Straight Up

This week Gretchen turned 14 weeks old. What have we learned/gained so far? Her ears (both of them) finally stick straight up.

As the day goes along, they get tired or something and the tips start to droop. Though with each passing day, they get stronger and straighter. We kind of miss the floppy tips. We've also learned how to sleep the whole night through or at least we learned what it takes to sleep the entire night.

It was really quite simple. We moved her crate into our bedroom. The hard part was removing the door to fit her crate in our room and not just temporarily. The door has to stay off as long as the crate is in there. Jen and I are of the philosophy that bedrooms don't need to be very big if all you do is sleep in them. The part we never considered was exactly how many would be sleeping in our room. We're up to one cat, two adults and two dogs. Unless we get a queen bunk bed, I think we're done. Now if I could just stop the 7am meetings with India, I might actually get to enjoy the peaceful sleep in my own bed.

Hmmm other things learned... Gretchen (CJ too now) can sit and stay with her full food bowl in front of her until I say it's ok to eat. It's not like I make her wait hours and hours, but it's nice to be able to put the bowl down without being attacked. She's also learned the basics like sit, come, and drop.

Bad things learned... peeing on herself in her crate makes her smelly. That was after three and a half hours. There is tastier crap in the yard to eat then the treats I offer to get her not to eat the crap in the yard. She's been eating nearly everything she comes across since we got her, but this week has been particularly trying. She's like a little Hoover with her snout to the ground sucking up, chewing and swallowing whatever nasties she finds. At first I would offer her a treat and ask her to drop whatever it was (positive reinforcement). That worked fine for a few days. Now she just stares me down in defiance thoroughly enjoying whatever piece of junk she's found to eat. She nearly forgets to go to the bathroom outside with distractions of crap to eat. Maybe that explains the crate peeing? Grabbing her by the collar and cleaning out her mouth with my finger does nothing to teach her eating crap is bad (negative reinforcement). It just makes her eat stuff further from my reach - basically avoiding me.

Anyone want a really cute, sort of trained, serious pain in my ass right now? I guess I should at least try coating the yard in tobasco before I give up and give her away.

- b

Puddles Still

Remind me why I can't "rub her nose in it"?

- b

Random Scan 7

Here's looking at you...

Freshman year of college I met and hung out with the same group of guys all year. Near the end of the spring semester one says, "Hey guys. My parents have this cool cabin on a creek about an hour north of here. We should all go?" Turns out the cabin is on Pine Creek at the south end of the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon (way, way south, but still).

"Uh you waited the whole year to tell us this?"

Throughout the rest of our careers at Penn State, we spent a lot time at that cabin and in the surrounding wilderness - hiking, studying, partying, etc.

This photo was taken on a hike my friend Kurt and I did the Saturday before Thanksgiving in 1993. The snow flurries were a nice touch.

- b

YardWORK Sucks

Spent most of the day mulching leaves. The Osage Orange leaves don't dry out and change colors. They just drop all green and soft.

Makes mulching them a pain. They pile up under the front of the tractor to the point you can't steer. It's easier to back over them. Then you're driving around the yard backwards and that's just stupid. Somewhere along the way I grabbed some wood pellet bags from their covered outdoor storage to find the bags soaking wet. Not sure if the pellets are damaged, but the moisture under all the plastic was really annoying. I'm hoping it was just condensation.

At some point we went to Petsmart for Gretchen's make-up kindergarten class. It was just us and Albert. He tested her sit, come, stay and watch me skills. He was impressed. He even started her on down.

With the outside work done, it was time to head inside to clean the stove and floors again. Going in and out all day for the dog leaves our place a mess.

At least I've got a homemade turkey soup, ciabatta bread and a Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale to wash it all away.

- b

Family Holidays

Are a blast!

At least the dogs relaxed.

And some of us learned stuff.

Kiva.org
Waverly Hills

- b

Random Scan 6

I met Jen in a bar...

