Veterinarians always tell us at our dog's annual exams to brush their teeth every day. We have tried several types of brushes designed for dogs with special flavored toothpaste, but it just seems to be more trouble that it is worth.

We have discovered a great product that makes brushing their teeth every day easy. They are pre-moistened wipes, kind of like baby wipes, soaked with antiseptic, mint flavor, and baking soda. I can wipe all of Mitch's gums and teeth in about 20 seconds. We think he actually kind of likes it too. He struggles just a little bit when I am doing it, but when he sees me grabbing the container and pulling one out he still comes over and waits for me to start working. His breath is really good too. We keep them on the coffee table and I do it in the evening while we are watching TV.

These are the ones we are using now and got them at PetSmart.

Go Bears!

Pringles has a new product line called Pringles Select. We tried one today that is particularly good: cinnamon sweet potato. Lightly sweet taste with a nice dusting of cinnamon. A one ounce serving has 40% RDA of vitamin A. We will probably get them again.

Oranges have been bad this year. They have been juicy but not very sweet or flavorful.

Luckily Fuji apples have more than made up for them. Every Fuji we have had this season has been fabulous. Mitch has even turned into an apple whore. When I first gave him a little piece a few weeks ago he didn't know if he liked it or not. Now he follows us around if we are eating an apple hoping for a bite.

Meijer had a 3 pound bag for $1.50 a few days ago.

After having Mitch for 1.5 months now I am convinced that greyhounds make the best pets for most people.

1. Very gentle. Have not seen any aggression towards anyone yet. Has been OK with kids touching him. Has been OK with clipping his nails, touching his feet, putting clothes, muzzle, boots, etc. on him.

2. Very quiet. Not a barker. In the morning when he is ready for breakfast and to go outside he has this cute little yip he makes, but that is about it, and then he only yips a few times and then stops. No whining. No barking when someone comes to the door or sees another dog walking in front of the house. If you want a guard dog then a greyhound is not for you. I don't think he would be very good protection while walking down the street at night, but I think just his size would be enough to deter someone from bothering you. He is a big dog, and someone that didn't know he was a greyhound or what a greyhound is like would just see a big dog and leave you alone. But if they decided to mug you anyways I don't know if he would do anything. Goliath was good protection. If he sensed that one of us didn't like someone walking on the sidewalk towards us, or thought there was someone in the house, backyard, etc. he let them know he was there and was pretty scary about it.

3. Very affectionate. He needs lots of petting and attention, and that is the way we like our dogs. When Sheri is at home working all day he needs to be in the same room with her and every couple of hours he gets up to check-in with her and get some petting. Just about every time I get up to use the rest room he has to get up and follow me in to make sure he doesn't miss anything. This might not be good for some people, but we like it that way. I think cat-people generally like their pets a little more standoffish.

4. Clean. Greyhounds do not have undercoats, do not shed very much, and have very short hair. If Goliath rubbed up against you after putting on a suit you would have to get the tape to get the hair off. Little balls of his hair would accumulate in corners and under the bed. We called them tumble weeds. Mitch can rub up against you and you will not find one hair on your clothes! Some people that are allergic to dogs can actually tolerate greyhounds.

5. Attention getting. I like the attention he attracts while walking him. I can't wait until the summer months and all the new girlfriends he is going to attract! The few times we have taken him downtown it seems every head turns as we walk past. Some stops us at least every 15 minutes to ask about him and to pet him.

6. Low exercise requirements. It seems like the world's fastest dog would need a lot of exercise, but they don't. They are huge couch potatoes. Of course regular exercise is good for them, and us, but they are not demanding about it. Some dogs start acting up and chewing inappropriate things as an outlet if they don't get enough exercise, but greyhounds are content just to sleep and cuddle most of the time. Sometimes while watching a movie we will notice that he seems a little restless. He will get up, come see us. Pick through his toys, walk around. We will pause the movie and take him outside. A lot of times he will do a few high-speed laps around the yard, take a pee, and then come in the house and go to sleep. When we do take him for walks he needs at least a couple hour nap afterwards to recover. The excitement of a car ride is enough to wear him out for a while too. I have no doubt he could keep up with an active runner that ran several miles a day, but he is totally fine with just hanging out too.

We had a really fun morning outside despite it being cold and wet. There is a "sport" called geocaching. It starts by someone hiding something someplace. It is usually something like a Tupperware container with some small trinkets inside. They record the coordinates with their GPS and then go to a site like www.geocaching.com and post where the cache is.

