"Grapes."

If you don't know who this is, I feel sorry for you. Got a rare chance on Saturday night to watch the Red Wings game on Hockey Night in Canada on CBC out of Windsor, Ontario. After the game we got to see this.. Is that a great suit, or what upholstery? And that's not all.

Bone Appetít

We having Chow for dinner?

Interesting thread floating around the portion of the blogosphere that I hang around in... dog for dinner. Read Patrick's interesting piece here, and Steve Bodio's here. Further links to related posts and articles at the respective blogs.

Save me the tenderloin!

Runaways.

Well. That was exciting... in a stressful kind of way. And hard on the vocal chords. (Cords?).

What was that, Dan? See, it's like this: To get Rally out of the motor home to walk, she has to be picked up and set down on the ground.. while this is happening, the door swings wide open, because both hands (and attendant arms) are on the dog. This offers a golden opportunity for Mr. Sandia to make a break for it. Most of the time I've made a circus grab, on the fly, and tossed him back in before closing the door. Today, I got a finger on his collar, but he just slipped off and away he went.

To make today unique, Fanny took advantage of the wide open door while I was turned and yelling at Sandia. Just one, I can get back fairly easily. With two, I had co-enablers. Away they rushed... toward the campground office. They said hello to a lady getting into a pickup, wheeled and ran back toward me.. hey, this was going to be easy after all.

Not. They ran to a corner and peed, looked over their shoulder at this...

Yes... a cornfield. A big cornfield, with a couple of deer stands on the perimeter. The temptation was obviously too much, as they disappeared. When the dogs disappear in the deserts of New Mexico, I don't mind.. I know they'll be back. This is completely different. Farmers in Michigan, and most other states in the vicinity, shoot dogs that are chasing deer. I hoped they didn't jump any deer. I did see a sandhill crane launch more vertically than they're used to.

Meanwhile, I still had Rally on the flexi, and she hadn't peed yet, so I couldn't put her back in, and I couldn't trudge across the cornfield with her and her cast, and the long-promised rain just beginning. So I stood on the campground side yelling, and they cavorted on the opposite side. I just hoped they stayed in the field and didn't venture into the surrounding woods.

Rally finally peed. I ran back to the motor home, threw her in, grabbed my Fox 40 Classic, and ran back to the cornfield, hoping they were still in sight. I was now ready to venture into the field myself... alternatingly yelling their names and blowing the whistle.. Sandia, made a run back toward me, I brought out a dog biscuit, caught his eye... and he slowed,... and then decided he hadn't had enough exercise. Meanwhile, Fanny had disappeared from view. Then Sandia disappeared.

It had now been almost 20 minutes they'd been running loose. I was on my own, because Margaret had gone into Ann Arbor to visit her parents.. if I dropped dead in the middle of the field, no one would find me until they came through to plant new corn. I had to find them..

I was halfway across the field when Sandia approached. And stayed. I got a leash on him, gave him a biscuit that he was too exhausted to eat, (although he did remove it from my jacket pocket after we were back in the house), and we went in search of Fanny.

We got all the way across, to the foot of one of the deer stands, and she was nowhere in sight. There was a trail that sloped downhill toward Goose Lake, west of the stand... as we started down it, Fanny broke out of the woods behind us, and stood to be leashed. She was finally out of gas. But not out of surprises.

I'd thought the worse thing that could happen was that they'd be shot by some farmer. Perhaps not... Fanny was covered in burrs... including covering her right eye completely; and she'd rolled in something exotic. Crane crap? Deer carcass? It was black, and greasy, and stunk to the heavens. Great. She needed washing, and it was raining and only about 45 degrees. I didn't want to bring her in, but that was my only option.

And that's how I came to do a thorough cleaning up of the shower and the bathroom today!

Return With Us Now to Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear...

Among the many reasons we love this part of the country.. the jacks, the green chiles, the dust.. we have to include these vestiges of the Wild, Wild West . Would this happen in Ann Arbor? Not on your life. (Watch the video if for no other reason than to check out news anchor, Nicole Brady. Hot!)

T-Rex vs. Blind Faith

So, we managed to extricate ourselves from the trial site last Sunday while there was still a lot of daylight left. That gave us our opportunity to spend the night at the very nice campground of the Dinosaur Valley State Park. As a bonus, there were only 3 other campers in the entire park, so we were able to spread out considerably.

We got hooked up, fed the dogs, and went back into Glen Rose for a damn good Italian dinner at Juliany's. (No review links or web page). Second time we've eaten there, and it was just as good this time as the first.

Monday morning we were able to hit a part of the park's extensive hiking trail system. Extensive enough to have a lot of back country camping locations. Our objective, however, was to follow the trail along the river to see the dinosaur tracks, left in the sand over a hundred million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period. The tracks were left by the two critters below,

one vegetarian, one meat eater. The tracks can be seen clearly in the below image, and also in more detail if you click on the new slide show on the sidebar. There's something just really cool about being able to "time travel" like this.

We spent a couple of hours on the trail, ending up at the two models (see the slide show), before returning to the Express to pack up and get out before the very generous 2PM check out time.

As we left the park, we drove by a neighboring enterprise:

The cleverly named, "Creation Evidence Museum". Yin and Yang? Fact and Fantasy? Interesting juxtaposition. We certainly didn't have the time to go in and visit, and I would have most certainly gotten us tossed out if we did. I expect we'd see a model of Fred Flintstone and his pet, Dino. Overall, it appeared pretty low budget. A bigger-budget, much more subversive version is in operation in Kentucky.
Not to worry, though. Look at those teeth. My T-Rex can shred their Dog-ma.

Oregon: The New Georgia.

I didn't think it was possible to be this drunk without being dead. As the story notes, this is the second time in recent months in Oregon for record level plastered women. Gotta be all that rain and snow.