I was pretty loaded, but somehow I got her interested in me. So interested, she would come over after work to watch me weld and work on my motorcycle trailer. 2001 was going to be the year I got real serious with motorcycle racing. I had some championships to chase and I didn't have much time or interest in a girlfriend.

Jen thought otherwise. Throughout the winter she came around to watch or help with the preparations for the race season. When the season got underway, she was still there. She would drive overnight with me to the practice days and race weekends, then drive home for work on Monday. She'd make meals or whatever else I needed, so I could focus just on racing.

The championships have come and gone, luckily Jen has not. Now I get the rest of our lives to pay her back for all that she did that year.

- b

Road Trip

Besides Jen's five and a half hour conference call, the trip was uneventful.

- b

Random Scan 5

Before you go...

Summer of 1995 I drove coast to coast. I started the summer in Maine for an Outward Bound course. From there I drove to TN to pick up my mother and do some quick maintenance on my truck.

My Dad's garage had a floor, lift and some steel beams, but that was about it. Luckily it was all we needed to get me on my way. My mother and I soon left for Tacoma, Wa. Took us 3 or 4 days to make the trip. We took the high route via Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and finally Washington. Once there, she flew back. I spent the next three months working for the City of Tacoma Parks and Recreation. I took inner city kids mt. biking, rafting, camping, etc. It was quite an experience.

To end the summer, I drove back with my Dad and my friend Dan (three of us in a truck going cross country). We took the low route back - Oregon, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee.

- b

Random Scan 4

Not a scan...

but I found this while working on the scans. Jen and I went to Baxter State Park in August of 2003. We'd reserved a couple of different camping spots over a few days in the park. After hiking miles and miles each day, it was nice to put on some comfy shoes. For this Jen brought her flip flops.

- b

K through CAT5

Saturday we started Puppy Kindergarten at Petsmart with Albert the pet trainer (he has hair growing on his nose). Gretchen really likes him, so I guess that's all that really matters. There was one other puppy in the class. She's a lab name Roxy that needs a little more exercise before coming to class. Roxy seems to be doing well with house breaking, but otherwise her owners were clueless. They couldn't figure out how to get her to stop chewing and not be so rambunctious.

"Did you try walking the dog?" was my question.

"That's a pain." was the response.

More of a pain then having her chew everything? Whatever. Not my dog. Our biggest concern, and in the end benefit, was how Gretchen would behave with the other puppies. She gets along fine with bigger/older dogs, but the energetic younger ones seem to freak her out quite a bit. Roxy apparently plays all day with the neighbors puppy (really? I couldn't tell. Don't get me wrong. Roxy is very cute.), so she wasn't shy. Gretchen was reluctant and spent a lot of time in our laps or running away from Roxy when she wanted to play. She was fine with everyone there, but Roxy freaked her out. Near the end of the class, all that changed. Not only did Gretchen figure out the whole play with other puppies thing, but she got the domination part down pretty well too. Unfortunately just as Gretchen was getting into it, the class was ending. Luckily Gretchen and Roxy found each other afterwords in the store and continued their play.

Yeah. So, we're spending $119 for our puppy to learn to play with other puppies. I'm not saying the class is a waste. Even though most of what Albert had for us the first class we already knew, I guess that's to be expected.

Though he did put us onto one thing. Jen's been thinking about it for a while. Albert just pushed her to it. It's called a clicker. It's scientifically proven to make me feel stupid. It's just a little device that makes a clicking noise when you push the button. You're supposed to click it before you give them a treat for doing something good. Eventually they associate the click with doing something good and you won't need the treats. I think it's the same as giving praise (saying good dog and petting them on the head), but apparently this is better (for lazy people?). Now we have them and click them like happy little puppy training idiots. I'm sure I'll have nightmares one day of these things clicking all around me.

After kindergarten it was home to do chores. Jen's mother is here, so they hit the flower gardens while I mulched the leaves in the yard. It's the greatest thing. I don't know why we didn't do this growing up. You just drive the tractor around the yard and mulch up the leaves into yard food. It's simple, requires way less effort then raking and hauling and you don't have to dispose of anything. Granted we may not have had mulching blades growing up, but the blades we had still chopped things into little pieces. Raking sucks.

