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

Judge Phyllis Cheesesteak
Forget trial by jury. This saucy heifer serves up justice faster than a drive-thru. With the help of her baliff, "Bull," Judge Phyllis has presided over hundreds of cases ranging from voluntary cowslaughter to illegal bun laundering. She's even butted heads with notorious crime boss Timmy "The Spatula" Zambrano.

Will someone please explain to me how the heck it's July already?

I have been working like a crazy person for the past couple days. I spent all day yesterday scanning, photographing, word processing, and making overhead transparencies and handouts for a client to use in the classes she's teaching at a national conference in a couple weeks. I didn't have to get it all done last night, but I've got a million other work projects in the wings and I just wanted to get this one done. Today, I did so many little things I can't even remember them all. I do know I spent a good chunk of the afternoon resolving a bunch of email issues with a web hosting company some of my clients use. We also made plans to migrate one of the websites this weekend to a new server and administration software. Hopefully, it will go smoothly and won't result in a lot of downtime for the site. ((crosses fingers))

I will probably spend a majority of the rest of the weekend working as well. We're leaving for our mini-vacation (only five days instead of our usual twelve) at Crater Lake National Park in less than two weeks. I've got a lot to get done before we leave so no days off for the holiday for this girl. It's the wonder of being self-employed. I may not be able to take the whole day off, but I will be taking a short break tomorrow for a BBQ at my inlaws' house. It will be nice to get out of the house and away from this infernal machine even if it is only for a few hours.

"NAME THAT MOVIE" CONTEST - 169

Click here for the entry form.

FYI - There are several other rounds of the movie contest still open. You can find them on the Name That Movie Contest page of my website under "Open Rounds".

Look closely.

Did you see the hummingbird?

South Carolina - April 2009

While we were in SC on vacation earlier this year, we headed up to Caesars Head State Park and hiked to the Raven Cliff Falls overlook.







We considered hiking all the way around the top of the falls, but decided to head to other parts of the park and do some Geocaching instead. We'll add it to our list of things to do the next time we're there.

Sharky went with us to South Carolina in April.





I think he had a good time. Well, aside from being molested by the millipede, that is.

Lunch for Josie and lunch for me.

Why does hers look better?

I can't believe in seven days we'll be at Crater Lake National Park. This year is zooming by at an alarming rate.

Don't you love it when the pharmacy calls to tell you your prescriptions are ready and you didn't submit any?

As of this morning, we have five doses of medicine left for Josie. Given how much she's starting to resist when we take her in the other room to apply or wash off the medicine, it can't be over too soon for her. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this round of treatment is going to completely eradicate the sores on her head like we were hoping. They've been really knocked back and look loads better than when we started, but they're still substantial enough that neither Mr Moo nor I think they're going to be gone within the next five days. I'm kind of pissed about it. I know there is no guarantee how well a medicine will work, but I had high hopes this was going to do the trick. If it's anything like last time, the sores will be back en force in about six months and we'll have to start discussing doing this all over again for the third time. ((mumble grumble))

Today we're going to Sauvie Island to do some hiking and Geocaching. It's totally overcast and could start raining at any second, but that's what makes it an adventure, right? Just don't let me forget my rain jacket.

We just got home from our day of hiking on Sauvie Island. Remember I was worried about the rain? Let me tell you, that was the least of our problems. We got absolutely eaten alive by mosquitoes. We brought bug spray and sprayed ourselves from head to toe several times, but it didn't seem to make a darn bit of difference. We don't know if the the spray was old and no good, or if the mosquitoes out there have just grown immune to DEET. Either way, it was brutal. (Note to my sister: yes, it was actually worse than Congaree, if you can believe it) If we stopped at all, even for a few seconds, we were immediately covered in them. We saw a few people on the trail whom we're fairly certain gave up and turned around because the bugs were so awful. Given how badly we were being attacked, if those people didn't have any spray at all, I can't even imagine how bad it must have been for them. What was even more odd is the fact that they attacked Mr Moo a hella lot more than me, which, usually, is totally not the case. He was bitten all over his head, face, neck and shoulders. They were even biting him right through his shirt! I don't know if my hair helped protect me more or maybe it was my bandana, but I have almost no bites at all. Weird. Guess he just tasted better today. While I managed to escape getting bitten by the mosquitoes, I didn't escape the wrath of the blackberries. My arms are covered in scratches from the thorns. We took a different route to one of the geocaches, ended up way off trail and had to do quite a bit of bushwhacking. I look like I've gone ten rounds with a really cranky kitty or something. Should be loads of fun when the itchies really kick in. And, towards the end of our hike, it did start to rain a little, but, let me assure you, by that point we totally didn't care one bit.

