Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Category Archives: fun stuff


by 12 Comments

Sleepy puppy…and Reilly's game

Over at Reilly the CowSpot Dog’s blog there’s a contest brewing.  It’s especially designed for those of us with “zoomie” dogs.  You know the kind….they never slow down and it’s rare to catch them snoozing.  We have one such dog…and most of you have met her.  But getting a photo of her sleeping is not so easy.

Just when you think you’ve got that perfect shot…

…she opens those eyes.

You try again…

…but she always hears the camera as I turn it on.

Sometimes she sleeps upside down, like she did the first night she was with us…which is when I got the first photo above.  And even now she sleeps that way when she’s really comfortable.

But sometimes she’s more shy.

Once in awhile she falls asleep outside, even in the winter.

You might have noticed by now that she’s quite the pillow hog.  Which is why we call her a princess…as in the princess and the pea.

But mostly she’s just our silly girl.


by 10 Comments

More hiking

Today we spent more time at the Petroglyph Monument west of Albuquerque.

On a 2.5 mile hike along a hill covered with huge black volcanic rock were hundreds of petrogylph drawings done several hundred years ago.

Amazingly they are still there.

They are just sitting out along the hillside waiting to be discovered over and over again by tourists and locals alike.

We had a wonderful time looking for them.

And I’m sure we missed many.

Blue skies, history there on the rocks, sunshine on our faces.

Can’t beat it.


by 11 Comments

Sunshine, snow and Katie's excellent adventure

When the sun shines snow doesn’t seem so bad.  And today we had sunshine!  So Katie and I went out for an adventure.  On the drive I noticed how beautiful the sky was.  It felt so good to see the sun.

We drove up to a little park in a town I used to work in.  We had the park all to ourselves.

Mostly it was a packed trail where some people had walked their dogs, and others had cross country skied.

Katie had lots of places to investigate, so we weren’t exactly moving at an aerobic pace.

It was a beautiful day in the woods…

…and in the fields…where I found a little tiny bird’s nest.  Katie got mad at me because I went off the path and she had to wade in snow up to her chest.  The next time I found something I wanted to photograph she told me she’d just wait up on the path, thank you very much Mom.

We got to chase a squirrel, both of us running at top speed across the snow.

The squirrel got away, but Katie wasn’t giving up.

When we got to a “T” in the path quite a ways away from the car I wanted to turn back.  But Katie wasn’t having any of that.  She didn’t want to waste a good walk going back over the trail she’s just covered.  So we went further around the big loop instead.  Cause Katie’s in charge don’t you know

We headed home along a steep ridge.  At one point Katie thought we should go down a steep hill.  Which she did.  Then she sat and watched a lady walk along the path on the other side of a creek.  After the lady went by Katie looked over her shoulder at me and all I had to do was motion her back and she ran right back up the hill.  Such a good girl.

We also did a bit of recall…just to see if she remembers.

Of course she does.

We had just the best time, she didn’t want to go back to the car, but I was cold and damp and hungry.  So she graciously allowed me to put her back into her crate.

We’re pretty sure we’ll go back to that park again this winter.  They’re predicting 10 to 15 inches of snow day after tomorrow.  Can’t wait to see how she feels about snow when it’s deeper than she is tall!

Hope everyone had a great weekend.  We sure did!  Katie sends kisses.


by 12 Comments

Snowshoes and Katie-girl

Inspired by PJ over at Books in Northport I dug my old snowshoes out of the basement this morning.  With a few more inches of fresh snow overnight I thought it would be fun to  goof off with Katie in the yard.

She’s never seen snowshoes before, so I was curious how she’d feel about them.  I went out first, got them on and plodded to the back of the yard.  Then husband “released the dog” and she raced out to see me.

At first she was curious about what was on my feet.

But pretty soon she was into the game of frisbee.

Though she also liked following me around, walking in my wide trail and pouncing on the back of the snowshoes.

And especially fun was digging and routing through the snow looking for..

…well, I don’t really know what she was looking for..but obviously it was very interesting!

There are lots of places to explore in the yard…

…but eventually snow began to ball up on her legs and underside…and it was time to go in.

But we’ll be out again soon, right baby?

Cause this was really FUN!


by 14 Comments

Hope

This was going to be a Wordless Wednesday…but I had to get my food blog up…

So I present these photos as a sign that spring can not be that far away… even though some of you are getting buried (yet again) by winter’s wrath.

The first is a sign in front of our local nursery…and the second is inside my local grocery store.

Time to smile.  There is hope.


by 25 Comments

Food photography

I’ve been trying, really trying, to photograph food.  You’d think it would be easier than photographing a moving object….say a sheltie or something.  But in reality I’m finding it much more difficult.  Here are the best photos I’ve taken so far…but I have a long way to go!

My first idea was to use ice cream.  Why?  Because I love ice cream, and I had this interesting plate…and it should go beautifully…right?

Well.  Not so much.  Ice cream melts, I didn’t have the right lighting…and though I liked the reflection of the ice in the plate it just didn’t work.  So I moved on.

Then I made some soup.  Soup doesn’t melt…should go beautifully…right?

Well…I didn’t have the right light…the chunkier parts of the soup sank, so I added some red bell pepper for color..but still…I moved on.