After the mulching I cleaned the pellet stove. I took apart more then I needed for just a weeks worth of burning, but it was good to get in it and see what it's all about. It's not very complicated, at least not the burning part, but will require weekly maintenance to keep it operating efficiently. Besides the first few hiccups, it's been working nicely. We've even almost got the temperature differential figured out between it and the thermostat being downstairs and us living upstairs. Though that will probably be a moving target as the temps drop and fluctuate outside and the various insulation faults take effect between the downstairs and up. The reality of me having to feed this thing everyday is also starting to set in. So far I've only been putting in a bag of pellets every other day (at most). As it gets colder, I'm sure that will increase. Filling it isn't a difficult thing to do, but it's different then a regular furnace where you set it and forget it. I'm certainly glad we didn't go the wood stove route. That would have sucked.

After the pellet stove, I moved onto a long lost forgotten home project - the Home Network. I have some new weekly meetings with India that I'll be doing from home. The meetings are online and will require bandwidth more reliable then wireless. We have the cabled network in the office, but to have the meeting and watch Gretchen I need the cabled network in the kitchen. Though honestly I'm not sure how it will work. It's not like I can stop the meeting if she pees or anything.

- b

Random Scan 3

In the summer of 2001 a co-worker hooked me up...

The ones on the ends were mine already. My co-worker set me up with the three in the middle. She and her brothers had them growing up and decided it was time to move them along. I was more then happy to take them off their hands. The two little ones I passed along to others. The white dirt bike I kept and still have. When I get the time, I should get it running. Now that I have a yard, it would be fun to zip around on.

- b

Random Scan 2

Some friends get married...

And I was in the wedding party. We had to show up at the church, for what seemed liked hours, beforehand. The grooms mother, Irene (names have not been changed to protect the guilty), handed us a bottle of Canadian Whiskey and said you boys have fun.

First order of business was to find a medium by which to consume said whiskey. I had been traveling abroad and spent many a night in the arms (thighs technically) of women of ill repute and the other fellas didn't want to catch anything I may have encountered via the bottle.

Ok. That's a lie.

Being the church was a Catholic sort of place, we found the communion cups and went to town.

At some point, for some unknown reason, we were blessed with some alone time with the grooms shoes and a bottle of white out.

What to do?

Like any overly creative miscreant, I wrote HELP ME on the bottom of his shoes.

Little did I know over half the ceremony would be the bride and groom on their knees. The first time they went down, a little rumble went through the congregation. I nearly fainted from holding in the laughter.

Luckily Irene (the grooms mother), thought it was hilarious and snapped this shot.

I don't remember when he discovered it or was told - probably by many in the receiving line. I don't remember the bride or the brides mother freaking out too much either. Now that I think about it, I don't remember much of anything from their wedding or reception.

I wonder why?

- b

Beep In The Night

I've finally given into the fact the puppy goes to sleep around 9pm and gets up anywhere between 5am and 6:30am. That means if I want a decent nights sleep, I better get to bed soon after she does. Last night it was 10pm for me. Great! Should finally get a full nights sleep.

Nope!

Around 3:30am I hear one of the upstairs smoke detectors low battery beep. Crap! Can't let it go. It will beep all night and wake the dog. I get up to pull the batteries. As I'm standing on the chair in the hall, I realize there's something alive on the couch next to me. It's Jen. Her cold/allergies had her up and on the couch at midnight. In my annoyance I ask why she couldn't fix the smoke detector. She says she fixed the cordless phone 10 minutes prior when it's low battery beep started. Ok. Fair enough, plus she agreed to take Gretchen out when she woke from all the commotion.

Back to bed to finish sleeping.

Nope!

