Yes, Better

Feeling much better about the whole Kima thing. I will not have to put her down. Sure enough with a little tenacity and diligence she is getting the hang of heeling on walks. She can even "go home" to her bed, whever it is, and stay there for at least a little bit (and longer if we are right there). A friend from work who trains a lot with her German Shepherds said she's pretty smart (which I knew!). She even likes the treadmill (liver is magical like that).

She's going to 'camp' for two weeks when I'm in Mali and hopefully that won't mess her up too bad...the trainer recommended it so I'm hopeful.

Of course...this week is a mess with pig roast and bday prep and huge amounts of things to do and people to check in with before I leave for Mali. Not everything will get done, I know that much.

Muxtape!

I made a muxtape. Not sure what the significance of 'mux' is, but it's basically a mixtape. You create an account and can make one mix at a time from any mp3 you have, and no one can download the songs (though there are links to buy them online).

Current faves Deer Tick, Justin Jones, and Eef Barzelay make appearances. It's sort of the "Sons of Townes" mix.

Work Cut Out

In this period of complete despair, bad luck and neverending personal life incompetence, I just keep listening to Deer Tick's "Dirty Dishes". Find it at Hype Machine.

Kima was evaluated yesterday and I spent the rest of the day crying. But just remember, "things could be/so much worse."

I've been waiting for the GD bus all day

Thanks CuteOverload.com for brightening my funky yucky day!

Boo to American Express customer service thinking I am stealing my own identity and boo hiss to GD IT people who think they are the only ones who know how to remove paper jams from the GD printer and are super snotty about it. I think I am old enough to know how NOT TO ELECTROCUTE MYSELF by now, thank you very much!

Pig Drama In My Head

The other night, after I had called a second farm to get a price for the pig, even though I had already ordered the one through farm #1, I had a nightmare that I ended up ordering two pigs, and couldn't 'unorder' either of them because it was the day before the roast and they'd already been butchered.

I got a call back from farm #2 today and his price is about $150 cheaper than farm #1. So I confirmed with him (nightmare coming true!!!!), then quickly called farm #1 with a white lie about mechanical problems. "Oh, that's too bad!" she said (guilt! shame!). "I'll just cancel your order, that's no problem. The pig's still alive so no worries!".

Phew!

Am still pickling in my own shame but at least nobody is hurt, right? Am sure I will make amends somehow this summer by going to farm #1 and buying expensive organic bratwurst.

Things we get to watch at work

Mother's Day on Animal Planet

Lonely lioness adopts tiny baby antelope in freaky obsession. Edith and I were continuously gasping at each other last night. The epilogue was particularly jarring - she went on to to adopt five more baby oryx before the team lost track of her.

http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/wildkingdom/lioness/videogallery/videogallery.html

Camping Chili

I don't remember this recipe well, but now that camping season is upon us:

2 cans trader joes chili
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 can red beans
chili powder
whatever squash/zucchini are lying around. we may have sauteed the veggies prior to setting out on the road with some onion.
2 pouches soy crumble
two pouches minute boil in bag rice - throw in at the end, or if you just have regular rice, put in at the beginning and add more water.
garlic powder, black pepper
garnish with shredded cheddar cheese

serves 6?

Roast Chicken with Carrot Onion Puree

From Julia:

Preheat oven to 325

Slice 3-4 carrots and 1.5 onions

Season the cavity with butter, salt, pepper, tarragon
Rub outside of chicken with butter

Cook onion and carrot in oil/butter for 5 min, add salt and tarragon.
Salt chicken and put in pot with veggies, baste with oils

Cover pot with foil and heat on stove till chicken starts sizzling.

Roast 1:10 - 1:20 depending on weight, basting a few times.

Remove chicken, add 2 cups broth to veggies, and boil for a few minutes. Puree all that and put over carved chicken.

Graduation!

Kima did her sit-down-sit-stand-down-stand test perfectly today at our last class! She got a diploma and a stuffed squirrel and big "great job" from Allie the trainer. Of course she wasn't at all interested in the toy until tonight when she started shaking it like the vermin it represents :)

Then we went down to K9 Koncepts today and it was a bit of a mess - I think that they're so used to aggressive dogs that the language they used about 'you gotta correct', 'gotta break her down first' just really turned me off. Eventually they clued in to my reluctance to dive right into prong collars and were explaining they would focus more on food rewards with us, but within five minutes of us getting there Roland wanted to test Kima with another feisty german shepherd and asked my permission to use corrections with her. I wasn't ok with that and said no, and so then they did a demo with one of their dogs and then sat me down in front of a Cesar Milan video. I'm sure their methods work great and might even work with Kima, but if I'm not comfortable with the approach I won't be able to implement it.

