Zac Brown Band

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I love these guys! I don't think this is one of their best songs, but it's one that everyone knows and was easy to find. This band is great to work out to! I've been going to the gym about five times a week, I'm walking/running two miles, and starting to work on my arm to try to work through the atrophy from the surgery. I'd love to have a waist by summer. I am trying to push myself more and more. The first night I went to the gym ... I don't remember if it was late December or early January or something ... I did my first two miles in about 43 minutes. Tonight I did it in 29:20. When I saw that I got it legitimately under 30:00, I pointed at the machine and louder than I realized said: "Ha! Take that!" The guy next to me laughed. Apparently, he also heard me say ... at some point ... "Ok fatty, you can do this," just before I went into my final jog! How embarrassing!

Here's my favorite song from the album: "Where the Boat Leaves From" This one gets my ass moving.



The gym. What a weird place. Tonight I saw come chick sitting on the elliptical (or however you spell the name of that stupid machine) TALKING ON THE PHONE! What the hell? Different strokes, I guess.

There are some women whose bodies I thought only existed in magazines and calendars. Makes me sick. No matter how much I work out, I'll never look like that. They're like 20. Gravity. Gravity hasn't taken hold of them yet. I am having a war with gravity right now. I see how my face has just ... fallen! It has now taken on a whole new shape and my chin rolls are going to turn into chicken neck by next week. Ack!

There are people there that can lift an exorbitant amount of weight. I don't care if I can ever do that.

There are people there that sweat more in 1/2 hour than I pee in a week.

There's one guy there that I swear is a machine. He runs on the treadmill at a very high speed and never faulters. Just keeps going and going and going. It kills me. But it also motivates me. When I see him there, I try to find a machine where I can see him in my peripheral vision. Is that creepy? Probably. Oh well. Whatever it takes to keep my ass moving.

I was going to swim tonight, but I didn't feel up to it after my two-mile jaunt. I've jumped in the pool once, and Mr. Swimmer showed up shortly thereafter. He did like 5 laps freestyle. Then did two laps in a backstroke. Then two laps in a beautiful butterfly stroke. I did 1/2 a lap and felt like I was going to have a stroke. So I stopped. So I hope to be able to do a lap by ... June.

Going to the gym late at night has now gotten me into this vicious cycle. I love the fact that there are very few people there by the time I get there (normally around 9:00 or 9:30 p.m.), I normally don't get home until about 10:30 p.m. ... then I take 1/2 of a melatonin and pass out -- only to get up at 5:30 and start all over again.

But it's becoming routine. If nothing else, I like the way I feel. And my lungs ... after smoking for 20 years ... are starting to work. I quit smoking in June of 2006, so I have almost 3 years. 7 more years and I'll have full function of my lungs back ... or whatever they say.

Melatonin is kicking in and the typos are starting to get carried away. Off to bed.

Happy tails!
Jodi

A "very very very special dog"

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/01/28/parker.fl.cloned.puppy.wpbf

 

I'm sure those of you that know me are just completely shocked that I'm horrified.  Yeah ... I know.

 

Cloning.  Dogs, no less.  When I first heard about cloning dogs, I thought to myself, "Ok ... that could be useful.  You know ... save a breed ... or preserve a particularly exceptional working dog's lines ... or to research (somehow) genetic disorders ... but surely no one would do this irresponsibly.  No one."

How naive.

 

Ed and Nina Otto apparently had nothing better to do with their money.  $155,000.00. 

 

"Lancelot Encore" is the dog's name - a clone of their former dog.

 

Despite the title of the video being "Couple Clones Pet Dog," I was still giving this whole thing the benefit of the doubt, and thought for sure there was a perfectly good explanation as to why anyone would dump that kind of money into cloning a dog.

 

Maybe it's an exotic breed. 

 

Nina Otto appears to be more "exotic" than the dog does.  The dog is a standard yellow Lab, of all things.  Lord knows we don't have enough of THOSE in the world.

 

Perhaps the dog died while saving their son or something.  Nope.  These pups gigantic paws won't even need to do much to fill the pawprints of the original "Lancelot"  ... for Lancelot was no Lassie-lot, except to Ed and his ... um ... lovely bride.

 

"It wouldn't hurt to have his DNA frozen," says Nina, through her 150 lbs. of makeup that probably cost more than my truck.

 

Lancelot's DNA was put into a "Korean dog," and what the Ottos got back was ... shockingly ... a yellow Lab!  Imagine that!

 

"He looks like him," boasts Ms. Otto.

 

Um, ya think?  You mean he looks like your previous "original" yellow Lab?  Black nose and all?

 

WOW!

 

Hey Nina, do you have any idea if Mr. Sum Dum Fuk just banked $154,000 of your money, and took the remainder and paid someone to ship you a Lancelot Jr.?  As far as I am concerned, it would serve your ass right. 

 

But alas, that's probably not what happened, and Mr. Fuk is probably now making a fortune cloning other useless pets such as "Encore" ... and they probably have equally er, um, creative names too, i.e. "Ditto," "Xerox," "Copy," etc.

