Parent Birthday Bash

Happy Birthday to Mom, Jack and Mindy! On March 4th we celebrated all of their birthdays, with food, fanfare, artificially colored flowers (they turned the water purple!) and friends. Carrot cake was, surprisingly, sort of pretty, if lopsided. It tasted good. Here are the party pics!

Today was not a good day. I as you can see, I suffered my fate with dignity, but having a bath is quite possibly my least favorite of all the negative experiences I have to endure in my daily life. You might think that, judging from the color of the water, I actually needed a bath, but that is pure nonsense. I prefer my fur to be slick with natural oils, because when it is, I itch less. And what dog would choose the scent of oatmeal shampoo over his own potent aroma? I am a good dog, though, so I put up with this torture thinly disguised as a bath. I remind myself that it could be much worse. They could be doing it with a hose...but I refuse to pretend like I enjoy it!! Even in the most desperate of situations, I will not be a ham for the camera. I prefer to remain stoic when I am being humiliated and abused.

Unfortunately, this day reeked of potential for disaster from the moment I got up. I started my day off by eating some kitty litter, which is one of my favorite forbidden treats. But something went terribly wrong and instead of digesting the morsel, I regurgitated it onto the dining room floor. My parents were both disgusted and intrigued. Someone wanted to take a picture of it for the blog, but I assure you all I would never let something as tasteless as a regurgitated morsel of kitty litter be displayed within this fine publication.

Anyway, it was all downhill from there. And to top it all off, its COLD outside. But at least I don't look like this when I go for walks:

My mom regularly gets mistaken for a homeless derelict, because she takes me for walks in the dark dressed in outfits similar to this one. Last week some of our neighbors pulled into their driveway when we were walking by and did not get out of their car until after we had gone on down the street and safely back into our house. What an embarassment to be tagged as the crazy homeless looking lady's pet! It's totally ruining my reputation.

On an upnote, I showed the Rotweiller down the street, who was boss yesterday. If he hadn't been behind that huge steel fence, I would have really socked it to him.

more pictures from New Orleans!!

Pictures from New Orleans Feb 2006 (Dad, we know you were there, too, but somehow you escaped our camera!)

Ode to this Blog

By Kate

Hi, I'm Kate. Today I want to tell you a little bit about why I LOVE this blog. But let me start by saying that I am the Queen of the world AND the authority on what is what in the world of blogs. What I say goes. When I say a blog rocks, the world stops what it's doing, drops all else, and checks it out. And I'm saying, today and officially, THIS BLOG ROCKS.

So why does this blog excel so much in the world of blogs? WELL, let me COUNT the ways. FIRST, Claire and Jim just have a way with words. They manage to subtly get right to the point and never bore us with too many details. What's that you say? Some suggest that Jim and Claire's blog is BORING? HORRORS! I am offended and scandalized by these allegations. I said this blog ROCKS and that means it ROCKS, holmes. So, get it straight.

Second, Jim and Claire don't mind making fun of themselves and others in their blog, which I find highly entertaining. I say, if you can't say anything nice, come sit next to me!

Just kidding...I'm a pretty nice person. But not to people who denouce this blog!!! What what WHAT? You think it's kind of weird that sometimes they let their dog blog??!! Come on, people. Hearing things from a dog's point of view is always better than hearing it from a person's point of view. Think about it. Dogs can talk about diarreah and eating poop and no one thinks twice. When I talk about eating poop, people move away from me as quickly as they can. Anyay, I'm just wondering when Claire and Jim get a fish, so that he or she can tell us his or her perspective. I expect that a fish has a completely different outlook on life. Especially if it's a Beta.

And finally, the pictures on this blog seriously ROCK. Just look at this one of me! It's totally school teacher/librarian/hot godess. Notice how my beer, horizontally placed across from my pointing finger (which clearly emphasizes my eternal rightness) perfectly balances the portrait. Notice my rosey cheeks, the suggestive style of my shirt. Man, I look HOT.

In closing, I would like to say that I'm thinking of starting my very own blog. It will never surpass the quality of Claire and Jim's blog, but I'll give it my best effort.

Back to the rodeo!

Well, we are officially rodeo'd out here in Fort Worth (at least the two of us are...I can't speak for everyone else here). Last night we went to the Saturday night rodeo in Fort Worth. It was a packed house full of cowboys and cowgirls and rootin' tootin' good times. Unfortunately, my new friend was unable to get me a Pig Club hat, but he said maybe next year.

