First Wellness Checkup

Faye had her first puppy wellness checkup today. She weighed 9.1 lbs., up from 7.5 lbs. a week ago.

Right now I feel so sleep deprived from trying to keep up with this puppy. I guess Siri was as active as this one, but I don't really remember. But she seems like a smart dog; we'll learn each others' routines and get through this.

Chirstmas Eve

Siri seems to be trying to at least tolerate the new puppy.

Can't quite reach it yet.

Big Dog, Little Dog

It's hard to believe that Siri was once that little.

Meet Faye

Meet Faye, the newest member of the pack:

Faye was born November 8, one of a litter of seven. I thought about naming her Seven, after Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01, on Star Trek Voyager, but that seemed like a lot of name for a little dog.

I was thinking of Lena. My coworkers were voting for Lexi.

I also liked the name Waciwi, which means Dancing Girl in the Lakota Sioux language.

When I told my mom about the new puppy today, she said right away that I should name her Faye. Faye is from Old English Faie, which means fairy. Of course I always do what my mom wants, always have. Sometimes.

Faye weighed 7.5 lbs. at her checkup on Thursday, 2.5 lbs. more than Siri did at the same age.

Right now the big dogs are being kind of skittish and standoffish with her. She tries to get close to them and they jump up and move away. Hopefully they'll get used to each other soon. The cat seems indifferent.

Catching Up, Part 2

A few pictures from my Instagram account - mathieu883 

Brea is 9 years old now, technically a senior dog, and she seems to feel the cold more than she used to. Hence the sweater. I think that's the first time I ever used the word hence.

This was captured by a camera I have outside my house. I have no idea who or what or why.

Catching Up

I was reminded today that it's been more than a year since I posted anything.  Instagram has made me lazy, and I forgot that not everyone has an Instagram account. So I'm going to post here a few of the pictures that I put on Instagram.

Biltmore estate, Asheville, North Carolina, in September of this year.

Restaurant where we ate in Lynchburg, Virginia, same trip

Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, same trip

 

I think this was the third or fourth time I'd been to Monticello. Each visit has been different, and it was the first time I'd been able to go into the upstairs part of the house. The garden tour and Mulberry Row tour, which talked about the enslaved people at Monticello, was excellent.

I'm not going to post any more pictures of these places because you can look them up online and see lots of better pictures.

New York City!

Brea and Siri and Kitty have been spending the past few days in air conditioned comfort at Animal Care Associates while Mary T. and I explored Manhattan.  She was able to get a pair of highly coveted tickets to the Harry Potter play, and that was all the excuse we needed to go to New York. 

The play is in two parts, and ran Saturday afternoon and evening, with a two hour break between parts one and two.

Of course we wore Gryffindor colors. 

Under threat of a curse, I'm forbidden from saying much about the play except that it was amazing.

We arrived in New York late, about 2:00am Thursday morning, courtesy of Amtrak, and stayed at the Park Central Hotel, which is midtown, near Central Park and a few blocks from Times Square.

Thursday we went to the Strand Bookstore. 

"Eighteen miles of books" and more on the street. Believe it. Once inside I forgot all about taking pictures.

After that, and after lunch at a place whose name I forget but had really good food, we went to CW Pencil Enterprise, a wonderful little store I've wanted to go to since they opened four years ago.

 You might be surprised at how many different kinds of pencils and pencil sharpeners and erasers and other pencil accessories and technology there are in the world. And this place has stuff from all over the world.

If you've ever read the book Time and Again, by Jack Finney, you might recognize this:

(19 Gramercy Park)

Or this:

The Dakota apartment building.

If you don't appreciate the significance of these two places, maybe you should read Time and Again. I first read it when I was 13 or 14. It was the first time travel story I ever read, and it really captured my imagination, and sparked an interest in time travel stories.

After that - this was on Friday - we went to the American Museum of Natural History (very crowded and noisy), and then up to the Washington Heights area, where we went to the Cloisters.  It was a welcome respite from the noise and the crowds.

Hmmm. Haven't we seen imagery like this in some of the Harry Potter movies? 

We left the Cloisters, walked some winding paths through Ft.Tryon Park, and met my sister, who lives in the area and was walking her dogs.

Her dogs, by the way, came from the Fayette County Animal Shelter in West Virginia. They're schipperkes, a Dutch breed, and they're about fifteen years old now.

 So that is a very condensed version of our trip to New York. I left out the part about all the walking we did - miles, literally, every day, or all the really good food places and coffee shops there are. Three days is not enough.