boolie

The Handsome Fellow

I was editing this picture of Templeton from 2003 so I could bring its associated blog post back online only to discover there was no associated post, and it never even made it up onto my old site before then, but better late than never. Templeton was a handsome little fellow with his green eyes and gray tuxedo and had a charming personality to match. I wasn’t a cat person when I met him a decade prior when my wife and I started dating, how little I understood then of how he would change my life. I didn’t get my first camera until college or grad school, the most basic of point and shoots, with my first SLR in my last year of grad school, so I’m thankful I switched to digital in 2000 and began photographing him more often. This picture encapsulates a lot for me, I took it during our first full year in the house in Portland where we would live for sixteen years. I think of him every day as I do all the pets and am thankful for the pictures I have to remember him by, he was a little charmer!

Calm Before the Storm

Storms approached both literally and figuratively as Ellie slept peacefully in our dining room in Portland in February 2018. Snow would arrive that evening, making the walk to the train to the airport a little more interesting the next morning as I left for my interview in Arizona. A whirlwind followed as I’d get an offer right away, kicking off a storm of activity for the next month in the mad dash to get here. Through it all one of our biggest worries was her health, she had recovered from some minor issues she was having but we were about to put her through a three day drive. She did great on the trip though, we found a wonderful vet pretty quickly after we arrived, and remarkably Ellie would not only see us to Arizona but into the home we bought a year later. She was such a tremendous blessing in so many ways, this pup.

Calm in the Storm

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Ellie basks in the warmth of the rare winter sun in Oregon, taken in December 2017 at her turnaround point that morning, the dragon statue at Irvington School. My team had been laid off a month earlier, and though that threw us into a period of uncertainty and stress that at times it feels like I haven’t fully recovered from, I so loved getting to walk her every morning that I sometimes have to catch myself from remembering this period overly fondly. We always started our walks at the nearby dog park but after that I let her choose her path and thankfully since I started saving the GPS tracks of every walk that fall, I can look back now at the routes she chose, depending on what she smelled with that amazing nose and what her body felt capable of that day.

The Sky Descends, The Earth Rises

Yesterday morning this heavy cloud bank snuffed out the sun just as it was rising but not before giving me a moment of color behind Weaver’s Needle.

The Song Disruptor

Back in June I woke up early before work so I went out for a short hike, spending the morning the way I had the previous two mornings, watching a mockingbird dance and sing as the sun rose. The previous day a curve-billed thrasher had flown in and the mocker stayed out of sight for a while, but on this morning I got a picture of it singing right as the first light arrived. But then almost on cue the thrasher flew in, dried saguaro fruit clinging to its beak, and the mocker yielded. I noticed the previous morning that although it would lay low for a while whenever the thrasher flew in, eventually it would always come back to dance and sing, but on this morning work waited so I could not.

The Less Early Bird Gets the Early Bird

Last night I turned off my alarm as I wanted to get as much sleep as I could, naturally waking half an hour later than I would normally get up to hike. However with trails so close by I was able to roll out of bed and grab my hiking gear and still make it to the trailhead right around sunrise. I took an easy trail, one of my favorites, but despite seeing a number of birds couldn’t manage any pictures. Some days are like that, and it’s fine as it’s just nice to be out. But then this gorgeous Gila woodpecker posed for me on a dead tree branch, even hopping up a little into a more photogenic location, and the smile on my face got even wider.

Spares to Share

It’s been dipping into the 40’s at night so time to bring out the hoodies, I have some I wear at home and some I wear hiking. Best to keep some spares around as I’m not the only one who likes to put them to good use.

In the Shadows, Dragons

Happy Halloween!

If this post seems a bit late, it’s later than it seems as I took it last year before Halloween, from one of the houses I passed near our rental house on Ellie’s increasingly shorter walks.

Sorry To This Banana

Boo was in a playful mood after each of my three hikes this weekend so we played until he tired, my apologies to this banana cat toy that got the thrashing of its life. He’s an introspective little fellow so it delights me to also see him play with such reckless abandon.