The Hoods....

Will be taking questions for the next 10 seconds
Some people that received this via e-mail asked why 10 seconds.....well, she is a flighty dog, and she was watching the lure being strung for racing, so really didn't want to spend time giving out advice to the love-lorn, anxious and all those other human tragedies. She is a puppy with a purpose on race days.

Fun Monday

AOJ and the Lurchers is the host of this week's Fun Monday.

The assignment: Continuing in the spirit of "being interested in people", I would like to know, or see, what's on, in or under your bedside table! So open those draws and bare your soul to us! Is there anything special there that has a story or a memory that you can tell us about? Books that you keep there to delve into from time to time? Trinkets that you don't know where else to put? Let's see!

Before signing up for this one, I made certain that there was nothing too horrible on my bedside table. A brief look suggested that all was A-OK so I signed up.

As you can see – not a whole lot going on. I’m a person who spent far too long in the Ivory Towers of Academia (read: paying for the privilege of working like a slave.....). Although I have been out in the “real” world for over 5 years, I still haven’t gotten around to decorating my bedroom. As a matter of fact, I just de-decorated one corner last weekend, removing some of the furniture that screamed "this was bought by a poor student with no money and no sense of fashion!". When the furniture was removed, I had no plans for what to put in it's place, so I now have a big empty hole ....I'm thinking a few more dog beds may be all that it needs (btw, the basket next to the bedside table has dog toys ).

Back to the bedside table: it was given to me by my neighbor’s in Dallas. I miss those people so much. The bedside table is one of only two “real” pieces of furniture in the bedroom (the bed is on a frame but has not head board/foot board so that is “fake” furniture; someday, I will make it "real").

On top of the table is a lamp. I LOVE this lamp. I found it on sale for $17 at Home Depot. If I were to be blessed with some great home decorating makeover extravaganza, the lamp would have to stay. No my decorating style is not the British Indies, but I love this lamp. Next to that is the requisite alarm clock and phone.

Under the table is a book shelf. I haven’t looked at the books on that shelf in ages…maybe I should have. I have read 2/3 of them and totally forgotten the other 1/3. In case anyone can make out the titles....the 2nd book from the left was given to me by a financial "advisor" (I use that term very loosely), whom I fired about 2 months later. Based on the adequacy of his "advice", I would not recommend that book to anyone. The drawer below the shelf is empty except for an old backgammon game and a broken whippet statue.

Although Insomnia and I are well acquainted, when I can't sleep at night, I tend to get up and watch TV or read in the living room. I would never want to be accused of interrupting the sleep of my whippets! Perhaps, I need to check out some of those books at my bedside table.

Rag-racing

We went ragracing this weekend -- that's the old term. In today's vernacular we say "chasing the bunny" which is actually chasing a squawker wrapped in stuffing.

It was a good weekend. The weather was cold, but warmed up a bit in the afternoon. Most weekends consist of straight track racing on Saturday with an oval on Sunday. It was foggy Saturday. That combined with lack of human manpower meant that I didn't get to engage in my 2nd hobby -- taking pictures. I took a few, but the fog really makes for a poor substrate.

Today, picture taking was limited, again. After starting by 8:30 or so, we had to take a 90 minute break when the fog got too thick (see picture). When the lure operator can't see the bunny, it's time to take a break.

A couple of club members helped me with my dogs, allowing me to take pictures when the fog finally burned off. I finally got a couple of decent shots of Mati (the photographer's kids can be the last to be captured):
The photo above is a little flawed -- I nearly missed her back foot!

Keeper #2:
Hope everyone had a good weekend.

Hug your hounds!

Gravity. It still works.

Many things in life are NOT dependable, but gravity is very dependable.

Two days ago, as I was leaving work, I fell down.

As a child, one falls a lot. No big deal. Adult falls, however, have consequences.