When someone goes and finds it they can take a little trinket and leave a trinket of their own. There is often time a little paper log where you can leave your name, date, notes, etc. Sometimes they are easy to find and sometimes they are tricky. There are lots of different variations on what kinds of caches are left and how they are described and found.

Anyway, I have known about geocaching for years but never tried it. Early this morning after I let Mitch outside and I was just checking the Internet before I went back to bed something made me register at geocaching.com and pick out a nearby one.

I went back to bed and asked the now-awake Sheri if she wanted to go on an adventure, and she did!

We bundled up and got on our rubber boots and set out to find our first geocache.

It was at a nearby forest preserve.



Sheri was holding the GPS and led the way. I think she liked it because I was having a tough time keeping up with her as she dodged in and out of the thick brush and thickets. It was not on a trail. We were going right through the underbrush.

Sheri found it after just a few minutes of being in the general area. My current handheld GPS does not have WAAS and will therefore only get us within about 30 feet of the point I entered. Here she is retrieving the cache from its hiding place. Take note of her new boots she got yesterday.



Ta dah!



This is what was inside.



This is what we took.



And this is what we left.



We also left four Wetnaps. A lot of families do this with their kids so I thought they might be handy if a kid gets into something messy he shouldn't have.

We saw a buck and three does during our adventure too!







Afterwards we went to McDonalds for breakfast and to read the Sunday paper. I would say we spent over an hour outside hiking through the forest. It felt good to get up and get going like that. We think we are definitely going to do it again. It is a fun way to get some exercise in. We both had a nice tired feeling afterwards and our cheeks were flushed from the cold wind blowing on us.

After breakfast we went to Walgreen's to get a few things that were advertised in the Sunday paper and then to PetSmart to get a couple algae eaters for the aquarium.

Now Sheri is at a neighborhood food party that is kind of like a Tupperware party. All of the food is either ready-to-eat or only needs one or two ingredients to prepare. We aren't really too excited about the food, but it is a good way to meet more people in the neighborhood.

After I wrap this up I am going to go downstairs and watch the rest of the Bears football game and probably end up taking a nap and wait for Sheri to get back home. I don't have to work tomorrow because of the MLK Day holiday so we will stay up late and watch a movie, burn some wood and wait for the snow to start falling. The last I saw we are only supposed to get between 3 and 5 inches. Earlier in the week they were saying Chicago might get over 10 inches.

Very funny. I laughed out loud a few times.

Thomas S. Ruff


Loving Husband, Father, Brother, Grandfather and Friend. Tom passed away suddenly on January 6, 2007. Tom always lived life to its fullest and "seized the moment".

We hope that donations to his memorial fund will help save young lives, find cures for childhood diseases and enable children to live their lives the way Tom lived his.

We had a really nice Christmas and New Years holiday. Even though Sheri was on call up until New Year's Eve day we still both felt really refreshed from not feeling pressure to do anything and just enjoy cooking, eating, watching movies, burning wood, and playing with Mitch.

For New Years I made pepperoni bread. We were gone too long while the dough was rising and it blew the bowl right off of the counter.



It turned out excellent.



pepperoni
provolone cheese
parmesan cheese
garlic powder
oregano
basil
onion flakes

We had a little incident tonight with Mitch. I thought I would see how he responded to having his nails clipped. I did one of the nails on his back leg while he was lying down. He didn't even look up. Cool. I took just a little off of the first one to get a feel for how far down his quick grows.

On the second nail I found out how far down his quick grows. He let out a little yip and sat up. His first response was to kiss my face, like he was letting me know he was OK, and then he looked at his foot.

It started bleeding like crazy. After inspecting it for about 10 seconds he laid his head back down and let us figure out how to stop the bleeding. It just wouldn't quit.







Direct pressure didn't work because I think when we removed the tissue any blood that had clotted was disturbed and it started bleeding again. After doing that a few times I just let it bleed. It started to slow down after a minute and pretty much stopped after about three minutes. I guess the air helped to dry it out and create a cap.

I had a really unusual pizza tonight. It was a very thin crispy crust topped with artichoke hearts, prosciutto, ricotta cheese, and a couple other things I can't remember.

As soon as they take it hot out of the oven they crack in egg right in the middle of it and let it cook for a little bit just from the heat of the pizza. By the time they bring it to the table the egg is coddled. The server takes a spoon and mixes the egg up right in front of me on the pizza and then spoons the egg around the entire pizza. Surprisingly delicious. If I go back I would order the exact same thing which is extremely unusual for me.

Sheri had to work most of the day so I tried to find things to entertain myself. I took Mitch in the backyard to shoot some video clips.

