Kevin's musings

I’ve been slacking and not posting much lately… will try and catch up on news and pictures in the next few days here…

On the 6th, 7th, and 8th of April I went out for my first camping trip of the year. I wanted to go someplace nearby and just do a trial run with the trailer and see what I needed to get for it, or change or whatnot. I did manage to do some prep before that weekend. Got the microwave all secured with some of these:
Super Grip fasteners. Seemed to work pretty well. Also picked up a 12v coffee maker (I have a percolator, but it takes forever to make a pot of coffee), and some other odds and ends.

Looking around, I decided to go to St Vrain state park. It’s pretty close (about a 30min drive or so), they had recently remodeled and rebuilt things there, and they had poooooower hookups. Unfortunately, the weekend of the trip, the snow and freezing rain was kinda depressing, but I decided to go anyhow.

Getting up and getting parked was a breeze. The place was pretty desolate with all the grass still brown and/or covered in ice and snow. There was a ton of water around… lakes and ponds, and
streams and such. Not too many other campers, but a few. There were even some folks fishing at one point in the snow. There were birds. Lots and lots of birds. Pelicans, Great blue herons,
Canadian Geese, Ibis type birds, ducks, and a lot I had no idea what they were. Nash was very happy to try and eat the geese poop, so I had to watch him closely on walks. Due to the lousy weather
we pretty much would go for short walks and spent the rest of the time in the trailer hanging out. The pups seemed to have a pretty good time, although I think Nash got a bit stir crazy a few times.

The EVDO coverage was pretty good there, so I was able to keep in touch on email and such. I got some portable ipod speakers which for the most part worked really well, except for when the
furnace fan was running it was hard to hear the music. The 12v coffee pot and 12v crock pot both worked great. The converter makes a slight humm when you are running 12v appliances, but
nothing to anoying.

Here’s a few pictures:

View from the parking spot back to the other campers.

Some pelicans. I had the camera on B&W somehow. ;(

Lounging hounds in the trailer.

There were some nice trails around the ponds. Gravel and pretty flat.

Merlin was being very tolerant of Nash. “I’m squishing your head”.

There’s a Great Blue Heron taking off. It was hard to get any pictures of them. They would fly off before you could get at all close to them.

Nice shot of a little bridge over the waterway.

Loon? Something funky looking…

All in all a good shakedown trip. I have a list of things I want to get/setup before my next trip, but overall the trailer did very nicely.

Here’s a catch up of some recent photos…

Got the trailer moved into my side yard (since the city was upset that it was parked on a non paved or gravel surface in the front):

Check out how close it is on this side to the fence:

Thunderstorm season appears to have started already. Here’s Kurt in his storm defender cape:

Is it a bird? A plane? no… it’s…

…it’s a tree rat!

Kurt and Merlin are ready for the day it makes a mistake.

Nash thinks it might be good to learn how to climb.

Once again I have been remiss in posting pictures as they come in. Here’s a catchup post…

Nash loves to play with any of the other pups in the training class we are going to, but there’s this small black dog that he really really loves.
Oddly he treats her very gently… love nips all over her and plays as much as he can…

Lets play!

Hey! How about I hold down your head and chew on your tail some?
Other pup: OK!

We went out to the colorado Pet expo last weekend. It was quite a nice fun adventure.
Nash found out that he could lay in the way and people would stop and pet him.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get many pictures of the event…

Here’s one of Merlin, Warrior, and Kurt.

And of course since the weather has been nice lately, it was time to break out the pool…

Nash: Hey? what is this? Some sort of large water bowl?

Kurt: No, allow me to demonstrate…

Kurt: First you soak your toes. Ahhhhhhhhh….

Kurt: Then you lay down in it. Ahhhhhhh….

Nash: ok, let me try. First you jump in at high speed!

Nash: Then you splash around trying to catch the floating things, then you zoom off!

Kurt: Sigh. Puppies.

Finally got around to pulling pictures off my camera from last month…

I went out to Fudcon Boston 2007 in the first part of the month…

You can read my writeup of it Here at my tummy journal.

Here’s the view from my hotel room:

The main meeting room at BU:

The Banner:

I made a batch of porter the other day… it REALLY decided to go… good thing I put it in the sink:

and what photo post of mine would be complete with out yet more doggie pictures:

Merlin:

Kurt:

Nash:

Downloaded the 70 (!) pictures that had piled up on my camera in the last week or two…

I see that in this batch I have topped 2000 pictures with this camera. Not bad. I still like it pretty well. I might upgrade at some point if something amazing came along, but aside from a few minor drawbacks, this camera is doing just fine for me.

