Bottle

Bottle
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Photogamer for today: Take a picture of a bottle. This is one of my birthday presents. Roland got me a couple colors of nail polish including this one called "Teal the Cows Come Home."

Sound

Sound
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Photogamer for Sunday: Take a picture of sound

Hat

Hat
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Photogamer for last Friday: Take a picture of a hat.

Pincushion

Bleys is officially back in action! We got a pass today to go back to regular activity after his appointment this morning. We are going to do more warming up before running and at least for a while we will be jumping only the lower jump heights. But all in all he should be mended. We are going back in 3 weeks for a checkup, but other than that we are all systems go. Bleys will be delighted since he is getting pretty antsy sitting around the apartment so much.

While we were at our appointment I took a couple of pictures of my favorite pincushion.

Cloud

Cloud
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Photogamer: Take a picture of a cloud. Lucky for me I could take this from my balcony.

Power

Power
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Photogamer today is power. If you look in the background to the right you will find a blurry dog nosed shaped object. Bleys just had to be involved!

Side by Side

Photogamer yesterday was side by side. I was pretty busy all day yesterday with a sewing project for etsy so I took this one this morning. On the left is a regular sized tennis ball, which is what we started with. But Bleys has trouble getting his mouth around it. Next we went to some mini tennis balls, and finally to the teeny tiny tennis ball at the end.

Revolution

Revolution
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Yesterday there still weren't any challenges from photogamer, so another commenter suggested 'revolution.' I found this one to be difficult.

Red/Green

Photogamer gave us another challenge today! Take a picture of Red/Green. I chose some of my red thread, both regular and embroidery thread with a few bobbins thrown in against the green of the astro turf a previous resident installed on our balcony.

Playing

Recently, my Dad sent me one of his old cameras to play with for a while. It has a lot more features than my current camera, so I was out on the porch today trying to figure out how to change some settings (alas an instruction manual was not included in this loan). Since they were convenient and don't have a tendency to move around a lot I took some pictures of my container plants. This is a nice little Gloxinia bud with some caladium leaves next to it.

Corner

Corner
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Photogamer hasn't been providing new prompts lately but someone on the discussion section posted one today. Take a picture of a corner.

Demo

This one was taken a while ago, but I seem to have forgotten to upload it. It was taken by one of the other people on the flyball team at the warm-up for the demo at Happy Tails Park. Bleys didn't actually get to run in the demo because I was doing the talking, but he did get to warm up before hand. Look at those ear flap! This was the day that he tripped over his ear hair a bit and I decided to trim them. I miss those long ears though.

Ret to go

The other day Bleys decided that he wanted to go to work with Roland. After getting ready in the morning he walked into the living room to find this, Bleys was totally already ready already. He was all up in his travel crate waiting to be whisked away to the land of eternal college-girls-who-think
-he-is-adorable-and-aren't-in-a-place-where-they-can-have-
pets-of-their-own. Puppy heaven.

Message

Apparently the weather has been busy in Colorado. Janice sent me some pictures around her house of all the snow they got. My favorite was this one.

In other news Bleys is doing a little better. I took him to a different vet yesterday on the recommendation of some of my fellow dog people down here. One of them is a lady who does pet therapy with me at the Renfrew center, and the other two are on the flyball team. They all recommended this lady separately which made me take notice. She specializes in rehabilitation and recovery and I was hoping that she could tell me more than give him drugs and wait. She was really nice and reminded me quite a bit of Doc. She actually did some acupuncture which was kind of neat to see. I was ready to be all skeptical of the results but when we came home Bleys totally slept like a rock. He hasn't been sleeping very well since Monday, getting up a lot and re-situating himself. So it was nice to see him actually get some real sleep.

Then today he is obviously feeling much better. Now we are going to have to keep him from being too active. He doesn't understand that I would rather put him on the couch than him jump up there, but we are working on it. I'm just glad that he seems to be able to wag his tail again.

Dumps

Bleys isn't doing very well. Yesterday morning he just wasn't acting himself. He wasn't all excited about getting up in the morning and not really very keen on eating (major red flag for him). I decided to give it a day to see if it was just a little stomach upset after what I'm sure was a super fun weekend hanging out with his girl Jubilee. However this morning he wasn't any better and eschewed breakfast all together. So it was off to the vet for us. After narrowing it down a bit we went through a series of x-rays. Although they were not conclusive the vet thinks Bleys is having trouble with his back, probably one of the thoracic discs.

I'm trying to hang on to the upside, which is that he doesn't need surgery. That would be bad because of his heart murmur (which was not evident today, but the x-ray did show a slightly enlarged heart). The down side is that he is on restricted movement. No stairs (oh wait, we live on the third floor), preventing him from jumping on and off the couch/bed, and no flyball. People can make fun of me for living through my dog, but it's the flyball that makes me the saddest at the moment. I really enjoy it and he has such a fun time with all the other dogs and people.

Ever wondered?

Wild flower 1.jpg
Originally uploaded by annethelibrarian

What I looked like when I was younger? Well here is your chance to find out. After my recent snow shoeing trip up in Colorado, my parents dug out some old slides of our family hiking the same trail way back when. Anne uploaded them to her flickr, for everyone to peruse. Here is one of me with a look that says: "Did you take the picture yet?"

Unusual

Unusual
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Today's photogamer was to take a picture of something unusual. I chose this little candle snuffer my Mom gave me.

Photo

Photo
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Photogamer: take a photo of a photo. I've been trying to find some ballroom dance classes with not much success. I had a really good time dancing at my wedding (and Roland was a really good sport about humoring me) and I would really like to learn more. Most of the places I've found mostly do private lessons like Arthur Murray, and I totally understand that they way they do things is a really good way to learn. But I can't really see spending that much and would settle for a less efficient class style if it cost a more reasonable amount.

Triangle

Triangle
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Photogamer: Take a picture of a triangle. I initially wanted to take a picture of the main roof, but it was really hard to get far enough away to get the triangle-ness of it without also adding in obstructions (trees) that hid said triangles. So instead I took this one of a meter room attached to one of the buildings here.

Nose

Nose
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

Photogamer: take a picture of a nose. Bleys' nose is way cuter than mine, and much easier to take a picture of.

Where a geek can be a geek.

Roland and I got back from Vegas late on Sunday. It was a great trip and we had a really good time. Jason was already there for a work class thingy, which he apparently passed with a 93% on the certification test. Go Jason. I spent some time playing poker, while Roland and Jason spend a lot of time playing poker. I ended up playing for about 7 hours total I think, and came out even, so that was good. Roland and Jason ended up in the money for at least one tournament each so that was nice for them (I only play limit so no tournaments for me). Plus they had a side bet going on one tournament that whoever got pushed out first had to buy me a caramel apple. This was pretty much a win, win for me so I didn't really mind.

We saw the Cirque du Soleil show O, which was incredible, and walked around seeing the sights. There are a few more pictures over at if you are interested. One of my favorite things was going to the Star Trek Experience and eating at Quark's Bar. We drank some quite a few nifty drinks served in a bowl with dry ice in it for fun smoking effect and chatted with a Klingon for a while. My inner nerd was pleased.

Three

Three
Originally uploaded by Sirelroka

I was out of town until yesterday so I missed some photogamer days, but today was to take a picture of three. I wasn't sure what to take a picture of, but then when I was cooking dinner and ended up with three extra cloves. Voila!