Dogs (mostly)

  • Flashback Friday

    Yesterday’s post was a list of 13 things that I have given away recently. Today’s post is about something that I tried to give away, but couldn’t. Looking at the picture above, from an Easter Sunday years ago, notice the adorable hat I’m wearing. I love that hat. I will never wear it again, however, and Maya doesn’t want it, and no one on Buy Nothing wants it, and I can’t bear to think of it going to Goodwill and no one wanting it and it being used for stuffing or rags or something. It needs to remain a hat. This is our beautiful girl, Genevieve, borrowing my hat back…

  • Friday Randomness

    So much randomness this week…this one is going to be scattered. Let’s dive in. Eggy GoodnessLet’s start with eggs, shall we? Maya and I watched a video on YouTube the other day about egg cooking hacks. If you need a lot of chopped up hard boiled eggs for egg salad or something, she has a tip where you crack raw eggs into a baking dish, bake them until they are set, then chop them up. That looked pretty good, but I can’t tell you the last time I needed a bunch of chopped hard boiled eggs. She had a trick for making poached eggs in the microwave that I had…

  • Bad Art Fundraiser

    Sorry for the late notice friends, but if you are at all interested in having a custom made ‘bad art’ digital portrait of your pet, The Friends of Animal Services in Oakland, CA is having a fundraiser. You donate $35 for one portrait, or $50 for two, then they send you a link via email for you to upload a picture. They will then assign your photo to one of their artists, who will send you a custom made copy. Be patient, they’re busy, so it could take a while. This is the picture I am submitting, Mulder in May of 2023. You have until this Wednesday to contribute if…

  • Friday Randomness

    Fighting the Good Fight – Overheard at a recent protest in our fair city…mom walking with 2 young kids. One of them asks what the people are doing, making so much noise and carrying signs. “They’re fighting for your freedom.” OMG, that brought a tear to my eyes and made me feel like showing up every Saturday is definitely worth my time. Pie Shop – I forgot to mention in my post on Oceanside that we saw this little pie shop, which is in the house where Kelly McGillis’s character lived in the original Top Gun film. There is a large military base nearby, Camp Pendleton, so Top Gun seems…

  • A Few Days in Oceanside

    My cousin Carey and her wife live in Oceanside, half way between San Diego and Orange County. When she invited me to go with her on the cruise to Mexico, she also invited me to come down a few days early to see Oceanside and San Diego. The last time I was in San Diego was 1988, and I had never been to Oceanside, so I jumped at the chance. While Carey has lived in Southern California for 11 years, she has never been to the Hotel Del Coronado, and has always wanted to see it from the inside. The Coronado is a beautiful beach resort in San Diego with…

  • Playing with ChatGPT

    The other day, a friend posted a ChatGPT generated picture of her horse as a human on Facebook. Immediately I wanted to see what Mulder would look like as a human, so I went to ChatGPT and tried to load a photo. You have to have an account (free). So I signed up for an account, but instead of loading a photo, I asked it to show me what a Keeshond would look like as a human. Chat asked me if I wanted male/female/androgynous, and I said androgynous. It asked for personality, and I said kind of loud. This is what I got. I love the grey hair, which matches…

  • The Friend

    The Friend ~ Sigrid Nunez The unnamed protagonist of The Friend is a writer and professor in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, a self proclaimed cat person, who inherits a Great Dane, Apollo, when her mentor and close friend dies of suicide. She is buried in grief for her friend, she does not want a dog, her landlord does not allow dogs, and here she is with a dog that weighs (quite a bit) more than she does. What happens is predictable to any animal lover. She falls in love with Apollo. “When you’re lying in bed full of night thoughts,” she thinks, “such as why did your friend have…

  • Spotted Photo Theme – Circles

    OK, I’m squeaking in under the deadline here. iHanna has another Spotted Photo challenge, where the idea is that you go through your phone/iPad photos, and find pictures that match the theme she has given. You’re not out looking for that theme, not taking new photos, just curating the pictures you already have. I’m not a photographer by any means, so mine are not going to be gorgeous like some others, but here they are anyway. A lot of them are food. And I snuck in some memes, which is totally cheating and not cool at all. The Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, 2018. I really hope…

  • Spotted Photos Challenge – Pairs

    Almost a Wordless Wednesday, here is my submission for iHanna’s Spotted Photos Challenge. The idea is to look through the photos on your phone/iPad/computer and post the ones that match that month’s theme. The February theme is Pairs, so here is Mulder in a (smeary) pair of glasses. He was preparing for an important presentation on macroeconomics that day. He crushed it, obviously.

  • Friday Randomness

    What could be more random than this artichoke that I saw growing in someone’s yard? Not much. I have seen artichokes growing as crops before, driving past farms, but never like this as an ornamental plant in someone’s yard. Pretty! Sometimes when I’m reading your blogs, I wish I could comment with a meme or a picture or whatever. Since that’s not how comments work, I will share a few responses/thoughts here. First off, Engie was saying that she wished she had pictures of puppy Hannah. So I thought I would share some pictures of our sweet puppy boy, Mulder. We got him when he was 7 months old, but…

  • Mulder’s Birthday

    Today should have been Mulder’s 9th birthday. He would have perhaps been starting to slow down a bit more, but would still be enjoying long walks on my Fabulous Fridays. He’d still be begging for carrots and cucumbers and bread. In his honor, I thought I would share this video from his 6th birthday, his ‘Golden Birthday’, which we celebrated by making him his own hamburger. He was so much fun!

  • Friday Five

    What to write about this Friday morning? Let’s see what I can come up with for a quick Friday Five. That’s all I can come up with around here. What’s new in your neck of the woods? Update to insert 2 of today’s FB memories about the last years of our sweet girl Genevieve’s life. Genevieve was 11 at this point, and lived almost 2 more years. I miss having a dog, every day. I don’t miss this part of the equation, though.

  • Facebook Friday

    One thing I enjoy about Facebook is the Memories feature, where you can see what you posted in a prior year on this date. I thought it might be fun to share a few with you. Sometimes I post something thoughtful, like a timely quote. Usually it’s more about what I’m doing in my life. Like whether I’m having a decent hair day or not. For those of you not on Facebook, it displays your profile picture and your name, and then your text, so I was doing a third person thing here. Why? Who knows. Clearly this is a different day. Sometimes, it’s a meme. There were plenty of…

  • T is for Things I Miss About Mulder

    Yesterday was 6 months since our sweet boy Mulder died from Lymphoma. We all miss him so much. He was such a joy in our lives, and such a good boy (except when he was being a butthead). In honor of Mulder, then, here are some things that I miss with him gone, and a few that I don’t. Things I Miss Things I Don’t Miss Things I Shouldn’t Miss, but I Do