02.28.08
Posted in Uncategorized, dogs, flying, love at 4:26 pm by wendy
We haven’t been up to much, but we’ve been taking lots of pictures of the notmuchness.
Belu and Crivvie got into it at the fence line in the backyard when they heard the neighbors dog RIGHT THERE ON THE OTHER SIDE OMG! And they got excited and the only one there to take out the excitement on…was the other one.
Belu put a teeny little nip in Crivvie’s shoulder (unusual restraint for her, really, but we’re almost positive she started it. Because she always starts it. And even when she doesn’t, it’s her fault. Now you see why we shouldn’t have kids.) and Crivvie decided to teach her a lesson by putting her head in her mouth.
The long scratch down Belu’s side and one of the little booboos on her forehead seen in the flickr set is from an earlier Peanut Butter Cookie Bag Incident at my grandmother’s.
Unattended bag of peanut butter cookies while packing + two bitches adjusting to new temporary environment = bitches be scufflin’.
(The other booboo in the album (on my foot) was from when I was sleeping and Belu was sleeping, and she had her head underneath my feet under the covers in the bed and then some dipstickbrained but adorable foster dog decided to jump onto Libélula.
Who, me? A dipstickbrain? Wha?
Libélula defended herself by tearing out a chunk from the pad of my forefoot. It hurt. But it happened ages ago, you can bearly see any difference in the foot now.)
Last thing about dog health–we took Belu to the vet because she’d been limping for more than a week for what should have been no big deal. The vet thinks she bruised the cartilage in her shoulder and that we need to keep her calm and inactive for six weeks.
Six weeks!
Six weeks without walkies and frisbee and she may damn near kill us all.
So if I don’t blog for a while, you’ll know what happened. Or we’ve just been busy. Or not feeling like blogging. Whatevah.
Nick’s been growing a nose neighbor! But he shaved it last night, so, it is no more, le sigh. But we thought it was as funny as it was itchy, so we made a montage of Nick doing sexy model faces.
Funny though that his sexy model face looks a lot like his stoopid tired/stoopid drunk face. 
And, we’ve started up flying again. With the prep of the move, vagaries of the weather and limited availability of our instructor for certain things that had to be ticked off our school’s list, we opted not to stress ourselves out racing for the finish.
So, yesterday, we took an area familiarization ride/checkout with one of our new FBO’s instructors. They only use a Skyhawk for training, not the 152 like we’re used to, but it’s just like flying a bigger, more powerful pig.
Click to visit the photoset of yesterday’s flight (there’s great pics of bird poop, Mt. Shasta, and Jo Alice’s house!)
The Skyhawk has 4 seats though, so it meant I got to ride in the back seat and take pictures while Nick got the hot seat yesterday, and I did it today. But from now on, our lessons are solo lessons.
Nick took pictures today, and I got to land on a gravel runway! Wheee! It was greenish with all the mossy winter wetness growth. (Nick updated the flickr page, mine start after the pic of him and Vern in front of the Skyhawk.)
It is simply gorgeous here and the weather’s been wonderful.
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02.21.08
Posted in Shop Updates, Uncategorized, dogs, spinning at 3:30 pm by wendy
So, small town life is not without its big city hazards, that is to say, the crazy busybody old man who wants to know what it is you are packing, and then without listening to your answer, tells you that it is ILLEGAL to send in the mail what you are sending, that it is a CHEMICAL and there are LAWS and it will EXPLODE! And so on and such forth.
For the curious, it was a gallon bottle of Fibermaster, a scour discontinued by Louet. It is lovely and the continued availability of it will be missed.
But it will not explode. Not unless you attach some dynamite to it. I just shook my head and politely disagreed, and I am coming to believe that the nicer you are to mean people, the more egged on to @ssholery they are.
But what is to be gained by being mean as well? Perhaps a shorter conflict, but a hell of a bad taste in your mouth. And I try to only put good tasting things in my mouth and keep anger and bile out. Trying. Complaining on a blog feels like a very clichéd and sneaky way of circumventing that hippy goal though.
Speaking of being hippies and trying to be better about putting our money where our mouth is and supporting local etc., we bought a bed (and frame)! You walk into this shop and smell delicious sheepiness and it’s all over, no other mattress will do.