As an adult, I have noticed that falls seem to happen in slow motion. I was walking. I realized, suddenly, that my foot, which places itself squarely on the ground time after time, was on angle for no good reason. I screamed at my ankle "REPOSITION, REPOSITION!" It was too late -- too much of my body weight was already on that mal-positioned ankle and my ankle was twisting further. I was falling. I reached out my hand (sort of, my hand wasn't really feeling that dedicated to catching my falling body weight) screaming at my wrist, "don't break!" I fell, sliding across the asphalt parking lot. As soon as I hit ground, I was picking myself up, glancing around, praying that no one saw the fall. For some reason, I don't like people rushing over, asking if I am OK....because then, the inevitable question, "What happened? Why did you fall?" I already knew there was no good reason for the fall. No, the asphalt had not reached up and grabbed my ankle. No, there was no ice -- it had been cold in the morning, so it might have been a previously frozen piece of asphalt, but thawed asphalt is just not an excuse for falling. My trusty ankle had failed me. That was it. I hobbled over to my van, climbed in, and did the quick neuro check. My ankle was throbbing. Actually, the entire right side of my body was numb -- too many nerves stretched into distances beyond their normal path. The pain was intense, but not enough to suggest a broken bone.

Last night, as I was watching TV (my internet was down again....going to Walmart to pick up a new modem, later), I had one of the worst Charlie horses in my life. I think it was because the muscles in that leg had been stretched inappropriately during the fall, and they just wanted to protest the whole falling process. I protest the process! I think there should be a rule that after age 30 (or so) one just doesn't fall. But I know that I will continue to fall, and that as I get older the dangers will be greater. I now fully understand why the elderly break hips when they fall. At the rate I am going, I will probably have a broken hip by age 50. I see my future. It is not pretty. Note to self: take that calcium!

Growing old is not for wimps.

We didn't go running today. We had a "winter weather storm" hit the area. They were predicting gall sorts of gloom and doom. Dallas was prepared to be shut down. Instead, there was cold rain, some freezing temperatures, but not enough to close schools, etc. As one forecaster said "this was not the event we were predicting." Yup, you guys got it wrong. Still, I live a few hours north of Dallas, and it is always colder in the country. My deck has frozen precip (the dogs don't think they can walk on it), so I deem it unsafe for my wobbly tottery old self to get out on potentially frozen asphalt (look at what the previously frozen asphalt did to us). Gabi, my cold sensor, has already informed me that it is too cold for whippets and that she hates being abused in this manner. Poor Charlie takes the brunt of her protests (this picture was taken on another day, but I have already noticed her in a similar position):

Hug your hounds, thank your ankles!

On being connected....

I have just over-come a minor crisis in my life. I am now RECONNECTED to the internet!

At this stage, I can not believe that people lived without being connected to the internet. I remember as a child standing in front of the tape recorder to speak missives on tape that were subsequently packaged in a cardboard box and sent via snail mail for the grandparents to listen to a week or so later . We thought about telephone calls, and timed them so that the bill wouldn't be too high. Phone calls to the grandparents happened no more than once a month. Now we chatter on the phone ALL the time -- in the car (dangerous to our health), in the grocery, in the doctor's office, in the movies, at the opera. There seems to be no place safe from the cell phone (Don't you love hearing those conversations when you are using a public restroom???? I have some sort of weird performance anxiety and just can't pee if the person in the stall next to me is chatting away on their phone. Everyone is all about making it illegal to talk and drive, how about making it illegal to talk and excrete?).

When I was in college, people were beginning to use computers for word processing. During graduate school, the internet began to take hold. We had one computer in the department the first year that was connected to the internet. Three years later, ALL of the computers were connected. (I wrote my thesis on an OLD Mac with TWO floppy drives!) Now, people don't even use those floppy drives! Am I that OLD? Probably.

But back to being disconnected. For the past 6 months or so, I have had a disconnect problem -- about once every 6 weeks I lose connection to the internet and start IMMEDIATE withdrawal. This outage problem ALWAYS happens on the weekend. As soon as I realize that I have a connection issue that has lasted for more than 60 minutes, it starts: the fear, the angst, the cold sweat, the nausea..... I can still work on computer related things that don't require connectivity, but the fact that I can't connect leaves me unable to work. The first time, my cable provider told me it was on their end....for some reason, this glitch had to be bumped to the highest level technical group so I was without service for 3 days. The next time, there was an outage in my area, and I was the first to report it, so initially, they thought it was just me....the next time, some thing-a-ma-bob had to be reset and I was up and going.

