caleb walker

eddy

I spent the weekend with family on the Eddy, way up at the other end of the Allegheny River. And took lots of photos. Didn't read and write as much as I wanted to, but I bonded with my brother's dog, and that makes up for that.

The dog's name is Maine and I'm not sure why that is. She's a mixture of pointer and about six other breeds, I guess, mainly white with brown spots, and a patch over her right eye that looks like someone took a cookie cutter from Georgia and dropped it onto Maine's face. She's probably about a fifty pounder.

I'm told that, when my brother comes home from work Maine is so excited to see him that she jumpes into his arms. When my nephew arrived at the Eddy today she did the same thing and, once we explained to him what was going on, he caught her and held her a few minutes. 

My nephew's not a dog person.

 

Hi knees!

 

 

Maine does tricks, and when she thinks you have a treat for her she'll run through the whole repertoire, ending on her back, smiling at you. 

details

The writing group critiqued my story tonight. I'd hesitated sending them the same thing they've already seen about four times, but I didn't have anything else. Turns out it was a really good session. Most critiques tend to be about bigger issues, but tonight we talked about transitions and sentence order and tiny nitty stuff. It was really helpful.

Thanks, group. Here's an otter playing with a boy.

hedgehogs.

Did I show you the hedgehog lamp KR gave me for my birthday?

And here's a hedgehog getting a bath.

via buzzfeed

tonight

So, what do you want to do tonight? 

Today there were ducklings in the river. A mama with ten tiny duckies bobbing around like ping pong balls on the water's surface.

Here's George Takei.

And Mitch Hedberg.

And Creature Comforts.

walk along the river

My back, neck, and shoulders have all been tense lately. It's because I sit too long. So today I took a walk along the river in the rain. 

I called KR and stood under the train tressle to stay a little out of the rain and to watch four baby geese play in the puddles near their parents. I walked down the path a ways to flex my back, making sure to stay on the other side of the path so the goose parents didn't get too upset. Goldfinches flitted around.

On my way back I saw the adult geese again, now sitting in the wet, and one of the babies practicing his preening. As I passed I saw the other three littles ones under the mother's wing.

 

grebe

Today's a sunny warm day. A day when the telepathic call goes out to everyone who works along the river to get outside and take a walk or jog or ride. And many answered the call today. I did.

And I saw a little bird swimming in the river. I thought it was a small duck, but the closest photo I can find online is of a Horned Grebe. It looked like the photo there but the fluffy tuft on its head looked more like Larry David's hairdo.

("Fluffy tuft" is the phrase of the day.)

communimacation

A few loosely related things:

• I follow a few friends on Twitter, but I'm thinking about unsubscribing to some of them since recent tweets look a lot like this: "RT @Vandelay @HDoofus @Mulva July 25 #Nothing event at bit.ly/LiNkItY #Whatsit #UmWhatNow." And it's just too much cognitive effort to figure out what's being said. Why not use the 140-character size limit as a challenge? Like the 100-word essays we do in my writing group as an exercise in word choice, in focus, in clarity.
• I got a cell phone last weekend and haven't received any calls yet. I'm not too happy about paying a monthly fee for a digital pocket clock.
• When KR cooks, the dogs like to lay around her feet. I'd think they wanted to catch dropped food, but when she does drop something they're oblivious until she points it out to them. Anyway, they're always in the way when she's cooking and the command she uses is "Get out of the kitchen." Georgia slinks away then, and Kaden stands up, not sure what to do until we push him far enough away. The other morning KR was doing her yoga in the bedroom. This attracts the dogs, too. I was in the office next to the bedroom when I heard her say, "Get out of the kitchen." The results of the experiment were inconclusive; Kaden gave the same slack-jawed stare as when he's actually in the kitchen.

That's about it for now.

month-end catch-up

End of the month and I'm beginning my last post for NaBloPoMo at 11:30pm.

Tomorrow it's back to the office, back to the routine. I'm kind of looking forward to that.

Last night we had dinner with a bunch of friends, including the owners of a B&B in the Finger Lakes region of New York. I could listen all night to Michele tell stories about their life up there: her Amish neighbors, the horses (imagine six enormous work horses running loose down the road), ducks, cats, the birds. Michele is one of the few people I can count on to read this thing on a regular basis.

Tonight we watched all three DVDs we had sitting on the tv stand. A few minutes into Manhattan I said, "I wish our tv was bigger." The whole movie is shot in gorgeous black and white. (Here's the opening scene. It's in Spanish because the English versions I found were all in the wrong aspect ratio; they're squished.)

And that pretty much does it for NaBlo 08. I can't keep this up all year long so you'll just have to check back again in a few days. (Or do the RSS thing. It's a life-changing technology.) Thanks for reading.

how to interview

It's the middle of November, there's snow in the grass, and we still have confused robins flapping around in the trees. In fact, it seems we have more robins now than we had during the summer. These must be the ones who live up north and who are just passing through on their way south.

The quantity of birds in the trees this week, along with yesterday's job interview, remind me of a story. Yesterday my interview was held in a conference room with big windows, which I put at my back when I chose my seat at the table. It was a subconscious decision, but I think it was a real decision, and here's why. (I swear I wrote about this before, but don't see it on the site.)

Many years ago I interviewed at UPenn's veterinary school, which is on a beautiful rural campus. I spoke with one person after another and as I remember it everyone asked what sort of video camera I would buy for them and I didn't have an answer for any of them. I ended my day with the school's director. He was a tall Australian man and had a very nice office. He sat at the table with his back to a large window. I sat across from him and we talked a while but eventually I noticed a mockingbird in the field over his shoulder.

It flapped and hopped around. It disappeared into bushes and reappeared. Mockingbirds have white bands on their wings and tails that flash as they fly. I didn't hear much of what the director said to me once that started. I didn't get the job.

georgia's dog

Ever since Abi died we've known we had to get Georgia another dog. She used to curl up against his belly in the cold weather and, we realize, relied on his big slow presence more than we'll know. Even now, four months after he died, she occasionally gets a look on her face like loneliness. So we've been looking for a second dog (and a third one who would be the shop dog). Today our friend who manages the Animal Rescue League's kennel had us up to look at a couple likely candidates.

Shadow is a long-haired black mix of probably border collie and lab. He's being treated for a skin problem so he's a little flakey and bare in spots. But he has a nice big lab head and he made good eye contact with us and was friendly and behaved well on his walk around the grounds.

Jasper was another long-haired border collie mix, but mottled brown, black, and white. He was good too, and knew a few commands. I think he was the one who came from a family who was evicted from their home and had the kids clinging to him as he was given over to the shelter.

We liked Jasper better, but the final decision was up to Georgia. So we went home and brought her back to the kennel. Jasper did nothing but bark at her, baring his teeth. Strikes one, two, and three. Shadow and she got along great on the initial meeting. They walked around the grounds fine, but did not pay much attention to each other except a few occasional butt-sniffs. Once we were back inside the office Shadow mounted her and she nearly bit his face off. Uh oh, we thought. Trouble in paradise. We let them get close again. He put a paw on her back and she hated that too. I swear I heard her say, "Don't touch me, you mongrel."

It was unexpected, but it turns out Georgia has standards. I thought she liked all the boy dogs but it looks like she won't allow a sucker to show dominance over her. Go girl.