More signs of spring

And in my neighborhood too.  I pass those townhouses all the time, how come I never see topless gardening lady with yellow thong and pink gardening gloves?  Gotta love Boulder.

Signs of spring

Today I saw not one but three drunk homeless guys with no shirt.  All in different locations.  O.k., maybe one of them wasn't homeless or maybe even drunk but he could have passed for both and he was wearing a pair of ill-fitting red, white and blue/stars and stripes shorts.  Or maybe more like some kind of stars & stripes material fashioned like a too loose diaper.  Which should count for something though I'm not exactly sure what.  But if all of that isn't a sure sign of spring then I don't know what is.

I sneaked out for short bike ride on the trails today in the 70 degrees sunny day.  Sort of too hot but also sort of felt good to feel too hot.  I've still got an ice floe in my backyard that somehow won't melt even in 70 degree heat.  All those poor polar bears that are missing their sea ice, maybe someone can send them to my backyard, there's plenty to go around.

Sweet sweet singletrack

What a beautific sight that dry as a bone trail.  Finally went out on my mountain bike for the first time since maybe November.  Felt so good to hit the trails, I could hardly contain myself.  Took Strum for an off leash run on this same trail yesterday but it was hardly the same as flying down it on my bike.  I can't believe how lucky I am to have these trails right out my back door.  I went out for an 'easy' 2 hour ride and was trashed by the time I got home.  I'm in really good shape in the pool but not so much on the bike and let's say we forget about the running right here right now.  Not sure what I'm going to do about racing triathlons this summer.  Don't want to spend the money on it mostly.

Further up the hill

Looking back downhill at some last remaining snow bits.

It was 35 degrees and cloudy this morning, perfect agility weather, so I took Strum to the field first thing in the morning and had the place to myself.  Weave pole training went great, dogwalk not so much for the reps without the treat gizmo, good (1 miss I think) for the reps with the gizmo.  Sigh.  I hate using props, such a pain to fade them.  Without the gizmo to focus on Strum comes flying at me from about 1/2 way down the board.  Doesn't even leap forward, leaps straight for me with much glee and enthusiasm.  I'm going to go back to using a jump then the gizmo.  Worked on a little lateral send into a serpentine excercise from the Jenn Crank seminar.  We see a lot of serps in DOCNA so it's good to work on those.  I have a habit of turning into the dog on the middle jump of the serp and I'm focusing on running straight and having him come into my hand so I don't have to slow down and get behind.  We're getting better with it.

Splurged on a 23" widescreen monitor and a proper desk chair.  My back finally gave in today, I can't do any more computer work at the dining room table on my laptop.  I'll be getting a new computer too.  My laptop is from 2002 and starting to sputter.  It doesn't have a high enough resolution to support the new monitor despite what the guy in the store said and I need the big monitor for drafting work.  It's amazing what you can get for not a whole lot of money compared to what I have right now.  My laptop has 30 GB of memory and the new ones have a terabyte (1000 GB for those of you who are as out of it as I am) which I'd never even heard of.  I thought my 179 GB external hard drive had an insane amount of memory.  Crazy.  I won't have to keep deleting my photos off the computer once I get them on the external hard drive and I don't have to hook up the hard drive every time I want to process videos.  It's all an unwelcome expense at the moment but I'll be getting some contract work and I need a decent office set up to be productive and not destroy my back and neck.  Guess I'm finally entering the modern age.

Shenanigans

Yeah, I know it's a tacky ad and yeah, I know, you have to click on the link.  But I didn't want to embed the player in the blog since I think the sounds starts playing as soon as you open the blog, rather than when you click on the player and I hate that.  It's so jarring to open a blog and be greeted with loud music or some kind of noise.

If I had more time I'd make up my own dialog but I'm actually busy with some important type stuff for the next few weeks.  Still, this was kind of funny:  Cody Baloney has words for you.

_

Haiku Wednesday

Snowflakes on my dogs

My weave poles disappearing

Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap

March can just go ahead and bite me.

Quick weave pole tip for the day

If you come back in the house after your 2x2 weave pole training session and there is smoke coming from the kitchen your session was too long.  Also maybe don't try to combine cooking and dog training.

This was Strum's second session with the 4 poles.  His first session he had one miss out of maybe 10-12 reps, different positions around the clock for both him and me.  Today was less successful, I think because this time I used the treat gizmo at the very end of the poles and he got overexcited and kept running straight for the gizmo.  Once he calmed down a little he was perfect but I stayed with him and sent to the poles.  I'll try another session today with my position moving around the clock as well.  His work with the 2 poles was fabulous, I think he finally understands his entries.  Now to see if we can transfer that understanding to the full set.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

I think the 'Alice in Wonderland' people owe us some royalties.  I'm checking under my bed tonight to make sure Tim Burton isn't hiding there.

Off with their heads!

Just don't call me late to dinner.

 

 

  

What is the Hatter with me?

 

At first I thought he was a shoe-in for the Hatter but the March Hare also bears a shocking resemblance.

 I thought the movie was good, can't go too far wrong with Tim Burton and Jonny Depp.  Factor Disney in though and the movie could have been better.  The characters and effects and Lewis Carroll humor were great but the plot, um, was this 'Alice in Wonderland' or 'The Wizard of Oz'?  They even added in a dog because maybe we were missing a Toto?  I also could have done without the loud, drawn-out battle scene at the end.  That sort of thing always sends me to snoozers.  Still, I enjoyed it despite the predictable, hackneyed plot and thought it was a good Burton/Depp vehicle.  Glad I didn't opt for the 3-D, I was getting enough vertigo with the regular effects.

I was a bit disturbed by the amount of small children there (5-6 years old) and the fact that they didn't seem the slightest bit phased by the violence.  I'm not at all a fan of sheltering kids but this was a violent affair for the kindergarten set and there was nary a peep out of any of them.  Scary that so many young children are desensitized to that level of violence and brutality at such a tender age.  Funny that parents these days are so ridiculously overprotective that they barely let their kids outside to play but they don't think twice about taking them to a movie like this.  Or maybe the kids had all grown bored with the plot and fallen asleep.  I'm hoping for the latter.

Happy Dogs

This video made me smile.  I saw it on the One Bark at a Time blog but since that's a rescue blog maybe some of the agility folk reading here missed it.



It's suddenly spring outside, sunny blue skies, high 50's-shorts weather, at least for running.  Took Strum for a run on the trails and was nearly weeping with joy at the dryness of them.  Seems like I've been slipping around on the ice and mucking through the mud for months now.  I'm not sure if I will ever get the mud out of my mud room.  We did a little fartlek-joring, ie some sprinting then recovering then sprinting again.  I love fartlek runs, they were my favorite type of workout when I was on the track/cross country teams.  So much more fun than intervals on the track.

I'm making a rare foray to the actual in the flesh movie theater tonight to see 'Alice in Wonderland'.  I love Tim Burton and Jonny Depp and 'Alice in Wonderland' is one of my favorite books so I'm supposing I can't go too far wrong here.  I'm not going for the 3-D version though, somehow I think it'll creep me out.  Maybe we'll go for dinner too.  A night out on the town-shocking.