Ludo's Ninth Birthday

Now Playing -  Here I Go Again by Whitesnake

Life -  

 Today, our boy Ludo turned nine!

I still remember the day we picked him out at the pound, a little black ball of energy, who has grown up into a smart, loving, cornerstone to our family. If it wasn't for Ludo, the last few years could have been almost impossible to weather, but his constant energy and enthusiasm makes it hard to do anything but feel happiness around him.

So yeah, I'm waxing a bit rhapsodic about a Newfoundland Retriever Pound Puppy. But he's worth it.

For his day, we picked up sandwiches and took him up for a hike around Cherry Springs. It was gorgeous out - sunny and clear, around 80 degrees. They've done quite a bit of work up there, but it's still the vaguely charming and overgrown nature area we've known since we were kids - a little too random, a bit small, but a nice little stroll.

Afterwards, we stopped at Tastee Treet and bought him an ice cream cone, (Video HERE) then went home and inspected him for ticks. I hate ticks, but he loved the inspection/attention.

This isn't the most interesting post in the world, but we've decided to really start turning this blog into a journal for our family and besides... Dog pictures!

The ROUS FAMILY -   

  

 

 

 

 

Now Leaving Moonstone Bay

Now Playing -
My wife is watching The Truth About Cats and Dogs behind me on her computer so I guess... that.

Life - 

Yesterday, when I got home from work and went to make some delicious dinner, I found our propane tank empty and gas stove inoperable. Now, I got that puppy filled around three months ago, and only use it for the one burner on the stove, roughly every other day. I've never had gas appliances before, but $90 for 90 days of operating one stove burner seems prohibitively expensive.  I can't help but think there was either a leak, an improperly filled cylinder or some other sort of shenanigans. Or is it supposed to last for such a short time?

Either way, we said "Forget it" went out and bought a single burner hot plate and had them pull our cylinder. We were pretty unhappy with their service in other areas too, so it wasn't just the propane. Now I have to get used to cooking with cast-iron on an electric burner! 

We also bought dog food today! Between the two, our dogs eat around 10 cups of food a day, so it seems to go really fast. Their food is one area we refuse to skimp on, and still serve them Science Diet dog food. We really do feel that the food keeps their coats shiny, their breath fresher and is pretty healthy for them. It's also spendy. So every time we need food, we use every trick in the book we can get our hands on.

Ludo Will Pout For Food

Step One - Buy in bulk. PetCo offers a 10% discount if you buy at least 200lbs of a brand at once. They don't advertise it, but it's a great deal. 

Step Two - Scour the internet for coupons. Science Diet usually has pretty good coupons available, you just have to hunt for them.

Step Three - Join their club in the right area. Apparently, the PetCo Club card offers different deals depending on where you live. Out here, we get a free shampoo after ten. Big Whoop. Back in Idaho however, they offered a free bag with the purchase of ten, which we are still grandfathered in to out here.

Step Four - Sales - A no brainer, but vital when the difference is $10 a bag.

Using all of these today, we bought six 35lb bags of Science Diet Large Breed dog food. Normally, before tax, this would have cost $239.94 or $1.14 a pound. But today, with everything taken off, it cost us $125.94, or $.60 a pound. That's right baby. We rock. Oh yeah, and that gets us more than halfway towards a free bag, to boot!

The dogs were a little mad that we went to the pet store without us, but their eyes always get so happy when they see that food piled up.

Reviews Of Unusual Size - 

Books

Five Things About...

BLACK LIGHT
by Stephen Hunter
 2003, 464 pages, e-book

1 - This is the second book featuring Bob The Nailer, a retired marine sniper. I enjoyed the first, which inspired the film Shooter. This time, Bob teams with a young journalist who wants to uncover the truth behind Bob's father's death.

2 - Bob is a hardcore mother who has the same appeal as Lee Child's Reacher or Daniel Craig's Bond, but he does like to go on and on about the specifics of the guns he's using. Or saw. Or held 15 years ago. Or wanted to hold... You get the idea.

3 - The story is a strong one, though I felt that the ending's big reveal came a little abruptly.

4 -Great, well rounded characters, in both the present day and the past.

5 - Too bad I had trouble keeping what was going on separate. Which I do not believe was the author's fault. The e-book I was reading seemed very strangely formatted, with no indication when I was suddenly in the head of a different character in a different time frame.

