Camera Critters 64 & PetPride

Due to the lovely weather I am a very absent and lazy blogger these last weeks. I can't bring myself to go inside and sit behind my computer to write a post or even to visit your blogs. The garden takes up all my energy and attention. Living in the Netherlands, the sun isn't a daily visitor, so I'm making the most of all the sunshine sent to us down here ;-) Therefore I am combining two Sunday-memes into a Tuesday post. This is our 'goldie oldie' Phoebe. She's 12 and still going strong. Although she seems a little bored here ;-) Biggles (featuring in my previous post) is her best friend. Late in the evening, when we call the dogs for their last walk of the day, sometimes Phoebe is so fast asleep that she hasn't heard us calling her. But Biggles always goes to her to wake her up. He pushes his nose into her side until she stands up and comes with him. He doesn't want to leave the house without her. So sweet.

Two fun memes about animals: Camera Critters and PetPride.

PetPride, Biggles

This is the youngest of our three labradors, Biggles. He features a lot in my blog. Not all of the photos I post of him are decent ;-) This one is though. He just has the most wonderful real labrador face. And he is such a sweet guy. He loves to make us laugh. PetPride is a great new meme, hosted by Magiceye and Bozo.

Camera Critters 63, desensitizing horses

Yesterday I visited a 'schriktraining' at the stables where a good friend of ours keeps her horse (she is 'no. 6', the one with the big dark brown/white Tinker). 'Schrik' is the Dutch word for 'scare' or 'frighten'. These horses will never be frightened of anything anymore. They will not raise an eyebrow if a big pink hairy scary monster pops out of a dustbin. Riders, horses and audience had a great time. It certainly gave me some ideas for training our horses at home. Although I don't think Evie will have problems walking through the caution-line-curtain that scared the shit out of most horses (literally, the green wheelbarrow you can see in some of the pictures is full of it).

Camera Critters is a fun meme, hosted by Misty Dawn.

PetPride

MagicEye has started a wonderful new meme called PetPride, where we can all proudly show off our pets. As many of you know, I'm the proud housekeeper of many pets. So...I couldn't resist this meme to first of all show you this sweet photo of Naloma and Evie, when Evie was only 5 days old.

Camera Critters 62, Say aah

Camera Critters is hosted by the lovely Misty Dawn.

Click here to see more entries or to post your own.