Not 10 minutes later something beeped from downstairs. What the hell? It sounded like the lightening/rain detector (i.e. invisible fence), but that's right under our bedroom and I didn't hear it from there. We got up again and went downstairs to investigate. The only other thing we could think it to be was the downstairs smoke detector. I hit the test button. Nothing happened. More dead batteries? Instead of just pulling them out, I replaced them. Having an automatic live fire in the stove in the basement has me a little more cautious with this detector.

Finally back to sleep. At 6:30 the whining started. Time to get up. The night is through.

I still feel like I haven't slept.

- b

Random Scan 1

A series of seemingly random scans...

Summer of 98 I decided to get into motorcycles. Summer of 99 I crashed my brand new 1999 Suzuki TLR-1000 on the track at Pocono raceway, so I decided I needed a track bike (a bike specifically for riding/racing/crashing on tracks). I found this nice 1990 Yamaha FZR 400 race bike (all street paraphernalia had been removed) in Kennet Square and bought it.

That fall I did two track days at Pocono raceway. The first was very successful and a lot of fun (Bill was even there to chaperon). The second wasn't so nice. It was a cold late October or early November day. I had this habit of thinking I was faster then I was. Bad habit to have. Usually ends with crashes. Sure enough I crashed the new track bike. Bruised and battered I packed up my stuff and drove home alone.

This was actually my second attempt at getting a race license. The first was the TLR crash and now this. The one major stipulation for getting your race license is you can't crash. That was two tries and two crashes.

The picture above is after I got home and started over. I never really liked the original colors or decals anyway. I put on new forks, fixed up the bodywork, and painted it to try it all again in 2000.

To see where that all went, you can click here.

- b

Puppy Pacifier

We started with Budda Bones and Greenies, but when we finally read the labels and saw they weren't meant for dogs younger then six months we turned to something more natural - cow hooves. They stink like all hell when they get all wet and slobbery, but they make great pacifiers. As long as we can hear her chewing on it or throwing it around, we know she's not peeing on something. When the sound stops, it's time to take her out.

Had another Vet appointment today. My suspicions were true. The Coccidia is still rockn' out in her belly, so we have a new regimen - yellow powdery half pills three times a day for two weeks and gourmet boiled chicken with rice till the diarrhea goes away. As if she wasn't already a handful?

Hell - look at the kitchen!

My body isn't a whole lot different. I have a cut from two (or was it three) weeks ago on my leg that's not healing like it should. My hands are scales. I wash them so much from being in pee, poop, cat litter - you name it, they've completely dried up. Lotion doesn't help. Just makes them smell funny.

Oh well. She's a good dog. I'm not complaining - just observing. Next time I decide to do this puppy thing, I'll have a reference, cause I swear CJ wasn't this hard. Speaking of which, found this in some of the negatives I've been scanning.

And for those that used to read this site for mt. biking, I found this

If you've finished the W101, yes that's the bridge. I first rode it back in 1994, so it wasn't much of an issue for me 12 years later. Though it's not nearly as cool a shot as this.

And for those that read this site for the dancing, the studio wants us to pay $540 for the two of us to learn a routine to perform at one of their shows in January. Huh? You want me to pay 540 bones to learn something I can't really do as a couple and is meant only for entertainment at your show? That's whacked!

- b

Thanksgiving With Friends

We have these friends.
They're pretty cool.

Every year (for nine now) they have a pot-luck early Thanksgiving dinner with all their friends. I think this was the third one Jen and I have been to.

It's cool.

And tasty!

We took Gretchen with us, since they have an 8 month old Lab. Unfortunately at 8 months he's a little bigger then Gretchen could handle, so she spent most of the time on our laps. Either way, she got lots of attention - lots of good socialization for a puppy.

- b

Tiny Explosions

From her butt. I spent my morning cleaning up little doggy diarrhea. Seems Gretchens Coccidia is still raging.

At least the house is warm and cozy.

- b

We Got Fire!

Finally got her to cave. After spending the morning bundled up with hot coffee (that's a hooded sweatshirt, long sleeve T, short sleeve T and quilted flannel)...

She agreed to fire up the stove!