It's been a busy couple of days. We're leaving for Crater Lake in the morning and I've been trying to get caught up on work. I spent almost all afternoon yesterday just tracking down clients and returning phone calls. For all of the technology we have today, people sure do seem hard to get a hold of still.

Today, I am focusing on getting us ready for our trip. Since we're only going to be gone for a few days this trip and we're driving instead of flying, packing should be relatively quick and easy. Being able to just toss things into the truck without having to make sure it all fits in one suitcase will make for a nice change.

The biggest items on the to do list for today involve getting the zoo ready for our absence. Today's cancer medicine application will be Josie's last. YAY!!! First thing tomorrow morning, she will be dropped off at the vet's office for the weekend. Since her head is still scabby and bleeding a little, we figured it would be safer to leave her there than home alone for the weekend. Also, we discovered a couple sores on her left arm yesterday, which need looking at. She's going to have so much fun this weekend. Not. Dr Jones is going to my inlaws' house. I need to empty and scrub down the tank, and change the water. Stuka might be going along, so his cage needs cleaning, too. Gonna be a busy day.

And we're off! Have a good weekend, fishies. See you when we get back from Crater Lake on Monday.

We're stopped at a rest area just north of Eugene, I think. There's a Geocache here that I wanted to grab real quick. As we were pulling into the parking area, I could tell by the look on Mr Moo's face that he wasn't doing well. While I went running around in a giant field looking for the cache, he stayed here in the car and napped. Upon my return, he was still knackered so I told him to sleep some more. I dug out the netbook and here I am. It looks like there are a couple unsecure wi-fi hot spots here, but I can't seem to get them working. I'll have to save this as a text document and post it later. I know for a fact there is no internet in the cabin we're staying in, but we may come across something in our travels.

We made it! After Mr Moo finished his nap, we got right back on the road. We made a few potty/Geocaching breaks on the way, but, otherwise, we drove right through. We were a little concerned we weren't going to make it before the office closed, but ended up making it in plenty of time. We got the key to our cabin (which is really nice and a steal at $100 per night), unloaded the truck and headed out to find some dinner. It wasjust past 1900 and there was only one place in the whole area that was still open. Welcome to the middle of nowhere! The place looked a little worse for wear, but the food was good and the portions enormous. I had eggs and bacon, and Mr Moo had some sort of chicken sandwich with homemade chips. Given the size of my meal, we plan to go back there for breakfast every day to load up before hiking. After dinner, we drove around "town", which isn't much more than a wide spot in the road. We found a market (this place isn't big enough for a full-on grocery store), but it, like pretty much everything else, was already closed. We plan on going first thing in the morning to get some things to make our pack lunches.

I am missing Josie something awful. We dropped her off at the vet's office before we left Portland earlier today. When it came time to put her in the kennel, she didn't want to let go of me. She looked so sad and miserable in there. I almost started crying. What made it even worse is the fact that we found a sizable growth on her left arm a few days ago. The doctor took a quick look at it when we got there and he's just as worried as I am that her cancer has spread. He's going to work on her over the weekend. He will do a bit of surgery to remove the growth the best he can then send it to the lab for testing. So, not only does my poor baby have to spend the weekend there, she's now having a procedure done, too. Ugh. I'm already looking forward to getting back and getting her home.

It's almost 2300 now and the people in the next cabin are still making a ton of noise. Argh! Go to bed, you noisy people!!!