3/5

AFRAID
by Jack Kilborn
2009, 384 pages, e-book

1 - Jack Kilborn is the pseudonym of Joe Konrath, the creator of the Jack Daniels series of books and e-book advocate. Check out his blog, it's very interesting reading.

 2 -  It doesn't take long for residents of a small town to  start dying in creative ways when a supercharged and ruthless group of killers arrive, looking for someone...

3 - Filled with some nice suspense, some nasty baddies and characters that you'd best not get attached to, Afraid is the perfect outlet for Kilborn's nasty side. 

4 - Like most books, I got annoyed by the child in Afraid but Kilborn does get some nice characterization in there for him.

5 - Aside from the first Percy Jackson, this is the only novel my little nephew has ever read. He's twelve and while I applaud him tackling a book this size, after reading it, I wish he'd chosen a more appropriate book for his age. 

4/5

Writing - 

I'm still working on GRAVES, writing up the final couple of chapters before I edit each chapter by character, in an attempt to inject some more specific personalities to 'em.

I have also come to a difficult decision. Moonstone Bay is going to have to fade into my taillights for a while. I'm not leaving it forever, I don't think I could. I love the characters and location too much for that. And that's precisely why I've decided to stop writing it. I don't think my writing is strong enough for a book like The Whispering Ferns yet. I feel like I'm ready to start publishing my writing, but not the Moonstone Bay Mysteries. I want them to be some of my favorite work, not something I look back on in ten years and cringe about. That first book has to be good enough to justify the sequels I have planned. There's pirate treasure to bury, Sasquatches to track, to say nothing of Smith's parents!

So they're going to go on the back burner for a while. I have a few other irons in the fire and it's time to take a hammer to one of them. Maybe one about vampires. They're hot right now, aren't they?

Re-Railed, for a night, at least.

Well, happily, a desperate move paid off last night, if only possibly temporarily...

We stripped my new writing room to the walls, emptying the closet and piling all of my computer stuff into the increasingly messy front room, which has become a kind of slush pile for our crap so far.

This left us a bit ghetto but serviceable big ol' dog kennel. After loading it up with kongs, treats, toys, stuffed beasties and rawhide, both pig and cow, we loaded both dogs in before work last night.

So far it seems to be a success! Now, granted, one night does not a celebration beg, but they were pretty good, according to the report from me mum in the basement. They wrestled a bit and Pooka whined, but there was no 8-hour marathon barking/drooling/hyperventilating session like the nights before. Huzzah and Vohnkar!

Of course, now the heating element in our dryer seems to have gone kaputski....



Onward!

Disaster rides a fluffy white dog named after a horse...

Now Playing -
Running Down a Dream by Tom Petty

Life - 

It was all going so (Semi) well.... My mom and brother moved into the basement, our schedules were mostly meshing and we'd even started introducing the dogs to each other without teeth and hair flying.

Then Lindsay and I had to go back to work. We put Ludo and Pooka in their kennels like usual and left. Apparently, Pooka took it upon himself to bark the entire time we were gone, only stopping to drool horribly and bark some more. Great Pyrenees are herding dogs and when we are home, he likes to make the rounds, checking on everyone. I think being locked in his kennel was usually a good thing, he could rest secure in the knowledge that all of the inhabitants were locked up safely. Now that we have people in the basement though, it freaks him out.

We've tried everything. Moving the kennel, insulating it and the room with blankets, lots of toys... nothing doing. So then we moved on to bark collars. All the citronella one did was make his fur lemony fresh and it only rarely heard his bark. Last night, we tried the sonic collar, and from what we can tell, last night was the worst one yet. Pooka barked non-stop and I think the collar freaked him out even more. When we let him out of his kennel, he looked like he'd been doused with a hose and left in a sauna. He was even weak on his feet, desperate for water from all of the barking.

All we have left is the shock collar. If my brother's dog was nice, all we'd really have to do is have the boys sleep downstairs with my mom at nights. It might make him a bit more restless during the days when we sleep, but all would be well. Instead, we'll either have to hope the shock collar works or try and finagle some way of having my momo sleep upstairs with our boys when we're on shift, locking Scout in the basement. It's not super fair to Scout, though she is the reason Pooka has to be locked up when we're gone and someone else is home.

