From this year's Chick-fil-A calendar, The Bovines in Blue:

Charsky & Hoof
On the mean streets of San Francisco, you're either fast, or you're fast food. Not a problem for undercover cops Ken Charsky and Manuel "Manny" Hoof. Whether they're breaking up burger rings or foiling beef extortion plots, their 1969 Cowvette is Grade A greased lightning.

It's very overcast and looks like it could start raining at any time, but it's not actually raining at the moment so we're going to take a chance and head out. We'll be Geocaching at the northern end of Forest Park today. It's the largest urban forest reserve in the US - covering more than 5100 acres. I bought a new North Face waterproof jacket yesterday. Will be interesting to see how well it works.

I'm taking Princess Josie to see the vet today for her annual check-up and shots. I've got several things I want to discuss with him including a newly developed bald spot on her belly (we think she's over-grooming that one spot, but don't know why) and the profound weakness she's developed in her her legs (we think that's arthritis). I need to write everything down so I don't forget. I also need to bring a fecal sample. Joy. On that note, it's time to get ready to go.

EDIT: Aside from her belly bald spot, everything looked good. Weight is up. Kidneys are holding steady. And she even jumped around like a fool to make me look like an idiot when I said she was getting arthritic. Not sure what's going on with the spot though. It's definitely not ringworm or mites. Going to treat it with some cortisone cream for a couple weeks and see what happens.

Over the past several days, I've been finalizing some of our travel plans for the rest of the year. So far, this is the itinerary:

April 24 - May 3 - South Carolina
We're flying out to visit my sister and BIL. We'll also be spending several days at Congaree National Park with them.

May 16 & 17 - Seattle, Washington
Driving up to see my Red Sox play the Mariners. Right now, we're not planning to be there for the Friday night game (just Saturday and Sunday's games), but I'm hoping to talk Mr Moo into going up earlier for that one, too. This whole weekend is contingent on us being able to get tickets to the games when they go on sale next week.

July 16 - 20 - Crater Lake NP, Oregon
It's shameful that we have lived only a few hours away from this park for so long and have never been. Decided to finally rectify that this year. We'll be driving down for an extra long weekend.

December 18 - 31 - Massachusetts
Annual trek back east to see my family for Christmas. I leave on the 18th and Mr Moo will join me on the 22nd.

Still haven't sorted anything for my birthday in October. I was hoping to get away to Mexico for a while, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. I have to think on this one some more.

Don't you know it. The minute we left the house on Sunday it started raining. And it rained down quite hard on us for about an hour. I didn't really mind because I had my new raincoat on and it worked wonderfully. I stayed nice and dry. All the rain did make for a messy hike in spots though.

You have to wear good boots when you hike in the rain in Oregon. At one point, we came across a girl heading in the opposite direction wearing a brand new pair of sneakers. They were a muddy mess, but she didn't seem to care one bit.

Bungee's home.

My FIL works near the avian hospital so he picked her up for us and dropped her off on his way home. The avian hospital must use the same cremation company as our regular veterinarian because the box is identical to the one Zoe came home in.

"NAME THAT MOVIE" CONTEST - 153

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Oops. I'm a little behind on the movie contest this week. Better late than never, right? Rounds 146 and 148 are still open. Got some good guesses last week, but none of them were correct. I've run out of images for those two rounds so they'll sit as is until someone guesses them.

It's that time of the year again, folks.

I swear these things are made with crack cocaine or something. Nom! Nom! Nom!

"NAME THAT MOVIE" CONTEST - 154

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Next week's round is up a little early. Good luck!

We were planning to do some more Geocaching, but have decided we're much too old and cranky to be out in the cold and wet today. The forecasted high temp for today is only 44F/6C and it's going to start raining any minute. They're also calling for a switch to a rain/snow mix later in the day. Yeah, I think we'll stay home and warm this time.

