Alki is still doing well, approaching two years since her cancer diagnosis, the beginning of that long adventure. She still takes medicines twice a day, and we check in with her oncologist monthly. She’s had some age related problems creeping up on her – dimming eyesight and not hearing well. Sometimes those are a blessing, because she doesn’t set off barking every time she hears the neighbor slam their car door – in fact she sleeps through most deliverymen now. I can clickertrain Barclay in the other room and she doesn’t hear it (which is good because otherwise she comes and demands treats). But we do have to be careful not to startle her when she’s sleeping. Usually a gentle touch wakes her up enough and she’ll roll over for a tummy rub. Dogs know the best things in life are free!
Pseudotropheus Estherae
These are p. estherae, also called Red Zebras or Cobalt Zebras, which as you can see is stretching it a bit in either direction. The red is not what I would call red, in fact I would call them yellow. I only have one blue male, and it is a pale blue. This is my 110g display tank in the living room. The amazing thing about these fish is that they are ALL estherae, despite the wild variations in color. If the solid yellow breed with the blue male, they will produce more solid yellow babies, and the dominant males eventually turn blue. In my tank there is only one yellow male dominant enough to show his blue colors.
If the blue male breeds with a yellow/black female, or a yellow/black male breeds with a yellow female, you get more yellow/black fish. And when the video swings over to the rocks you see some of the yellow/black babies hiding in the rocks. This type of fish is a mouthbrooder, so the mom will carry the eggs in her mouth until they hatch and the babies are ready to swim and feed on their own.
The dominant yellow/black male in the tank is most visible at the very end of the clip, and he stands out because he is BIG, and because in the dominant yellow/black fish, the black turns blue. So I have blue fish, yellow fish, yellow/black fish, and yellow/blue fish, and they are all the same type of fish – amazing!
Homemade pizza
We were snowed in again today, but this time it wasn’t as annoying because instead of shutting our business down and costing us money, it was our day off anyway. So instead of running around and doing errands, we were forced to sit home and relax, and that was kind of nice.
So I made pizza. I have been wanting to experiment more with making doughs, it’s just hard to find the time. Earlier this week I made a quiche with a homemade pie dough, which wasn’t as hard as I was expecting. So I used a recipe in a Gordon Ramsey cookbook I had handy to make homemade pizza dough. Unfortunately it made enough for four pizzas! So I took the first round and did a test pizza with just plain cheese to see how it went. Pretty good, but needed a bit more flavor.
I took the second crust and roasted some garlic and brushed the top with the garlic and olive oil, and docked the dough so it wouldn’t blow up like a balloon. Still came out looking floury and pale. So I brushed a bit of butter on it and stuck it back in for a few minutes. Looked and smelled great when I pulled it out, so I went ahead and put all the fixin’s on for Dave’s favorite, Hawaiian.
I cooked it in Great-Grandma’s cast iron skillet. The story goes that the skillet came from Illinois to Oklahoma with Great-Grandma on a covered wagon back when she was a little girl. True, or just family legends? Who knows, all I know is when I was growing up that skillet was used for nearly every meal and hardly ever cooled off between cooking for family members on graveyard shift and swing shift. Makes me feel special to cook in it.
Chickens in the snow (or not)
When I checked on the chickens this morning I saw Big Bird out with one of his buff hens.
I was out in the pasture watching Barclay tear up a molehill when I heard a strange crow from Big Bird which I hadn’t heard him make before. I went over to investigate and found him walking around calling for his hens. The other chicken you hear is the one buff hen answering him.
But the hens aren’t stupid, it’s cold outside! They were all in the coop nice and warm and working on laying eggs!
A good morning for Barclay
This must have been Barclay’s idea of a perfect morning. First off there was snow…
And then he chased Alki a bit, which annoys her plenty…
Then he found a fresh molehill to dig up.
Then he snuck into the pen and chased the goats and tried to get Houdini to play. Then he chased the rooster. Then I took him inside and he sat next to me on the couch and laid his head on my chest and fell asleep. It’s that last part that always makes me forgive all the other stuff 🙂
Oh Snow! Not again!
I thought we’d had enough snow for the season, but apparently not. Luckily this was just a light dusting. For the past few days the critters have been in the main pasture since it was frozen and I wasn’t worried about them messing it up, but now they are confined to the paddock again so they won’t muddy up the field.
I put the manger under the shelter so the hay wouldn’t get wet, and as they pull it down and leave behind the stemmy bits it ads to the straw they sleep on, so it actually looks pretty cozy in there.
Sheep and Goats and Coyotes
Well, Annaliese won’t be taking the sheep and goats back, she is worried about the coyotes she heard around their house the other night. I don’t blame her, I wouldn’t want them to get eaten either! So I guess fate has decided they will stay here for a while. We’ll just see how it goes. Luckily winter is almost over, right?
Time wasters
Having grown up when Pong was new and cool, I still love video games, and they are without a doubt my favorite time waster. Not much time for them in the summer, but in the winter, when we’re stuck inside, I love to play play play. Especially games that involve exploring. Can’t hardly put them down to go to bed!