We’d just been in Black’s Furnishings (Yreka’s furniture store) and bought a leather couch, pretty close to our idea of what we wanted, close enough I think that we’ll be happy with it for a long long time. We’ve been wanting leather furniture for ages, they’re better for Nick’s asthma, comfortable and easy to clean. We’ll keep it covered in blankets though because the dogs can be rough on furniture, what with their nails and stealing milkshakes. Blankets can be washed easily, upholstery just sucks up the dander, even with our carpet cleaner.
Anyway, Crivens likes it.
We had thought about ordering a furniture set, finding exactly what we wanted.
Turns out, Crate and Barrel makes exactly what we wanted. But this is still not the world where we will pay that much for furniture…even when we tell ourselves that it will last us twenty or more years…
And it turns out, we really needed a couch. Crivvie was peeved when we gave away her couch (our only couch) before moving, and the movers didn’t show up when we had been told to expect them–turns out we could have stayed nearly a week longer visiting our families, no big deal, right?–so we’ve been eating our meals hunkered on the floor.
Of course, the couch doesn’t really solve this since the dogs have taken it over, but it’s nice to have a cushy place to set your tuchus now and again. I really look forward to the rest of our furniture joining us.
Hey since I took so long to post this, our furniture arrived yesterday! Yay!
Anyway, back to the mattress/bed topic.
We’d just been in Black’s basement trying out their beds and mattresses. The Simmonseseseseses are very nice, but with that crazy pillowtop, how the heck do you get sheets that fit and stay on?
Plus, Nick and I, somehow, are hard on mattresses. And I don’t mean that in any flip “hehrheh, knowwhatAhmean?” wink, wink, nudge nudge way (well, not completely); I really don’t understand how two people who aren’t overweight manage to make such fancypantz mattresses as we’ve had get lumpy so quick.
We tried these fancy mattresses made of plastic and steel and I wondered how long they would last, really.
We were steered toward the Tempurpedic. I laid down on it and nearly freaked out.
Every time you lay down, or move, there’s this slight sinking shift. Which is what they want I guess, because according to the salesman you sink down to a level and then that’s it and everything’s even and your spine is in alignment with the spheres. Anyway, that weird motion without motion thing reminded me of that motion shifting of perception after lying down when you’re really sick.
I really don’t like that feeling.
Then there was that little discussion of “offgassing.“
We’d already called Shepherd’s Dream from home and Montague is the next town over, so they were our next stop.
And we laid down in the demo bed amidst all the sheepy smell, and it just felt like a good bed. Nothing fancy but a bed without chemicals, made locally and from locally raised sheep and processed conforming to organic principles. Any offgassing won’t be from the bed itself.
So there’s a saga for buying a bed, who knew there was so much to say about it?
But all the things we’re buying now in this frenzy of economy stimulation are things we’ve been waiting on, planning on.
For about four years now, anything big that’s needed replacing has been put off, and now we’re in what is basically a practice house. We bought a washer and dryer. Wow. A very nice washer and dryer. So they darn well better last. They are both supposed to be very energy and water efficient though. But slow. I’m kind of missing our old rental ones with three settings. Nostalgia, eh, whatcha gonna do?
On a different topic, I got the chance to meet up with my new friends, the Siskiyou Spinners and Knitters, or at least some of them.
Everyone was very nice and friendly. I didn’t have my wheel yet as it was Tuesday and the movers didn’t come until Wednesday, but I took my knitting and enjoyed chatting and watching, and finished the collar of my sweater. I still need to do the bottom rib, so no pictures yet, and it might be a while with all the unpacking we’ve to do.
I was blown away by the beautiful paint job of Jo Alice’s s17 though, created by her daughter:
I just can’t imagine anything more perfect.
And on another note:
It’s Tahoe’s birthday! Yay! Our little firstborn bastard son is seven today!
We may go on a little walk later, but Belu is still limping from some mystery accident (we heard a thump on the stone tile floor in the middle of the night and now she’s limping. So, not much of a mystery really. ) and Crivvie just stopped limping from the Jackrabbit Incident.
We were walking in a field and a guy walking his dogs around a neighboring hill flushed a big, fast Jack across our path.
Thus we discovered that Crivvie actually does have some prey drive, and she got pretty close.
But the wily Jack led them up and around a hill which had a lot of volcanic rock, and we got them back with cuts all over. Tahoe had blood dripping from his chin, so he may have biffed it or run the Jack into a hole out of sight. We’ll never know, since none of those involved in the incident are talking.