We dropped my camera off for repairs yesterday. For a while now, I've been getting a dark smudge in one corner of all my photos. It's only really visible on shots of clear blue skies and such, which are easily PhotoShopped, but I'm getting sick of doing it. I've cleaned the lens a billion times, but it doesn't help. There's obviously something inside the camera that's causing it. I called around for estimates a couple days ago. At one shop, they quoted me a price of $225 for the cleaning and said it could take up to a month and a half before I got my camera back since they send repairs to Arizona. Yikes times two! I couldn't live without my camera for that long and, for that price, I could just buy a new camera. Fortunately, I found a shop that will do the cleaning for only $79 and in house, which means I should have my camera back by the end of the week. That I can live with. In the meantime, I am camera-less. Eeep. Let's hope aliens don't pick this week to land in my back yard.

Seattle, here we come! Just bought tickets to the Mariners vs. Red Sox games for May 16 & 17. I joined the Mariners Members club so I could participate in the ticket pre-sale that started today. I made a hotel reservation several weeks ago just to be safe since hotel rooms near SafeCo Field go quick once baseball tickets go on sale. We now have tickets to the games and a place to lay our heads. We're all set. We'll be staying a few blocks from the stadium this time. It's more expensive than staying out by the airport, like we did last time, but it's within walking distance, which will be loads better. No more struggling to find the right bus, fighting for space on said bus or having to spend an age on the bus to get back to the hotel after each game. All that's left now is to hope and pray we don't hit traffic getting there and back like last time.

I've been searching for a case for my iPod so I can take it along when we go hiking. We've already got a clear protective skin on it, but it needed something a little more substantial for outdoor use. I was also looking for something with a clip so I can attach it to my backpack. Enter Speck Toughskin for iPod.

It's a thick rubberized skin that comes with a screen protector and belt clip.

It only takes a second to put it all together, which is nice. There are adequate holes in the top and bottom for the charger and headphones. There's also a knob thingee on the back to attach the clip.

As an added bonus, it's the same clip set-up as my handheld GPS unit so they're interchangeable. One quick click later and I'm ready to go.

Now, if we could just get the weather to calm down a bit, I could try it out.

Hawaii - September 2005 - Volcanoes National Park

From our hike across the active lava flow dumping into the ocean.





You can see other photos from this trip and others in my newly remodeled Travel Photo Gallery.

"NAME THAT MOVIE" CONTEST - 155

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The birds and turtles might have been sleeping...

...but the hornets certainly weren't.

Taken at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, September 2007.

Here's a photo of Josie and her belly bald spot.

I had just sprayed it with some Bitter Apple so her belly is wet, which is why she looks sooo happy. We gave up on the cortisone cream several days ago because it was making her lick the spot even more. I took a close look at it tonight. There seems to be a lot of new hairs coming in, which is a good sign. Hopefully, her belly will be a lot less bald before too long.

I don't know how much more officially messed up my sleep schedule could be. It's 3:15AM. I just cleaned up the kitchen, washed the dishes, did a load of laundry and worked out. Now I'm going to take a shower and see if I can wind down enough to get to sleep before the sun rises.

I need to move to another time zone or something.

We started Josie on a new routine yesterday. We're giving her her dinner (half a can of soft food mixed with scrambled ground turkey) at 1800 and that's it for the night. No more giving in to her begging, crying and whining for food at all hours of the day and night. It's a considerable amount of food and it lasts her through the night. If she's hungry during the day, she always has crackers available. Yesterday was day one of this new routine. I asked Mr Moo how long he thought it would be before she caught on and figured it out. We both figured it would take at least a week.

She was at the top of the stairs ready to go at 1759 tonight. HA!

South Dakota - September 2007 - Badlands National Park

Talking to a prairie dog at the edge of the Roberts Prairie Dog Town.

Even though there are signs everywhere saying not to, people still feed the prairie dogs, which is why they aren't as afraid as they should be.

Wyoming - September 2007 - Devils Tower National Monument

Look closely. Do you see me?

The color is very odd in this photo because it was from an ancient roll of film that we dug out of the refrigerator and used up on this trip. All of the photos from those rolls were a disaster. Piece of advice from me to you - don't let your film sit in the fridge for 10 years before using it.

