On May 6, Baxter invited all of his buddies over to celebrate his 2nd birthday. Ben had the BBQ going and Carrie kept everyone (including the pups) well-stocked with tasty food and drinks. This year Cowboy wasn't the only big dog around, so he ran and played himself to exhaustion. It was a great day for the pups and their people!
Link: View Baxter's birthday party pictures
At the end of April, Trish and I went on a weekend cruise to Ensenada with her brother Felix, John, and about 30 other people to celebrate her friend Greg's birthday. I did the same cruise with Sita almost 10 years ago, and I have to say, it is more fun when you go with a huge crowd of people you know.
When Sita and I did it, we did it on Carnival (which tends to be a younger party crowd). So even 10 years ago, we felt like the old ladies on the ship because it was full of high school and college kids on spring break. A couple years ago Trish and I took a 10-day cruise to Panama with her family on Princess cruise lines and that was the opposite experience. It was super luxurious, and we were the youngest people on board by about three decades. That was a fantastic trip and we went with a large group of people we knew, which made it even more fun.
This time, we took Royal Caribbean. It was a step up from Carnival, but definitely not the luxury of Princess. The crowd seemed to be closer to our age this time, but it didn't really matter because we had our own crowd with us. We set sail from LA on Friday, docked for a day in Ensenada on Saturday, sailed all day Sunday (we must have just been doing circles since LA is only a few hours away), and returned to LA on Monday. It was a great little mini-vacation!
I've posted the pictures on Flickr. Click the link below (or click on the title of this post) to see the set. It's much easier if you view the pictures as a set rather than going directly to my Flickr account and looking at the main page (which shows my most recent pictures). The main page doesn't post them in the correct order, so it can be confusing.
Link: View Mexico cruise pictures
I know I said I'd post pictures soon, but I haven't been on my home laptop in over a week and that's the one with all the pictures. I'll try to get to them sometime this week.
We had a nice, mellow Memorial Day weekend. We wanted to go on a hike, but thought better of it after considering all of the trouble Cowboy could get into with a huge cone on his head. Instead we hiked along the Iron Horse trail, which is nice and wide and allows plenty of room for the cone.
We also enjoyed a BBQ at Robin & Glenda's and I got to see little Thomas for the first time. He's about 4 weeks old and such a mellow baby! I'm usually nervous about holding babies that small, but he just laid there and stared at me so it was pretty easy. And it's amazing how quickly Tatum's grown! She's 16 months old and has such a great little personality. Chris and Robin had their own fun watching the Indy 500 and then going through Robin's old sports posters, shot glasses and pennants. Chris needs to be reminded, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's posters."
On Monday, we scurried through the NW Folklife festival as quickly as possible (while grabbing some roasted corn on the cob and kettle korn) to head to the Pacific Science Center for an IMAX movie. We saw "The Alps", a story about John Harlin III's summit of the north face of the Eiger, following the same route which took the life of his father when John was 9 years old. It showed some amazing footage of the Swiss Alps as well as the climb itself. It was especially neat to see while our own memories of the Bernese Alps (and that scary scary north face) are so fresh.
We've been leaving Cowboy alone in the house (rather than in the crate) since he's had the cone. We tried to crate him once, and that was a miserable failure. The cone is so wide it doesn't fit through the door, so Chris had to back Cowboy into the crate and wedge the cone in last. That left Cowboy's head propped into place, unable to move.
Apparently, however, Cowboy figured out a way to move. After less than 3 hours in the crate, I came home to find him still wedged in, but the cone mutilated beyond recovery. I think he pushed the cone up against the front of the crate so that it bent back towards his mouth, and then he proceeded to chew it to pieces. I had to take him back to the vet to get a new cone, and they actually laughed when they saw him. They were amazed at how much damage he'd been able to do in so short a time.
So now we leave him loose in the house. He hasn't done any damage so we were thinking that maybe we can leave him loose when the cone's off. But then yesterday, Chris forgot his sunglasses so we turned the car around after a block and returned home. Chris walked up to the porch and saw Cowboy standing ON the couch (he's not allowed on furniture), howling at the top of his lungs. He was so into his howl that he didn't hear or see Chris walk in.
That little sneak. We had to laugh anyway -- it was pretty funny. But I guess that means it's back to the crate for the Cow once the cone comes off!