On our second rodeo night, we decided to puruse the stockyards, where we watched the cows and bulls being bathed, groomed (shaved!), blown dry, and then vacuumed off. they were very shiny and soft and fluffy. We saw chicks hatching and marveled at cross-bred ewes, pigs, and donkeys. We posed with llamas and snorted with pigs:

And then, to make sure we got the full animal experience, I got into a llama cage and did my best llama imitation:

Then we got serious. After a feast on bbq, we headed to our seats (in the nosebleed section on Saturday night) and watched buckin' broncos, calf roping (no calves hurt this year), barrell racing, trick riding (weird gymnastics done while riding on a galloping horse and wearing strange spandex outfits), bull riding and many other exciting rodeo events. We also decided that the clowns who taunt the bulls during the bull riding must be certifiably insane.

What fun! I encourage anyone who can to check out the Fort Worth rodeo. We've had enough for one year, but next year we'll be back for more.

Bulls Night Out (and Jim and Claire's First Night Out at the Fort Worth Rodeo 2006..YEEHAW!!!)

Let us start with this:

No, I don't REALLY own a cowboy hat, but I always seem to be able to acquire one when the time is right. A couple of years ago, in a kicker bar in College Station, TX, with Jim standing by, I convinced a cowboy to let me borrow his hat for a while, so that I could feel authentic. This was long before we had any inkling that we would be moving to Fort Worth, Cowboy Capital of the Universe...maybe it was foreshadowing. Since we have moved here, I have made every effort to NOT conform to cowboy-ism. I have not purchased western wear, have no desire to own a pair of cowboy boots, fringes scare me, and wouldn't be caught dead in Wrangler's, but there is something about a cowboy hats and my head. They just go together...without really wanting to. Anyway, last night we were pretending to take pictures of me, when really we were trying to capture the sheer mass of the 10-gallon Stetsons that surrounded us, when this friendly cowboy came out of nowhere and offered me his hat so that we could get a 'REAL' picture. We did...the moment has been documented: Claire in her green peacoat and a real cowboy's hat at the Fort Worth rodeo. Then, to make it authentic, we got some corny dogs (yes, that's what they call them in Texas) and giant Coors Lights.

So, how can I describe the Fort Worth rodeo to those of you may not have been to a rodeo before? First of all, everyone wears cowboy hats and they are VERY serious about it. THere are no concerts unlike in Houston and the bull riders are bonified cowboys, unlike the prisoners, who ride in the Prison Rodeo near New Orleans. At the Fort Worth rodeo, everyone is VERY patriotic. We had to stand as the cowgirls rode their painted horses around the arena, waving giant American flags behind them. Picture doing the wave at a baseball game, but instead of doing it because you're drunk and happy, you're doing it because you are solemn and patriotic. After we stood for the several flags being paraded, we stood again to sing the National Anthem (Jim didn't get the words wrong this year...FOR SHAME, JIM! You are a descendant of Frances Scott Key!)

After praying, saluting, singing, there was a very dramatic tribute to the greatest bull contractors in history. Most of them were also former bullriding champions themselves. They came out to flashing lights and smoke and teetered out (the mean age of these cowboys was about 95) to the center of the arena with fancy videos showing in the background.

And, FINALLY, we got to the bull riding. There were 40 riders, who had all randomly drawn bulls. The bulls had names like Torpedo, Little Boy Blue, Old Yeller (just kidding) and they were all pretty angry by the time we saw them. Basically, the bull riders confine these 1600 pound bulls into a very small pen, strap very tight ropes around the bulls' testicles, and then get on top of the bulls. Some of the bulls bucked much more than others, some were bigger than others. We had a lot of questions: What if your bull doesn't buck that much? Does that count against you? What if your bull is smaller? Does that count against you? Why did some bulls have their horns sawed off and others didn't? We agreed that we would prefer to ride a bull with sawed off horns. We did figure out that you don't get any points unless you can stay on the bull for at least 8 seconds. Then factors like skill and style get added in. Some cowboys wore helmets, which those of us in Public Health can appreciate. Personally, I think they are the smart cowboys. When the crowd cowboys didn't like the judges calls, they booed. And everyone was keeping score on pink score cards that we somehow missed. We spent a lot of time spying on Jim's co-workers down below with our binoculars (Thanks Jack and Mindy! They work REALLY well!)

The cowboys who seemed to be the best at bullriding were the smaller ones. One cowboy got pierced in the leg by a bull and a couple of clowns got tossed around as well.

By far, the craziest thing that we saw last night was this:

These four cowboys had the priviledge of sitting at a card table in the middle of the bull ring. A raging bull was let out of the pen and he went straight for them, tossing 2 chairs and the table in one direction and then coming back to toss the other two about 20 feet. The cowboys all ran like hell and climbed up the gates surrounding the ring. They didn't get tossed themselves, but it would have served them right if they had.

We left early, so we don't know which of the handsome cowboys won the bull riding contest, but we'll try to stay for the whole thing on Saturday when we got back for MORE RODEO!!!!!! And that's when I get to pick up my "Fort Worth Pig Club" baseball hat, which was promised to me by another friendly cowboy (who was sporting one himself). I'm to meet him back in the same place on Saturday night to pick up my prize.