You can call him Han, or Mr Solo.
He’s doing pretty well. His whining has pretty much gone down to just before meals when he’s wanting his dinner faster, and sometimes to go out.
He still occasionally screams when he is a klutz and runs into something, or someone startles him too much, but thats gone way down too.

A rotted log is such a wonderful toy!

Kurt has such a distinguished face these days.

Snow is yummy.

Hey, whats that in here? More snow you say?

Kurt and Han.

Nash enjoying some downtime after a hard day of playing in the snow.

I really liked the effect here… the shadows were keeping bars of snow from melting…

Spent much of today shoveling snow. I have to pick up the travel trailer from the shop, and so need a place to put it.
Snow moving is hard work. Hopefully I can get enough cleared to get the trailer in.

Just got a new foster pup tonight.

He’s 4 years old. Very very dark red brindle (yet another shade of brindle. I think I almost have them all covered
So far he’s kinda stressed, but sweet. He’s a return, his people were having medical issues and couldn’t care for him anymore…
I’m sure he will find a good home soon. Good looking, cat safe, gets along with other dogs nicely, etc.

Will post some pics later…

wow… I haven’t posted anything yet in 2007.

Not too much going on… busy work, cold snowy days.

Managed to bottle out Blackberry Vanilla mead the other day. It’s very yummy. I think it turned out great.
We still need to gather up bottles and bottle up the plain batch we did at the same time.

Sierra the foster girl left last week for her forever home. She’s heading out with a group of 30 pups being taken out to the coast.
I sure hope she has a good home, she was very sweet.

Looks like I will be heading out to Fudcon Boston in early feb.
Should be a good trip, I am looking forward to it, although I hate to leave the pups at home…

Now to catch up on pictures:

Ready to head out the door for a walk, Sierra, Merlin, Kurt, Nash.

I have started using Twylas old Soft Touch Harness on Nash.
It’s worked wonders. Before he was pulling up a storm, to the point were it was starting to hurt my hand.
With the harness he only very ocassionally pulls at all.

I got this $1.75 brush in the horse section at petsmart. It’s wonderfull… I reccomend them for any hound owners.
It pulls quite a bit off of Nash, but it’s worked great on the other hounds too.

This is what the outside of the door to the back yard looked like the other day.
Nice puppy print patterns.

Kurt’s looking pretty stylish in his coat.

Nash loves some snow zoomies.

Kurt and Merlin sharing a couch. Note that kurt has woken up and seen me get the camera, and is trying to decide if it’s
more scary to stay there while they flash goes off, or get up and potentially annoy merlin by removing his pillow.

Well, we got another nice storm the other day… 8-10″ new snow.

There is at least one person here who is happy with this: Nash

Nash has now started playing with Sierra the same way he plays with Maisey the puppy… and she puts up with it.
He jumps on her and chews on her head and she does the same back to him. It’s very amusing.

Nash and Sierra playing with the chicken Nash got for xmas, while Merlin looks on in disgust.

Still not sure if I am going to go do anything for New Years tonight. I could go to a party or wander out bar hopping or something,
or just stick to my usual tendencies and stay home.

So late last week was the great denver blizzard. I guess we ended up getting about 2.5ft or so here.
Of course as long as net and power are working I was able to work, so it wasn’t much different than most days.
I did have to do a bunch of shoveling to get it so I could pull out of the garage, but otherwise the snow was pretty fun.

Nash had a blast. He loves the snow. Running, jumping, playing, diving into, laying in, rolling in it.

This snow stuff is wonderfull!

You can even burry your head in it.

Nash bursting out of the snow.

Parade of hounds heading out to the yard via the path I shoveled.

Hounds playing in the snow

Majestic Merlin

Pile of hounds.

Nash takes a cool down break.

Nash finds a peice of ice to play with.

On a walk, the shoveled out sidewalk is narrow in places… no problem for Nash, he prefers to jump through the snow.

Yesterday a number of folks and hounds came by to visit. Including Nash’es favorite dog in the universe: Maisey the greyhound puppy. They played and played and played for about 2.5 hours non stop. Nash sure slept well that night.

Today I opened some squeeky toys for the dogs… they had a blast playing around with them.

The chicken was a big hit.

Later today I need to do some baking and then head up to a potluck in boulder.
I could bring a dog or two with me, but it’s hard to decide which ones I should take… I might just let them all stay home and relax.

Here’s the lovely little Sierra foster dog…

She probably needs a home with other dogs around. She’s a bit curious about cats, but nothing that can’t be corrected.

Aside from some cat interest she has been a very easygoing, mellow foster.

Sierra and Nash in their crates…man, having 2 big crates is such a pain.

Sierra streeching…

Making herself right at home in Nash’es crate.