Mr Moo had a Battlestar Gallactica finale gathering tonight. His aunt, uncle, cousin and a friend came over. For dinner, we had spaghetti and meatballs we made from scratch this afternoon. I watched a couple episodes when it first started, but I never got into the show like they did. So, after cleaning up the kitchen, I came upstairs and watched a ball game here in the office while they enjoyed their program. Between Mr Moo coming home from work early today and having company over, it totally feels like Saturday to me. I'm so confused.

I was up early (for a change) this morning. We're heading out to do some hiking and Geocaching before it starts raining.

"NAME THAT MOVIE" CONTEST - 156

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We had a good time and much success Geocaching in Wilsonville on Saturday. We found 17 new caches. We also saw a lot of wildlife including this guy:

He was hanging out in a cow pasture by the side of the road.

Another critter we encountered while Geocaching on Saturday:

I found him sunbathing next to the truck at one of the caches. I tried to take his picture before we went off to find the cache, but Mr Moo's giant Sasquatch feet scared him away. On our way out, I took a quick peek before getting into the truck and surprise! He was back again.

Sharky went with us on Saturday. He even found a cache!

This weekend, we encountered our most difficult cache to date. See the porous piece of lava rock in the back that's closest to the top of the photo?

It's affixed to the lid of a container that's sunk into the ground. You have to unscrew the lid using the rock. We almost didn't find this one. Very clever hide!

And here are a couple happy cachers with some of their finds:

We visited Champoeg State Park on Saturday. It's a lovely park with quite a few hiking trails.

There were a lot of spring flowers in bloom.

My dad had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff this morning. Mom left a message a couple hours ago to let me know everything went well and she was on her way to pick him up. He's going to be off work for a while. Both of my parents shut up in that little house for the next three weeks - you couldn't pay me enough money to be living there right now.

Mr Moo and I met with our financial planner today to assess our status. While things aren't great, they're not horrible either. Given the grand scheme of things, our investments are doing okay and we're still on track for Mr Moo to retire early. We just have to keep on budgeting, clipping coupons and saving as much as we can just like everyone else and we'll be alright. Needless to say, I'm relieved.

I'm starting my inventory tonight. Who's coming over to help?

I got back on my food plan and started working out again a few days ago. I've been steadily gaining weight for a while now and it's time to do something about it. I lost a lot of weight in 2006/2007, gained back a few pounds after that second Christmas and totally ballooned after Zoe died last year. Gotta love depression eating. At my absolute heaviest, in January 2006, I was almost 170 lbs. I'm not quite that heavy again, but, if I were to keep on the way I was going, I would be in no time. So it's back to working out and the food plan. I lost my fondness for step aerobics somewhere along the line. I'm getting on the treadmill this time. I've started the Couch to 5K running program. When I've tried running in the past, my knees have given me major problems, but I know I was trying to do too much too fast. That's the beauty of this program. It eases you into running. I'm still on the week 1 rotation, but so far so good. Will be interesting to see how well and how long my body holds up with this whole running thing.

*hack* *cough* *choke*

Swallowed a fish bone at dinner. Nasty.

"NAME THAT MOVIE" CONTEST - 157

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Bar Harbor, Maine - September 2008 - Acadia National Park

When we were in Acadia last year, we ended up on top of The Beehive together by accident. Mr Moo wanted to go up there, but I didn't so we split up on the way back to the parking lot from Gorham Mountain. And, wouldn't you know it, I took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up there, too. It's that giant thing in the distance.

It may only be 520 feet high, but trail goes down the totally sheer side. The trail is designated as "strenuous with steep grades and many steady climbs". You're supposed to climb up it, but, being the ding-a-lings we are, we did things backwards. Not sure I would have agreed had I seen this sign, which is at the base, beforehand rather than after.

Caution: Trail steep with exposed cliffs and fixed iron rungs. Oh, yay. I was all smiles at the top...

...until I looked over the edge.

I put the camera and everything loose into my pack to be safe, went very, VERY slowly, and cried tears of fear most of the way down, but, with Mr Moo's help and assurance, I did it!

Bar Harbor, Maine - September 2008

Me on top of Bar Island.

Peaks in the distance, from left to right: Champlain Mountain, Huguenot Head, Dorr Mountain and Cadillac Mountain.