Garden update

Getting stuff planted out has been slow.  The weather keeps peeing down cold nasty rain on my days off, resulting in me getting very little planted out so far.  Which is frustrating.

But some pictures anyway:

 

End of last year I put down black plastic on the tire beds, to kill the weeds, water of course collected, and this frog claimed this puddle, and steadfastly refused to leave even after I literally pulled the plastic out from under him.  A night in the dry tire eventually convinced him to move on however.  The other problem I’ve been having was the discovery that wasps were making nests under the plastic in several spots.  I THINK I got all of those taken care off……

 

We did pull out and fill Apollo’s pool, to his delight:


Life with a Tibetan Mastiff

I get occasionally asked what it’s like to live with “those dogs”.  My responses vary, depending on the situation, the person asking, my mood….everything from highly insulting (towards my dog!), to amusing, to deadly serious.  But sometimes the anecdotes just write themselves.

A note, when I refer to Apollo barking in “full voice”: legend says that a TM’s voice could be heard from mountain to mountain, and while that might be exaggeration they do have one hell of a bark when they get pissed off.  In close quarters its deafening.  It makes your average GSD’s bark sound high pitched and wimpy.

 

So, the other day…….

Apollo is sound asleep in the kitchen, the room furthest from the road.

Wakes from a sound sleep POSITIVE that the invading hordes are about to break down the door. Charges the front window in full on guard mode, complete with aggressive posture and full voice:

BARK BARK BARK

Bounces off the window, still in full voice:

BARK BARK BARK BARK

Actually stops barking long enough to look out the window. THERE MUST HAVE BEEN SOMETHING OUT THERE CAUSE I HEARD IT!!!!!!

BARK BARK BARK BARK

Stops and looks out the window again. Dammit. I know I heard something!

BARK

Looks out window.

Chuff Chuff Chuff

Sigh Must have scared it off.

Chuff

Sigh Flops down in front of the window for the rest of his nap.

Snore


For Rain

 

Mind, this is the same dog who does NOT want a bed in his crate.  Every time I’ve attempted to put a bed, or blanket or SOMETHING in his crate he drags it out and sleeps on the bare bottom.  Maybe I need to buy some extra couch cushions and try those…..


Random bits and thoughts

The upside to having my mother now on Facebook is I no longer need to send her photos and what not separately, she can see them and show them with my dad and it’s much easier.

The downside to having my mother now on Facebook is that she freaks out every time I gripe about getting sick, and every time I gripe about work, and…..

*sigh*

 

Speaking of Facebook, there’s a video going around of a Comcast worker doing work on the side of the road and a bunch of cars almost hitting him.  The general FB opinion is that the Comcast worker is EVIL and why didn’t he put out more cones, and OMG!!!  GONNA BOYCOTT COMCAST!!!!  Meanwhile I’m looking at this video thinking those morons are going WAY TOO FAST for road conditions and they better hope their insurance companies never see this video……

 

A few months ago I ordered custom muzzles for both dogs.  Arty needs one for vet visits, and I’d been trying to train Apollo to wear one just in case but hadn’t been able to find a premade one I liked.  The company offered the option of matching leashes (both leashes and muzzles made out of biothane), so I ordered one for Arty (we’re really picky about the leashes we use on Apollo).  Everything arrived, and I love the muzzles.  The leash….well, the biothane is awesome, but the clip they used is cheap crap (one reason we’re picky about Apollo’s leashes).  Since its technically a custom piece I decided it wasn’t worth griping at the company, I’d just replace the clip at some point with something heavier.  But I figured the cheap one would last the winter at least……

I was wrong.  Last Saturday, while I was at work and Husband was taking the dogs out for one last potty before he left for work, the clip on Arty’s leash somehow popped open (I suspect ice in the spring, and the cheap spring not being enough to keep it closed anyway), resulting in him taking off in mad-cap zoomies down the road.

Apollo saw him taking off, got all excited, and bounced off the end of HIS leash (another reason why we’re picky about his leashes), at which point HIS COLLAR CLOSURE popped open and he took off after Arty.  They were easy enough to catch, they only got a couple houses down the road before the excitement wore off, so everyone’s home and safe.

We’re not quite sure what happened with Apollo’s collar, in theory it’s possible that we just caught a large enough chunk of fur in the closure, resulting in it not closing properly.  However this collar is 4yrs old and I’m having a hard time believing that we’ve never gotten large chunks of his fur caught in it before.  Which makes me think that even if we DID get fur caught in it the closure itself is failing.  Which wouldn’t be a huge shock since it IS 4yrs old and gets put on him and taken off him multiple times a day.  But it is frustrating.  So until I can find a new collar I like for him we’re double collaring him.  His current collar (which, when closed, can’t slip over his head) and his old martingale (which, even when fitted properly, he’s proved he can slip out of if he really wants), in hopes that the double collar will be enough to keep him restrained.

And no, neither dog has all that great of a recall.  Normally we do have a GREAT emergency recall.  But Arty was in psycho zoomie mode cause he’d been cooped up in the house due to the cold, and Apollo wasn’t letting him go by himself.  We’re back to using Arty’s old leash, not the end of the world, but annoying.  Lotsa fun….

