Woe, c'est moi!

Tonight, I cried over cinnamon.

Those near and dear to me know that when I am hungry, I cry. When I am getting sick, haven't eaten in 8 hours, frustrated with a hyper dog who just needs attention! attention!, home late due to a broken bus, leaving in 11 hours for a trip for which I have not packed, have an apartment to clean so the dogsitters don't declare us unfit puppy-parents, and desperately want some homemade chicken noodle soup but lack the time and energy to make it, and so make due with some applesauce for which I simply want some cinnamon, and yet the cinnamon is not where it should be! Well then... then I cry. Even while I realize how ridiculous I am. Throughout it all, I just kept thinking, "If Peter were here, HE would know where the cinnamon was!" (In fact he did. He knew it was at school where he took it for a cooking project for his students. Boo.)

Now, my stomach is full(er), the apartment is somewhat picked up, I had an excellent snuggle with Jasper (he really is the best snuggle-dog in the world), and I have exactly two shirts and two pairs of underwear packed. And I think I am going to give myself a freaking break and drive to work rather than try to catch the ass-early bus and attempt to get everything else done before 6 AM. Yes, I think I shall give myself a freaking break.

Frustrated

In keeping with my 8-years-behind-the-times theme (see: recent Buffy discovery), I am obsessed with Funny Farm now. I've unlocked eight of the squares and just get myself to the point of frustration with a section before figuring something else out using only my wits, Google (who seriously knows the names of poker stars off the top of their head?) and a few hints from the archives of when this was popular 2-3 years ago. It's quite fun!

***

Jasper has a habit of lightly nipping or snapping at people's faces when he is excited. I HATE this habit, but haven't figured out a good way to deal with it. Tonight, I saw a positive side to it.

We were on our nightly walk which is always taken in the dark now, just me and J, when I heard two men talking by the bus stop. I had to walk right by them to throw away J's offerings, so I was trying to take stock of them, as any female walking alone at night does, just as a matter of course. Friend or foe?

As I got closer, they began talking to me, asking what my dog's name was and if he was a boy or a girl. I was pretty sure they were residents of the group home nearby, but no matter who they were, they were strange adult men, and it was very dark and I was wearing all black walking a black dog. I politely answered their questions, walking quickly by, as J tugged to sniff them.

I had to walk past them again to get back home, and as I did so, they asked to pet the dog. Sure, fine. J of course is in raptures, wiggling and sniffing and loving attention. One of them is frantically petting him, and talking to him in exciting high pitched tones, and THEN that same guy puts his arms under J and looks like he's about to pick him up!

Nanoseconds later, J is just WAY too excited by all of this. The guy's face is bent down near J, and J does what he always does when excited: nips at the face with love. Luckily, he NEVER gets close to the actual face, but let me tell you from experience, you are close enough to hear those jaws snap!

I tug J away and say we better get going, and Nipped Dude seems to be OK with that. To his credit, he wasn't upset or scared, just a little taken aback, which was fine with me, because who tries to pick up a strange 60 lb. black dog?

I will still try to figure out how to curb that habit (the joys of adoption!), but for the time being, I'll take the silver lining!

As the week goes on, the posts get randomer

My mommy is coming to visit tomorrow! I am so excited! We are supposed to get snow tomorrow (le boo), so hopefully her flight stays on schedule.

Funny word swap I have seen twice now: "viscous" for "vicious." I was really confused reading "My horrible viscous burden on society is licking the tears from my face." Umm, really gooey dog? Because she licks a lot? I definitely don't mean to be a word-nazi, and usually I can just skim right over these, but vicious and viscous are still too different for me, and so it's jarring to try to parse it out. And funny.

I have been working on another post about Jasper, but I really need to take some pictures for it and I can't take decent pictures in our place at night. Since I am no longer ever home during any kind of daylight hour (even when I leave 2 hours early), you will have to wait for the weekend for my masterpiece.