The first one is of him chasing a ball. On his return trip he is just sort of doing a nice easy gallop, but on his way to get the ball he gets all the way across the backyard in about three strides.



This video is just a 360 degree walk-around to get a better idea of what he looks like.

Mitch got more Christmas presents than either one of us did this year.



Sheri got these really cool Starbucks mugs for us.

Mitch gets so happy when he sees me pick up his leash that he starts hoping. I think he gets so much air that he is almost eye to eye with me.



Sheri got paged to a bridge call while we were in the middle of a movie so I took Mitch for a walk. We went to the fire station and back which is 1.25 miles.

This is Mitch's painfully elaborate settling in process he performs about one third of the time before taking a nap. It makes us giggle every time he does it.

We got a great deal on our Christmas Eve prime rib. Dominick's had them on special for only $4.99 per pound. The normal price I have seen the last couple weeks has been in the $10 to $13 per pound range.



We placed ur order for it a week ago. We asked for a roast between 5 and 6 pounds and to have it Frenched and tied. Yesterday afternoon we stopped by to pick it up. When the butcher brought our order out from the back it was HUGE. He handed it to me and the sticker said 12 pounds. "We placed our order for one between 5 and 6 pounds." I get a blank look. "This one is 12 pounds." Another blank look. "This is twice as much as we need." Finally he says: "What do you want me to do?" I didn't think this was supposed to be that complicated. "Can you cut it so it is between 5 and 6 pounds?"

I think the person that cut it for us read the tag as needing 5 or 6 ribs. I saw the little piece of paper that the order taker a week ago wrote out and it just said "5 or 6". She didn't write the word pound on the slip.



As you can see it was a really nice piece of meat.

And it turned out really nice.



I also made Yorkshire pudding, a little side salad, and one baked potato. I only ate half of the potato. It has been years since I had one and I just wanted the taste of it.

Our visit to the nursing home went well. It was much more tiring than I thought it would be for both Mitch and us. We only lasted for one hour. Mitch's personality started to change towards the end. He just looked tired and wasn't into meeting new people anymore. We would walk into a room and after his initial sniff he would come back and press up against one of us.

I think there were between 7 and 10 people that really really enjoyed Mitch, appreciated his visit and made their day. There were probably another dozen or so that petted his head, smiled and thanked us for stopping by, but we didn't really see anything light up in their eyes like the other people. There were maybe another dozen that seemed like they didn't care whether we were there or not so we just kept moving along. If they were sleeping or looked like "no one was home" we just skipped their room.

We met up with one woman in the hallway. The first thing she asked is what kind of dog he was. When we told her she said "Oh, those are those ugly dogs." We didn't stay too long around her.

A quick video of our fondue evening.

We started our 5-day Christmas extravaganza off right this morning with eggs and some of the best coffee I have ever had. Sheri's friend from Seattle sent us some fresh roasted local stuff (it was roasted on December 6) and it is just amazing.

It is from a place called Raven's Brew Coffee and I think it might even be better than my beloved Intelligentsia. (That's saying something too.)

The blend we have is called Deadman's Reach. Its motto is "Served in bed; raises the dead."

I love the Deadman's Reach logo too:



They have it on a t-shirt and I just might have to order one.

We are off to get last minute fondue ingredients for tonight.

I have not mentioned this yet but last weekend we bought a streaming webcam mostly so we could watch Mitch in his cage when we are at work.

We are going to have it on all weekend so you can stop by and watch us try our hand at fondue and a standing rib roast for the first time.

Drop me a line if you want the camera's address and/or our schedule of when we will be fondueing, roasting, etc. (or Mitch's schedule!) Depending on your connection (as well as how many other people are connected, but I am not sure about that yet) it will stream up to 20 frames per second. I received word back that on dial-up it does about 1 frame every 4 seconds.

It is a wireless camera so I can move it anywhere in the house, plug it into an electric socket, and it will immediately make a connection to our wireless router and start streaming whatever it sees.

On Christmas Eve day we are going to take Mitch to a local nursing home and let each of the residents spend some time with him. We figured if they are there on Christmas Eve they probably don't have any family nearby and might appreciate the distraction of Mitch.

We coordinated to show up around 1:30 PM and spend a couple hours there. The activities director said that would be a good time because they would be finishing up lunch and leaving the dining room, so there would be more people awake and moving around. I think the activities director is even going to post a notice on the bulletin board or put something in the daily activity flyer saying when we will be there and that he is a retired racing greyhound.

We bought some antlers for him to wear to be more festive.