Game plan for tomorrow is still kind of open. I do know grocery shopping and a hearty breakfast out will be the first two items on the list. After that, we'll probably head into the park. More than likely, we'll spend a bit of time in the visitors center learning a bit about the area and talking to the rangers about which hikes are the best. From there, I'm not sure what we'll do. There are a few virtual Geocaches in the park we might do. We'll be able to drive around the rim road in the process, too. If there's time, we'll probably squeeze in a couple of the short easy hikes as well before heading back here to the cabin for dinner and discussion about which of the more brutal hikes we'll do on Saturday and Sunday.

Time for bed now though. Goodnight, fishies!

Good morning! We found a place with wi-fi. Woot! It's a restaurant and we're sitting here waiting for our breakfasts. I just posted a couple backdated entries from yesterday. I don't think this place is open tomorrow so I'm sure I'll be backdating several more, too. No pictures to post just yet. The camera batteries are charged and ready to go so there will be loads soon.

Once we have breakfast, we're heading to the market for lunch stuffs, then on to the park. Looks like the weather is going to be cooperative (for a change) and beautiful all weekend. I can't wait to see the lake finally. The mountains in the area are very pretty and several of them are still snow covered. And the best part - the resort we're staying at is surrounded by ranches so there are cows everywhere we look! Wheee! :-)

Looks like breakfast is just about ready so I'm going to sign off for now. Laters!

PS - Talked to the resort manager. The noisy people from last night are checking out today. Yay!

We had quite a day today and it wasn't all good. Let me get the bad thing out the way first. My camera is dead and we have almost no photos from today. Those of you who know me well will understand how traumatic this is for me. I forgot I had unclipped my camera from the harness while we were driving to the first viewpoint. When I got out of the truck, the camera fell to the ground and crashed on the pavement. If we had been in my Escort, it might have survived. From the cab of the truck, it didn't stand a chance. At first, we couldn't even get it to power on. A few minutes later, I got it power on, but it kept insisting the batteries were dead when I knew they weren't. On about the third try to get it to turn and stay on, smoke started pouring out of it and that was the end of that. Something has obviously shorted out. The camera is so old now, it won't be worth trying to repair it. I will be shopping for a new camera as soon as we get home. Fortunately, Mr Moo has his little pocket camera with us. Unfortunately, the battery died less than an hour later. I guess we just weren't meant to take any pictures today.

On a happier note, we did have a really good time today. Crater Lake is absolutely beautiful. It's so blue it's surreal. We drove all the way around it on the rim road and stopped at almost every viewpoint. We hiked to the fire lookout tower on top of Watchman Peak, which is one of the highest spots in the park. The hike was tough with the sun beating down on us, but the view made it all worthwhile. We could see a wildfire burning not too far away and later learned it's deliberately set controlled burn happening in the northernmost part of the park. We headed up that way to do a Geocache and met some firefighters at the Pumice Desert overlook. We were supposed to pull into that overlook to get some information from a sign, but they had it all blocked off. I asked if I could walk over just to read the sign and learned they were using the parking area as a helicopter landing zone. They had huge pool-size baskets full of water for the helicopter to take and dump on the fire. They let me read the sign so I got the info I needed then we were on our way again.

Late in the afternoon, we drove past the trailhead to Mount Scott, which is where we're going tomorrow. We could see the fire lookout tower at the summit and I nearly had a heart attack when I saw how far up it was. We're going to set out very early in the morning because it will probably take me all day to get my sorry self all the way up there. Mr Moo's camera battery is charging as I type this so we'll definitely have some photos from the summit.

We've seen quite a few animals since arriving. As I mentioned previously, there are about a billion cows in the valley near our resort. We've also seen the following nearby: a large owl, several hawks/falcons/maybe an eagle, loads of suicidal chipmunks darting across the roads, a fairly large animal that Mr Moo swears was a badger but I'm not so sure about, and lots and lots of bats at dusk snacking on mosquitoes on the creek running behind out cabin. In the park, we've seen loads of butterflies and dragonflies, several species of birds we've never seen before including a mountain bluebird, and one crazy chipmunk who tried to climb into my backpack. The signs say there are black bears near the campground and the nature guide says there are also elk, deer, coyote and foxes in the park, but we're not holding out breath for any of those.