We have another appointment for an evaluation with a certified behavioralist who used to study fetal hemoglobin and malaria before going to vet school. I liked her approach a lot more...so thanks Mr President, your stimulus package will go directly into dog training, one way or the other.

Day in the life of Kima

OMG Dalmatians on youtube

There goes the last half hour of work.

Piggie!

I am _this_ close to reserving a pig for the roasting on May 31st. Valerie at Springfield Meats is awesome and ready to provide one happy little piglet (and they're only 20 miles away!). The farm's been going for over 300 years.

There are some other options too, but further away. Fortunately most pigs up to 80 lbs can fit in a long cooler, even if their little trotters are sticking out!

Hooray for pig roasts!

Kima update

Good news first. She slept all night in my room last night! She lurves the sheepskin from Ikea, it's the softest.

Also, we are doing really well at obedience class and she is much improved at walking nicely on the leash.

So the unpleasant...

Last weekend another dog came walking by the fence at the playground we hang out at, and Kima managed to squeeze through a small gap to start trying to bite him. It sounded terrible and of course was frightening for me and the other dog's owner. She bit him on the hindquarters and peeled off and then came to me, and we established that no skin had been broken and the dogs were ok - the owner was great about it, actually. As we were walking away Kima bit me on the calf but didn't break skin (second time she's done this when aroused by nearby dogs).

Obedience class was an hour later and she was actually much better behaved, and really was able to focus and work, with only a couple brief outbursts.

I've arranged to get her evaluated by a woman who does a lot of work with reactive dogs - she has her own rescue dog who helps with the process, and she approaches things very scientifically. She even studied fetal hemoglobin and malaria in grad school! It's not cheap but both the SPCA trainer and I think it'll be a really good thing for her, and give me some solid ways to manage her.

Poor Kima. So scared of other poopers she tries to get them first.

Vosges Barcelona Bar - Chocolate, hickory smoked almonds, sea salt

YUM CITY WHOA!

The ATL

I went to Atlanta last week for the CORE Group Spring Meeting. I left early on Wednesday, had an excellent egg bacon sandwich thing at BWI, and took the awesomely convenient MARTA metro from the ATL airport into the city, and then walked four blocks to the hotel. This is the first time I've been able to travel with just my laptop bag and no checked luggage, and it rocked. I felt like I was cheating.

I went to a morning session but all the people I knew well were involved in running the show, so at lunch I skipped out and hit the Georgia Aquarium. It was fantastic! Cute otters, huge whale sharks, happy children and families, and some freaky jellyfish.

Walking back for a 4pm session I called my friend Adam Klein, a singer-songwriter friend from PC Mali. It had been a long time but that's no thing for Adam and me, and pretty soon we had plans to meet up at Eddie's Attic in Decatur for a show by a band I'd just recently discovered, Romantica from Minneapolis. Eddie's is a listening room and as Adam says, even if you don't know who's playing that night, you should go, because it'll be awesome.


Now, I didn't know where Decatur was but I was sure hoping it was easy to get to, and sho'nuff, the concierge at the hotel told me not only is Decatur on the MARTA line, the stop is one block from Eddie's! I gave thanks to the Atlanta city planners and silently cursed the architects of Baltimore's public transportation system, just for good measure. I mean, the MARTA links the airport, the Greyhound station, and the downtown area. Genius!

After the 4pm session I lit out for Decatur, bought some tickets, wandered around the expensive and adorable clothing and kitchen supply shops, and bought two bars of Vosges chocolate for 6.95 each. Adam arrived and we had a nice dinner of mix and match sliders (pulled pork, falafel, fried chicken!) and talked to the guy from the Bittersweets, who were opening. They just moved to Nashville from San Francisco and now they hang out with all their hero singer songwriters. Their set was great, real heartfelt duet stuff.

Then Romantica came on. Adam hadn't heard of them but I knew, if you put the stuff Adam likes in a box, and wrapped it up all nice and shook it around for a bit, when he opened it, it would be just what they were playing. Pedal steel, great lyrics, solid rhythm section, an Irish crooner. My favorite moment of the night was a rocking cover of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, of course made famous by the late Jeff Buckley. They pulled out all the stops and made it new again.

After the show people sort of trickled out, and when the guitarist came by I started talking to him about Minneapolis. Three hours and several few beers later it was 2am and we all had standing invites to crash at each other's houses next time anyone was in town, and I'd discovered the Bittersweets guy had gone to high school with a bunch of my Carleton friends from Amherst. A nicer group of dudes (and a lady) one could not hope to meet. Probably the highlight of the month.

Please listen to these guys and buy their music!

Didn't Drop the Baby

This is Makena, Vanessa and Manu's son. We were all Peace Corps Mali back in the day and now they live in Accra increasing trade.

Your Biscuit's Big Enough for Me

Oh yeah it is.

And you missed this

You all missed this - Justin Townes Earle

And it was free!