I put in a fenced back yard for the dogs but was unable to afford the cost of a back door!
If you could donate any amount it would be greatly appreciated.
Look at it this way, I could have put ads on my blog. But yuck! Instead, I have one ad to help create a back door so we won't burn up if there is a fire. Isn't that worth it?
Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!http://ow.ly/gsTX
KTUU in Anchorage is reporting that at a news conference, Sarah Palin stated she will resign as governor at the end of the month.
She's still fighting many charges of ethics violations, and I'm sure she's running from that..straight to campaigning for the White House! Ambitious as ever, but not very smart.
Alaska will be better off without her. Let's see what kind of a job Parnell will do. I am not holding my breath.
This is Buddy, a Red Lored Amazon parrot. He needed a new home and I was happy to give him one. His original name is Baby, so we are transitioning to something similar, but not so silly. He doesn't seem to mind.
Until I can take him to the vet to be sexed, we don't know if he's a male or a female, either. I'll try not to freak him out with too many changes for now, though!
As Amazon parrots go, he's the 3/4 size, as opposed to the full-sized Double Yellow-heads or Yellow-Naped Amazons. That makes him a perfect size for a little house like mine!
His former owner got him from her aunt, who, at 84, began to have troubles caring for him. Someone else gave Buddy to the aunt, so poor Buddy has has four owners in four years. Well, the bird stops here, so to speak. He'll be staying with me for a long, long time. If all goes well, I'll have to put him in my will, as he'll outlive me.
With all the changes in situation, Buddy, so I've been told, will bite. He wouldn't bite his former owner, but he bit the heck out of the kids and anyone else who tried to handle him. However I think a lot of it had to do with ignorance of bird nature, and proper bird handling. I am taking things slowly, but he seems to like me a lot. He comes right over to the edge of the cage, he takes treats from me and hasn't tried to bite at all. I was told by the former owner that I had better put a glove on if I put my hand in the cage because he'd "bite the heck out of you" but I'm not seeing that kind of behaviour. We'll see. I'll use caution but I suspect he's a lot more relaxed here than he was in his previous home.
He's so quiet for a parrot! I love the way he chitter chatters quietly to himself. He gets very excited about music, vacuum cleaners, and other noises, and of course he loves to be talked to, but he doesn't just scream for the fun of it. Not at all!
He does a great chicken cluck: buck buck buck BUck KAW!! He wolf whistles, has asked me "How are ya?" He's called me "Mommy," and I'm working on teaching him Hi and Hello. He has quite a few indistinct words and sounds. We may never know what some of them are.
I spent a hilarious fifteen minutes meowing at him, only to have him chicken cluck every single time I meowed. "Meow?" "Buck buck buck BuckKAW!" "Meow?" "buck buck buck....." "Meow?" "Buck buck....buck.....buck kaw?" Yes, he can cluck like a chicken asking a question.
At first I wondered if I would be able to sleep once he got here, because right now we have no night. It's light 24 hours a day. But he's a good little bird: he goes to sleep with the rest of us just fine, and he doesn't get up until we do, either. In fact, he's very quiet unless I'm doing something to get him going. It's pretty wonderful!
Of course Sofia wanted to eat him right away. She went into full coyote-slink mode, with that zoned look, all body parts slunk down. She hid under the table the cage is on, as if I wouldn't notice!
Ole thinks the bird is fascinating, especially because Buddy drops FOOD out of the cage! I won't need to do any clean-up in that regard because I have my own Elkhound Cleaning System. He thinks the bird is interesting, but the bird dropping food is AMAZING. Buddy is by the edge of the railing, and he dropped a peanut down to the first floor and Ole thought "OMG Peanuts falling from the sky!"
Sofia has chilled out and is listening really well. She's over her Intruder Alert and knows that Buddy is off-limits. It's only the third Bird Day, so we are doing very well here!
I feel sorry for Buddy, that he's only four and yet has had four homes. He has a band on his leg, but his former owner didn't know what was on it. I suspect he was a hand-fed baby guy, and has just gotten jaded over the years. I'm really happy to have him and want to thank the Alaska Bird Club for letting me adopt him, and thank his former owner, as well, for knowing it was time to find him a safer place. I know it must have been hard to let go of him, but she did the right thing, and I thank her!
I'll be playing at Alaskaland Gazebo on Friday, June 26, from 7—8pm. If it rains I'll be in the big, round building somewhere, probably in the Bear Gallery, but check, around and look for signs, or ask at the Fairbank Arts Association office, which is right there on the ground floor. There will be a sign at the Gazebo as to where I've gone.
I figure it will rain. It has so far, two out of three times. I was playing earlier in the afternoon for the last couple of weeks but will only play for the Gazebo Nights hour tomorrow.
It's free, so please do come by and enjoy!
It's been raining since around noon, it's 7:30 now and we've had rain almost every day for quite some time.
Are we going to need to build an ark? I'm beginning to wonder.
Last year I had a booth at the fair and lost money hand over fist because it rained almost the entire time. I had a brand new, heavy-duty tent fresh from Sam's Club (the only place in Fairbanks you can buy such a tent, gotta love small towns) and it leaked from the get-go. Argh.
So right now I am very happy and glad for two things: 1) My house has a sound roof, and I never take a thing like that for granted, and 2) I did not sign up to do the fair this year. Been there, done that!
Midnight Sun Festival, our huge Summer Solstice party held in the downtown area, was almost a bust due to rain. I had to set my tents up in the rain at 7am, and stack all my boxes of gear and stock, tables, and signs under them and just sit there until it stopped raining. It stopped around 11:30. Thank goodness! After that the weather was fine. It wasn't the really hot, hot summer weather we usually get at the festival, but it was nice, and I even got a little sunburn across my cheeks and nose.
