Dog Days

On March 26, 2012May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn alki, barclay, navi, pets3 Comments

Seems like I only have a chance to take pictures of the dogs on the weekends, since I get home from work so late during the week. Today was a beautiful sunny day, and we got to play outside all day. Barclay was my subject today, between rounds of stickball.

I am still LOVING my 35mm f1.8 lens. I love the soft backgrounds and the sharp focus on the subject.

This is the two year anniversary of our little Alki passing away after a three year battle with cancer. I’ve been so lucky to have Barclay to soften the blow, and then a few months later Navi joined the party. Sometimes Navi looks so much like Alki, or does something that just seems so much like her, I take a double-take. Rest in peace, sweet little Alki, you’ll always have a place in my heart.

Alki

Reflections

On March 15, 2012 By stefrobrtsIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Our Camera Club assignment this month was ‘reflections’, so I took my camera downtown on a rainy day and spent my breaks and lunchtime snapping pictures to see what I could get.

On the doorstep of the postal building, looking across the street at the Dekum. They sure don’t put details on buildings like they used to!

Inside the postal building. I was just playing with my camera, because it was my old Powershot, and I’d forgotten how to change the settings on it. I accidently snapped this picture and I liked the way the elevator looked. Going Up?

I want to go back at night and get a picture of the MAX going by that cool old building with the columns. It’s lit up at night with blue lights, and I think it would be a pretty cool picture.

Walkers in the rain. One reason I brought my PowerShot is because it’s smaller so it doesn’t attract as much attention, and it doesn’t make a big ‘ka-chunk’ noise like the DSLR, so it wasn’t attracting much attention on the street.

I had to overexpose a little to get a long enough exposure to do a panning shot and get a little blur around the bus as I followed it by hand. I like the way it turned out.

Same technique with the MAX. Pretty impressive that the PowerShot can do this!

Finally, just a shot of the sidewalk near the bus stop. I liked the reflections off the wet bricks.

Navi and the bath

On March 5, 2012 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi2 Comments

Navi had a great afternoon hunting mice in the field

She’s very concentrated when she’s hunting for mice

Digging holes, shoving her nose in them, is a dirty job. So I clean her up before she goes inside with a quick dip in the water trough

I said it was a QUICK dip!

Much better! But that’s no reason to stop playing with the hose..

Barclay has no interest in playing with the hose.

And just like magic, she is all white and clean. After a quick roll in the grass to dry off, she’s ready to come into the house again!

Mighty

On March 5, 2012 By stefrobrtsIn cats, mighty2 Comments

Mighty always looks so dignified. Lets see if we can take care of that.

By catching her in mid-yawn…

Or in the middle of a good shake!

Well, she can’t help it if she’s naturally beautiful.

Navi and Car-Sickness

On March 3, 2012May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, naviLeave a comment

Navi (our little perpetual-running machine) gets car sick. She’s been having this problem since she was a puppy. I think it got to the point where she would get car sick, and then she would anticipate getting car sick, and then she would get sick because she was so nervous anticipating getting car sick.

We’ve tried Dramamine, and jelly beans, and having her ride in a crate, and outside of a crate, and in my lap (puked in my lap that time) and taking her for short rides (but I think I didn’t give it enough time or make it short enough), and forcing her to just buck up and put up with a long ride and nothing has really done the trick. She just runs away when she thinks she’s going to have to go for a ride, and when I do get her into the car she looks miserable, and drools, and eventually throws up.

So two weeks ago I started taking her for a ride every single evening after work. Just up to the mailbox and back, which is about 200 feet. The first trip I had to beg her to come in the garage, and then I had to pick her up and put her in the car. After a week of these super-short rides, she was running out to the garage, and hopping in the car when I said it was time to go for a ride!

Now we’ve expanded the distance, and we’re going to the park entrance, or the firestation – they’re both about a quarter mile. She’s still a little nervous, but I’m going to keep this up until she thinks a quarter mile is just plain boring! Then we’ll go a little farther. I’m going to turn her into a traveling dog yet!

Snow day 2012

On February 25, 2012 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi, snow3 Comments

Yay! Snow!

We woke up to an unexpected dusting of snow. It’s funny how sometimes they know the storm is coming, and talk about it all week, and then nothing happens, and other times you don’t hear anything and just wake up to snow!

Barclay knows how to enjoy snow…

Our neighbors have been hard at work tearing down the rusty old barn.

It will be nice to see it go. It’s not a cool old barn, it’s just an eyesore, and I wouldn’t trust it to house a horse without falling in on them.

Handsome Barclay!

I don’t want you to think I only take pictures of Barclay, but Navi just doesn’t hold still. She is constantly orbiting around me. She never stops running…

Running…

Running.

And when I do try to get a nice picture of her dirty little face after digging a hole, she can’t sit still long enough for that either!