It's getting late and we have to be up early so I should get to bed. The restaurant with the wi-fi isn't open tomorrow (on a Saturday? what is up with that?) so it may be a while before I get to post this. Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

I'm too tired to write much tonight. We stayed busy today. Had a great big breakfast that gave me a stomach ache. There really is such a thing as too much bacon. Ugh. Drove to the park. Spent most of the day hiking to the summit of Mount Scott. Saw deer on the way up and about a billion butterflies at the top. Met an NPS worker at the summit who told us about the wildfires burning nearby. Hiked back down. Visited a few scenic overlooks. Drove out the The Pinnacles. Did a couple Geocaches. Drove back to the cabin. Decided to drive to California tomorrow to visit Lava Beds National Monument. Went into "town" to sit in the parking lot and steal wi-fi from the restaurant that wasn't open today to get information for tomorrow. Saw a bald eagle on a telephone pole on the drive back. Did a quick cache up the street before coming back to the cabin for dinner. Lying around like slugs now and thinking about going to sleep real soon. Took a few photos today, but I think they're all going to have to wait until we get back to Portland on Monday.

Lucy, we're home! And I don't think it's ever felt so wonderful. We left the resort this morning, drove through the park one last time, then headed for Portland. We went straight to the vet's office to get Josie. I don't think she knew quite what to make of us being there at first, but she warmed up to us very quickly once we got into the truck and she realized we were taking her home.

The doctor removed the growth on her arm Thursday afternoon. She is sporting some serious stitches, but, fortunately, doesn't appear to be bothered by them. He already had the biopsy results back from the lab when we arrived today. It wasn't good news. It's the same cancer as she has on her head. It's no longer in situ. It's spreading. He's still very confident that's it's not internal in her organs or anything, but we're no longer referring to it as a small isolated pre-cancerous lesion. It's full-on skin cancer. We'll have to check her for sores regularly now. As long as we catch them when they're small, he can remove them via relatively quick outpatient surgery. The patch on her head is too large for surgery at this point. To close the wound, he would have to pull the skin so tight she would look like she had a really bad face lift. It would mess with her eye and she could lose vision in it. Given that she's already almost totally deaf and getting crippled from arthritis, possibly making her blind is not an option. We'll just keep an eye on her and decide on treatments as we go.

I've got a lot of unpacking, laundry and cleaning up to do tonight. Hopefully, I'll be able to get some photos from our trip sorted and posted before I go to bed.

I didn't get a whole lot done last night, except for a bit of unpacking, before the past few days of not sleeping well and getting up much too early caught up with me and I gave up and went to bed. Needless to say, I didn't didn't get any photos sorted. It's a miracle I even got them downloaded off the camera. I'll get to them soon. I promise!

Josie appears to be feeling much better now. She's happy to be home and is settling back into her regular routine. She no longer has to wear her e-collar or foot cover. She doesn't even have a bandage on her arm where the lesion was removed. All she has to do now is nap and wait for the hair to grow back on her head.

Since our access to the internet was so limited while we were away and we had no television in our cabin, we had no idea we'd be coming home to a heat wave in Portland. There's talk of the temperature hitting triple digits this coming weekend. Phew! I think we got spoiled by the cool temperatures on our vacation.

Southern Oregon - July 2009 - Crater Lake National Park

I've only got one photo so far, but it's a start.

That's me on our hike to the summit of Mount Scott, the highest point in Crater Lake National Park.

We hiked to the summit of Mount Scott at Crater Lake National Park on July 18, 2009. On the way up, we started noticing a large number of butterflies zooming all around us. The numbers kept increasing the further we went up. We shot this video just shy of the summit. They are California Tortoiseshell butterflies. According to an NPS employee we met at the summit, there is a 2-3 week period each summer when the butterflies hatch and fly around the mountain. It was like being in a snowstorm of butterflies. Very beautiful.

