Kevin's musings

I’m a slacker and haven’t updated in quite a while…

Just a few items:

• Nash and I have enrolled in a Basic Obediance Class. It remains to be seen if thats for him to be more obediant to me, or me to be more obediant to him.
• Enough of the snow melted today that I could move the trailer to a level spot and get it all situated right. TIP: don’t leave a case of diet coke in your fridge in a trailer over december and january. (Luckily it wasn’t too bad to clean up)
• Unloaded Nash’es old old crate. (36″). Way too small for him anymore. Anyone want a crate?
• All the toys I left in the trailer got moved inside. The pups were very very happy to see them!
• I had a lovely time on my trip to Boston. For a more detailed write up see: Fudcon Boston recap
• I am REALLY Looking forward to being able to go on camping trips with the trailer this spring/summer.
• I have a bunch of pics on my camera I need to transfer. Hopefully a big photo post soon
• Meadfest was a lot of fun. Pretty nice fun group of people
• Taxes suck. Since this year I have a form K-1 from my dad’s estate, I have to use a service that can deal with that. Turbotax claims to, but they don’t have the finalized worksheet for that form yet. Not until next week.
• We bottled the plain mead we made, and made a Vanilla/Peach. It’s bubling away next to me now
• I also made a porter, just to have something with more immediate gratification. Luckily I had it in the sink, because it Really decided to ferment for the first few days
• My family is doing a trip down to Karchner Caverns next month. I’m considering going, but I need to probibly do another trip in the trailer with Nash and confirm that he’s ok with being left out while I am gone for a while. Anyone planning any camping soon?
• Looks like I ordered a new laptop. I think it should be a good one and my tax return should just about pay for it.
• I have a bunch of stuff I should ebay/craigslist/get rid of. I really should work on that sometime.

Look for hopefully some pictures soon…

I forgot I took this movie a while back, but remembered when I got things off the camera today.

The movie doesn’t do justice to it, it was very cool.

Cool reflection with water dropplets (9MB avi).

So far I have:

• gotten gas at $1.999
• Voted (love that early voting
• got worm meds for all the dogs and got merlin home to recover from his teeth cleaning
• purchased some beer and other booze to take down to NM
• Went to the store for a few things
• picked up my Satan suit from the cleaners
• cleaned out the litterboxes, and had the garbage bag break open on me. YUCK!

Now Ijust need to pack all the stuff I am taking tomorrow and get all ready to go.
Hopefully I can get everything ready except for hiching up the trailer, and then leave somewhere around 7amish.
It’s supposed to be windy and rainy, which is not going to be fun towing a trailer.

Yesterday I managed to get a bit of cleaning done and go up to the CGC dinner/meetup. It was fun to catch up with some folks that I don’t see very often and hear all the fun hound stories. A good time was had by all.

Today I started getting the trailer a bit more ready for my upcoming trip. I am heading out Wednesday to go down to the annual halloween party and then the following week I will be heading up into the Gila Wilderness to go deer hunting with a good friend of mine. Should be a fun time all around. I will of course be taking the pups along. I am pretty sure kurt and merlin will be perfectly happy if they have a soft place to hang out that they know somewhat (the trailer). Nash I am a little worried about, since he’s never spent too much time away from a yard to run around in and burn off some energy in. Hopefully he will do ok with some long walks.

Today I: Emptied out the grey/black tanks. Filled the fresh water tank and got all my filter and hoses all fixed up and spooled up. Reorganized stuff in the outside storage, checked to see which folding crate I could easily get in there for Nash (the x-large one will fit, but makes it very hard to access anything while it’s up. The small one fits on the ‘couch’ in the back of the trailer. It’s a bit cramped for Nash, but I think it will work for this trip at any rate), got oil and gas into the portable honda generator I got a while ago and tested it (At least here it has enough power to run the a/c, which is good), Checked on the small heater I have been using in the trailer to keep the water lines from freezing (it’s doing great).

Upcoming tomorrow: work, need to pick up some beers for the beer tasting thursday night, some dog food and a new tag for Nash, find a cat sitter, and then the weekly GURPs game.

Hopefully I can get everything ready to be gone for 2 weeks by Wed.