Most of the damage was self inflicted because of their double suspension gait and the interference, so I think we’ll have to get muttluks (or similar, if someone out there has experience with dog booties I’d love to hear opinions–I like the long liner cuff of the muttluks but it looks like the ruffwear booties fit well) with those long cuffs to protect their legs, and the paw coverings will also help them from knocking the tops of their toes.
Since Tahoe is white, his wounds looked most dramatic:
But we took them home and washed their wounds in a tub full of warm soapy water, and after all was revealed to be relatively minor despite all the blood, sprayed them with WoundKote, and let them be.
No one had any wounds that needed stitching, or breaks, thank goodness, although Crivvie’s limp worried us for a bit. But nothing was broken, or even very hot, so we let it go. She had really gouged the heck of the back of that front leg, and had a cut on the edge of that pad, so that may have been the cause.
Amazingly, that was the only cut pad out of the whole deal, and she’s done worse to her pads playing on the deck at home.
And since Tahoe had run up to a bloated looking fox terrier-type at dog beach the Sunday night before the movers came to say “hi” and got a bite in the side as a reward, we already had an anti-licking cone and him on precautionary antibiotics.
So we’d been putting the cone on whoever seems to find theirself most delicious at the moment.
And hoping this is the end of dog injuries for a while. Dogs are such fast healers though, everybody’s nearly a hundred percent again, except for Belu’s limp.
And Belu bit her tongue during the Jack Incident. Which made a nice change from her biting Tahoe or Crivens or me or Nick’s juicy upper thigh, even if by accident.
Heavens to Betsy, sorry about the novel!
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10.26.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:21 pm by wendy
The smoke hasn’t cleared, but there are two pieces of news that just can’t wait.
First off, Cristina finally finished that project she was working on…well, I guess finished isn’t the word…I hear these mini-people need a lot of work even after a 40 week incubation period.
I thought I’d post just the first pic, but upon opening these up for trimming and resizing, I realized that the look Peter had moved onto Cristina’s face and hers moved to his, which I thought was really cool couple phenomenon.
Check it out:
7 lbs, 9 oz. and 20 inches long and all fabulous new human being.
Yay!
Welcome to the planet!
(okay, welcome to the planet outside of the inside of Cristina ;)).Okay, and my big news which is relatively minor (hehheh, that’s kind of a pun) compared to the creation, formation, and successful delivery of a new person…
Grammy, if you’re reading this, STOP NOW. We’re going to take you out to a lovely dinner at Chez Loma before we tell you this. We love you. We want to break it gently over spinach and duck bacon salad and filet mignon and a mellow but robust red.
…but we FINALLY got our transfer out of here!
I do love San Diego.
But the city has changed since I first fell in love with it as a teenager, and I’ve changed too.
(Long story short: I grew up here, went away to boarding school in a foggy northern California town, finished high school spending nearly every day surfing in Coronado [it’s the O.C. of San Diego ;)], worked and saved two years through community college and got a transfer to CSU Sacramento where I thought I could afford to pay for college and eat and still pay for rent [$350 for a 1 bd/1ba w hdwd flrs! (in the ghetto where everything you have that you don’t watch all the time gets stolen! who knew?)] and while the college thing didn’t work out, at the job I found the most fabulous man…)
When we looked at moving back here, the houses were at least somewhat affordable (at least to our then-Bay Area eyes) and my Mom lived here and my Dad lived here and since we spent half of our vacations driving south to visit his parents and the other half my parents we thought we’d live somewhere next to one set of them and save time and since my parents lived in the prettiest part of California…;)
But my Mom has since passed away and my Dad lives much of the year in Arizona, and we can’t afford the land we want with the commute we want with the house we want on it …and truth is, San Diego’s changed.
We’ve changed.
We put in for a transfer six months after we got here.
That was over four years ago.
My Mom was talking about getting a place where we were going to be and we were paying special attention to properties with “in-law units” (heheh) or guest cottages etc. on it but nothing was going to happen until the state gov’t coughed up a transfer to one of our top four.
And thanks to a bunch of lazy-state-teat-sucking-dishonest-corrupt pigs and the bureaucratic justice so slowly visited upon them…we have a transfer!
