Oh, Reno.

So the west side of Reno burned yesterday. Our local paper has extensive coverage of the fire. It got uncomfortably close to a friend's house, and my heart goes out to all the people who lost their homes or had to evacuate, but thankfully I'm totally fine. It was 20 miles south of me, on the other side of Peavine. It's been a really hard year for the region - the worst unemployment in the nation, horrible housing market, crazy IHOP shooter, air race crash, and now a huge fire in one of the nicer parts of town.

But up here in my scrubby little neighborhood, all was well. I did not even know there was a fire til I saw it on Facebook - no smoke was visible up here. We just had to deal with the insane wind. Winds of 30-40 mph from the south, with gusts up to 60-70. (The fire was so bad because they couldn't get any aircraft up to help fight it.)

You know those shrink-wrap window film insulation things? I put those on all the windows a couple weeks ago and they worked great. The whole house was much easier to keep warm. Yesterday they blew in :( Tons of dirt came in too. I packing taped the window film back down because I am one classy broad.

Tiny little retrospective for a tiny little dog

I think I got Cersei four years ago. I know it was mid-November, but it was before I started blogging so the exact date is lost in the mists of time. Today is as good a day as any for a Tiny Puppy Photo Show!

I was living in a house in the hood with no heat. Long story, lying landlord, etc - but the point is it was very cold and unusual alliances were made in the name of staying warm. Tiny fluffy kitten Bambers (then called Curtis - he evolves into a new name at least once a year) would sleep ON tiny puppy Cersei.

Tiny puppy Cers appreciated blankets and hoodies.

She even curled up with my other dog, the phenomenally dumb Jaime.

This is possibly the one and only time Bambers ever curled up on a human in his life. He's just weird.

Anyway! Back to Cers, who is much more adorable. She was so small that I got her a belled cat collar so I could keep track of her. She'd get tired halfway through doing chores for my four horses and sit down in the barn aisle and cry. We'd go in the little house at the barn and she'd sleep on my lap while I hung out with people.


She had blue eyes!


When she outgrew the cat collar, I got her the first of her tough hunting dog safety orange collars. Cause, you know, she's a rough and tough duck dog.


Eventually she got too big to ride in my lap in the truck and was banished to the passenger seat. Life is hard!


Her first snow was fantastically exciting!


Summer of '08 I moved the horses to Como. There was a big cow pond in their 40 acre pasture and Cersei didn't even need me to throw things - she'd just swim around in happy circles in it.


This was my desktop picture for years. I think she was chasing butterflies or crickets.


G insists that she is not, in fact, a tiny little dog. He points to pictures like this, where the curled-up Cersei occupies exactly half of a loveseat, as proof. I refuse to be reasonable. She is still a tiny little dog to me.

She's such a good buddy. She's always been game to do whatever, and now that she's mature she's also game to just sleep on her couch all day. Labs are the best if you can just survive the first three years.

Carpe-ing the diem

I got enough stuff done around the house so I felt ok about going for a quick ride. Dixie was extremely skeptical of this plan.



I took Cersei and we went ripping around the flat part of the valley between the two subdivisions - maybe a 3-4 mile ride. Dixie spooked hard and even tossed in a buck (!!) at a flattened snow pole in a ditch, of all things, but after that she was a fine steed. I kept her in her nice slow gaits for most of the way, probably 7-9 mph - a good speed, but not as fast as a flying pace or a speed rack. When we got back near the house I had her walk home down a different road and she was nicely calm yet forward.

The death tinsel is getting closer and closer to her.


Remember how I said I was going to tinsel her up for Halloween, but she utterly freaked out about it? I tied the scary death tinsel to the fence where she eats dinner. The first day it was tied to the top rail starting a good 4' away from her bucket and it caused her great consternation. She snorted and stood at the end of her lead and glared at it for a good five minutes (while I calmly did other chores) before she decided it was ok to stick her nose in her bucket and eat. I left it there for a week and now I've been gradually moving it closer and tying it looser. It was flapping in the wind when we got back and I looped it over the post to give her a little break. :)

I don't know if you can tell, but from her stance, she's ready to leap backwards if it makes a move on her.

She needs a trim again but I'm pretty happy with her feet, especially her central sulcus.


Trimming is on the agenda for tomorrow and I'll get more pics.

Poor mistreated animal. I made her sweat, then I tied her up by mortal danger and didn't even let her roll for minutes and minutes.

Wham.


Straight over.


Itchy face.


So itchy it needed to be ground into the dirt.


She always sits up like a dog then stands up. Weirdo.

Coffee snobbery

It's official. I am undeniably a coffee connoisseur.

Since I went French press, I've started really paying attention to coffee. My morning cup of joe is hedonistically good. The first time I went to SF, last year, I realized that I had perhaps visited coffee nirvana - I still have not had a bad coffee drink there. But this trip really pushed it over the edge.

I went up to the Ferry Building for a Christmas present and stopped at the Blue Bottle kiosk for a macchiato. It was amazing. I'm not a very good connoisseur, because I don't have the right words to describe how amazing it was - it was bitter and rich and full-bodied and almost chocolatey, just the way I like my coffee. I could've licked the cup if I wasn't trying really hard to be cool about it.