In my fridge was a beautiful head of cabbage.  I thought the colors in the leaves were wonderful.  Cabbage is food…right?

But is this food photography?

I wandered into the grocery store…and fell in love with more vegetables.

Have you noticed how they arrange produce in store lately?  It’s just so beautiful, like artwork.

Have you ever seen orange beets?

Or noticed water droplets on the purple cabbage?

But is this food photography?

What about the farmer’s market…

…do you see the purple green beans?

And don’t you miss the fruit of summer?

But really…back to food photography.

Finally I made a cake just to see if I could photograph it.  Sometime I’ll show you the whole cake baking event.  It took me most of the day.

But for now…because this is getting more than long enough…here’s the cake.

I’m still struggling with the lighting..but I suppose this is more what food photography is supposed to be about…because this one makes me want to stop writing and go have a piece.  A big piece.

Yum.


by 14 Comments

Katie's adventure

Katie here.  Mom said I could tell you all about yesterday’s adventure.  You see my Dad was down in the basement…did you know there was STUFF under the FLOOR?…and he was making too much noise so I was telling him off.  A lot.  Finally my Mom said “lets go for an adventure”  And I said “REALLY? Can we GO NOW?”

I wasn’t sure where we were going.  I don’t think Mom was sure either.  But eventually we ended up in the town where she grew up.  That’s about an hour away and I was really good about not asking if we were there yet.

We parked near the public library where my Mom used to go all the time as a kid.  As usual she made me pose in front.  Geesh!

There was lots of traffic on the busy road in front.  That made me a little nervous as Mom and I haven’t practiced walking near noisy cars in a long time.  But I was OK as long as I could look back and see my Mom was still attached to me by her leash.

Right across the street was the church where my Mom and Dad got married.  Guess who had to sit around while Mom took more pictures?

We walked around the church block and found this house with a BIG red cat in the window.  Mom thought the cat was ceramic, but it started glaring at me when we got too close.  Can you see it?

Mom says she’s sorry, she has a new computer and no program on it to crop pictures…so you’ll have to use your imagination for awhile till she finds some software…

Anyway, after the big mean cat hissed at us…I mean after I took care of business with the big red cat …we headed back to the car, and since I wanted to practice my stair climbing we walked up the steps to the library and then down the ramp back to the car.  Just before the steps was a beautiful sculpture of two children reading.  Mom wanted me to sit next to them and smile for the camera.  But there was a pesky squeaky door at the top of the stairs that needed to be monitored by me.  Just to be sure.

I was a very good dog all the way home, another hour car ride.  I slept most of it, but I didn’t let on that I was asleep…so as not to give my Mom the satisfaction of thinking she wore me out.  I just nodded off with my head bobbing.

Mom says we might go on another adventure today.  Cause Dad’s not finished with his project under the floor.

Can we go NOW Mom?


by 8 Comments

Wandering

Katie’s dad is doing something noisy in the basement while getting ready for an insulation contractor who is coming next week.  Katie’s not so good about remaining her normal rational self when there are strange noises coming from below her feet.  So we went on an adventure.

Katie will tell you about where we went and what we saw in another blog; what I wanted to share with you today is the happenstance of chance.  How sometimes just a bit of odd luck brings you to an interesting moment.

Because as Katie and I were wondering down a country road I happened to see this:

No matter that the temperature outside was 16 degrees F, the sky was gray, and there was a steady stream of cars going by only feet from her easel; here was a woman standing in a driveway of an abandoned home painting.

As soon as I could I turned around to go back.  As I approached her from the other direction I noticed the beautiful red barns across the road.  Obviously her inspiration.

I parked the car and walked back to her, letting her know I didn’t want to startle her, but could I please see what she was working on?  She giggled and said she wasn’t very good, had just started painting…but her work was very nice.  She was painting with oils, and I asked her how they worked in such cold weather.  She said it was a bit more difficult, the paint was a bit stiff, but that last weekend she had been painting out at Kensington (a park) when it was only 8 degrees.  EIGHT?  Are you kidding me?  You were out paining in 8 degree weather?  She talked about how the snow falling mixed in with the oil paints and caused some problems.  Yea. I bet!

Anyway I asked if I could take her picture, and she hesitantly said yes.  This is the first time I’ve ever asked a stranger if I could take their picture.  But I wanted this photo so bad.  She in her red beret, the gray day, the snow boots, the easel.

So here she is.

I left her after a bit more chatting.  Her feet were getting cold.  My ears were freezing.  Katie was waiting in the car.  Such an unexpected encounter –  I hope I meet her again somewhere.   I left with a smile on my face.

And I hope she was smiling too.


by 10 Comments

Weekends with Katie

Last weekend Katie helped me pack up Christmas.

She wasn’t very comfortable with all these boxes on the sofa, especially since they made funny noises when I put ornaments in them.

But she was curious enough to come back and sit on the sofa and watch each time.  She didn’t, however, provide much advice about how to get all the ornaments packed away.

This weekend Katie helped me fill the bird feeders.

She thought this was a lot more fun.

Then we went out into the back yard to play.

That was the most fun of all.

She’s napping now.  All this work wears a Sheltie out.