Southern Oregon - July 2009 - Crater Lake National Park

Our very first view of the lake:

That's not Photoshopped. It really is that blue. It's the middle of July and there is still quite a bit of snow still present in the park. We passed through a big chunk of it on the hike to the Watchman Fire Lookout.

They average over 500" of snow every winter! The view of the lake and Wizard Island is spectacular from the lookout tower:

Unfortunately, that was the last photo we got that day before Mr Moo's camera battery died. We asked a complete stranger to take our photo at the summit with his camera and email us a copy. He said he would once he got home from his vacation so we'll see!

I fulfilled a Photo Request a couple weeks ago.

Amy requested: your dinner

Taken on July 10, 2009.

Dinner was roasted lemon pepper chicken, maple carrots, broccoli and lemonade.

I finally caught Josie lying still enough and in just the right position to get a photo of her stitches.

They're from the minor surgery she had last week to remove a skin cancer lesion from her arm. Amazingly, she hasn't tried to pull the stitches out or even licked at them. Since she's been so good about it, we haven't had to put the e-collar on her, which is a big relief for all of us. She's had them for a week now. If they haven't fallen out on their own by Monday or so, I'll probably cut them out for her.

Mr Moo and I had talked about going hiking somewhere today. However, after looking at the weather report, we've decided to stay home and hide in our cave. It's supposed to be in the 90s today, which is just a wee bit too warm for spending the day climbing a mountain with ten pounds of pack on my back. Instead, we're going to stay in and attempt to get caught up on work this weekend. A futile exercise, I know, but we're going to try.

A potential client left a message on my machine a couple days ago. She's in a wedding in a few weeks and her dress is too small. She wanted to know if I could fix it and how much I charge for "altercations". Hmmm... Well, I've never actually fought a client before, but I suppose I would charge my going rate.

We're melting!

"NAME THAT MOVIE" CONTEST - 170

Click here for the entry form.

FYI - There are several other rounds of the movie contest still open. You can find them on the Name That Movie Contest page of my website under "Open Rounds".

We went for a short hike in Forest Park on Sunday to find a Geocache. We had to solve a complicated trilateration puzzle to get the coordinates for it so we were anxious to see if we had solved it correctly. Our math was off by a little bit, but we still found the prize in the end. The view from the cache area was fantastic. Unfortunately, it was a little too hazy to see all of the mountains clearly. You can make out Mt St Helens if you look closely.

When we went hiking on Sauvie Island a few weeks ago, some plant had gone to seed and littered almost the whole trail with little fluffy seed things that looked like snow.

It was very cool until Mr Moo unknowingly started kicking them up a lot and I started inhaling them. ACK! We also saw what we think was an osprey nest with young in it.

On the hike in, we went as far as we could along the beach, which was a mistake. We ran out of land and had to bushwhack our way back to the trail through grass that was taller than both of us.

That's Mr Moo standing in the approximate spot where we stumbled out of the grass and onto the trail. I'm still in shock neither of us ended up with a single tick after that little adventure. We hiked all the way to the lighthouse at the northernmost point of the island.

It was a great place to hike, but a shame the mosquitoes were so miserable.

Today, I am very busy and still very hot. We've finally broken out of our triple digit heat, but the forecast is calling for a high today of 99F/37C, which isn't much of an improvement. I do have air conditioning here in the office/sewing room. However, once you get the iron, the lights and all of my machines going, it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. I've got a small mountain of sewing projects that need to be done by this weekend so I have to just grin, bear it and drink lots of water.

Don't you just love it when you use the iron so much it sets off the smoke detectors? Definitely gets the heart rate going. My Rowenta has gotten a good workout tonight. My main project for the evening has been converting a regular bridesmaid dress into a maternity bridesmaid dress. I've got just about half of it done. Think I'm going to call it a night soon and tackle the other half tomorrow.

I went outside a few hours ago to water some plants. Within about 20 minutes, my shirt was completely soaked through. Ugh. The weather forecasters can say the heat wave is over all they want, but I'm not buying it. It's hotter than Hades out there still!