Zelda's 2nd birthday

OMGZ YAY!

Snow Dog prefers... the snow

No, really. He begged to outside and then he just laid there for hours looking quite content.

Frisbee FAIL

playing fetch in the snow

Zelda is unsure how she feels about all this white stuff

She is very skeptical.







"Oh, wait. You can play fetch in this stuff? Why didn't you say so?!"

San Francisco - Black Friday version

Thanksgiving

My aunt really knows how to set a table.

In the forest as night falls

happy spazzy dog is happy and spazzy

What's that you say? You can't see her face clearly enough? Well here's a close up:





Note also the Half-raised Hackles of Joy and Excitement:







What's all the excitement about, you ask? Nothing in particular. We just love the water....









...and our punching bag - er, I mean BEST FRIEND, Rocky....









.... and bull kelp. OMGZ we love bull kelp!

California Proposition 2

This.

"For the bill to pass, 50% of the residents of California would have
to vote in favor of the bill. If all of these people truly have the
desire for animals to be treated a certain way, they would vote,
daily, with their pocket book. They would, like I have, choose to do
business with farmers that farm with practices that they agree with.
If 50% of the people in California did this, there certainly would be
a LOT more farmers doing it this way to meet the demand. I have very
little tolerance for people who don't want to be inconvenienced by
having to go out of their way to buy meat and eggs from the farmers
that do things the way they prefer -- yet want the government to do
the dirty work for them. Every day these people have the CHOICE to
either buy from free range farms, or buy factory farmed products."

Factory farms got where they are because we let them/demanded cheap food. I'm all for mandates like this, but if the same people who vote yes later end up buying cheaper imported eggs when the price for California eggs goes up a few cents, then they're missing the point.

World Bread Day

http://kochtopf.twoday.net/stories/5175999/

I participate:



I haven't made bread in months. I messed up the measurements, handled the dough too much, and my kitchen was too cold for it to rise properly. But it still turned out pretty tasty. Yay for super simple/forgiving recipes. I used the no-knead bread recipe from here. It's awesome. Takes some planning (if you don't want to be up at odd hours of the night), but only about a total of 15 minutes of your time.

hoofprints in the sand

wherein I gush about my dog some more

I just went through my calender, and we've officially been to 9 agility classes. I can't believe we've only being doing it for three months - it feels like forever. It was also, apparently, enough for us to go to our very first competition! Whoo! Except... yeah, I wasn't expecting to be very competitive. I went into it expecting just to have fun and practice and that's exactly what we got out of it. We didn't get a single clean run because Zelda went off course every time to go say hello to spectators. We did, however, end up with two points (I think) because it was a team competition and my partner (heh, the trainer) got points. Pretty funny, and now we have points on the books with NADAC. Good times.


OMG. Our very first off-leash weave pole success - caught on film!!


As of the taking of this photo, Zelda had only touched a teeter-totter about 5 times. Ever. The fact that she was willing to do it for me without a leash says volumes about just how willing, eager to learn, and easy to train she is. And did I mention fearless?



Zelda says: "I worked so haaaaaard."

Spazzy dog, agility version

Last week we had our 7th agility class. Tom graciously agreed to take some pictures (yes, it's really weird for me to be on the other side of the lens.



"I love to jump!"





"I LOVE TO JUMP!!"







Through the power of Photoshop, you can see HOW FAR AHEAD Zelda feels she needs to launch herself.






Proof that she can do a sit + stay. No one seems to believe me that this occurs.





We interrupt your regularly scheduled Zelda for a quick shot of a cute class mate:






Ok, back to Zelda:



Here we have bonus dog AND Suzanne ass-shot.
Zelda sez: "I love chute!"








"I conquer the chute! The chute is mine!"








"Ok, Ok, gotta concentrate. Monkey is trying to get me to do something... something to do with these white sticks..."



"Wait, we're done? Ok. Well, the monkey seems pleased, and when the monkey is pleased..."




"...we get..."



"...OMGZ treats!"



"Om nom nom"




"More hotdog, plz?!?"

photography - and not mine for once

I've taken it upon myself to scan and archive aaaaalll the family photos. One of the perks is coming across gems like these:























I'm not sure who took them, but I'm guessing it's Dad. He took a couple photography classes in college. I really what I've found. I wish there were more remnants from those days.

Old photos of the author

The period of my life which shall henceforth be known as The Great Scanning Project of '08 is finally finished. Except for a few stragglers, 1,677 of my family's photos are now in digital form and online via Flickr. Praise jeebus. For a while, my entire life was scanning/photoshopping/uploading.

Also, all these pictures of young Suzanne are very... telling...


Here we have a typical young Suzanne on a summer day circa the 1990.







Here's a beautifully crafted cardboard maze I made for some mice. Unfortunately (or fortunately, from my parents' and the mice's point of view), I couldn't catch any, so I put some snakes in it instead:







...and frolicking with a puppy







Back before my family caught on to that crazy "spay/neuter" fad, my hobby was donning winter coat and ski gloves and catching feral kittens in the barn. Here's a couple of the more tame ones:







My family went camping a lot












We had a big garden, too.






See where I get it from?