Category Archives: walk

game, Molly, walk

A Hard Days Night

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Molly had a busy day today. We went out for our walk early in the afternoon so that football could be watched with concentration later. About four miles into the walk, we ran into my friend Bill. Shortly thereafter, we started being followed by a Samoyed that had a collar but no tags. Bill got a catch halter while Molly and I  talked to the Samoyed until Bill could put the halter on. Then we  called one of the animal control officers (who work for me in my position with the Humane Society). As Bill and I figured, the animal control officer recognized the dog and knew where it belonged. It apparently has a habit of roaming on its own. So Molly got the excitement of meeting a new friend and someone to share the doggy equivalent of the masonic handshake – the butt sniff. That kind of excitement just doesn’t happen every day.

Molly and I finished our walk and then I got ready to go to the Super Bowl party. Along the way I talked to L in between interruptions by other calls. Molly decided to take a nap since I was ignoring her.  She was still napping when I got back after the game. Entertaining her new friend must have exhausted her.

As I was putting away the laundry, I noticed she was already sacked out in the master bedroom just waiting for me to come to bed. I hate to tell her it will be a while before that happens. What can you say to this:

Especially when Molly then flops down flat when I try to explain:

Guess she’ll just have to get over it. It’s either that or she was a Colts fan and can’t face the final outcome of the game.

geese, Molly, robins, walk, weather

Blue Monday

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L headed back to the mountains today, so it was up to me to console the mournful Molly. We tried a sneaky trick this time – we had Molly out in the back yard playing while we loaded L’s truck. It meant Molly didn’t catch on to the impending departure of her mistress quite as soon. In order to cheer both Molly and myself up, we went for a nice long walk this afternoon after L left. If Molly is tired enough, she doesn’t get a chance to mope because she is busy sawing logs as she snores away, usually at my feet in my office.

While we were walking, it was once again borne home to me just how much the climate change has got the flora and fauna confused this year. The robins are still here in mass. There will  not be a first robin of spring here since they never left. This is the first time in my memory that the robins have not left for the winter to return in the spring. It is really strange to see hundreds of robins in the trees and on the grasses in January and February in this area. I even saw a few pairs mating today. Makes me wonder what is going to happen to the population if they all get fooled into early mating and subsequent egg laying while it is still freezing at night and we may get weeks of extended cold.

Yet another sign that the climate is driving the birds loony is that Canadian geese are circling in the late afternoons. The characteristic Vs of geese honking and circling the corn fields and river ponds is not usually heard at this time of the year. They have apparently not completed their southward migration and are instead hanging around in the fields edging town and on the river bottom. Normally they come flying south in November and December and aren’t seen again until spring. Not this year.

I could continue with a long and boring compendium of odd fauna behaviors related to the climate upset, but you get the picture. Things are a bit strange out here in the hinterlands. The weather is changing, air streams and the resultant rain patterns are changing, and the plants and animals are duly confused.

I’ll close with a couple of pictures of Molly.

First we have Molly laying forlornly by the fireplace in the library:

But then I asked her if that was a squirrel making noise outside:

That got her attention. Note all of her chew toys on the floor. (You didn’t really think I’d leave a hamburger sitting on the floor did you? And you surely didn’t think that Molly would not snarf it if I did leave it did you?)

cold, meeting, prison, walk

The Cold Front (and Rear)

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Today as Molly and I headed out to walk, it was about 40 and calm. A nice day for a walk.

So I have on my walking shorts and a sweatshirt and a windbreaker. Just fine for the weather at the start. Molly and I begin our trek heading North, directly into the little breeze that is about. As we walk, the wind starts picking up and the temperature dropping. At the half way point about 3 miles out when we turn around, the wind is up to about 20 mph and the temperature is dropping fast. Pretty much a typical storm from coming in here on the plains.

By the time we are within a mile of the house, the wind is gusting to 40 mph and the temperature is down to 30. Molly’s fur is blowing forward on her face and has her tail whipping in the breeze like mad. I am walking a bit like a Keystone Kop from the old movies. You know, the hop-skip-jump-step that looks so funny in the movies. That is because the wind is blowing right up the back of my shorts and freezing what the TV commercials so politely call “that certain part of the male anatomy.” Needless to say, Molly and I were both happy to arrive at the house and get out of the wind and into the warm. Our walk tomorrow will probably require sweatpants – it is forecast to be cool and maybe even have some new snow.

Tomorrow looks to be busy as I have a haircut and then am off to the prison for a gang activity briefing from the Department of Corrections intelligence service. It will be interesting to see what is going on. Events and trends in the metro and front range areas tend to migrate out here to the rural areas with a certain lag factor. Thus we get a bit more time to prepare for upcoming trends. I don’t know whether to feel honored or insulted – I am the only non-law enforcement official invited. Is that good or bad? Assuming all goes well and I don’t get stuck in a lock down, I have the council meeting tomorrow night. The agenda doesn’t look too bad, but we are going to have to meet on the 23rd because we have a first reading of a contract ordinance tomorrow which means that we have to have the second reading and public hearing 2 weeks later for the contract to be in force by the end of the year (which it needs to be). The council members are generally pretty good about such needed formalities.

Well, time to see if this will post or not. Blogger has lost it’s editing headers and the font controls and … So I am not sure if enough of the function is present to successfully post or not.