Of course the new thermostat to replace the old whacked-out one didn't work and now we have to play with the temp/fans to get the downstairs and upstairs each at semi-comfortable temperatures, but at least there's heat somewhere.

- b

Puppy Prison

House breaking is killing us. We're stuck on guard duty in our kitchen - looking for clues, indications, some kind of pattern to her peeing.

But she's onto us.

She knows we're watching. She runs around behind the cabinet, out of view, to make us get up and see what she's doing. It's a game. It's a check that we're paying attention. She loves attention.

The house is cold. It's manageable, but uncomfortable. We've dropped to an average of 60 degrees. It feels like a prison.

Two nights ago she slept 6 hours straight through the night. Six hours for us now is a good nights sleep. Last night we put her down at 10. At 2 she was up and whining, so I took her out - in the cold drizzle. Brought her back in and put her down again. Wasn't happening. She didn't want sleep or wanted too much attention. Jen got up to calm her back to sleep. At 4 she was up again - wanted more attention. I got up and laid down with her till 7. We realize now both 2 and 4 were mistakes. We should let her whine herself to sleep, overcome her anxiety on her own, but at 2 and 4 in the morning all we wanted was sleep.

And something else... We're trying to train her to use only one part of the yard for her bathroom and that part happens to be out behind the garage. That means when we take her out, we have to carry her down the stairs to the door, carry her down front steps to the house, carry her down the sidewalk, across the lawn and out behind the garage. Doesn't sound bad till you do it five times in an hour - a billion times a day. Why all the carrying? Two reasons. First is we have to make sure she doesn't go till she gets to the spot and second she's too small for the stairs. She can actually go up and down them on her own, but there's this whole thing about not making them do too much physical stuff too early for fear of joint and ligament problems - blah, blah, blah.

Am I rambling? Yeah I'm on duty. Nothing to do but watch the dog and type.

We did buy a scanner to help occupy our time, hence the seemingly random pictures from my past.

- b

Used To, But Now

I used to ride bikes a lot. Almost daily I rode to work and some other evening ride. On weekends I'd travel to far away places to meet new people and race with them. It was a lot of fun and I wasn't too bad at it.

Now things are different. Due to some life choices, I hardly have time(and definitely not the stamina) to ride even once a week.

It's ok. They are all choices I willingly made. Sometimes it's tough - tonight's ride was particularly difficult - but I still have a lot to appreciate.

• Riding alone at night in the woods brings a certain awareness for things living and watching me just outside my field of light that I'd normally be going too fast to perceive.
• Having a puppy sleep precariously across my lap as I sit in a straight back wooden chair shows an amazing amount of trust or the simple desire for something to be next to you regardless of risk.
• Cooperatively sharing responsibilities with a spouse when both of you are exhausted and at wits end over domestic and job related stresses - things just have to be done, so you do what you can when you can for each other.

It may not mount to the quantity of miles I've seen, but the quality of experience is surpassed by few.

- b

No Heat

For whatever reason, Jen has decided we're going to forgo heat for a while. So far it's been alright. At night we have thick blankets (or good sleeping bags if we're on dog duty). In the morning the house is usually in the low 60s. During the day it warms up to the mid 60s (where we'd have the thermastat set anyway). In the evening we can hit the high 60s if we're cooking with the stove. It's actually been kind of fun.

Tonight the outside low is supposed to go below 30 and tomorrows high is not likely to hit 50. After that it will warm back up.

We'll see how it goes.

Makes me wish I got more insulation in this year. We'd have a better chance of lasting the month.

- b

I'm A Winner

Went to a benefit tonight for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I won the door prize and what a prize it waz!

They're chocolates.

- b

Not Fair

Jen takes the puppy out in the middle of the night and sees a 6 point buck 10ft from her. The following night she sees an owl in the tree overhead.

I go out in the middle of the night to one of the patients in the group home in front of us having one of their screaming fits.