We are going to cook a standing rib roast for Christmas Eve. The roast must be warmed up to room temperature before roasting, so before we leave for the nursing home we will put the roast out on the counter. By the time we return it will be ready to pop in the oven.

I bought one potato and one turnip to roast in the same pan as the meat.

The roast needs to rest for 20 minutes when it comes out of the oven. During this time I will make the Yorkshire pudding. This is basically popovers with a tablespoon or two of the meat juices added to each muffin tin to give them a more savory taste. We also will have a salad to go with the dinner.

Tonight we went grocery shopping for all the food we need for the holiday. On a whim after we checked out I bought an instant lottery ticket. I won another lottery ticket. We went to the customer service desk to get our ticket, and that ticket won $10! I buy an instant lottery ticket about three times per year.

One little thing can revive a guy, and that is a piece of rhubarb pie. Serve it up, nice and hot, maybe things aren't as bad as you thought.

A big reason I bought my Canon Eos 30D digital SLR rather than a Nikon was that my first camera, which I bought about 15 years ago, was a Canon Eos Elan and I already had a couple of lenses for it. These lenses can be used with my new camera just fine.

When we bought our first digital point-and-shoot camera seven years or so ago my film camera got a lot less use. My SLR took better pictures, but it is just so much cheaper to shoot digitally and get prints of only the really good ones.

Anyway, when my new camera showed up I dug out my old camera to get the lenses. There was a roll of film in the camera, but the battery had been left in for so long that it died and there is no way to tell how many exposures were made. I didn't know if it was an almost full roll or totally unexposed.

I thought it would be fun to take the film in and have it developed but I didn't feel like spending $10 on a special battery just to rewind the film into the canister. I took it into the downstairs windowless bathroom, turned out the lights, and opened it up. I popped out the film canister and slowly pulled the exposed film from the take-up spool. It felt like there was almost the full roll on the spool!

We will take the film to Wal-Mart to be developed tomorrow. I have no idea how old the film is. I don't even know if they are pictures from here or when we lived in Ohio. When you develop film at Wal-Mart they also convert your pictures to digital and let you get them on their website. They let the owner of the account download the full resolution version of the pictures too. I am excited to see what they are.

Mitch made some progress tonight with the "cage" command and the "drop" command.

Cage is obviously directing him to go inside his cage, and drop is for releasing a retrieved ball into my hand.

A couple years ago I bought a really nice, almost commercial grade, clothes steamer. It has worked great whenever we have needed it.

A month or so ago I went to add more water to the reservoir and I noticed the rubber check-valve in the water bottle was almost deteriorated. If I touched it my finger would be covered with a heavy coat of microscopic rubber particles.

Crap! Here I have this excellent quality steamer and it is going to become useless because of some obscure part that I will never be able to find.

On the way home from work (I don't know why I was thinking about this on the way home from work) I had the idea to check the manufacture's website. I did and they sell a packet of three rubber check valves for $0.75 plus $1.90 shipping, and they ship within 24 hours! Yeah me!

It is a Jiffy J-2000 steamer and I highly recommend them. Built to last. I think it is the brand you will usually see in clothes stores.

We are having a great time with Mitch!

We have local dog parks nearby that have several acres completely fenced in. You have to buy an annual permit to use the parks, and we are not sure how Mitch would be off the leash, so we thought early Saturday morning we could go to the park which would be completely deserted and no rangers around because it was cold and covered with snow. We could see if he would come back to us or if we would spend two hours trying to chase him down and get him back on the leash. Depending on how he did would determine if we bought a permit or not.

We pulled into the parking lot early Saturday morning and the park was packed! They had Santa Claus passing out goody bags. A couple pet store chains had booths set up and were passing out sample packs of Greenies, doggy sausages, tennis balls, etc. They also had a dog sled group there with a team of huskies and a sled. They were mushing around the park every now and then but not while we were there.

We decided just to leave him on the leash and see how he reacted to other dogs. Would he be skittish and cling to our legs? Would he be aggressive and lunge at every dog we passed?

It turned out he was mostly indifferent. One of the first dogs we passed lunged at him with barred teeth and loud fast barks. (The other dog was on a leash.) Mitch looked at him for a second and then kept walking. Not spooked. Not agitated. Not impressed. We passed several more, nicer, dogs and he pretty much had the same reaction; indifference.
What did catch his eye were dogs in the distance running and chasing balls and Frisbees.

After a few minutes of seeing how he reacted to other dogs we decided to risk it and let him off the leash. He was at the other side of the field which was probably about a quarter mile away in a flash of the eye. It was awesome to see his legs pumping. He would see a dog running and go after him. Once he caught up to the other dog he would just look for another dog a distance away and go chasing after him. No interaction with the dogs he "caught". He just likes chasing things.

