The Return of the Frog Eating Bird!

We saw our frog eating egret friend again on our evening walk! I was able to get much closer this time, although because of the light this time of day he's still a bit blurry.

I was very excited to see him. There's something about him that seems very special. I've really been noticing birds a lot lately. I'll have to read up on them, I'm dying to know more.

Today I am thankful for-

Scrabble- We've been playing a lot of Scrabble lately (open dictionary), and I've really been enjoying it. I'm not great at it, but I'm getting better. And I'm increasing my vocabulary. We've actually been learning so many words with our open dictionary style that we're going to start a list.

Charlie- I'm married to a truly wonderful young man. I can't fully express how happy he makes me. He's so sweet, and so kind, and he works so hard to make our lives happy and secure. I don't know what I would do without him.

My job- I really love what I do. I like working at the yarn store, I like teaching knitting and crochet classes, I like making art. Being able to not only do what I love, but to get paid for it, makes life very pleasant and fulfilling.

The pecan bar from Buster's Coffee Shop- It's like pecan pie, but in cookie form! I love it so very much.

A recommendation tonight, for The Human Face, a BBC production available on dvd. It's presented by John Cleese, and covers not only the physiology of the human face, but also the importance of human interaction. We just watched the first episode tonight, and we loved it. Thanks to Orchid for recommending it to me.

link day!

Today I direct you towards Book By Its Cover. It's really lovely for peeking at the inside of other peoples sketchbooks, which I adore. The different paths the creative process can take are really fascinating.

walk

We saw this guy at Caltech yesterday, eating frogs out of one of the lily ponds! I sent this picture to my bird expert/friend Jean, and she believes he is a greater egret.

I'm just thrilled I happened to bring the camera when walking the dog.

eager

He wants to keep going! Why have we stopped moving?! Must pull!

It is so overcast that when I walked the dog this morning, I could not see the mountains. I can pretty much always see the mountains. I'm giddy. All of these clouds, all of this rain, it feels like some sort of magical present.

First of all, and most importantly, the vet called me on his lunch hour, and the dog is just fine. The little lump on his leg is indeed a histiocytoma, and it will go away by itself in a few months. He said they could remove it, but since it isn't chafing on anything, I'm just going to make sure it doesn't get infected again, and let it do it's own thing in reabsorbing into the body. If it was in his armpit or something, I'd consider the surgery, but it's on the outside of his front leg, just below his elbow. It isn't hurting him. The vet seemed to think this was a perfectly good way to go, so good. No unnecessary surgery for my baby.

In other news, it's raining. It's just lovely. Seriously. I should probably live in the Pacific Northwest; I really, really like rain. Unfortunately, I live in Southern California, land of constant drought. On the other hand, that makes days like today, when it does rain, seem that much more special. Plus it's supposed to rain for a few more days after this, so I'm pleased.

And lastly, I got my copy of Keri Smith's How to Be an Explorer of the World in the mail yesterday. It rocks. It rocks hard. It works very much with how I generally approach the world, so I think it will serve as a nice, gentle reminder when I get stuck in my work. I suspect there will be more on this awesome book once I've played with it more.

No news on the dog yet. They're pretty sure they'll have his results tomorrow. I'm almost positive that the results will be good, but I'm still nervous. So much so that mainly what I got done today were repairs (a throw pillow and a baseball hat, both ripped up by the same dog I'm now worried about) because that's all I could really concentrate on. I have students tomorrow, so I'll call the vet after I teach. Teaching is the sort of thing I can handle when I'm anxious, so that will keep me pleasantly busy.

Expensive Pup

It was back to the vet today for Smee and me. We were there Saturday to have his tick bite checked, to have another possible tick bite (from the same day as the first one) that looked a little angry checked, and to get some Frontline to prevent future tick bites. Today we were back because a certain little someone's possible tick bite was bleeding, possibly because he was fussing at it, and because due to how it was healing I was becoming increasingly sure it was probably not a tick bite.

Today's vet agreed with me. He thinks it's a histiocytoma, but to be sure it was fact benign, he aspirated it. The results will be back tomorrow or Friday. I'm not terribly worried, because he's so healthy otherwise, and the vet didn't seem deeply concerned.

But either way, since someone was not inclined to leave the owie on his leg alone, he gets the Elizabethan collar and bandage. Although if you look closely, you can actually see his owie in the picture, right above the bandage, as I took the photo before I realized his bandage had scootched down. I've since hiked it back up.

I am-
-Still feeling giddy, hours later, about the inauguration.
-Also feeling fairly giddy about realizing that I do have the makings of a fast, easy dinner after all.
-kind of sleepy.
-wondering what smells like poop. Is it the cat box? I sure hope it's the cat box.
-finally feeling a good deal better, after feeling pretty cruddy all last week.
-kind of hungry.
-excited to get back into printmaking.

Haircut day!

Today was haircut day for Charlie. Nothing fancy, just a buzz cut I gave him in the bathroom. I'm a little jealous. I enjoy having a buzz cut, but I'm trying to grow my hair out at the moment. We'll see how long that lasts. I love having longer hair, and for me that starts a chin length. At the moment it's a lot shorter than that, but much longer than a buzz cut, and extremely awkward looking. On the other hand, it has a messy little boy quality I love. So we'll see. But Charlie! He looks great with a buzz cut. It's one of my favorite looks for him.

Tonight I direct you towards a show I saw earlier today at the Hammer Museum- Gouge: The Modern Woodcut. Check out the page even if you aren't in the Los Angeles area or aren't going to make it there (the show runs through February 8). There are lots of images, and a little video walk-through.

A girl and her walrus.

sketchbook

Still sick, but getting better.

diagram

A diagram for a plan that has yet to be enacted, because I am too busy coughing and sneezing.