The next day, we went to the Mission to Four Barrel. Yes, it's just as astonishingly hipster as you'd think from the website. :)

They played records. Remember those? Big black things, go round and round on a turntable?


I got a stunningly beautiful breve latte, which is my usual go-to drink. I immediately noticed it tasted different - almost thin, kind of acidic. I wasn't sure if it was the cream-to-espresso ratio or the actual espresso, so I watched the guy roasting coffee for an hour.


Then I went back for a macchiato. It, too, was too bright and acidic. G loved it - he got a macchiato too on the second go-round and he thought it was excellent. We went to late lunch with some friends, and they were also split on the Four Barrels espresso - she prefers it, he likes Blue Bottle.



I think it was just too light for me. I don't like dark roasts, in general, because it's too easy to hide bad beans by just burning the hell out of them (Starbucks, I am looking directly at you), but I'm definitely coming around to a proper espresso roast.

I can't decide if this is a terrible new development or not. I have certainly cut down my Starbucks spending because the coffee I make at home is so much better. I live like 20 miles from any independent coffeeshops that might have great macchiatos, and I live 220 miles from known amazing coffeeshops. I can't macchiato us into the poorhouse, and I get a great deal of pleasure every single day from the coffee I make at home.

Still. I'm one of those people now. An annoying coffee snob.

I'm pointing a finger at my own face

I'm back! I went to SF last week for my belated (and BEST EVER!) birthday present - They Might Be Giants at the Fillmore. I know I've got a couple of TMBG friends so the rest of yall can just skip this one. Unless you wish to improve your ears and minds and even lives by joining us. It was just a really excellent concert. I've seen them four times now and this was a great performance.

I am no longer young and hip so I'd never heard of the opening dude, Jonathan Coulton, but he put on a good act. Cute nerdy rock; I'll probably get some of his stuff.

TMBG opened with Can't Keep Johnny Down, which is definitely one of my favorite songs already.
Some dude hitting golf balls on the moon / bathroom in his pants / and he thinks he's better than me!

 They've got a full band for this tour. John F is a fine guitarist, but the new guitarist dude - omg, he did a badass instrumental Spanish acoustic guitar version of Istanbul then the whole band rocked it out again.


 Two sock puppets made an appearance on the screen behind the stage and performed Spoiler Alert. They also complained about living in a suitcase, poor sock puppets :(

 After the sock puppets were cruelly stuffed away again, the band did Fingertips live - that's the My Little Pony video I posted last week. (I remember my first CD copy of Apollo 18 had each snippet of Fingertips as a separate track, which made the whole thing just awesome to listen to on that high-tech new shuffle feature.)

 They did about half of the new album and about half of my favorite old songs. Of course they played Birdhouse! I think I killed my first set of car speakers blasting Birdhouse as loud as possible. It's a wonder I never set off the airbag pounding on the steering wheel.


And the very last song - third encore - was Dead. The world needs more songs about the French Revolution.


G asked one of his friends if he was going to the show, and the friend (you know who you are) said he'd seen TMBG. Here's the thing: these guys have been singing Birdhouse in Your Soul for twenty years, and they're not sick of it and they're not just phoning it in. All the songs had the right lyrics, but they were all totally different versions. They're still playing with the songs, not just playing them. It was excellent live music and well worth the price of the trip.

They Might Be Ponies

NEXT WEEKEND I am going to see They Might Be Giants, and of course last weekend I MLP'd my sweet horse, so this seems appropriate.

Looking ahead

I'm almost certainly through with AERC rides for the year. Lake Sonoma is too far to drive for a 25. With any luck at all I'll get to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with my husband, instead of doing Desert Gold and Death Valley Encounter. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to do both those rides, but not this year. :)

(I might still do the Turkey Trot NEDA ride - I don't think G would mind if I went off for the day and came back that night, and I'm not worried about doing LD distances on Dixie.)

But hopefully 2012 will be our triumphant and injury-free return to 50s. I really enjoyed both Rides of March and the Nevada Derby, so I'm thinking of doing the ROM 30 on March 17 and the Derby 50 on the 31st. They're both super-local: I will ride farther than I will haul. I don't think a moderately challenging (great footing, some medium-size-Nevada hills) 30 two weeks before a 50 is asking too much. I will probably do most of my winter training rides at Red Rocks or in my backyard toward Palomino Valley, so it'll all be totally familiar to Dixie. And last but not least, I want to support both of them. California friends, SASO is a nice ride, but Nevada rides go on rain or snow regardless! No last minute cancellations here.

I feel like I should quantify my goals for next year. I think if we can do a mid/back of pack 50, with a perky horse and a moderately fit to continue rider, I'll look at doing back to back 50s for the ride after that. But it's hard in the West - there are some rides where a 9 hour finish is shameful and some rides where it's pretty respectable. So I think I'm going to have to rely more heavily on how the horse feels at the end of the ride than on numerical criteria.

Thoughts on my plan? What are your plans for early 2012? I know, winter is coming, but spring will be here before we know it.