Every now and then he would need a break and would go to the closest person and press up against their leg and let them pet him. We thought that was hilarious. After he caught his breath he would dart off again.

After about 15 minutes of him chasing things he stopped and looked around for us. We called his name, he heard us, and he came at us at full speed. Very cool. We gave him some praise and head rubs and then he was off again for another 15 minutes.

At one point we saw a dog running towards him in an aggressive manner. Mitch didn't change course at all. He leaped over him almost like a gazelle! Beautiful.

Soon after that he stopped and looked around for us. Heard us. Charged towards us. The wind chill made it very cold and we were ready to leave. We put the leash on him and walked back to the car. He was exhausted and walked with a slow heavy stride. Once in the car he laid down and closed his eyes almost immediately.

Since it went so well and we had so much fun we will definitely be buying and annual dog park permit.

We wanted to take some video of him at full speed but he was away from us so fast that by the time we got the camera out he was just a speck.

I love having a shadow around the house again. He thinks everything we do is the most fascinating thing in the world. Wherever I go he is usually just a step behind.

He is pretty good about responding to a simple "No."

He picked up that he is not allowed to beg at the table the first or second day. When we sit down at the kitchen table to eat he barely tries to see if he is getting any treats and then just walks to his pillow and goes to sleep while we eat. He seems to be a very quick learner.

We took him back to the Rescue on Sunday to buy some coats for him. When we got there they had three other greyhounds in the front lobby and two or three other people. He made the rounds and greeted everyone, but after 5 - 10 minutes he came back to Sheri for a few minutes of head scratching and then over to me for some head scratching. I think he is bonding really well with us.

He has not snapped even once at us when touching his feet, food, picking him up, moving him around, putting clothes on him, touching boo-boos, etc. While Sheri was going through a stack of coats at the Rescue he just stood there while she slipped one on, took it off and tried the next one. I don't know if I've ever seen a more easier-going dog.

We took him to a little expensive dog boutique on Saturday after the dog park and just about every other person wanted to stop and fawn over him.

I took him for a walk last night before bed and he is perfect on a leash on a sidewalk. He didn't stop every 20 feet to smell something and make me tug him, and he wasn't pulling so hard that he was walking on only his back two legs and gagging himself like Goliath would do. He walked straight ahead and kept just the slightest amount of slack in the leash.

Every day we see changes in his personality. His tail wags more. He gets more playful. He just generally seems more at east and comfortable.

Mitch riding shotgun on Sunday.


Mitch at the dog boutique.

When we first got Mitch he was terrified of the steps. We never had to carry him up or down, but it was a big ordeal coaxing him. I wish I would have thought to take a video of him on the stairs when he was still having problems with them. These two videos were taken after we had him 4 or 5 days.

For the video of him coming up the stairs we were encouraging him for 10 seconds or so before I started shooting, but you can still see his initial hesitation. Once he gets going though he shoots right up.

He mastered going down the stairs a lot sooner than he did going up which surprised me. I thought it would be the other way around.

He still has some mis-steps on the stairs every once in a while, but for the most part he has it figured out. I think he gets into trouble when he stops to think about what he is doing and where his feet should go.

Going up the stairs


Going down the stairs


We are getting ready to take him out on the town in a little bit and might have some more video later this afternoon. We plan on going to the dog park, our downtown shopping area to walk around, and PetSmart.

By the way, the video I posted a few months ago of our new toilet seat that closes slowly on its own has been viewed 12,664 times as of today.

After I dropped Sheri off at the train station I came home and ended up taking a nap with Mitch for an hour or so. We woke up and went to PetSmart. Lots of fun! He is definitely an attention getter. If only I had him back in college. We weren't 20 feet from the car walking in when a woman stopped to say hi. At our first stop, chew toys, within 1 minute a cute employee asked if I needed help with anything. First of all, I don't think I have ever been asked if I need help with anything at PetSmart. Second, who needs help with chew toys? Then a dad with his wife and family had a few questions for me.

He LOVES the guinea pig display. There are glass cages right at his eye level and I think it was like greyhound TV for him. He just wanted to stand there and watch. He knew there was glass in front so he didn't try to lunge and hurt himself, but every time the guinea pig moved he would tense up and change his stance like he was getting ready to lunge. That made me laugh out loud a few times.

(I just now had to scold him for starting to chew the box my Canon 30D came in so I ran downstairs and got the chicken flavored Nylabone we picked out tonight. He likes it.)

