Dogs on Ice

Shep playing with a 5 month old puppy he adores and another pup.




The Three Musketeers!
Two of the first dogs he played with in the park.



And finally, the satisfying sound of ice cracking!

A new favorite toy

Shep has gotten his burgling mouth on one of these whirlwheel toys more than once in the park, and when he does, all "drop it", etc. training is out the door. I could have a steak in my hand (I haven't actually tried steak but I have had a variety of treats including chicken) and he's not letting go.

Despite his almost pit-like grip, I can usually pull a solid toy out of his mouth if I try hard enough, but not this little evil thing that others keep bringing to off leash. Nope, this one has those convenient holes so he can really get his teeth in there and hold on.

Usually if he gets that excited over a toy in the park, I just buy one for home and it quickly looses value in the park and he can get back to playing chase or hoping folks will scratch his sweet spot. I finally found one in a store yesterday and got him the large one. He was thrilled. He played with it for maybe 4 or 5 hours, with a couple of breaks when I took it from him. He of course made quick work of ripping out the squeaker and ripping most of the middle ball section out of that side. I gave it back to him today and he actually held onto it with his paws when he took a nap and wakes up every now an then and runs around with it.

He loves it. He's had several similar toys, but this one makes him happier than any of the others and here at home he's happily bringing it to me and dropping it, which means he might not be so obsessed with whirlsheel's belonging to other dogs in the park.

I definitely recommend this toy.

Stuff to buy!

A fellow dog owner in the park told me about a woot-like site that is mostly outdoor clothes and gear as opposed to Woot's true miscellaneous offerings . Steep and Cheap offers one item at a time until it runs out or until a pre-determined time is up. Good prices and good work distraction!

Bookmark it and wish you already had this stuff in this cold weather.

Tilt shift photos

Tilt shift pictures are meant take real scenes and make them look like tiny models. It's pretty cool, imo. Now, there's a website that lets your feed your photos in and get them out as titlshifts. Not all pics really work for tiltshift, but the effect is neat when you have the right shot.

A scenery shot tends to do better; having lots of depth and something going on at all depths tends to be better imo.

This photo is one I took during a labor day weekend in New Hampshire, maybe 2007. It's Craig and our friend Burns hiking down Mount Washington.

Wow

This is just cool. A group raised funds to put up atheist messages (like a religious message) on buses in the UK. It seems like like an awareness campaign: just because I don't believe in a god doesn't imply that that I am evil.

I like the one in this article, a quote from Katharine Hepburn shown above.

Does anyone still look at this?

I rarely post here. I think I prefer photo-blogging. You can always see pictures (I try to upload at least a few new ones each week) at my flickr page.

I'll post a couple of the recent flickr uploads here. I'm probably more likely to notice comments there, though :)

Here's one of our sweet dog. A little running with other dogs in the park and he's ready for nap.



Here's Craig getting the grill ready. Our new place has a yard and a deck off the kitchen so we can once again grill!

surprise, more dog video

Shep, the dog who didn't want to live with other dogs in his previous life now enjoys playing with dogs in the park (but he still likes coming home to be the only pet).

Back to school

I'm finally going for some more school. If I can survive the program, I will have a masters in public health from Mount Sinai (NY, NY) in a couple of years. Maybe I'll actually make my way up to the campus one of these days and take a picture of where I'll be heading during the week this fall.

Shep and Monkey

Shep found this monkey in the park (re: stole from another dog in the park while with a friend of ours). He would normally instantly shred any destructable toy, but not Monkey. Monkey is now the sole occupant of Shep's bed and they love to play together. The biting is bites of love!

Cool journals

I saw a link to these journals on BoingBoing.

They take old hardcover books and use the covers as the cover to a journal. Scattered throughout the blank pages are illustrations or pages from the book they wanted to include so each journal is unique. I may have to keep a journal just as a reason to get some of these...

Belize!

We went to Belize (just south of Mexico) for two weeks and it was great. We did some jungle bits and some beach bits. Here are a few pictures.Chico the spider monkey at a lodge where we stayed likes Craig to sit with him
Chico on his sad little wire
The cemetery in Placencia
The beach
The fancy harbor at dusk.