I don't know, I'm kind of at a loss, my wit's end.  Also, my Sony DVD player that I've had without a hitch for over 8 years suddenly decided to stop working yesterday. So much for this move helping my damn karma. Unless karma wants me to get so pissed off and frustrated that I murder a nun.

It's also pretty negative on the transferring front. Both districts would take me, but they can't, thanks to the company's ridiculous Shift Leader Initiative, which will require any store I want to transfer to to lose two assistants rather than one - one to be replaced the useless and horrible shift leader position and then one so that I could come over. The best laid plans........

Writing - 

Trucking along on this, I've made a good revision pass on the first six chapters. I'll likely want to do a second before sending it out, but I'm liking the added scenes so far.

The Last Sentence - 

He didn't want to lose the key, so he carefully threaded it onto the chain around his neck beside the key to his apartment in New York.

From - "The Whispering Ferns" (WIP)

My cold little writing room

Now Playing -
Soon by My Bloody Valentine

Life - 

Not a lot going on in the last couple of days. Moved a fridge, which required the removal of three doors and almost the door of the fridge itslef, but it was mostly uneventful. We've also started introducing our boys to Scout (My brother's overly protective, nippy DevilDog) After a slightly heartstopping moment earler when she came upstairs and confronted Pooka, who acted shocked that all dogs did in fact not want to be his friend and be drooled on, we installed a baby gate on the stairs and have been slowly letting the dogs meet each other through the gate outside. This will no doubt be a very long process.

We have been watching and enjoying LEVERAGE on DVD. It stars Timothy Hutton, who has begun looking like Gary Oldman as he ages and is a different con or heist each episode. The cast is excellent, with perfect chemistry. Check it out!

Made McClanahan's Creamy Shepherd's Pie yesterday for lunch and quickly won over a skeptical mother and brother. There's something about the name Shepherd's Pie that puts people off. For lunch today, it was slow roasted Gumbo, which meant I was up at 7am to get it prepped so that it would be ready for lunch. Good stuff. We've decided to try using Okra in other dishes. It may become my secret ingredient. (Not that it would be a secret once someone has looked at a dish, Okra's pretty obvious.) Tonight, my brother's grilling mysterious root vegetables and pork on the grill... Will keep you updated on that.

Back to work tomorrow. Bah. I feel like very little Day Offage has been accomplished this week and the following sets of days off will just get more packed as Christmas approaches.

Writing - 

I'm really happy where I'm sitting with the rewrites on The Whispering Ferns, so far I'm around 2500 words in, and it's sounding a lot smoother and getting to the action faster. Better and faster, always a good thing!

Unfortunately, my new writing room, AKA the closet is quite chilly. Maybe I'll write more when the feeling returns to my fingers.

The Last Sentence - 

"Some Folks say you can't see the forest for the trees, it's the other way around out here."

From - "The Whispering Ferns" (WIP)

My House, Half Full, Half Over-Full

Now Playing -
Windfall by Dead Can Dance

Life - 

I spent all day yesterday moving my mom and brother into the basement of our house. It has begun.

The move itself went pretty smoothly, especially considering everything was done with my Element and thanks to my mother's Gallbladder operation and my brother's twin kidney infection and bonus mystery infection, I had to do all of the moving myself. My family isn't really the packing type either. Lindsay and I have a tendency to over-pack, loading boxes months before we even have a glimmer of a place in mind, labeling boxes, planning for needs, etc etc. Most folks I've helped move have been more along the lines of "Let me move these clothes off of this couch so that we can get it upstairs. I'll throw the rest of this in a trash bag and we can pack that. But all in all, it's not been bad.

I do have a lot of pets in the house now, 3 cats - our two, Sassafras and Clover and my mom's cat, Savannah. 4 dogs, our boys, Ludo and Pooka, my mom's Cocker Spaniel, Bella and my brother's cute but super-neurotic and overly protective Border Collie/Shepherd mix, Scout. Bella and our kids get along really well, and my dogs love Savannah - Ludo almost adopted her when we had her here before giving her to my mom for Christmas last year, but Scout is a wild card. They haven't met yet, but she has a history of being pretty snippy and we're worried that there could be some sparks bebtween her and my dogs. We'll see. My main concern is that my dogs won't take it well and attack back. I don't really think Scout could hurt them much, as long as we keep an eye on things, but if one of my dogs got angry, he could be hard to control, regardless of how unlikely it would be.