The font is wacky on this post and I can't figure it out. Nor do I care overmuch.

You should read Julia. She is wonderful and makes my day happy. We made her couscous cakes tonight for the second time and they were delicious.

Buffy is teh awesome. Why can I never get in on shows when they are actually airing? Oh, maybe the lack of cable and/or time to watch has something to do with it. And the lack of desire to get a TiVo. Netflixed old episodes will have to do, I guess.

Witty, satisfying ending here. Done! And before midnight, even!

Weekend in Pictures

We actually did do fun things this weekend, but I need to stretch them out for my NaBloPoMoing, because we do nothing during the week. Well, that's not entirely true. We have finally jumped on the Buffy bandwagon (what, a decade too late?) after an aborted attempt at starting at Season One (PS Not That Good). So yeah, an episode or two a night and we are DANGEROUSLY EXCITING.

This weekend. Right.

Here are some pictures, because, you know, a thousand words and stuff. And do you know how long it actually TAKES to type a thousand words? A lot longer than picking out pictures, I tell ya!

Here are three pictures of a beautiful sunset we had. I meant to only post two, but accidentally uploaded the third and figured, what the hell. Who doesn't like a pretty sunset? Pro tip: if your camera has a sunset mode, use it. The real sunset didn't look half as amazing.

Went to a super fun engagement party Saturday night wherein I drank some too-delicious vodka cider and remembered my fear of heights peeking over the edge of our friend's 14th floor balcony. Gulp.

Then we went for a walk on Sunday with Jasper and his little people friends (our adult friend and her daughters).

Near our place:

Jasper was watching something very intently. I'm pretty sure it was a leaf.

And finally, here is a video of Jasper frolicking in the snow when we had our storm. He can't wait for winter (but we sure can!).

I hope I still have stuff to blog about tomorrow! Stay tuned!

Should probably post more...

I'm just not sure I have anything worth writing about. Work is great ('nuff said), I leave in time to watch the sun rise and get home well after it has set, Jasper is settling in nicely, though he wishes desperately that we were home more often and that every day was a weekend (me too!), and the kitchen (and rest of the condo) have been in the same state for the past several months. Perhaps I can see if Peter would be interested in finishing the last bits of the kitchen this weekend? I haven't taken any "after" pictures yet, because it's not really "after." Two of the cabinet doors are still resting where they will be hung, and the kitchen lacks trim entirely. It's amazing how easy it is to get used to these things, and then years go by and you still are staring at the unhinged cabinet doors. Hmm, maybe I will bug him to finish stuff. (Note how I don't try? I could, but I have no idea what I'm doing and would just do it all wrong. I'll stick to the sewing around here. At least he doesn't know how to do that either!)

So that's the haps. In exciting weather news, two weekends ago, we had four inches of snow and a record low of 20 degrees, last weekend we tied the record high at 80-something, and this morning we had slushy rain (technical term). Colorado weather is awesome.

He fetches!

Maybe it's because he's more comfortable with us now and little more bonded, but Jasper has been acting like an actual lab! If we get him excited enough, he will chase a tennis ball down the hall and bring it back. Actual retrieving? I guess he is part lab after all! However, he won't even look at the ball outside. There are to many yummy smells to investigate and critters to hunt. We'll just be thankful for small miracles.

The barking in the middle of the night also seems to have calmed down for now. Letting him sleep on the couch and running the fan so he can't hear noises outside as well seem to have solved the problem (knock on wood).

His critter-dar is better even on walks now. When he spots a squirrel, he will freeze, then slowly stalk it, get close enough to it that it runs up a tree (though the squirrel is never scared), watch it in the tree for a while and then he's good. We can walk on without whining, pulling or barking. I think he needs to be able to tree it to feel like he has done his job. Even so, if I tell him to "leave it," he actually kind of does. It's awesome!