 

My work has been typical Christmas madness.  This is the time of year when I tend to really hate people in general.

And then I had to explain to a casual acquaintance that the use of “frenzied beasts” (by a mutual acquaintance) when referring to Black Friday/weekend crowds was not racist.  Her argument consisted of “but it’s OFTEN racist!!”.  I pointed out that context matters.  She asked if there were any terms that I thought were ALWAYS racist.  I said I always consider “nigger” to be racist, but if the community as a whole really wanted it taken that way they needed to stop using it in media.  To which she responded that it’s alright if black people call each other “nigger”, cause context mattered!  To which I responded “so why are we having this conversation again?  Cause you just proved my point”.  She hasn’t spoken to me since.

 

Speaking of retail, and people in general.  Please take some thought as to how you treat people in front of your kids (or grandkids or random children around you).  A while back I had a lady approach me looking for a particular product.  She was pushing a cart with a kid in it, probably less than 5yrs old, though I suck at guessing ages.  Kid called her gramma.  She told me that she was looking for two specific products, either of which would work for her project.  I told her that I wasn’t familiar with the one, but the other is right over here if you’ll follow me.  As I turned to lead the way I hear the kid say “you must be new here if you don’t know….” at which point gramma shushed him.  I pretended to not hear, though I’ll admit that what I wanted to do was snap at the kid about manners (which wouldn’t have been useful, but yah).

But someone in this kid’s life has said that to people who are trying to help him/her.  And not just once, likely it’s been said multiple times.  The kid rattled it off word for word.  5 yrs old or less and he already thinks that’s how you treat people who’re trying to assist you.  Oh sure, he doesn’t understand the context of it.  Doesn’t matter.  With that as his guide how do you think he’s going to grow up?


Winter

Arty gets cold faster than Apollo, and the single digit temps we’re already getting this winter are a bit much for him, but he has fun for as long as he lasts.  Apollo on the other hand doesn’t understand why we can’t spend all day out there!

We’re definitely getting a much more normal winter this year, instead of the incredibly warm one we had last year.


Snow two

Arty was wondering where his green grass and warm sun went

IMGB1661

He was very upset at the cold and snow appearing out of nowhere.  He’s well on his way to being shed out for the summer, and isn’t the most cold tolerant dog to begin with.

Meanwhile Apollo was having a blast

IMGB1662

And if you needed proof we got more than 6″ of the stuff by yesterday morning, there you go.  I guess this is why he was refusing to shed for so long.  His legs finally let go of their hold on the winter coat this past week, so hopefully this’ll be the end of it.

Yesterday afternoon they put out a winter weather warning for our county, another 3-6″ overnight-into Monday.  Yay.

As of 8am today, Monday, I’m thinking we got somewhere close to another 3″, but it’s still coming down, so we’ll see what the totals are.

I’ve been putting off getting new tires for my car, thinking the worst of the winter weather was over, and I guess this is what I get for thinking.  Drive into work today ought to be interesting, to put it mildly.

This isn’t exactly a truly “late” snow for the area, we’ve had snow on Mother’s Day on more than one occasion.  But after the early warm spring everyone’s pretty well horrified by it.

I guess this is what I get for putting away my winter boots a couple weeks ago.

Greenhouse is nice and toasty though.  Makes me wish it was big enough to climb into……


That was my seat!

KIMG0683

 

I swear I was gone for all of a minute and I come back to find him pretending to be sound asleep.

Good thing he’s cute.

He’s still not shedding either.  Every other 4 foot in the house is shedding, except for Apollo……


Snow

Mother Nature finally decided she’d better get her ass in gear and give us a proper winter.  Between late Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon we got a solid foot of snow.

The dogs are thrilled.

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I was perfectly happy not having had to do any shoveling yet this winter…..

(Tomorrow, Friday, is predicted to have a high of 40……)


2016 Honda Pilot

We test drove the 2016 Honda Pilot EX-L, and loved it.

Bought it.

Picked it up Thursday.

Friday we loaded 5 adult humans, 4 collapsible lawn chairs, and Apollo into it and headed off to the dog show for the morning.  Apollo still had room to lay down.  Yup, this’ll do exactly what we wanted and more!  I was sitting in the smaller of the 3rd row seats.  There was enough room, though a longer drive would have left me a bit cramped.

We really wanted one in one of the blue shades they’re offering.  The one that Husband looked at briefly on Saturday was blue and he loved the color.  But when we came back Tuesday for the test drive the blue was gone, and all they had was a black and a couple white ones.  We didn’t want white.  They did a quick search for us but none of the dealerships in the surrounding areas had any blue ones either, and we didn’t want to wait for one to come off the line, so we bought the black one with the black interior.  More than we wanted to spend, especially once taxes etc had been added on.  But not as bad as it could have been.  Plus they gave us more for Husband’s old Nissan than we’d been afraid they would.

KIMG0465a

My Caliber is a bit closer to the camera, screwing with the perspective, but you can still see the size of the Pilot there.  We put a good 200 miles on it this week, between all the back and forth, and the dog show, and then running Arty up to a Barn Hunt practice.  Averaging 24mpg for those 200, considering that a good portion of that was on city streets I’ll take it.