- b

Puppy Training Sucks

We're reading all this stuff about how to properly train your puppy. I think half of it's bullshit. Ever watch dogs with each other? Are they constantly teaching other via positive feedback only? No. When a dog gets out of line with another dog, there's barking, growling and probably some nipping. Not having a very sharp bite or good growl, I resort to my bark. When puppy jumps up, I bark GET DOWN! She gets down. When the puppy chews the drywall from behind the door jam, I bark NO! She stops chewing the drywall. How the hell would I get her to learn these things otherwise? Where the hell would I find the time to teach her otherwise? Already our time is full with things like:

• Walk nice - don't pull
• Like your crate - don't whine
• Know your crate is called Condo, so when we say Condo, you go in on your own - eventually
• Know not to eliminate in your Condo
• Know your name
• Know not to chew people or their clothes
• Know not to jump up on people
• Know to pee and poop outside the house in a particular part of the yard even
• Come here
• Sit
• Don't chew the kitchen towels
• Don't chew the kitchen cabinets
• Don't chew the drywall
• Don't chew your leash
• Don't eat dead worms, slugs, snails or snakes
  
• Don't swallow the fuzz off the tennis ball
• Stand still while I pull the tennis ball fuzz you swallowed out of your butt

House breaking is particularly hard. There's no real way to teach them. They just have to figure it out - like CJ figured out the invisible fence. One day he just got it. We both know he can run through it, but one day he learned it was easier not to. Gretchen just needs to learn peeing/pooping inside isn't right. If I catch her, I could bark, but we hardly catch her. She's sneaky. I watch her like a hawk, but still she leaves puddles. She's the stealth fighter of peeing puppies. We should have bought stock in paper towels and Nature's Miracle before we got into this.I think I'm sort of shell shocked from having to keep such a watchful eye. We know she's at least capable of holding it. She just doesn't know she should. Praising her outside when she pees is sort of ridiculous. She just looks at us like we're idiots at 3:30am in the dark out behind the garage. I think part of the problem is she sat in the shelter for a week and a half in her own excrement. Not only are we teaching her something new in this department, but also breaking her of previous habits.

Luckily, she's so damn cute.

- b

BioBags

If you're like me, staying up late at night worried about your environmental impact, there's something you can finally do about it.

They come in all sizes from a bunch of different vendors. Search online for BioBag or biodegradable trash bags to find places to get them.

- b

Fall Weddings

Click on the photos to see the picture pages.

Melissa & Dave Oct. 20, 2007

Jeff & Sara Oct. 27, 2007

- b

Torqued

Jen scratched her cornea and I threw out my back. We're quite the pair.
- b

Puppy Teeth

I don't get people.

Why is it I'm worried about the biodegradability of the poop bags I use, while other people let their poop lie?

Sure it goes away on its own, but with the amount of dogs in the park, kids and whatever else, there's no telling where their poop will end up.

Owning a dog and walking it in public is a responsibility. Pick up the poop!

Then we'll work on what kind of bags you use.

Besides the poop buffet, our walk went well. The mutts are getting along fabulously.

The little one likes to playfully nip at the big one. Every once in a while she gets too close and he lets her know. It's all apart of learning her position in the pack.

I have to admit I'm having trouble referencing them in the pack structure myself. I'm tempted to call CJ her brother and Gretchen his little sister, but they're not siblings and it seems too cutesy for me. Unfortunately it's convenient. It just comes out. When Jen comes home from work I say "Mommy's home!" and feel like an idiot. Not sure how this one will resolve itself.

She's started chewing inappropriate objects, so I've started adding some flavor. Her first taste was kind of funny. She couldn't stop licking her lips. Typical for mammals, water didn't help. She stopped chewing the first object and moved onto something else. It now is flavored as well. If I could figure out how to coat the cabinets, I would.

Before anyone thinks it cruel, it's really a great sauce. Turns a bland baked potato into a fiesta for your mouth. Mmmmmm Spicy!


If you're not totally bored with the puppy thing and want more explanation and pictures, you can find them here.

Yeah. I still owe wedding pictures - slowly but surely.


- b