We also got a place matt with a raised edge to contain water splashes from his bowl because he is a very sloppy drinker, some coal tar shampoo, and a tag with his name, our address and phone number.

One passerby commented on how well behaved he was and another clerk commented on how well he was doing on the smooth floor. She said her friend has a greyhound and gets freaked out when his feet slide on smooth floors so he just gets stiff and freezes in place.

He has been a working dog his whole life and a lot of the time his personality is best described as serious. There have been a few times where he loses himself and frolics for a minute on his back, but then it is back to being serious. Not too much tail wagging. Doesn't seem to have ever played tug-o-war before. But I have noticed a slight change between last night and tonight. I got a wag as we were going out to the backyard for the last time tonight. The fosters said last night a lot of times adopted greyhounds will have a personality change after 1 week or 1 month. I forgot which. Last night I just thought yeah whatever, but now I think I can see what she is talking about. He has never had any people to play with him. It was always business, and I guess he has to learn how to relax and play a little bit. He loves to be pet though. He will stand motionless for as long as you want to scratch his head. He is also can't help himself when he hears a squeak toy or sees a ball rolling across the floor.

I missed having Goliath follow me from room to room and I am glad to see that Mitch does the same thing.





He is still nervous on the steps but I think he gets a little more confidence on each trip.




I planned on grilling my sausage tonight, but it was too cold out, and I felt cold, so I just cooked it in a pan on the stove. I cooked up the pound of Lithuanian sausage I got and ate it with some of their homemade sauerkraut. I made some fat free sugar free instant banana cream pudding for desert.

The Dukes of Hazzard movie was just what I thought it would be: stupid fun humor. When I was a kid I looked forward to watching the Dukes on Friday night and making popcorn or eating cheesy poofs. It kind of brought back good memories tonight from back then.

No major plans for tomorrow. Finally complete the forms for my camera rebate. Read the paper. Pick Sheri up at the train station. I should clean out the fish tank. Still haven't gotten around to that. I guess mostly just hang out with Mitch and bond some more.

I taped some pieces of paper to the glass door in the kitchen to remind Mitch that he can't walk through glass. I want to try and find something a little more aesthetically pleasing though. Maybe something Christmas themed like some vinyl stick ups.



His tail is 20 inches long.



This is the first I have seen him in full run. He just pooped and he is darting to come back inside.



He is laying next to me in the office right now. The rescue people said a lot (most?) of greyhounds will not sit. I think Mitch falls into that category. I think I have only seen him standing or laying down. Maybe their legs are so muscle bound that they can't sit?

I just dropped Sheri off at the train station. Our friend from San Francisco is in town for some training and Sheri is going to have dinner with her tonight, spend the night in the hotel with her, and then do some shopping in the City tomorrow.

We stopped at Bobak's after lunch today and I picked up some fresh sausage to put on the grill tonight for my dinner. We also stopped at Blockbuster and picked up the Dukes of Hazzard movie for Mitch and myself to watch tonight. That seemed like a good movie for a bachelor/guys evening.

In a little bit I think I am going to pack Mitch up in the car and go to PetSmart for some coal tar shampoo for his flaky dry skin and something like a non-edible Nylabone. Sheri was watching him stand next to the TV stand in the bedroom. He swung his head over and tried to chew on the edge of it a little. We gave him Sheri's broken electric blanket and she noticed him trying to chew the plug at the edge of the blanket. So I get the impression he is a chewer and needs something safe to keep him occupied.

We were in bed with the lights out and TV off but I was feeling restless, so when Sheri got a page it was a good excuse for me to go downstairs with her and do this. I'll start with the mundane and end with the Mitch.

This is a handheld picture I took from our bedroom window last night around 11 PM right as the snow started to fall. I had the ISO cranked up to 3,200. I think it has a neat weird look to it.



This is our backyard this morning taken using the "correct" exposure. Notice the snow looks grey.



This is the same shot opened up about 1.5 stops. Nice white snow.



The pine tree on the left isn’t doing too well.

OK, now to the good stuff. The foster family showed up with Mitch tonight. He settled into our place almost immediately. I think he was actually laying on his big pillow within the first 15 minutes he was here without anyone directing him to it.

He still doesn't get sliding glass doors and bonked his head hard twice. Once going out and once even harder coming in from the cold. I was outside with him and after he bonked his head while trying to run into the house. I slid the door open and then he wouldn't go in. He thought he was going to get another head bonking, so I had to walk in first to show him it was OK. On the steps he is still VERY cautious, very unsteady and not very graceful. I think it will take him a few more days before he gets really comfortable with those.