And..she’s out of here!

See ya later, suckers!

A day at the beach

On February 25, 2012 By stefrobrtsIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Last weekend Dave and I dropped the pooches off to spend the day with the other eskimos, and we headed for the beach. I would have liked to have taken the dogs, but Navi still gets car-sick, and a whole day of driving around would have just been cruel!

Our first stop was to swing by the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinneville, OR, because I had heard they had a 747 parked on top of a building.

Yeah, that’s kind of hard to miss!

What they’ve done is build an indoor waterpark next to the main museum, parked a 747 on top of it, and run the waterslide tubes through it. I have to admit, that’s a pretty awesome thing to do!

We continued our trip to the beach, and it pretty much looked like this the whole way…

But finally we got to the beach

It was windy, and stormy, and I had the ISO turned up too high on my camera (I forgot to check my manual settings) so all my pictures came our grainy Sad smile

But I needed the high ISO when we went to the Newport Aquarium. They have one of those tanks where you walk through tubes underwater. Love it!

My favorite exhibit is the jellyfish. I wish I could have an aquarium of jellyfish. They may not be as interactive or personable as fish, but they sure are relaxing to watch. I’m sure they’re very tricky to care for.

Oregon Sunshine, huh? Smile Perhaps it’s more uplifting in summer!

On the walk back to the parking lot there’s a lovely view across the estuary.

We headed down to the waterfront to see the sea lions, but there were only these two lounging on the dock.

Sleeeeeepy…

And this guy sitting way out on a rocky outcrop in the harbor

We had our usual lunch at the Chowder Bowl, to-go, and ate it in the car parked at the beach overlook so we could enjoy the view. Then we headed home. It was a lovely, refreshing, rainy day in Newport, Oregon!

The Jungle Book

On February 17, 2012 By stefrobrtsIn booksLeave a comment

No pictures today, I haven’t had much time for photography lately. One thing I have been doing a lot of is reading. With a 45 minute bus ride before and after work, there’s lots of reading time! One thing I have quickly discovered is that the classics are classic for a reason – many of them hold up just fine as excellent, entertaining reading, even a hundred or more years after they were written!

My favorites so far (in no particular order):

Jane Eyre (1847)
A Princess of Mars (1912)
The Jungle Book (1894)
War of the Worlds (1895)
Treasure Island (1881)
anything with Sherlock Holmes (1887)

All available on Project Gutenberg for free!

I thought I would share this little piece of The Jungle Book. BTW, there’s a lot more to this book than the Disney movie – especially the story of Riki Tiki Tavi – I have happy memories of watching the cartoon when I was a kid.

Here Mowgli has returned to the world of Man, and is put on herding duty with the other boys. I think this passage particularly shows why a well written book is such a joy, and a peek into another world, another life, described in such detail that it can make you hate to turn the page and leave it behind:

Then Mowgli picked out a shady place, and lay down and slept while
the buffaloes grazed round him. Herding in India is one of the laziest
things in the world. The cattle move and crunch, and lie down, and move
on again, and they do not even low. They only grunt, and the buffaloes
very seldom say anything, but get down into the muddy pools one after
another, and work their way into the mud till only their noses and
staring china-blue eyes show above the surface, and then they lie like
logs. The sun makes the rocks dance in the heat, and the herd children
hear one kite (never any more) whistling almost out of sight overhead,
and they know that if they died, or a cow died, that kite would sweep
down, and the next kite miles away would see him drop and follow, and
the next, and the next, and almost before they were dead there would be
a score of hungry kites come out of nowhere. Then they sleep and
wake and sleep again, and weave little baskets of dried grass and put
grasshoppers in them; or catch two praying mantises and make them fight;
or string a necklace of red and black jungle nuts; or watch a lizard
basking on a rock, or a snake hunting a frog near the wallows. Then they
sing long, long songs with odd native quavers at the end of them, and
the day seems longer than most people's whole lives, and perhaps they
make a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and
put reeds into the men's hands, and pretend that they are kings and the
figures are their armies, or that they are gods to be worshiped. Then
evening comes and the children call, and the buffaloes lumber up out of
the sticky mud with noises like gunshots going off one after the other,
and they all string across the gray plain back to the twinkling village
lights.

Trailer Cover

On January 28, 2012May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn airstream1 Comment

A couple months after a storm shredded the last cover, the Caravel is now snug and dry under a new cover.

A pack of eskimos!

On January 22, 2012 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi, pets2 Comments

Our friends took a little trip south to warmer climates this week, and left us with two extra eskimos – what could be more fun?!

Oh the insanity! Crazy eskimos, ravaging each other out in the yard!

Sake, Sitka, and Navi get into it and wrestle and chase a LOT. Barclay is a little stand-off-ish for some reason. He mostly watches. Maybe now that he’s 4 he’s too dignified for these shenanigans.