 

So what will happen with Encore now?  Will he get the snip?  Oh probably not.  Do I see many more Encores running around?  Absolutely!  I can't wait to see how much his puppies will be going for!  I mean, after all, they will have a very expensive daddy.

 

"We've given a lot more to the Humane Society than we've spent on this ... project." 

 

This .... ladies and gentlemen ... is Mr. Otto's justification.  Yes, the same Mr. Otto that married the caked-on-brain-surgeon sitting next to him. 

 

"He was a very, very, very special dog to us."  Not just "special" ... very very very special!  OH!  Now I get it!  Yes, must clone THAT one!  Whew!  So glad you did! 

 

Jackass.

 

Ironically, the video that came up for me right after watching that one was ... this one:  http://www.cnn.com/video/?JSONLINK=/video/us/2009/01/28/kendrick.oh.frozen.puppy.woio

 

Kind of puts the whole damn thing in perspective, doesn't it?

 

I hate people sometimes.

 

Feel free to comment.  I hope a lot of people see this post.

 

Tails,

Jodi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Martha Stewart I'm Not

Well, I came home from work, and instead of the chicken Caesar salad I was going to make, my son and I ordered Chinese food and sat around chatting. I also made some more chocolates, and found some time in between to hit the gym. Some day I am going to blog about my take on the gym, but tonight, I'm a bit tired.

Well, I stopped by the store on the way home and picked up a couple of things. Peanuts was one ... so I could make some peanut clusters. Gee, does the intricate "design" look familiar?



And I also bought some pretzels to cover also. Despite the fact that these are certainly not the prettiest things on the planet, I doubt anyone will be complaining about pretzels doused in three different types of chocolate.



Tomorrow night I had planned on baking some cookies, but being that it's midnight now, I doubt it will happen. Maybe Wednesday or something.

Happy tails,
Jodi

Weekend Blahs

Well, Friday night ... I didn't do much of anything. Cooked some chicken, rice, corn, etc. and pigged out.

Saturday morning, I went to the gym, came home, took a shower, and headed over to Colleen's to help her pack. Met up with Katy, Jaenne, Mary, Ellie and Ann and we all got it done in a few hours. Katy, Jaenne and I went for a couple of beers at the Overland Bar afterwards. Boy ... I've never had such an expensive Corona in my life. Won't be going back there any time soon. Came home, heated up some leftovers, and went to bed early. How exciting, eh?

Sunday morning, got up, went to the gym, did some laundry, cleaned the kitchen, made some tuna for lunch, made some salsa to snack on during the week, and made some chocolates for ... well, I thought I was making them for the trial in February, but that's a ways off. So I'll take them to work with me. That way, at least, they are not sitting around here. Nothing exciting, but here they are. It's nice to get back into practice. I'd like to get some more molds.





So hopefully I'll get a little more creative by the time the trial rolls around. LMAO!

Happy tails,
Jodi

10,000

Wow! 10,000 hits. Holy cow!

Happy tails,
Jodi

A Very Funny Blog

I don't have much time to post at the moment, but my sides hurt from laughing, so I had to mention this.

If you haven't already started following Katy's blog, you need to. Daily. This is some funny shit!

Eye Herd Ewe

Enjoy!

Jodi

PayPal Puppies!

Does that title just turn your stomach? It does mine.

What is with people? It's disgusting how puppies are being advertised on websites nowadays as casually as a pair of pantyhose. You pick your color and size and boom! You can pay for your puppy via PayPal. The button is right there on the website! How convenient!

Puppymills. Gotta love 'em ... cause we can't blow them up.

Tails,
Jodi

Flying by the seat of my pants ...

I got off from work today, stopped by Michael's and picked up some heart chocolate molds. I hope I can make some chocolates for the Red Top trial in February. We'll see how ambitious I am when the time comes.

It was still light out when I got home, so I worked Echo for a bit before the sun went down. I love that it's staying light later.

She is maturing very nicely, and is really starting to understand the ranch part of stuff. Sometimes she gets stuck a bit with her eye, but nothing that maturity won't fix.

We sorted off the less pregnant ewes and a few lambs and worked in Russ' pasture. Her outruns are looking good. She's taking her down at the top now. I was starting to work on flanking her on the fetch. Naturally, if she takes her flank on the fly, it's much tighter than if I lay her down or check her up first. It's still ugly all the way around. But ... I was able to flank her to one side or the other, and then pull her towards me and send her all the way around. Instead of circles around the sheep, picture very ugly squiggly, but closed, shapes.

I wonder what the people in the airplane overhead were thinking.



I am so bad at this, at one point, I made her so unsure of which way to go that when I sent her on an outrun to go pick the sheep up again, she wasn't sure, and was reluctant to go. So I had to step back ... it was obvious I was putting too much on her and expecting too much out of her.

We re-grouped and continued working on the same thing a bit and it was obvious she was getting it. The shapes started to turn into circles -- albeit tight ones -- and at one point, I was able to send her on an outrun, lift, fetch and then I flanked her around 3/4 of the way and sent her on a crossdrive. I stopped there.