Meanwhile it's still raining today. Mushrooms are popping up all over and the trees look droopy.
Sofia detests mud and squishy ground, so she only wants to do commando-raid trips outside. Ole doesn't care, he's fairly oblivious and easy-going. Me, I hate wearing socks! But in the rain I have to wear shoes with socks, instead of sandals, dang it. Life is rough, eh?
I have heard that this excess moisture is from La Niña, the little sister of El Niño. Instead of drying things out, the way El Niño does, it makes things wetter. We must have had this condition last year, too, considering the river that was running through my fair booth.
After living in Eugene, Oregon for almost a decade, I get anxious if it rains more than 24 hours. I believe it's a from of Post Traumatic Stress. Seriously. In Eugene, you can go for months without seeing the sun. That's a terrifying thought for me. Give me darkness split with brilliant skies, that's how winter is in Alaska. Being covered in gray clouds for months at a time is like being smothered. No thank you! I need to see the sun, daily if at all possible!
If I have to build an ark, I'm going to float South. And I"m not bringing any mosquitoes!
This is so cute and funny! Plus it runs smoothly even on my old computer with the rural connection. Be not afraid, ye of the bandwidth-challenged!
Note what the ladies are wearing as they groom these elkhounds! Yes, that's what I wear, too. Of course.
http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/food/2009/06/11/sushi-tapeworms/
Seems to me that I have heard of folks ordering a diet solution on the internet (GUARANTEED RESULTS-You WILL LOSE WEIGHT!!) and unknowingly ended up with tapeworms. The creepiness factor is enormous.
When I went to school at UC Davis, which at the time was the only vet school in California, I would sneak into vet lecture classes. One class on parasites was enough for me to say "Never again!" to raw fish. You really don't want to see the slides I saw.
Just a reminder: I'm playing at the Gazebo in Alaskaland (Pioneer Park) from 7-8 this evening. It's free, so stop by! Ole dog may be there and need a handler, for all you dog lovers. We may have to take a Dog Tricks break in the middle, you never know.
For the last two months I have gotten a very good, indeed, a frighteningly good idea of what it was like to waste away from something as simple as a cold, turned bronchitis, turned pneumonia, turned generalized bacterial infection. You read about these things in Victorian novels. People took years to die from "consumption" (tuberculosis), or got a cold from "night air" or being dunked in a river or caught in a rainstorm (Austen was fond of this for her more tragic heroines) and then took six months or more to die. They'd have good days and bad days, until they finally took to their beds and became paler and paler and finally died.
This could have, no, would have been my fate many times over if it weren't for modern antibiotics. This isn't counting how many times I would have died from asthma. I have been very sick for two months, complete with good days and bad days. My body would rally, I would almost kick it, and then WHAM it would slap me back down and there I was, in bed on my day off looking at my laundry and dishes and too wiped out to do either.
I went to the doctor in April and was given steroids and my asthma prescriptions renewed. But no antibiotics, unfortunately. This was a huge oversight on the part of my doctor, and that visit also cost me $200. I like the guy, but he missed the boat here.
What started as the flu (one has to wonder if it was swine flu, seriously) just continued and continued and continued, with me almost all better and then getting the old smack down again. It just wouldn't go away.
I did all the "natural" remedies and while they helped a bit, nothing helped me kick this crud. I was using echinacea, goldenseal, homeopathics for flu (which seemed to work the best, believe it or not),vitamins and vitamins and vitamins. And kept getting sicker.
Yesterday, after having lost my voice the day before (and now my throat hurt a lot),my eye being infected, and running a fever most of the weekend, I finally decided that enough was enough, I was on the verge of Very Bad Things and went to the emergency room. The first thing I told the doctor was, "Please, give me Zithromax!"
And he did! That very morning I ate a handful of pills and lo and behold by last night I had my voice back! Yeah, so I sound like a cross between Phyllis Diller and Froggy from Little Rascals, who cares? I can talk again! I also had a long breathing treatment that helped greatly.
Better than that, this morning I feel so much better. I actually felt good when I woke up! I'm so used to feeling terrible every morning that the difference is astounding. No more waking up in the night wheezing and coughing. I breathed all night, all the way, like normal people. Heaven! Breathing IS number one, folks. If you can't breathe you can't heal and I am sure that not being able to breathe was keeping this thing going.
I'm still coughing, I'm still sick, but I'm definitely on the mend. And best of all, I FEEL better.
It's interesting that suddenly the dogs are happier. They are so empathic. I was low, so they were low. They weren't playing much, they were mopey, and they both had allergies themselves. This morning I could see both of them being much happier and playing and being spontaneous. It was a marked difference from the last two months. Still, they get to go to the vet next, it's their turn, now that I have enough energy to make that happen. Everybody wins!
I'll be performing every Friday in June at the gazebo (near the Harding car) in Pioneer Park, (more happily known as Alaskaland). It's a one-hour show, from 7-8,outdoors, fairly informal and relaxed, and suitable for the whole family. I'll be fiddling, and may or may not have special guests. You'll just have to come and see!
Why is it that people get so anxious to get your free stuff, but then never follow through? Or rarely?
I've got something lots of people need right now: moving boxes. My Freecycle ad says that I want them gone today, and the general area in which I live. I've gotten three emails saying "I want them" and I respond with my telephone number. Call and get directions, I say.
How many phone calls have I gotten in the last hour. None. Zippo. Zero. Zilch.
This often happens even with things that are on the garage sale list. They want it, they desperately want it, they even get directions, say they are coming out and then never show up.
It's just rude. That's what I say.
