Raving Amicks

With Tyler’s help during President’s Day Weekend (he had a three-day weekend back then), I reupholstered our dining chairs that he had picked up for $10 years ago. They originally had dirty and cracked white vinyl on the seats, plus they were really hard and uncomfortable. Now they have high-density foam seats covered with beautiful white leather, and our butts sigh with delight each time we sit on them (or maybe it’s just the leather sinking into the foam that sighs). One of the chair seats isn’t quite as taut as the other (surprisingly, the second one we did), but they’re still infinitely better than before. Now I just need to strip and re-stain them during a summer dry spell and we’ll be dining in style.

Osa also approves of the new seats:

The snakes were enjoying the spring rays today.

On the same note my friend Adam McRae and I came up with a name for dad’s snake the other day. We’re calling him Neville which seems to pair with “Benji” the other snake pretty well. It only took about a decade to name two pets but I think the wait was worth it don’t you?

Well, we’ve had the puppy for a little over a week now. I guess Tyler and I were just too lazy to take pictures, upload them, and write a post. Oh yeah, we were also busy reorganizing the apartment. And later Tyler was busy with battling what was potentially the swine flu. It was a flu anyway—a flu that he conveniently came down with 48 hours after attending a video game expo where there was a swine flu outbreak. All those video gamers not washing their hands and then eating lunch makes even me feel sick.

So now we have a cute, fluffy puppy that loves people and loves to snuggle. But oh the whining. Oh god, the whining. This is the whiniest puppy I’ve ever met. I feed her food, she scarfs it down—while whining. I give her a walk, she bounds around happily—while whining. I look at her, she whines. I hold her, she whines. All I can guess is we’re simply not giving her enough attention. Or maybe she’s just pissed that we haven’t given her a name yet.

On the flip side, she makes a really good bookend:

Over a month ago, a local terrier breeder with which I’ve been in contact emailed me about six weeks ago and said “I have a female Wire Fox puppy. If you want her, let me know and send a deposit.” That was all I knew, and all I needed to know.

After close to 9 months of being dog-free, of being on the wait list for 7 different local rescue groups for terriers, of being told repeatedly by the city pound and the humane society and a number of different non-profit rescue groups that we suck because we live in an apartment and don’t have a fenced yard even though we are amazing people and will spoil any dog rotten with love and love and more love, I finally was close to getting a dog. Holy crap, a dog! Of course I want the dog. It’s a puppy from a reputable breeder, it’s 1.5 hours away, and it’s a female. Yes, I want the dog. Here is my deposit. Thank you, come again.

So last week, I get another email with some pictures of two cute puppies gnawing on each other and being all floppy and puppy-like. The only text is, “These are the two females of the litter. Which one do you want?” (more…)

Well, even though it’s been over a month—and even though I posted these pictures almost as long ago—I thought I should write about Tyler’s and my trip to Chicago. We went the last weekend of April to visit our friend who was there for law school. Incidentally, he already graduated and returned to Seattle just last weekend.

My highlight of the trip was definitely the turtle racing at Big Joe’s. We went with our friend, his fiancée, another friend who traveled with us, and some other random people from Chicago. Basically, the turtle racing is a lottery; for every drink you order, you get a number of raffle tickets based on what you ordered (and the bartender’s whims). The more you drink, the better chance you have of being drawn. If your raffle ticket is drawn, then you go up to a table and randomly pull out a ball with a number. That number corresponds to one of the six numbers taped on the racing turtles’ backs, which means the turtle with that number is “your” turtle for the race. The person with a winning turtle gets a free T-shirt, and the person with a losing turtle gets a free beer.

Despite having ordered an obscene number of pitchers of beer, none of our tickets were called. Oh well, I did muscle my way up and take lots of pictures of the scared turtles.

Meanwhile, Tyler’s favorite part of Chicago was definitely all the brownstone and brick buildings. He can write all about that if he wants, though.

Oh yeah, and we did other things like seeing two pairs of mating tortoises at the free public zoo, having drinks at the top of the Hancock tower, and getting alternately pummeled by rain and wind.

Here’s a picture of the male Pileated woodpecker out the front of the house.  This is the closest view we’ve ever had of one.  They’re also noisy as hell in the springtime.  Incidentally, it’s pronounced “pie-leated”.  

Meaning: 1. Wearing a skullcap or in the shape of a skullcap (Latin pileus). 2. Crested, having a crest on the pileum (top of the head of a bird)