A fun weekend

I wish! We ran errands Saturday afternoon and returned home with some wine and dinner fixins ready for a relaxing night at home with Netflix. We were both in town, I wasn't working and had the next day off, it was time for a quiet night at home. The stars had other plans for us though. The stars, or the lazy guys remodeling an apartment above ours. They put tons of black stuff (still don't know what it was) down the drain that should not go down the pipes. It backed up in our bathroom sink then rushed halfway across the living room and even around a chunk of the bedroom and of course the bathroom was covered.

The fatalities include 3 rugs, one very nice large one. A "Rug Doctor" machine could not save them. Now poor Shep is lacking in soft places to flop until we can remedy the situation. The bathroom reeks of midlew (?) and the black gunk despite many hours of cleaning (btw, Craig can do some scrubbing when necessary).

This picture is a little taste of the fun.

More dog and snow video

Now that I realized I can post video here, I'll try to take more videos of stuff to post. My little point and shoot camera can record video.

First big snow of the season

Most dogs love snow, and Shep is no exception. I had the morning off and took him to the park to play. It was still coming down pretty good so my pictures are a little blurry. This video is of us playing the stay game. I tell him to stay and walk off and he just lays there until I call him. Then he bounces over to me. He seems to like this game.

Dog Days

We finally have a dog! Two year old border collie/german shepherd mix, male. Loves to be pet like no dog I've seen. He really likes to put his paws up on a bench and bet pat or brushed. This is one happy dog in this picture, with Craig brushing him :)

HoneyBee Boby

I really get a kick out of products packaged in Asian countries for American stores. A great little Asian run dollar store near us always has funny products. I took a couple of pictures with my phone of some toys today.

I think this HoneyBee Boby is supposed to be either HoneyBee Baby or LadyBug Baby. Some products that were not obvious had caucasion kids in the images but not a lick of English to explain what was inside.

A break from temping

Yahoo! An old boss working at an AR company recommended me for a position they were trying to fill in NYC and now I'm an environmental scientist. I don't think I'll actually being doing much more than glorified record keeping, but no more office clothes! I have to wear work boots, a respirator and at times, a hazmat type suit!

Work is at a construction site in the city and officially I'm monitoring air quality among other things.

All kinds of crazy stuff is happening in apartment land, but I'll save that for another day. The good news is that whatever happens, we're getting a dog finally!!!

Today I took advantage of not having to be at the jobsite, the warm weather and headed up to the Bronx Zoo. I posted a few photos from that on my flickr page. Nothing fancy, but just fun with my pocket-sized point and shoot. My flickr page is more of a blog than this is...

what's up these days

For anyone who actually looks at this but that I don't talk to much, post is for you. Email me to say "hi" sometime though because I love getting emails from old friends.

Craig (my SO and partner in crime as we move from city to city) and I are living in Brooklyn, NY. After a crazy lab job here, I've been toiling away in shitty office jobs as a temp. The fun part of temping is low responsibility and getting to see lots of different industries from the inside. I've worked at hedge funds, museums, magazines, design studios (clothing and architecture) and more!

Craig has an awesome job that he loves so that helps balance out my chaotic situation. He does math and programming--that's all you really want to hear about it from me.

The tv show Seinfeld has new meaning to us as we've lived so much of the shenanigans from that show. Just think about these tidbits: the man-bag, George sleeping under his desk, getting that apartment that an old lady lived in 50 years, mailman problems, and so much more.

I'm back!

I pretty much forgot about this thing. I tend to save my ramblings for small audiences via email. Are you on that list? If not, aren't you jealous that you don't get long emails about my daily life??

Currently, a better way to see what I'm up to is to look at my pictures

Lots of photos from my hikes (I hike while Craig and our friend Michael rock climb) at Mohonk Preserve. The pictures are mostly taken with a small digital point and shoot, so don't expect amazing art photos. They are enough for me to remember what I've done.

Back at it?

I'm going to try to get back to this, but no promises. Tonight I will ramble about music!

Luke Temple. I saw him about a year ago as the opener to to another show. He was awesome and the cd is still on my ipod. I saw him again this week, as the main event at Union Hall and was again impressed. He played all new stuff (not on the previous album). The new stuff isn't too far from the old but a little rougher around the edges, with a darker side that the first album seemed to be aiming at.

Also at that show was Adem. Good, charming performer. No cd for sale and I must say that I was a little disappointed. I'd be interested to see him again. Mostly indie rock with some experimental stuff like hand bells backing a reading.