me and said "the yard is full of collies."

Then I realized my husband was standing over me and he has just said it. I opened my eyes and see that dawn is just breaking. Barely. It's 4:30 am. I rubbed my eyes and said "Is one of them minature and named Max?"

I went upstairs and sure enough, it was Max, the minature collie and his buddy Rusty - not a collie, or even close. Rusty is a chow mix. Sarah-Dog had alerted Mark with her version of "THE YARD IS FULL OF COLLIES...THE YARD IS FULL OF COLLIES." (Which, ironically sounds a lot like "THE YARD IS FULL OF SQUIRRELS" and "THE YARD IS FULL OF UPS DELIVERY MEN".)

So if you have read my blog before you'll know the beginning of March, I wrangled Max and took him across town to his former address still listed on his tag (which luckily was still inhabited by some of his humans). Rusty, thankfully had a tag with the correct address -- about a block over and a block down.

Since clearly Sarah-Dog was verklemped -- there would be no more sleeping until the yard was free of collies. So I leashed up the wayward pups and at 5 am, walked them back to their house.

My intention was to slip them back into their own yard. But the gate was nailed shut (probably after their March escapade). Then I noticed the front door open (the screen door shut) and a pair of glasses laying on the step. As I approached, I smelled the reason someone had accidentally let the dogs out ... in a drunken stupor. Lovely. Holding my breath, I picked up the glasses and put them on the ledge. Carefully opened the screen door, de-leashed the pups and pushed their rumps inside. I made sure the screen door shut and then went back home to my bed.

The drunken fool who let them out probably didn't even know they were gone. Wonder if he/she found his/her glasses...

We were quite freaked out by how the wayward pups got into our backyard in the first place since the gate is normally shut. But pretty much determined the hubbie left it open after taking the trash out Thursday night and my girls mysteriously didn't notice it open when they were out on Friday.

Otherwise someone else may have woken up to "the yard is full of Labradors."

Top 10 problems dogs have with humans

I saw this in the paper a few weeks back and had to repost it - 'cause it's funny.

Top 10 problems dogs have with humans:
10 Sit. You sit!

9 Chewing. There is no logical translation for not chewing in dog language.

8 Don't cover up my holes! It's hot. I'm trying to cool off. Cut me some slack, will ya?

7 Barking. There is no logical translation for no barking in our kingdom.

6 Stay. Sorry. No can do. Got things to do, dogs to see.

5 Sniffing. It's called P-mail people. Geez, buy a clue already.

4 Jumping up. Stretching. That's all we're doing. Stretching those back legs, don't ya know?

3 Collars. Here's an idea. You wear them.

2 Off. What? The couch? No way.

1 Wait. There is no logical translation in dogdom.

Source: longmonthumane.org