Sunday morning, my service went out. Again. I went for my usual jog, and when it was still out, I called. I knew it was early, but I have learned that early morning/middle of the night calls to my IP don't require as much wait time. We went through the usual: disconnect the power from the modem, wait 30 seconds, now reconnect. I had already done all those things. In the end, they told me they would send out a technician. I laughed. I think it was a slightly hysterical laugh-- I live in small town NE Texas, and the last time they said I needed a technician it was going to be FIVE days before one could come out (thankfully, that problem turned out to be the area wide outage that they didn't know about, yet!). Well, surprise! I nice young man came to my door Sunday afternoon -- he checked this connection and that connection and told me that it was because I had a splitter where I just needed a male to male connection. He fixed that, and I was up and running....for 48 hours.

So, when I didn't have service last night, I called at peak hours, staying on hold for 20 minutes. This guy put me through a NEW contortion -- unplug your modem and take it to another cable outlet in the house. WHAT! I have a computer armoire It weighs....well.....far more than I do. Behind that armoire is a jumble of wires that aren't easy to unjumble. After struggling, holding the phone to my ear (I swear I could hear the guy smirking), I finally got the right wire and unplugged the modem and took it to another outlet. He then told me that the problem was either my wiring or my modem. Not enough pings coming through , yada, yada, yada. For some reason, I find myself losing faith. Shouldn't they have already alerted me to the ping paucity when the nice gentleman came to my house on Sunday?

At work today, I was lamenting my lack of connectivity.
A colleague turned to me and said, "you mean, you don't have a Geek Guy?"
"Geek Guy??? Well, no......"
"Oh, you must get one. I have one that is just EXCELLENT. He comes on the weekend and everything....it's an emergency if you aren't connected. He understands."

A man that understands and helps with the angst of being disconnected?? This MIGHT have some potential! I didn't realize they had made such a man.

Well, I didn't get a reference for a GG, because I was determined to try to trouble shoot my problem. Tonight, I stopped at Office Max and bought my own lil' Geek Guy to solve my connectivity problems -- I think he's kind of cute. He's got two little blue eyes with cute little antenna ears. I can look up and he's winking at me from the top of the armoire. I already had a wireless router for my computer, but it was hard wired into my main computer, and it seems that the cable into the kitchen, to which the entire assembly has been connected (I have a long cable running to my study), may be the problem. For a moment, when I first unpacked my lil' Geek Guy, I panicked -- it appeared that I might need to connect to the internet to get the lil' GG going. Now, I know this lil' wireless GG isn't going to help me on the next problem, but he did bypass the current impasse, and for that I am quite thankful. I also managed to get him going without having to call a human GG.

Hug your hounds!

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle

A quote from Winston Churchill. He and I share the same birthday...not the actual day, as I would be QUITE old (and I do feel old, but not THAT old).

Taxes. 'Nuff said. I need to start thinking about them. The forms are arriving.

Last year, there was a significant delay in the IRS issuing my tax refund. I was quite pleased to see that I had been paid interest for the delay (and, btw, the delay was never explained). Today, I received my 1099 form from the IRS. I know that all interest is taxed, but somehow, this seems a little circular. Or not.

My brain is tired. I think I will go feed the dogs. Remember....it's a privilege to have enough income to be taxed, it's a privilege to have enough income to be taxed.....

Fun Monday....

I have been lurking in the blogging world for a while; I finally decided to start my own blog, and with that also decided to participate in Fun Monday. Since this is my first post, I can't link to last year's post. The assignment for today is to post the view out my front door.

Here is today's view. Quite boring if I say so myself. I live in the middle of a pasture. There are tons of trees across the street, but almost all of the trees around my house have been planted. Last year, I planted 30 trees. I staked them with plastic fence stakes. It kind of looked like I had some odd fetish with black temporary fence posts....About half of the planted trees survived, but I was very pleased by that. I planted a row across the front of my front yard. None of those trees survived -- probably some evil colony of red ants ate all the roots.


Out the front door off to the right....the largest tree in the middle is dead, but has a beehive in it's base so I have been reluctant to have it cut down.


This is a bad time of year in NE Texas -- the grass is all brown, except for some of the weeds. Great -- ever-green weeds! Today, a cold front blew into the area. Nasty wet rain with a high of 38 degrees. No thanks says both me and my dawgs.