A plastic baggie full of Cowboy's Buddy Biscuits looks an awful lot like a plastic baggie full of Honey Nut Cheerios. It does not, however, taste the same. Not at all.
"You can't teach people to be lazy - they either have it or they don't."
~ Dagwood Bumstead
I've been playing around with the Flickr site and various other slideshow add-ins and I haven't found anything that I like. I've decided to abandon slideshows entirely for now because they are either too gimmicky or too inflexible. I'm looking for something that is clean, simple, and streamlined.
Instead of slideshows, I will simply post new sets to my Flickr site. As they are posted, the six most recent images (yes, in backwards order) will appear in the strip of photos at the top of my blog. You can either click on the individual pictures or click on the link below them to go to the Flickr site.
I'd advise clicking on the link (rather than an individual picture), as it will take you to the photo sets page and you can chose how to view each set from there.
Bye-bye slideshows!
I still have a few photos from March that I haven't posted yet, so I'm posting them all together.
I am annoyed that Flickr automatically shows the most recent pictures first (in other words, backwards from the order in which they are taken). When I'm putting together a slideshow, I am generally trying to tell a story of sorts...in which the ORDER is quite significant. The Flickr slideshow equivalent in literature would be like printing a book with the last chapter first, and ordering it backwards from there.
There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about this other than putting all the pictures together in one set. This diminishes the value of sets, since I can't organize the pictures by event if I want them to show correctly on the slideshow in my blog (I have to lump them together by blog entry rather than by event). I tried using collections to fix the problem, but to no avail. Once I added my three correctly-ordered sets to a collection, they displayed backwards in the slideshow.
Any Flickr experts out there have another solution? For a relatively slick photo service, Flickr's slideshows leave a LOT to be desired (backwards ordering that can't be controlled easily, no display of image titles or description, etc.). I like Flickr in general, but since my primary goal is to make slideshows for my blog, I'm going to keep looking around for better alternatives. Any suggestions?
Anyway, back to the pictures. The following slide show contains pictures from the annual Corndog Day celebration at Tristan & Laura's, the Point B Gala at the Ibiza Dinner Club (with DMQ performing!), and Chris birthday dinner and celebration.
***Update: I have removed the slideshow from this post. Please use the photo strip at the top of my blog to access the pictures on the flickr site***
Last night at Chris' birthday dinner, we were seated near one of the private banquet rooms. We kept seeing clean-cut athletic-looking guys wander in and out of the room. When one of them passed our table, Chris said, "That's Sammy Sosa!"
At first, I was impressed that Chris can recognize pretty much every professional athlete out there, regardless of whether he watches that particular sport or not. But then I realized that it's probably similar to my ability to recognize most Hollywood starlets, even though I haven't seen any of their "work".
It turns out the Texas Rangers were in the banquet room, enjoying a steak and lobster feast before they play the Mariners tonight. We enjoyed our front row seats as we watched them walk around and chat. In general, they are much more athletic and compact-looking than I thought baseball players would be.
As they were leaving, Sammy Sosa walked past our table again. He turned and gave me a little wave good-bye and I smiled back. Chris sat there in shock, and then announced to the maitre d' in a loud voice, "Sammy Sosa just hit on my wife!" The maitre d' laughed as Chris said, "I was going to do something about it, but then I realized that whatever I started would end very quickly and badly for me."
Maybe he IS a year wiser!
On March 3rd, we headed out to the OP (Olympic Peninsula) for Emily and Brett's wedding. Although they were legally married in December, they waited until March for the full ceremony and celebration so that Brett's family could travel from Australia to attend.
The wedding was held at C'est Si Bon in Port Angeles. It was a beautiful venue and the wedding was lovely. You know how you look at those wedding magazines and you see the glowing bride on the cover and wonder, "Does anyone really look that great?" Well, Emily did.
With Brett's Aussie influence, we expected an evening of wit and laughter -- and we weren't disappointed. Unfortunately we had to leave at 11:30 PM to catch the last ferry back to Seattle, but we had a great time and are so happy for them!
The pictures below start out with a few from Emily's "Hen's Night" (bachelorette party). Em's sister Allison arranged a fun get-together at her house, followed by dinner at Mona's Bistro and then two-steppin' with cowboys (and old men) at the Little Red Hen. Emily was decked to the nines in a cowgirl outfit (courtesy of Allison) and we all had a rip-roarin' good time!