Other than that and only having one bathroom upstairs, it's going well. Thank goodness.

It snowed here last night, leaving the city pretty and white, it really feels like the holidays are getting close now. It makes me want to sit in my chair with some wassail and read a book.

Writing - 

I re-wrote the first page of The Whispering Ferns last night and I'm finally happy with where it starts. Unfortunately, my eyes started to droop very quickly and that's all I got done. I'm looking forward to some progress in the next few days.

The Last Sentence - 
 

"Young James!"

From - "The Whispering Ferns" (WIP)

June 17-18, 2009 - Welcome Signs

Life -

Lindsay and I took the dogs up hiking to Scout Mountain on Wednesday. We were actually supposed to go camping by Lava for a few days, but between having to call for jury duty every day and still catching up from my downtime with my ankle, we decided to put it off.

One of the nice things about living in Pocatello is the nearby nature areas, it's always great to be able to drive 15 minutes and be in the forest. Scout Mountain was always one of the common stomping grounds for locals and clearly still is, though on an extremely rainy Wednesday afternoon, the mountain was pretty much deserted, apart from some rather annoying forest service crews doing something with saws and a backhoe.

We'd planned to pay for a picnic site and eat some Kowloons Express that we picked up in town, but it was raining pretty heavily and for some asinine reason, they've raised their prices this year to $10 for the picnic sites, which seems excessive, especially when that's the same price that they charge for overnight camping.

So instead, we ate in Strontium parked at the lookout, which was pretty pleasant. Then we took the Scout Mountain Nature Trail, a roughly mile long loop through the forest that I hadn't been on since I was a kid. Apparently neither had anyone else. The trail used to be nice and wide and had little wooden poles that corresponded to a pamphlet about each little feature along the way. Now, the trail was more of a runoff ditch and the pamphlet box had been empty for some time. There were fallen trees all over and someone had stolen #12 on the path. Its still a nice little loop though, and it was great to get out and walk in the rain.

The next day, we hung our mask collection in the front room, just a little step that's made the house feel more like home again.

Writing-

Designed a "Welcome Sign" for the eventual logo for my separate Moonstone Bay Blog, which will be a place that I can post chapter previews, artwork, character bios, etc. I'll still post most of my writing updates here, it will be more of a place I can send someone that is interested in that particular book series.


Also continued editing my MS, with an eye towards finishing it ASAP, mostly ferreting out repetitive phrases, which is something I do a lot. Something I do a lot is repeat phrases as I type, so I've been trying to find all of those and fix them, as well as reading it aloud to see how it sounds. I need to work on my Aunt Grace voice.

May 9, 2009

My 100th post!

When I started this blog, I wasn't sure I'd make it to 100, which isn't that large of a number, but after things started going pear shaped on the Motel front, I was pretty sure that the last thing I would want to do is write a blog about our lives in Pocatello, but so far, it's been kind of fun. Cathartic.

Life -

I spent a good chunk of the day helping my mom with a few things. She is currently living in my grandparents old house, a shack that is slowly falling apart. They only have electricity in half of the plugs, and a few nights ago, their hot water heater split open along the side, flooding the dirt floored basement. So for the last few days my brother has been taking cold showers, and my mom has been heating water on the stove and using an old camp shower in the tub. The problem is that the house is tied to my grandmother, so it isn't something that either plans to stay in long term. (If our Motel had gone through, they would have been living in our current house when we moved.) It seems silly to pay $300 for a new hot water heater when the house will likely be sold to the state and demolished when my grandmother passes on, especially since they don't really have the money. However, they need hot water to live, so we've decided to put my old hot water heater in down in the basement. The one element is utterly shot, I mangled it pretty completely trying to get it out the first time, but the top still works, so they would at least have some heat. (About 7 minutes worth in the shower) It seems like my family has had pretty shabby luck lately. Hope that will turn around soon...

We walked the dogs tonight trying the Close method, and it worked really well. It was a gorgeous evening, cool and sunny, and we went the extra leg on the walk we take. The four of us are a bit fat for a couple of the sidewalks, especially the ones with ill trimmed hedges, but it looks like a really effective way to walk them. For the most part we could walk with our hands in our pockets with the leash dangling from them, which is a huge change!

