Irrelevant, random distractions from homework

I'm pregnant!




Wait for it...

Wait for it...

APRIL FOOLS!
I do this to Tim every April Fools Day, and he has never once fallen for it. I figure my mom might poop a cat, so I thought I'd give it a try. Then again, she knows me pretty well so she probably won't fall for it either. Now, if I were to say I just adopted 3 puppies, she'd probably believe that (because I probably WILL do that sooner than later!).

Speaking of puppies, I'm supposed to be busy doing homework but I feel like I accomplished a lot today so far, so I was inspired by Tara's facebook selection of her favorite dogs... So I started looking at Wikipedia dog breeds. Apparently, besides German Shepherds (the best dog in the world), I have a thing for rare northern breeds. So this is my puppy "wish list"; if nothing else, learn a little bit about some neat dogs that I had never heard of before. When I make it to Alaska some day and raise my own sled dogs, this might be much more relevant!

The Canadian Inuit Dog (Wikipedia): Like a malamute on 'roids
Here's a Canadian Breeder's website for them

Tamaskan Dog: Another sled dog, this one is from Finlad... looks wolfy but isn't a wolf

Czechoslovakian Wolfdog: shepherd with eurasian wolf generations ago

Utonagan: a mix of husky, german shepherd and malamute, what bliss! plus it looks like a wolf, but isn't a wolf. ;) sled-dog potential perhaps?



And the Northern Inuit Dog (different from the Canadian one): another husky, malamute, gsd mix... though in my quick search there is a debate about Inuit sled dogs vs hybrids just using the term inuit... oh well I like the pictures anyway. To be researched another day...

And of course, since the internet is full of random stuff... Tell me, have you ever heard of a breed of cat called a CHEETOH?! Pretty groovy looking. Too bad I don't have a good working relationship with felines (ACHOO)... I think cats know I'm allergic and they go out of their way to be friendly just to make me sneeze!

What else have I been up to? I did the "quinzhee or die" snow cave trip with my wilderness class about a month ago; I went to Mt. Rainier and Olympic National Parks a week later to study volcanoes, natural disasters and such; it was so much fun, pretty much non-stop learning and talking and traveling every day. Took me a while to make up for lost sleep from traveling and school work and being sick. Finally feeling pretty good though!

Also was psyched that my lovely doctor friend Kim, who sadly moved to Portland for her residency a year ago, was in town for a couple weeks! I got to meet her boyfriend, drink margaritas and watch basketball, and then hit up some delightful March powder at Breckenridge. She's my original telemark ski inspiration and her advice was soooo helpful, I'm mad at her for going home. ;) Just kidding (sortof)! The good news is she can come out to Colorado for a month for her residency next February! Yay! She wants me to come out to Portland for her 30th birthday to run a 1/2 marathon, but the furthest I've ever run is 7 miles... and overtraining recently gave me a mild case of plantar fascitis! We shall see, I have until June...

I started my unpaid wildlife rehabilitation internship a couple weeks ago. The baby squirrels are starting to arrive, but so far I've tended to the needs of some rather cranky waterfowl. The house finch is cute and scared to death, but I love giving him his little bowl of fresh fruit. He loves grapes! The pigeon got a new roommate, a dove... Pretty easy to deal with them. We have 2 Canada geese, and we have an uneasy cooperative relationship right now. As long as I feed them first, then leave them alone for a while before I come back to do any cleaning, they seem to almost tolerate my intrusion. Otherwise it's a lot of hissing. The real bastard is the swan! It's apparently a domestic swan and it's HUGE. I swear its head is up to my chest or higher! And he is NOT happy to see us. I took on the task of getting way back into his cage and washing it out with the hose; somehow, I made it out alive and he didn't even freak out on me. Stress kills wildlife pretty easily so it's very important to cause as little stress as possible... but what about me?! Having a bird that big hissing and coming after me stresses ME out! ;)

Tim and I went skiing in the Park last weekend after that awesome dump of snow refreshed the crusty, melting leftovers. We went up from Bear Lake Road towards Flattop Mountain, then took a right and followed the trail towards Odessa. Somebody put in an aweful trail that made NO sense, so we went a bit out of our way... eventually went past the Banana Bowl to the Drift and guess what, the wind was HORRIBLE. It LITERALLY knocked both myself AND Tim (big strong burly Tim!) over! I could barely breathe, asthma does NOT like cold air being violently forced into my lungs. I can't even guess how windy it was, probably some of those gusts at least 60+ mph. On top of that I'm not that great on skis; by the time I got to the Drift, between the wind and fatigue, there was no way I was gonna get any tele turns in. I was pretty cranky at that point. We turned around and our trip took about 4 hours total... literally 3 hours 40 minutes to get there, 20 minutes to get back!! I was pretty damned scared of how steep and through the trees it was on the trail we blazed ourselves, but I made it out ok and had fun. Gotta keep hitting the gym so I can go out a few more times for spring skiing in the backcountry!

Oh yeah, and Tim is becoming a conspiracy theorist. :P I despise some of these "reporters" that he has shown me, just so happens they are conservatives but even any liberal that is as derogatory or disrespectful just plain pisses me off. The loudmouth type, YELL first ask questions later type... think radio talk show. I wish I could remember this one arsch's name, but then again I don't want to promote him. The one thing I will admit is that the whole Sept 11th attack is mighty suspicious.... We watched this Architects and Engineers for 9-11 DVD and I'm sold, it sure as hell looks like those buildings were demolished via explosives INSIDE the buildings. Don't jump down my throat if you disagree.... watch the DVD. What really got me is that 3rd building that fell... the one that the planes did NOT hit... It sure as hell looks just like those videos of imploding old casinos in Las Vegas! What's up with that?!

He's also getting into this "New World Order" thing about Obama wanting to take over the world or something. I don't know much about it but I'm not sold on that. We also went and saw that Nicholas Cage movie, "Knowing"... I actually really enjoyed it. ;) You know they say the world is going to end in 2012 right? I figure, why freak out about it. If the Apocalypse comes, or if a big solar storm destroys Earth, there's not much I can do about it. So I have a lot of shit to do in the next 3 years. Then again, didn't some other prophecy say the world would end in 2018? Besides the naysayers saying the world would end in 1999, 2000, 2003, 2009... Ha ha. Maybe I'll just pretend it will end in 2015, a nice comprimise. Guess I got a lot of traveling to do between then and now, "just in case". Of course, my plan is to move up to Alaska and homestead. You know, grow my own food and gotta have chickens of course. This part I'm not kidding about. To live a self sufficient life, solar power and off the grid... Yeah, that's my dream.

Everybody is freaking out about the government taking over the car companies.... really, is socialism that bad? Canadians seem to enjoy it. ;)

That's what's floating around in my head for now.