The fosters said he never tried to get on the couch and only got on the bed a couple times. When we went upstairs he jumped on the bed on his own while we were in the bathroom brushing our teeth.

They said if he gets loose and we can't find him in 15 to 20 minutes to give the rescue a call and they will mobilize all of the greyhound owners in the area and go looking for him until they find him. They said there dog got loose for a whole weekend but dozens of people were looking for him from sun up to sun down. How cool is that?

Every year they have a reunion for all the dogs they have adopted out. It is at the local minor league ball park and last year over 500 dogs were there! I think that sounds like a lot of fun. We will probably also go to the local pet store on the second Saturday of each month with Mitch. The rescue sets up a table with literature about adopting a greyhound and they like to have hounds there for people to pet and see what they are like. She said A LOT of people think greyhounds are mean because they see them wearing muzzles when they race. Who would have thought?

They brought a big pile of printouts showing all of his race results and his ancestors several generations back. There are a lot of columns on the race results and it will take me a bit to figure out what it all means.

His color is officially red brindle.

His official name is Knight Errant.

I am not 100% sure but it looks like he ran 56 races in his career and came in first for 7 of them. He weighs 76 pounds.

He has one toe on his left rear leg that is white.

He responds almost instantaneously to his squeaky toy. I don't think Goliath responded that intensely when we crinkled a potato chip bag. His squeaky toy is what finally got him to climb the steps and it is what got him back out of bed when Sheri got paged and we all were going downstairs. He is sound asleep again on his downstairs pillow.

I got up at 6 AM to use the snow blower. We got about 3 – 4 inches of VERY heavy wet snow. Whatever I paid for the snow blower over 10 years ago was more than made up for today.

I had finished the main driveway part and was halfway through the sidewalk to the west of our home when I noticed the college girl neighbor to the east of us slowly making half-shovelful scoops of progress past their property line and all the way to our driveway. She wasn't doing the whole width of the sidewalk, just a shovel's width so walkers could at least get through. I didn't see her dad, brother or mom, so I had to go over and help her out.

I finished up our stuff, unplugged the cord and walked over and told her to plug me in. The normal guy etiquette if another guy comes over to snowblow your driveway if you only have a shovel is to keep making progress with the shovel in the tight areas while he gets the big major areas. If you are about to have a heart attack it is acceptable to simply pay attention to what he is doing in case he needs help, give the occasional thumbs up, etc. You can even go inside momentarily to warm up as long as you bring out a cup of coffee, beer, etc.

College girl decides the best thing to do is put the shovel down and make a snowman. I don't know if that is proper snow blower assist etiquette but I thought it was cute. Sheri thought is was adorable too.

Time to shower up, go to work, and endure the agonizing 12 hours until Mitch shows up.

The foster family just called and they are bringing Mitch to us tomorrow night (Friday) at 7 PM! Get ready for dog-picture overload. When the foster family called they said they were busy Saturday and suggested Sunday. Sheri convinced them to come tomorrow night.



We have been talking about what fun food we want for the extended Christmas weekend. (I am taking Friday and Tuesday off so I will have a full five days.) The first idea is a standing rib roast and Yorkshire pudding. I think we will do that late Sunday afternoon (Christmas Eve). That way we can have leftovers for a few days.

Then I had another fun idea. I have never done fondue. We also do not have a fondue pot. I did some looking on-line and I decided an electric pot would be better than the traditional liquid-fuel heated kind. With electric you can get really hot heat for hot oil fondue too.

I found a nice looking Rival one at Wal-Mart's site but it was on-line only. The price was great at $30. The other one I found a lot of on-line was a $50 one by Cuisinart. Hmmmm. An extra $20 for something I am not even sure I am going to use much. I did some more looking around and found that Linens-N-Things carries the Cuisinart one. We are holding on to a 20% off coupon from there. OK. I can live with $40, so we picked it up tonight.

I think I would like to do a traditional cheese fondue Friday night as kind of way to start the Christmas weekend off on a fun note. Get a nice crackling fire in the fire place. A nice treat for Mitch. A good movie playing on TV, and a nice not pot of fondue. Traditional Swiss fondue has dry white wine, Kirsch (cherry brandy), garlic essence, and two kinds of cheese. I have been thinking maybe gouda and Swiss, but I am not sure yet.

We might try a hot oil fondue where you cook bits of raw meat, seafood and vegetables right at the table. I was thinking some nice sirloin and fresh mushrooms for Sheri and some scallops and shrimp for me. There is no batter involved, and the oil is very hot, so there is almost no additional fat added from the cooking oil.