To what was in our hearts our number one but on the transfer list our number two! Whheeeee! That’s the shizzle, yo!
Yay Yreka!
It’s not on the coast, but it’s less expensive than Eureka (our #1) and has a biodiesel coöp nearby. Also Mt. Shasta. And Ashland, Oregon.
Space to stretch out, space to be, space for us and our little family. I’ll finally get to use my snowshoes!
Frankly, we’ve been waiting so long, hoping so long, putting things off & wondering & waiting for so long, it’s kind of hard to believe.
Imagine living your life in three month increments, planning your life in trimesters. And you’ll know why on the one hand, for our friends, I am so excited by their new little futures, and, why I am hesitant and reticent and hoping for the best, come what may.
It’s hard to plan your life that way, but wow, am I looking forward to that new place.
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02.28.07
Posted in Uncategorized, dogs, entertainment at 11:01 pm by wendy
Skype is free, unless you want to use it to call land lines, in which case it’s still really cheap, you just buy credit or sign up for their plan. It’s cheaper for us to use Skype for our long distance. With our digital phone service from Cox it costs nearly $2 a minute to talk to Madrid, which can be a major bummer.
We had Best Buy store credit, so I got a Logitech laptop specific headset that has great sound quality, but it isn’t wireless which is kind of a bummer. But if you have a Bluetooth headset for your cell you can use it with Skype.
But if you don’t have/want Bluetooth and are looking for a headset, there are tons out there. I’ve read that the headsets for gaming systems work just fine too (and the PS2 one is really cheap from Amazon).
And I suck because while I was originally thinking about last night for a Skypecast SnB, I wasn’t feeling it. For some reason, comments on the last post weren’t being forwarded by e-mail, so I just shrugged and thought, “meh.” But I see there was some interest. Oops. I didn’t have the Skypecast listed and was just going to send out the link to people, but instead, just click here. If we have a problem with privacy or weirdos (besides Mary-Kay ;p -mwah!- besos!) we can change the location and e-mail it out to the Normals.
So next week, Tuesday night 6.15 pacific, which means 7.15 mountain, which means 8.15 central, which means 9.15 eastern, which means 2.15am Wednesday morning Zulu time. A duration of 3 hours, so there should be plenty of time to come in and out of the conversation. I’ll have my cr@p together better next week (I hope).
Crivens says “hi.”
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02.24.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:26 pm by wendy
Who’d be up for chatting via skypecast? You’d need a headset and a skype account, but it would be like a virtual stitch and bitch. Except you can’t see or smell or touch what people are knitting or spinning. But you can also wear your jammies and don’t have to buy overpriced burnt coffee.
What times and nights are good for people? I set one up for Tuesdays at 6.15pm pacific time, lasting two hours, but I think I can change it. 6.15’s a little early for us westcoasters, a little late maybe for eastcoasters…so northamericancentric…
Anyway, leave me a comment to let me know if you’d prefer a different time, we can always do a poll, or leave a comment/e-mail me to get the link to join in.
I do have knitting, spinning, and pictures, and more than just grieving and packing going on. I hope to upload proof of that soon.
In the meantime, let me know about a virtual SnB, and here’s some old news:
pictures from the green tortoise portion of our trip
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02.07.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:53 pm by wendy
Thank you, to every one of you who have commented, or e-mailed or called. I appreciate it so much, I can’t even say. But I’ll try, in my spaazy way.
(my mom and her Crivvie, this Christmas at our home)
Mary-Kay came from Colorado, that’s how much she rocks. She made us laugh, she held our dogs, she withstood the raygun glare of my grandmother without bursting into flame.
The knitters and spinners have been amazing with their offers of support and food, it’s been much, much, much appreciated. Cathy who met my mother when I brought her into Two Sisters and Ewe nearly made me cry today with her kind words (some of the stuff you all say might make me cry at times, but it’s a good way, a good thing, I swear). Nancy and Crissy stayed at Rebecca’s probably much longer than they wanted to and listened to anger I didn’t even know was there. I should now better by now than to be surprised by the strength, kindness, and generosity of this community.
And all your comments.