Sleuthing

Jasper is one big mystery to me and I love finding new pieces of the puzzle. All of his little quirks feel like clues to his past. Some can be reasonably interpreted (his crazy barking at two huskies indicates some kind of past bad interaction with a husky), but others will likely always remain mysterious (he only poops in bushes, and only bushes of a certain height. Was this trained? Just a quirk?).

As many people close to me know, right now I am consumed with trying to figure out his breed. Because we adopted him from a lab rescue, they have to say he is 100% labrador retriever. Which, I guess, he could be, but after having him for a couple weeks, I highly, highly doubt. For one, he is the worst retriever ever. I can only get him to chase a ball with a LOT of coaxing, and only in our apartment.

No, his obsession is the hunt. Finding critters, knowing where they are and chasing them are his main goals in life. He also points, not beautifully, but definitely a very still point, and can occasionally follow a scent trail pretty well (this morning was very god because it rained last night, so the smells were nice and damp).

We realized just how MUCH he loves critters when he woke us up at 3:30 in the morning a week ago because (we figured later) he heard or smelled a raccoon in the dumpster. And then he would not settle down for another two hours. That was fun. And then again when a cat was right outside the door. He was calm, but clearly excited and interested, when he could see the cat, but when I opened the door to show him that the cat was gone so he would stop whining, he completely lost it. The poor baby looked SO worried and concerned, ran back and forth between the two windows he could see out of, looked at me with panicked eyes and whined and barked even more. Clearly, it was the KNOWING where the prey was, not the getting it that he was most concerned with. Yeah. Not exactly typical lab behavior.

Based on this behavioral stuff, with the addition of his very un-lab-like body (very lean, with muscular legs and a thin, curling tail), I've decided that I think he is black lab and English coonhound. (The obsessive hunt for the raccoon the first night put the thought in my head, though his body had always made me think "hound" for some reason). I really have no basis for this thought, other than lots of pictures on the internet and guesses.

Compare:

To:

Whaddya think? Seriously, I'd love to hear opinions. Other ideas?

Sometimes, I think it's kind of like horoscopes. You can find shades of your dog in the description of any breed and make it fit what you want. When I read that English coonhounds love the couch, it seems like another piece of the puzzle, since sleeping on the couch is the only thing that will calm him down when he is riled up about a critter. And he loves, LOVES going out for night walks, which is apparently when raccoon hunting happens (since they are nocturnal and all).

Really, he could just be a super-mutt who likes to sleep on the couch and knows that animals are more active at night, but having an idea of a breed behind these odd quirks somehow makes it seem to make more sense. I like trying to make sense out of him.

Jasperillous Espinoza von Tragerberg Smith the Third

I promised you the sweet story of how we met our Jasper, and so I shall relate it. Here is the long version, even though the short version is nice too.

As already discussed, we decided to go backpacking in the Rockies near Boulder. Based on the suggestion of the Forest Service worker, we decided to go to Jasper Lake for our first (and actually, only) night. On our hike in, we met some friends of ours from Linguistics hiking out with their dog. We had heard about him as a puppy, but never got the chance to meet him. As Peter and I petted him, we mentioned how excited we were for the day we would get our own dog, as we had been waiting for this since moving to Boulder almost four years ago. (Foreshadowing!)

We made it to Jasper Lake, fished, got bitten by mosquitos, woke up very sore and decided to cut the trip short and hike out, rather than continuing on. Instead, we took a lovely day hike straight up the side of a mountain, wherein we watched a group of 8 backpackers and a dog almost fall down the rocky slope, and watched a pack actually fall hundreds of feet with baited breath before we could confirm with our binoculars that it was only a pack, and not a very-probably-dead person lying at the bottom.

On our hike out, only a mile or so from the lake, I heard a woman say something to the effect of "Anyone want a dog?" I was thinking it was more along the lines of a joke, like when your kid is misbehaving and you jokingly offer them to a stranger. But no, this woman, Becca, was a foster mom to this dog, whose name happened to be Jasper, just like the lake we had just come from. He seemed very calm and sweet (of course, this was probably six miles into a hike, so most dogs would be at that point!) and she proclaimed him the best dog she had ever fostered. Even better? When we expressed concern that we lived in a condo, she said she did as well and since Jasper was a fence jumper, but had a great temperament, they thought a condo would actually be preferred. She got my phone number to text me the website of the rescue group, and we headed off on our merry ways.