I spent 3 hours weed whacking an especially stubborn patch of ground by our RV parking (Which sits essentially unused.) There is a patch of land there that the previous owners filled with small rocks, that has since been overrun with weeds and other growing beasties. We've decided to plant a few low lying evergreen shrubberies there instead, it should look decent, and they aren't supposed to grow larger than 1 foot high, but I couldn't just mow the weeds. The ground is uneven and all of the rocks make it very dangerous, and one of the weeds is a thick, resilient burr plant of some sort that resists the mower blade anyway, so I had to stand out there for hours, gradually wearing them down with the trimmer. Had to change out the cord 3 times, as it wore it down, but finally trimmed it all back to rocks and dirt, and planted the shrubs.... now they just need to grow! Also talked to my neighbor, who we have a bit of a rivalry with. The old owners used to plant and share tomatoes with him, and when we planted some the first year, we gave ours to my family instead. He was pissed in an old guy kind of way, and refused to talk to us, and filed complaints with the city for various little things. Today, he introduced himself like we'd never met, and once again, casually mentioned that they had grown "Some awful nice tomaters over there... yes sir." Sigh. Maybe I just need to give the dude a few this year.

Ever since the trimming, my arms wont stop vibrating and flexing. Its pretty annoying, especially since every time my bicep flexes my shirt sleeves rip off. Grr!

We also took a little trip to Tastee Treet Drive In and got some soft serve cones. Shouldn't have, since we're trying to lose weight, but it sounded fun.

Writing -

I ended up writing 3,031 words yesterday, and today I added another 2,824, which was a lot less than I'd hoped. I had planned on around 5,000 words, but I was interrupted by real life, and tonight, when I sat down to write, my arms were acting up from the weed whacking I did, and I am having a lot of trouble typing. (My biceps keep flexing and vibrating, which is very odd.) I have to work an asinine 5 hour shift at 8am at work tomorrow too, so I can't stay up late and type like I prefer. Oh well, tomorrow evening should be a good night for it, and I'm off Monday too. Maybe that will work. I was really hoping for 25,000 words by the time I went back to work.

The Last Sentence -

There were little bearded men carved out of the drawer pulls in the old dresser in the closet.

Christmas Card Outtakes II

Clearly, Our cats are no easier to photograph than the dogs... Especially with the dogs in the same room!

Our Plan

Our plan, if it can be considered as such, is to eventually own a small sized, luxury themed hotel with extensive garden and wedding facilities in the Portland/Vancouver area. Obviously, that's easier said than done, and to accomplish this, we've devised an elaborate series of starts, middles and finishes that will take us away from everything we've ever known and hopefully, after a series of hills and valleys, land us in a place we love to be, in a job we love to do, and in a life we're proud to call ours.

This is something we've been working on for quite some time, and I'll be starting with some events that have happened quite a while ago, partly to protect the innocent and ourselves, partly to ease my sense of superstition about talking about certain events as they happen in fear of jinxing them, and partly because I just started this puppy, and a lot has happened!

First, a bit of background on us:

I'm currently a manager with a major nationwide chain of drug stores. I've been with them for 6 years now, and prior to that, I managed a gas station and a movie theater, at one point, I did all three simultaneously. I've been in management for around 12 years combined, all of it retail in some form or another. I enjoy reading voraciously, own over 2,000 DVDs, (Odds are, you'll see some reviews of books and movies pop up on here too...) and I draw, paint, sculpt and design, occasionally for actual money!

My wife, Lindsay, is a graduate of the University Of Montana, and currently works for the Best Western Hotel. In her time, she's worked at a pet store, a greenhouse, a craft store, and for her father's music store. (off and on continuously since she could work a vacuum, in fact) She enjoys reading, cross stitching, crafts, and computer programs. If not for this last thing, she could easily pass for a septuagenarian in print...

We have 4 pets, all of whom are treated like our kids. We have a 2 year old Newfoundland/Retriever mix, named Ludo, a year old Great Pyrenees puppy, Pooka, and two cats, sisters that were born on St. Patrick's Day. The black one is named Clover, and the Siamese is named Sassafras.

We currently live in Pocatello, ID, a city where we were both born and raised, a city where if you don't know someone and their entire history, you inevitably know someone who does. Some people consider this a good thing, others want to move to Oregon and open a Hotel.

All joking aside, while we have great respect for the city and it's history, it's just time for us to stake our own claim in the world, and we figure now is a good time to try something crazy that might work out better for us than we could possibly imagine.