I really can’t thank you guys enough for the comments. I’m one of those people who feels so overwhelmed by the small useless-feelingness of my words when confronted by the overpowering hugeness of someone’s pain that, before, I’ve started to comment on someone’s blog and then just deleted it because it seemed so…so…inadaquate. But now I know, all those words count, all those words help. With every comment that has been left I’ve paused and felt the sympathy in the words and thought about the commenter, and that has really helped pull me outside of this pain a little more, out of this me who is struggling with everything never seeing or talking to my mother again means. The support of everyone has been awesome and I really, really, really appreciate it.
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12.31.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:05 pm by wendy
In no order, no precedence, hopefully a better completion rate than last year’s…
- This is the year of the weaving!
In February, I’ll take Margaret’s weaving class for harness looms, but I will finally comb out that lovely Karakul lamb fleece I got from Robin Snyder, spin it, naturally dye it and weave a rug on a navajo loom, using Working with the Wool and Designing with the Wool as a guide. Yes, this resolution is very familiar…
- Get to a San Diego Derby Dolls bout. What say you local knitters? Get some floor space, bring some chairs and knitting, and see what it’s all about? I’ve never been, but I’m curious.
- Drinks at the Top of the Hyatt (kick@ss view of the San Diego skyline and bay) with Nick.
- This will be the year I customise ZenCart, so I can see and my customers can see what I’ve got in at a glance, and hopefully, easier to update and maintain than my current tables based pages, and people can find things more easily, choose their own shipping methods and costs.
- Start running and climbing again.
- Have dinner with my grandmother and mother and Nick here at the house, trying new recipes or just enjoying old favorites, at least once a month.
- Finally gather, create and post web pages for all our wonderful local San Diego fiber resources, as I have a notebook bulging with wads of scribbled notes.
- Gather up all UFOs, and either rip ‘em or finish ‘em. Any UFOs from this year which are still UFOs next year, should be ripped and the yarn given to someone else who will actually use it.
- Do not lose any more Spanish! Learn French.
- (another one from another year [for 2005]) Write more cards and letters, I have a huge stash of stationary to bust.
- Always remember how blessed I am. How loved I am, how much I love my beautiful family, and how lucky we are we all found each other.
¡Féliz año nuevo a todos!
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12.29.06
Posted in Uncategorized, entertainment, stupefied at 2:33 am by wendy
I’m so dependent on bloglines now, it seems that if you don’t have an rss feed, I won’t remember to read you (I don’t use my own sidebar! horrors!) even if I always love what you have to say. Once upon a time, this comment might have been addressed to Terri. But now she has a real blog! Yay for not having a fake blog any more! ;p
Anyway, there are definitely blogs I check as soon as I see they’ve updated, Heidi’s, Lauren’s, Nancy’s, Amys, Lori’s, Crissy’s, Melissa’s, Cari and the Amazing Thumper’s, LoriO’s, Cecilia’s, Jen/La’s, Jessica’s, Susan’s (who unfortunately has been lost from blogland lately to real work and pampered chefdom, Ande’s, the aforementioned Terri’s, Hilari’s, Mary-Kay’s, Minou’s, Brooke’s, Stephanie’s, Allison’s, Eunny’s, Kirsten’s, Felicia’s, Andrea’s (beautiful photos, beautiful hardwon Ben), Monica’s, June’s, Iris’s, Vera’s, Paula’s, Mandy’s, and MJ’s.
And then there are the ones I see and skip until they are the dregs of boredom and realise…oh yeah! That’s why I added this!
For example, the “five hour erection” of BLDBLOG and Mimi Smartypants with her guard llamas of the underpants drawer (defends against underpants gnomes!) Why do I forget how interesting I find these blogs?
And the sadistic perverseness of Girls Are Pretty!
Updated to add: And why do I forget Cara at January One?
I love all her header images and the random surprise, they’re always new to me. And such great works, not just knitting.
What’s the point of this post? I don’t know!
I’m gathering up UFOs for a goals post, skeining up yarns, and savoring every second with the Pomona/Angelina.
BTW, I guess our dog beach post was somehow marked “private” before. I don’t know how that happened, and if that means you all couldn’t see it before, or just couldn’t comment, but in case you couldn’t see it–check out Tahoe’s impossible floppiness in the frisbee catch pic. It’s a crazy pic that Nick took.
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12.10.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:27 am by wendy
Hie thee on over to Pixie Sticks and congratulate them on a very hard earned adorable FO!
Go to her main page and scroll down to see how full to busting a momma can get, oh my.
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