Happy tails,
Jodi

Outside to Inside Transition and Some Photos

Went out to Dianne's today with Katy. Worked Echo for a bit, although I have no idea what I'm doing, but I can tell you, trying to do what I was trying to do on dog broke sheep wasn't helping.

For the sake of conversation, let's call an "outside" flank the area from 9:00 to 3:00 (via noon), and an "inside" flank the area from 3:00 to 9:00 (via 6:00). We have both of those. What we don't have is the flank between 12:00 and 6:00. That transition. So I sent her from my side (at 6:00) on a large come bye flank, and the minute the sheep see her, they start booking ass towards me. By the time she swings around to 3:00 and I want to call her to me, the sheep are at my feet. So essentially, I was running backwards and calling her in. She came in a couple of times and I was able to continue flanking her around on the come bye side for another pass. But I know there is a better way of doing this. I did it on the away side also, with about the same measure of success -- and while it was all very tight, she still took it and went. I imagine this is the start of it. So just another thing to add to the long list of stuff to work on. But if we can get these flanks working all the way around, perhaps I can save us from another "M" cross drive and can fix it before it happens.

Patrick was there today with a few of his pups, so I took some photos.

Here's Java:


And Pi ...


Teal ...


Andi ...


And Bella ...


I took some more pics of Peg's pups for Dianne ... you can find them on her site HERE. They have their eyes open and starting to look more like puppies and less like guinea pigs. Give them another couple of weeks and we won't be able to catch them!

Happy tails,
Jodi

Colleen's Going Away Party

This still isn't really real to me yet.

Anyway, we all met at Janie's house to work dogs and sit around and bullshit. And that's exactly what we did.

Janie told me a couple of days ago that when she got home, she had eight lambs on the ground -- when there were none that morning. So first up, we went and played with the lambies.

Here's the whole group of them:

Some had white legs ... some had one black, one white ...



Some had two black legs ...


Some had perfect markings ...


Some did not. (I'm going to steal this little girl!)




Is there anything cuter?


A true Bo Peep


Here's Colleen ...


... and Jaenne ...


... Janie ...


... Kirk ...


... and Katy!



The beauty of being the photographer and the blogger is ... photos of me don't land on here.

We took the dogs for a leisurely run in the canal. He's Janie's puppy Guy. He is such a goofball and cuter than all getout.


Here's Guy again.


Here's Reena giving me a dirty look. The photo is not in focus. No photo I have of her is ever in focus. I am beyond frustrated. I took a ton of photos of her yesterday, and not one ... not one ... came out in focus. I don't think she's really a dog. ;-)


L to R: Janie, Katy, Jaenne, Colleen


Scout!


Mo ... what are you lookin' at?


Then the alcohol started flowing. I didn't drink because I don't drink nearly as much as any of these other people. It's a rare occasion when I'll crack a beer. These guys don't care if they're even drinking their own beer, and sometimes just all drink out of the same one. See?

Here's Colleen ...


and Katy ...


and Jaenne ... (gotta watch this one ... she's a real tipper, if you know what I mean...)


Colleen ... she was really goin' at it ...


Even Janie was hittin' the bottle.


See this? They were all doing it.


Not me, though. I don't drink. Much. Or very often. And never on Saturday at a going away party. Nor on Sunday at herding lessons. Or Monday after work. And I don't go to the bars during the week. Nope. And Friday night ... that's doG's night. I don't drink then, either. Not me.

I, instead, went out and worked Echo. First, we had to move all the momma ewes with their babies into the 125' arena. I wasn't quite sure what Echo would do around newborn lambs as she hasn't had the opportunity yet. She was amazing. Different than Zip (Zip pretends he doesn't see them), she looked right at them and knew they were there, but there was never a time when I felt she would do anything about it, so I never said a word to her and just let her do her thing. She focused on the ewes, and seemed to understand that moving the ewe was all she needed to do. They would stomp at her, and she would change her body pressure to let them know that it's alright, they can have a little room, but they will do what she wants them to do. They would turn and go. The lambs would come right up to Echo nose to nose (I was far too amazed watching her that I forgot to get pics), and she was just incredible. So after they were all safely in the other arena, we went into the duck arena and took the two very pregnant ewes from there into the barn area where the lambs just were. Easy peezy. I think we might have fun at the ranch trial in Washington. Seems like Ms. Echo is ready for some pen work. There was no tension. Just quiet, calm confidence.

So it was time to work the ducks.


She took every direction I gave her.


Stayed nicely off the ducks.


Kept control of everyone.




Flanked beautifully.


And looked gorgeous to boot!


Just like when she was a puppy ...





And here's Kip:


And Mo:






And Scout!






I think it's safe to say a good time was had by all.

Colleen, we're going to miss you like crazy! I'm not going to sit here and tell you how much I hope you enjoy your new place, and how I wish you luck in your new job and all that, because I won't need to. I'll probably be up there "visiting" before you know it! LOL

Happy tails,
Jodi