Man did I get a pile of packages today. Most everything I ordered via mail order in the last few weeks picked today to arrive on.
Trailer Dolly, microwave, hitch lock, coffee pot, etc. Tomorrow the generator shows up.
The one thing I am lacking is a folding crate for nash to use in the trailer. I looked at petsmart today, but they are more the 2X what they would
cost on-line. ;( Guess I will order one and see how he does without this weekend.

The boys, just hanging out in the doggie bunker after a walk.

Here you can see how over large the x-pens I got are. They are the 48″ ones, when I should have probibly gotten the 36″ ones.
(This is 2 of the 8panel ones hooked together. You can hook them easily, but you have to disconnect them to transport them).

The A/C unit of DOOM. I did figure out that I wasn’t adjusting it right, so I can now get it to now totally freeze everything solid in a few minutes.

Nice lazy weekend here.

I did go out saturday and look at travel trailers. The place I went was a distributer of the shadow cruisers that I have been looking at on-line.
Man were they packed with people. All their customer parking was taken up and I had to park next door. Since all the salescritters were helping people,
I got a chance to look at the units I was interested in with no pressure. I really liked the shadow cruiser 160 they had there on the lot.
It’s a 2006 model, so they are trying to sell it (it was a “managers special, with no haggle low price”
It had the “mocha” interor, which wasn’t too bad all things considered. There was some minor trim dammage around the bathroom door and some
small amount of surface rust on the front, but other than that it was looking good.
I emailed them some questions yesterday and their sales person got back to me this morning.
Now I just need to decide if I really want to blow that kind of money on a trailer… It will be very handy for halloween in New Mexico, Hunting in New Mexico, thanksgiving at my sisters in phoenix, and Faire next year. Other than that it will sit next to my driveway though…

Well, just the usual chaos going on around here…

• Merlin wanted to go out really bad today… that usually means he sees a squirrel. This time it wasn’t a squirrel, but a cat. Luckily the cat managed to go the right way and made it out of the yard alive.
• The other day when I wasn’t paying enough attention, I must have left the back door open just a tad long and Bitty the cat got out. Luckily I managed to herd her back in before she could get very far.
• Been trying to fight off this anoying cough for a while now… I sure hope it goes away soon.

In other news I have been thinking about getting a small travel trailer. I have a number of things coming up where that would be very handy.
It would be handy for nukestock at halloween, hunting in new mexico after, and going to phoenix at thanksgiving. It would be nice to not have to
find a hotel that takes dogs while traveling. I would feel much better leaving the dogs in a nice sturdy trailer with a/c than in a tent or a hotel room.
I have some good leads… will probibly go look at some this weekend.

Hello from bazcamp up in loveland near boyd lake.
I wish I could just hang out up here this weekend, but alas, I overbooked myself a lot.

Soon I should head back home to the pups.
Tomorrow at 9am until noon I will be helping man the Broomfield days Colorado Greyhound Adoption booth.
Then, in the afternoon some neighbors are having a ‘Neighborhood party’, which I have missed every year I have lived in my current house. It would be nice to at least make a short appearance there and meet some folks.
Some other friends are having a BBQ/party in boulder in the afternoon/evening.
Some other friends are up visiting from New Mexico, and it would be great to meet up with them, especially since monday my friend D heads out to the east coast for 6 months or a year, so hopefully I will see them some.
Then perhaps sunday I can relax.

Well, the puppies are going to be quarentened for another 7-10 days to make sure they are all healthy before fostering.
Thats just fine with me… fits in much better with my travel plans.

However, there was a returned greyhound today that I am gonna foster until I head out of town this weekend. She’s been here about an hour and is doing wonderfully. She learned stairs in about 5minutes. crates fine. Minds fine. Is outgoing and very pretty. Still pending is the meeting between her and the cat, but I imagine that will happen soon.

Well, today was finally back to normal around here. House guests left monday (in a rental car. ). GURPs game happened monday night.
Today was busy at work, and then I finally worked thru all the laundry I needed to do, unpacking ice chests and car, and got caught up on some geeking.

As an introvert, it’s nice to be able to have a few days of just relaxing at home with my pups every once in a while.

Possibly will get faire pictures from this weekend up later tonight, or possibly tomorrow.