The entire hike down, Peter and I were thinking about Jasper off and on. Could this work out? Could we have just met our dog? All of the reasons we had for concern (condo, lack of time for training, leaving for vacation in a week) had an easy answer with Jasper (fence jumper, only needs fine tuning for training, Becca would love to watch him while we were gone). For some reason, the name of the rescue group, Safe Harbor, stuck in my mind as well. As soon as we got home, I looked them up.

Immediately, I was nervous. "Must have a fenced yard" was right there on the front page. Would they let us be Jasper's parents? Becca said a condo was OK, but what if she was mistaken? We filled out the online application (which was full of seriously intense questions, many of which we didn't have an answer to) and waited. Nothing. A few days later (or less?), Becca let me know Safe Harbor had not gotten the application. Huh? So we filled it out again (thank goodness auto fill remembered most of the answers!). Still nothing, she said. She gave me a number to call so I could fill it out over the phone.

At the end of the phone call with the volunteer slash adoption coordinator, the woman said the next steps were either to adopt Jasper or to foster him for a few days to see how it would go. Woah! At the beginning of the conversation, I wasn't even sure if they would let us have him! Now we could just have him?

Before we did that, we went over to Becca's to see him again, since ten minutes on the trail after many miles of hiking may not be the best indicator for compatibility. At her place, we were even more in love. He seemed to recognize us, or at least sense us for the petting-suckers we are, and stayed by our sides the entire time we were there. He even graced us with his funny smile he gives when he's really excited or happy (like baring his teeth, but friendly and goofy). We were hooked.

A few days later, we met with the Safe Harbor rep, signed some contracts promising to be good to him and he was ours! With all of the stars that had to align for this, it really does feel a little bit fated, or at least, very, very lucky. I honestly still can't believe that he is ours.

Even as I type that, I have a cold little icicle of fear in my heart because one of the things the rep told us was that since he was not surrendered (he was found in Nebraska covered in ticks), theoretically his owner could come back and claim him. Since he is such a good dog, it's clear he was not a stray his whole life and I'm terrified that he jumped a fence somewhere and has a home that misses him terribly. On the other hand, he could have been abandoned by a family overwhelmed. Impossible to say. I just hope that Safe Harbor's record of never having a dog reclaimed holds true for us and he gets to stay with us forever.

Weekenders

Update! I officially, officially submitted my thesis (though of course it needs one tiny change, so I'm STILL not totally done!). HOORAY!!!! Once it is all done, I will be thrilled beyond measure. As of today, it should all be taken care of, but I thought the same thing Friday and again on Monday.

We went backpacking this weekend in the mountains not too far outside of town and had an incredible time, complete with adventures, fish and chance encounters with friends. We had planned to go for two nights, but it turns out that a five-year hiatus is not good training for backpacking, particularly at high elevation, so it turned out to be a good thing for our bodies that we headed back early so Peter could work on project for his summer class. The hips, they still hurt!

Unlike many people, we did not move to Colorado specifically for the outdoor opportunities, but they are a lovely benefit that we don't advantage of often enough. In an effort to correct this, I pretty much demanded of Peter that we go camping/backpacking at least once this summer. And so we did!

Proof:

Lots to write about

Just got back from a great weekend with the girls, including soaking in a hot springs with a surprisingly respectful nude man, many bottles of wine, and lots of great conversation. Also, we have an adorable, wonderful new member of our family sprawled on the floor, listening to both of us clacking on our computers.

Working on a post that has lots of pretty pictures of our previous weekend adventures, plus the heartwarming story of how we met our new "fur-child." Stay tuned!