Posting these pictures made me realize that I almost NEVER go through my front door. Obviously, when I get a delivery, I open the door to retrieve the package, but otherwise, I tend to got through the back door or through the garage. Those are the safer exits.... Even at work -- I enter through a back door and exit through a back door. I never see the lobby in our office. I wonder if this back door life has some weird significance. Probably not, but I do live a back door kind of life.

So, in honor of my back door existence, I decided to post some pictures of my backyard. The first is taken from this time last year -- when we had one of the rare snows in this area. The deck has carpet down -- the dogs were getting splinters from the aging wood. I don't even notice that outdoor accessory, anymore. My yard extends to the trees at the very back.


The last picture was taken at the end of last summer. The grass was incredibly green, and I was trying to capture a rainbow (which I did successfully with a different exposure). I live next to a field. The owners intend to build a retirement home on it. That really bums me, because I like living next to an open field.


I am ready for the warm sun of summer to return. Perhaps, this is some sort of vitamin D deficiency.

Slow weekend....

This was a very slow weekend at the Wilcox Camp for Wayward Whippets. We ran this morning....I couldn't face the cold yesterday morning. The temperatures were in the mid-20's, but according to weather.com, it felt like the mid-teens. I must agree, but the dogs didn't seem to mind too much.

After that, I organized a bit (my on-going January project) and the dogs tried to keep to the patches of sun. Reilly.....
And Gabi (who took over the same patch).....
We did get out the GARGANTUOUS skunk for some play. It normally lives above the refrigerator, but comes out on boring afternoons.
Then Mati, the baby dog, claimed Mr. Skunk.
In the end, it was just a good day for sleeping (at least, that's what Charlie thought).

Some days just.....don't quite make the grade

I work in a business were frequently, I have to deliver bad news. It's not something that comes easy for me. I hope that it never does come easy, because that means I will have lost something important.

Life ISN'T fair. We were never guaranteed happiness in this world - but why do some people end up with so much unhappiness? Ahhh, the age old question which will not be answered-- at least not tonight.

So, with that, on this day (or month) that just isn't making the grade -- there is beauty in the world, even on the bad days. I miss the beauty of summer, right now.

Life today....

Today, I live with a herd of whippets....or, it feels like a herd. Still, I love them all, and they provide an incredible comic relief to the stress of my life.

This year's Christmas card:
From left to right: Reilly, Charlie, Gabi, Mati, Hudi, and Darby (the first).

Darby and Charlie are both 8 years old -- it's hard to believe that time has gone so fast. Reilly is 5 -- almost 6 (in one month). Gabi is 3.5, Hudi 2.5, and Mati 1.5. This year, I managed not to acquire another dog....but really, the current pack of dogs is enough.

Peyton, the cat, graced my life for about 17 years. She never did figure out how to be a dog (someone had told me that if I got a cat when it was young enough, it could be "trained" to be a dog....NOT true. Peyton was 110% cat!). Although I got Darby as a puppy, and Charlie came from a mixed household (with both dogs and cats), Peyton was the one who always enforced the separate and try not be be equal rule in the house.

The beginning

I'm not certain what I want to do with this blog. I am constantly amazed by the creativity of others, so I guess this will be my try.

How did I get into whippets? As a child, I had always dreamed of growing up, owning a house with a fireplace that would contain two Old English Sheepdogs.....someplace along the way, I got realistic about hair.

The road to my final profession and to my two dogs by a fireplace has been a long one. As an undergrad at Texas A&M, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. After realizing it WAS NOT chemical engineering, I gravitated toward biochemistry and then graduate school. In grad school, I couldn't afford a place where I could have a dog. So, I got Peyton: I was told that if I got her as a kitten, I could train her to be a dog. NOT true. She was 100% cat, but she and I went through a lot together.

Twelve years, later, I decided that I had delayed gratification long enough and decided it was time for my first dog. While in graduate school, I had met a man that jogged with his whippet. I knew nothing about the breed, but doing internet research, I though it was THE breed for me. Dogs that needed exercise but were somewhat cat-like in their sleep requirements. A dog that with training could become a jogging partner. It all seemed that it would be right for me.

I began the search, and eventually found Darby (he's boy -- it was in the boy name book). I was smitten him from the beginning, and was not certain that I would ever find another dog that could be so perfect. Unfortunately, even though Darby came into my life as a puppy, Peyton (the cat) never quite warmed to him. Still, we had a happy, if not separate household.