My favorite when I was a kid was Adventure, on the Atari 2600. I knew that game inside and out, and all the easter eggs, and every cool thing you could do like carry a dragon around and fight other dragons with it. Spent hours playing around with that.
Then in college we wasted huge amounts of time playing Dungeon Master on the Atari ST. This was miles ahead of anything they had on PCs at the time. Ah, the warm fuzzies I get just from looking at the screenshot! Oh no! A Mummy!
Then there was Wolfenstein, oh about the time I got out of college. Great fun running around and exploring and looking for hidden passages, and shooting nazis of course. But the best was yet to come…
Doom! The ultimate time waster – because now we could network and play together, and hunt each other down, and have giant frag-offs that lasted all afternoon. At work. When we should have been working. Nothing like launching an RPG and hearing a tormented cry from the guy two cubicles over! Oh, bless the people who created Doom. Probably precipitated the fall of the American capitalist system. So much productivity lost…
I don’t think anything gave me as much pleasure as Doom until KotOR came out – that’s Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. For a geek what could be more fun than to be completely immersed in a Star Wars universe, surrounded by familiar aliens, Jedis and Sith, lightsabers and blasters, and ship that looks a lot like the Millenium Falcon? Nothing. Nothing could be better.
But KotOR came out in 2003 or so, and I played it shortly after that, so why reminice about it now. Because it is set in a very immersive universe, and the clever way they worked in all kinds of side quests that you may not even run into the first time you play, and different choices based on if you’re playing good or evil – or switching back and forth, it can be played over and over again. Slightly different things happen, you see cut-scenes you never activated before, you have little adventures you never ran across previously. I’ve played it at least four times, haven’t played it for a couple years but I’m playing it again now, and I’ll be playing it again after that.
One of my favorite things about KotOR is you can play as a man or a woman – finally a videogame that acknowledges women may be playing! Or maybe that option is there because they thought some men would want to play as women – let’s not even go there! I appreciate being able to play as a woman for a change. And that hunka-hunka-star pilot in the screenshot is Carth, the first guy you meet and he is your companion through the rest of the adventure, along with other characters you pick up along the way.
The original KotOR is just the best of the best as far as videogames go, in my opinion. KotOR II was not nearly as engrossing because it didn’t have all the hidden side quests. Pretty much everything in it had to be done to complete the missions. So there was no reason to play it again and again. Recently they announced the next KotOR will be an online version, one of those massive multiplayer games. I don’t have much hope for that, we don’t really have the high-speed connection to play stuff like that out here in the boonies anyway. But I guess we’ll see what the future holds.
Sheep and goats and Barclay
Well, Annaliese, who gave me the sheep and goats to begin with, is going to save the day by taking them back – at least for a while. This will give me a much needed break before I completely burn out, and she’ll enjoy having her little buddies back. Then we can figure out a better way to take care of them by next winter so it’s not such a chore. I mean, I don’t mind chores, but this was really wearing me out!
Probably the biggest cause of burnout is Barclay. He is just coming out of his ornery teenage phase, and turning into a wonderful dog. But there’s a lot of work to do yet, and everyday most of my time is devoted to him. Either playing with him to wear him out so he won’t be as destructive, or teaching him things, or practicing the things he should already know, or cleaning up the swath of destruction he leaves behind if he isn’t worn out enough. He’s sweet, and I think he’s really going to be a great dog, but raising a pup is so much work! Even Dave says it seems like our whole life revolves around him right now.
I can’t imagine having kids and keeping this up for 20 years!! I salute you moms out there!
Yesterday Barclay went to work with me for the day, and had a great time visiting with customers, schmoozing up to everyone, and licking the kids who came in. But between customers he was trying out something new – when he got bored he decided to bark at me, demanding I entertain him. Barking gets ignored, laying down and being quiet gets rewarded. So I got barked at quite a bit before he figured that out. He’s never been a barker, so I don’t know why he decided to give it a try. Just testing the waters I guess.
Then we went to the dog park so he could run off some energy before we left him in his pen all night while we went to see a show. At the dog park there’s a big dog area and a small dog area. I take him on the small dog side. No other small dogs were there. But on the big dog side was a german shepherd, a chocolate lab, a bulldog, and a boxer/pit/rottie mix. He had fun running up and down the fenceline with some of those dogs. After a bit everyone left except the bulldog, so I took him over there to play with him. They ran around and wrestled, except he couldn’t knock that bulldog over for anything – it was just his size by height and length, but weighed 80lbs! He weighs 30! The bulldog kept knocking him over and laying on him, and he couldn’t wiggle out from under all that bulk 🙂 They were having a great time, but he started to get tired and then the humping starts, which is a sign it’s time to go home. He was filthy from the dog grinding him into the clay, and worn out, and that was perfect! So that was his first time playing with a strange dog at the public dog park, and it went very well.
I’m a bit nervous about dog parks because you never know who you’re going to meet, and how they will act, which is why I didn’t let him over to play with the lab or shepherd. They’re just too big, they could hurt him badly pretty fast. And I would never let him play with a pit. Hopefully we’ll find times to go when we can meet up with other dogs his size.
Steff Does Stuff! 