Hard to get in, even harder to get out

(With thanks to Suldog, who also writes a company blog, for opening a little drawer in my mind that contained this story.) In a former life I used to own a small company for which I had to regularly visit big companies. We were quite successfull in what we did, which is very difficult to explain in another language, but it had something to do with exams and legislation. Anyway, that isn't what I wanted to tell you. One of my clients was a large firm that shared an office with some other firms. The architect of that building must have been on drugs, because he had the novel idea to design irregular steps to the main entrance of the building which meant that some of the steps were too wide to take in one normal stride, but too narrow to take in two. So, either you had to make two silly little strides or a normal-and-half-a-stride. And every step had a different hight. No way one could conquer these stairs in a somewhat elegant manner. Not a normal step in sight. Every step required a different approach. Aarrrrggghhh, a very stupid idea for stairs. Some clever person has not come up with a mathematical calculation for stairs for nothing! "Francois Blondel, a French architect, was the first person to establish a rule for staircase design. In 1675, while working for the Royal Academy of Architecture, Blondel devised the following formula: twice the riser height plus the tread depth equals 24 inches (25.5 in today's inches)." See or the full text, very informative and clearly ignored by the stupid architect:http://www.classzone.com/books/algebra_1/page_build.cfm?content=links_app2_ch3&ch=3 Also, the building had parking spaces in front of it and a two-storey parking garage stuck to the side. The parking places in front were very narrow. I drove a big car - well, one has to keep up appearances as the owner of a company does one not? - and earlier visits to that firm had taught me that parking in these narrow spaces wasn't a problem, but getting in and out of the car subsequently was. One unfortunate day therefore I opted to park my car in the garage. As I had parked it near the entrance I walked out and hop-skipped up the stupid stairs to the main entrance. The receptionist told me that I was expected at the top floor of the building. So I went up, had my meetings, which took all of that afternoon until way after everybody else in the building had already left, except for the receptionist and the people I had the last meeting with, and then went down, said goodbye to the receptionist and noticed there was a door that had a sign 'parking garage' on it. I went through that door. The other people all left through the front entrance of the building. The door to the parking garage closed behind me. There were no cars left in the parking garage. Not even mine. I frowned. Had someone stolen my car? I couldn't believe that. To get onto the grounds of the building you had to pass a gate where you had to tell your name and your measurements , which always struck me as kind of weird (just a joke, you did not have to state your measurements, but they wanted to know almost everything else about you before you were allowed to pass the gates). So not stolen then. Suddenly it dawned on me that I had to be on the wrong floor. My car was parked on the floor below. So I turned around and went back to the door. The door that wouldn't open. It could only be opened by using a pass. A pass that I did not have. Shoot! Think quick, I encouraged myself. The ramp! I could just walk down the ramp that led to the lower floor of the garage. No problem. I could get my car and just drive home. No reason to panic! So I walked to were the ramp was. Only to be encountered by a huge gate, all bars, that closed off the ramp. To be opened by using the same pass that you could use to open the door to the building. The pass I did not have. Shoot again! There I was. All alone in a parking garage. I ran back to the door that had closed after me and looked through the little window if I could see anyone. No one there. The entrance hall was empty. The receptionist had gone. I was the only one left in the entire building. I had my mobile phone, so could I phone the firebrigade to let me out? Perhaps I could. But first I phoned hubs. 'I will be late tonight. I'm locked in this building and I have no clue how to get out.' Hubs understood my problem. But since he was about 200 kilometers away, at home, he couldn't really help me. 'I will keep you posted', I said. Then I tried to call the reception desk. I had the phone number of the company I had just visited stored in my mobile. Answering machine and it didn't mention another number to call outside office hours. I looked through the window of the door again, one last attempt to see if perhaps someone was there before I would call the fire brigade. And there actually was someone in the entrance hall. Putting on her coat, ready to leave the building. I screamed and banged my fists against the door. She lifted her head. I banged and screamed even louder. She turned around and saw me through the little window of the door. She came to my rescue and opened the door to let me out. I told her why I was there and she accompanied me down the stairs to the floor below where she kindly used her pass to let me drive out of the garage. I called hubs to let him know that I was on my way home. Actually, on another occasion I had a very similar but different experience in the same building. I will save that story for later. I hated going there. First you had to overcome all sorts of hurdles to get into the stupid building and then they wouldn't let you go again. HATED IT! On a happier note: The lovely Cece, a.k.a. WVU Chick, loves my blog. So she gave me this award. It's the second time I've received it. Yippee! I will pass it on to... Jay from thedeppeffect Simply because I love her blog and she regularly lets my good friend Data appear in her posts. I never cared that much about Data, until she pointed out that the actor who plays him, Brent Spiner, is also a singer and referred to this site. Please go there and listen to song no. 8 to know why Data and I have a special bond. He knows things about me that only very few people know! I'm blushing while I write this. And laughing out loud. (You could also go here to see the actual songtext and listen to the music. I mean: how does he know that?)

ABC Wednesday, U is for Unwrapping

I find it fascinating to see how the flowers of Nectaroscordum siculum bulgaricum Unfold. Most of the pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them (please do and be stunned ;-)). Not sure why it doesn't work with all of them. Blogger works in mysterious ways.

ABC Wednesday is hosted by Mrs. Nesbitt. Visit her for more entries, or join in the fun and post your own.

HiFi, great Scottish music, an award and balls for beagles

Fi from Four Paws and Whiskers posted the video below on her blog. People who post things like that deserve some space in my blogspot because they make me cry with laughter, so please visit her and see the other hilarious musicvideos she posted. They need a warning though, don't drink or eat while watching. You might need a Heimlich manoeuvre. She also gave me an award:

Yippee! I will pass this award on to... T at It Matters To Me, for being a wonderful person who loves her animals. She rescues ferals and writes about them with so much love and passion that I just love her blog.

And the next photo is just for the Dughallmor Beagle bunch. They just love balls. The rest of you: please look away...

...NOW:

Camera Critters 61, rear view

Is it something I said?

Click for more Camera Critters here, the site of our lovely host Misty Dawn.

Caution line, so many different uses

Look at that big grassfilled belly of Naloma. If we didn't know any better, she could be pregnant again. But don't mom and daughter look gorgeous? We've noticed that Evie's colour is changing. Her legs are getting almost black and in other places, for instance her head, a darker brown appears. Similar to Naloma's colour. Exciting. Perhaps she will not be a grey after all.

And now Evie and her little friend Escobar (I know, our friends have a strange sense of humour) will demonstrate the different uses of caution line.

Escobar is showing how handy it is if you have an itchy nose, while Evie is leaning into it to show how strong and stretchy caution line is.

Caution line is also very useful to practice your 'going under something'-skills. As you can see, Evie has not yet mastered it completely. In these exercises caution line's stretchyness is very much appreciated.

And you can not only rub your bottom against it (as described in the 'poledancing foal post').

We asked Evie if she wanted to demonstrate the bottomrub again, just for the photo, but she refused. We even promised her money for a little poledance, but she said that she has too much class. Ha!