When I wake tomorrow there should be about 10 inches of snow from the winter storm we are expecting. I plan on getting out there at 6 AM to run the snow blower. Probably another 2 inches will fall after that before it stops.

A few weeks ago I read an article written by a famous (supposedly) landscape photographer on how to shoot snow scenes. If you use the camera's defaults the pure white snow will more than likely show up looking like 18% grey. His tip was to first get the "correct" exposure and then open it up about 1 to 1.5 stops. This will make the snow look white while still preserving the subtle texture details. If you open it up more than that the snow will loose all texture and just be blinding white. I am looking forward to trying that out on Saturday. Most likely there will be a Mitch in a lot of the shots too. (Don't say I didn't warn you.)

This is what I have in mind:



You can see some very subtle shading in the foreground from the waves of snow.

"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination."
--Albert Einstein

We got the idea to enlarge our photographs that turn out well, display them for a few months and then swap it out for the next one we like. We can change the picture to reflect the seasons. We got a nice picture frame on sale over the Thanksgiving holiday for this. Right now it is just sitting on the mantle. I have to decide if I want to drill a hole in the brick to hang it up or just find a stud behind drywall in a location we would see all the time. Here is the first picture in our series.

I ordered the 35 pound dog cage, two dog sweaters and a shedding brush the Monday night before Thanksgiving. Even though the cage was 35 pounds, if I took the seven day ground delivery service the shipping was only $10.99. This would be perfect. It would show up early to mid week after Thanksgiving but before Mitch arrives. I ordered Monday night so they would not start processing the order until Tuesday.

Well I was right, they didn't process it until the next business day, Tuesday, but it was sent overnight via FedEx and got here on Wednesday! That would normally be fine but we left for Toledo Wednesday morning and were not planning on returning until Saturday.

Fortunately I checked my e-mail before we left and received the FedEx tracking number with their delivery estimate. Sheri was able to find one of our neighbors still home Wednesday morning and got her to pick up the stuff from our porch.

The neighbor had plans of her own and was going to be gone this day and returning that day but would be able to pick it up for us. The box is obviously very large and I was worried during our visit that it would be sitting on our front porch for a day or so like a big sign to everyone driving by that we weren't home and to come on in and get comfortable. Help yourself to our stuff. Or at least someone would have some brand new free doggy stuff.

Fortunately she picked it up and everything worked out fine. On the one hand I am a little annoyed with them that they shipped it overnight and messed up my plans and gave me anxiety. On the other hand I am really impressed with their prices, service and shipping. We ordered it from Doctors Foster and Smith. I will obviously order from them again.

This is where we think we will keep the cage. It is in the front room right next to the door into the family room where we spend most of our time. If he just needs some alone time he can go in his cage but still keep an eye on us and the front door from that location. (Goliath used his cage for that purpose a lot. It was his safe place.) Plus it is pretty much out of our way, both underfoot and visually.

At 1 AM Sheri had a break for an hour and went to bed for an hour. I was wide awake when she went up and it took me an hour to wind down, brush my teeth, etc. to make it to bed. By the time I slipped under the covers at 2 AM she was waking up to get back to work.

I woke up at 7:30 AM and she was still at it. I went downstairs and made her some coffee and then just browsed the Internets for a while.

After a bit I was getting hungry and asked her if I could get her anything. "No." I asked a few times, and each time "No."

I knew she needed something to eat, but in her mind she didn't want anything. I made two over-medium eggs and slid those on top of a piece of buttered toast and sprinkled some cheddar cheese on top. (She doesn't get enough protein.) I casually carried into the family room like I was getting ready to eat it, but I quickly handed it to her and said "Just have a couple bites." and then left the room to use the restroom. I knew if she had it in front of her and couldn't hand it back to me she would at least have a few bites of the egg white with the cheese.

When I came back a few minutes later half of it was gone! That meant she was hungry. I told her to finish it up and she resisted. "No, I can't eat your breakfast. You made it." Etc. etc. She already ate half of it. So I just told no, you eat and walked back to the kitchen to make my own. She finished it before I could finish cooking my own.

Afterward she said she was glad I got her to eat. I think the last thing she had before that was the Buffalo chicken sandwich for lunch the previous day in Toledo.

She is only going on an hour of sleep and it looks like there will be a stopping point soon. It looks like she is a little slap-happy and wants to go out to do a little grocery shopping, stretch her legs and get some fresh air. After that she might have a little more to do at work and then she will take a nap. I don't know if I will lay down with her or clean the fish tank. I have been putting that off for weeks and weeks now.

It is 55 degrees here right now so getting out for some errands should be refreshing.