Well, all the time spent in airports this weekend resulted in my picking up a nasty cold somewhere.

day one: sore throat and clogged sinuses.
day two: clogged sinuses and runny nose.
day three: coughing and sneezing.

Hopefully day 4 will be back to being well again.

Well, made it back from chicago eariler today. It was a very nice trip…got to see lots of old friends, the wedding was very nice, the food and drynke was great too. I think I am about 4 days back on sleep however, we stayed up late every night there and got up early. Friday we also did a LOT of walking around in the “hottest day so far this year” in chicago. Good trip.

Pictures are up at: The usual picture place

Been a pretty busy week with all the usual things in it.

Tonight I get to see the sneak preview of Serenity. Looking forward to it. Hopefully it won’t dissapoint me. I have been watching some of the tv episodes the last few days. If it’s anywhere near as good as any of those it should be great.

Then tomorrow bright and early I get to go out to DIA and fly out to chicago for some friends wedding. It should be nice to see lots of friends there. Hopefully there won’t be any travel hassles on the way. At least my laptop is all suspend friendly these days.

Well, got back from the Arizona trip last night around midnight. The drive back was long as well, but also uneventfull, just some construction and stupid drivers, nothing out of the ordinary.

Friday we had a bunch of visiting time and hanging out at the resort. It was a pretty nice place. Very good views from it (it was on a hill). The pool was nice. All the folks in the resturant there were nice. Friday night we went up to my fathers place (about 30min away) and had a BBQ. Got in more visiting with the family there.

Saturday we all got up early and went for a geocache expidition. There was one only a few miles from the resort and we wanted to go before it got hot. We got to the trailhead about 8am and after a very nice hike we managed to find the cache. This one was a 1.5 out of 5 difficulty, so it was pretty easy. By the time we got back to the cars around 9:30 it was already getting too hot for hiking. We probibly should have gone eariler. Saturday afternoon was spent in the air conditioned suite looking at photos and drinking wine, then off for dinner down at the resturant. They were kinda slow bringing us our food, but everything was very yummy. After dinner was yet more visiting and drinking wine.

Sunday was the drive back day. I stopped by my dad’s place on the way and visited for a bit and then hit the road. 14 hours later I was home.

This weekend I am at a family gathering down in arizona. Rio Rico Arizona.

The drive down thursday was pretty uneventfull, but quite long. It’s almost exactly 1000 miles from my house to the resort we are staying at. Took around 13-14hours. Predictabily there was bad traffic in the larger cities: Denver, Colorado Springs, and Albquerque. I almost got to witness a head on collision on the highway between hatch and deming. Some lady passed me, and then stayed in the left hand lane and was adjusting the visor on the passenger side while not paying attention to the large truck headed her way. Someone honked and she brained up before they hit though.

The resort seems pretty nice so far from the small amount I have seen. The desk lady was nice and wanted to meet all the dogs (yes, they allow dogs here! Hurray). She said the wireless they have setup would work in the lobby or the resturant, but not in the rooms. Luckily she was wrong.
Well, time to pass out now. More adventures tomorrow.

Well, this last weekend was the opening day of the Colorado Ren Faire and I was out there both days with my 3 pups. Saturday was very nice weather wise. It seemed kinda lethargic on what people were willing to do, there wasn’t as much playing as normal for some reason, and our donations weren’t too great.

Sunday was more rainy, but more playfull. Lots of folks starting to get into the spirit of things and have a good time.

Of the dogs, twyla of course was in heaven. People to pet her all the time and a soft pillow to lay down on. Nothing could be finer for her.

Merlin does pretty well out there. He doesn’t mind people petting him and enjoys walking in the parade. He’s always looking for me though. He’s very very bonded to just me in particular. When I leave the booth someone has to keep a strong grip on him.

While Kurt does petsmart just fine, he really doesn’t like the front of the booth out there. So, I set him up behind the “counter” in the booth. He gets to relax and I can get people coming into the booth to go over and pet him. Seems to work out pretty well:

I’m traveling the next 2 weekends, so I won’t be out there, but I should all the weekends after that. Should be fun.

well, the ren faire planning is going reasonably well. Went out to the faire site sunday and dropped off all the benches and painted the two new ones. It’s amazing how much surface area those things have. It took me several hours to mostly paint the two new benches. Hopefully they will hold up ok for this year at least. Dropped a bunch of other junk off at the booth so I don’t have to carry it in every week.

Saturday is starting to look ok for volunteers, but sunday is still light. Hopefully we will get some more folks to step forward this week.

Starting to look forward to being out there.

One of the benches I made for the greyhound booth at the faire last year died, and a few others are none too stable, so I decided I would make a few new ones. They really get beat up out there, so I worked out a new (hopefully more stable) design:

I used glue in addition to lots of nails. I cut the braces inset into the 2×12 legs for added stability, and I moved the legs out to the end, not 2/3rds of the way out. We found tons of people would sit on the end of a bench causing it to flip up on them, these shouldn’t do that hopefully. It seems pretty darn sturdy. I am going to try and make another one before sunday and wander down and drop them off then to the booth.

Of course it’s summer, so here’s a few dog pictures for you:

Kurt relaxing in his pool (Even resting his head on the side of it):

and Merlin with his new favorate toy… it’s a goose. It honks when you squeeze it. It’s very cute:

Ren faire is coming up. Starting to really look forward to it. I hope it goes nicely this year.