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Category Archives: adventuretimes!

Yaris’ first snow

I took my random day off again in January again.  Last year, I went to the beach with the dogs.  One of the reasons I tend to take my random day off in January is that I’ve really wanted to take the dogs up to the mountains to see their reaction to their first time seeing snow.  It’s just…never worked out.  Either it was too hot and there was no snow, or no snow when I happened to be able to take a day off, or my day off had to be dedicated to something else other than taking the dogs somewhere fun.  Anyway, this year it finally all worked out.

I ended up taking the dogs up to Big Bear because 1) I wanted to see how they’d react to snow as neither Yaris nor Horse have seen snow before and 2) I wanted to drive mountain roads.  I’ve always enjoyed driving mountain roads.  And having a Subaru, the likelihood of me needing to drive with chains is much lower.  Driving with chains isn’t nearly as fun.  It’s loud and if you don’t want to melt your tires, it’s slow.

So, here’s Yaris modeling in the snow.  Because she thinks she’s a model.

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What a butt.  But anyway, it’s another one of those photos of Yaris that I find soothing and calming.  I do find it funny how icicles were forming on her belly fur (I dried her off before we headed back down the mountain so she wouldn’t have a soggy belly).

As for her reaction, there wasn’t much of one.  I kept pointing at snow piles and she was all, “yes, it’s white over there and it makes my paws cold.”  It was hard to find an area where I could let her off leash and play in a big pile of snow though.  The picnic area I had intended to go to was too full with families with small children.  The pile she’s on here is actually just edge portion of a giant mound a snow plow pushed to the side of the parking lot.  After I kept pointing at it, she finally went up a few times to sniff around.  But she didn’t seem to really care that there was snow on the ground.

Horse didn’t care much for the snow either.  He just made a lot of yellow snow.  Because he’s a horse.  Also, he’s not a very good model, so I don’t have any pictures of him modeling in the snow.  Here’s one of him walking with Yaris downtown though.

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I think the dogs had fun.  Horse was exhausted by the time we left.  He slept all the way home.  Lazy.

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Seven years bad luck

Early last week, I broke a mirror.

Well, I did not personally go over to the mirror and then punch it (that’s a thing, right?). I was very calmly minding my own business when I heard this loud crash in the hallway. Yaris did not appreciate this loud crash. She let me know immediately that she did not appreciate this loud crash in the hallway. Her hallways are supposed to be crash-free.

Anyway, when I went over there to look, I saw that the mirror that hangs off my old bedroom door finally grew tired of hanging and decided to fall off the door.  Or perhaps, it just finally got so hot (it’s been very hot) that the adhesive I was using to keep the mirror stuck to the door melted and the mirror came crashing down.

Anyway, I broke a mirror last week.  And you know what they say about breaking mirrors.

AND THEN, what happens on Thursday that same week?  My aunt calls me at work (Clib) and tells me that my house is drowning.  She had stopped by to pick fruit and whatnot, because I am not inclined to eat all the fruit in my backyard by myself, and she noticed that there was a small waterfall coming down my front steps.  There was a water leak somewhere in the house.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have the keys and so she couldn’t get into the house to see what was going on.  The best she could do was shut off the water to the house.  And then she went home.  Because what else was she going to do?  Go kayaking in the river that was forming in my yard?  She had gone to my house from work.  She was obviously not dressed for kayaking.

Welp, when I finally got home, fought through the current of the river that was my front walkway, and opened the door, I heard the sound of rushing water right away.  Apparently turning the water off to the house did not immediately solve the problem.  There was still a lot of water pressure in the house.  And the leak was still leaking.

I waded through my living room to see where the sound was coming from and saw that my kitchen was now a swimming pool.  And there was a small waterfall coming out from the cabinet under the kitchen sink.  Sugh.

At least it wasn’t the kitchen sink that was leaking.  That would have been much worse.  It was actually one of the drinking water filters that had sprung a sizeable leak.  And at least, that means that it’s easy to isolate that one leak and turn the water back on to the house.  Which means right now, even though my house is quite waterlogged, at least I still have water.  Hot and cold water.  Because the last time this happened (a leak in general, not the filters leaking specifically), I didn’t have hot water for months.  MONTHS.

Sugh.  So, here we go again with the wall replacement (the house is old and there’s asbestos in the walls), floor replacement, air movers everywhere, dehumidifiers, insurance adjuster wrangling.  Yay.  And since this is the most extensive water damage ever, EVAR, this will probably go on for seven years.

Shakes fist at mirror.  (Btw, my beloved watch also broke last week and my Fitbit refused to charge for awhile.)

Incidentally, the mirror broke some more when the “sanitation engineers” came by to pick up the trash.  Do you think they share the seven years of bad luck with me because it’s the same mirror that’s breaking again, or do they get their own seven years of bad luck each?  And if we’re sharing, how is the bad luck spread out between us all?  I mean, if enough people break the same mirror, does the bad luck dilute itself so much that it’s really not discernible anymore?  Is there like a quota of bad luck and once we all collectively meet the quota, we don’t have anymore bad luck even though the seven years aren’t up yet?  Or maybe there’s a quota per day so that the bad luck is indeed spread out over the seven years, but not everyone experiences bad luck each day because other people are filling the quota before the bad luck gets to you.  These are all very important questions.  Someone should research this.

Oh, and if you’re wondering if Yaris had drowned or something while I was work, she hadn’t.  Yaris has a very active social life and was visiting friends when this happened.  And then when she found out that I was going to be bailing water out of the house all night, she opted to spend the night at her friends’ house instead of helping me.  Granted, her paws aren’t really capable of holding a giant squeegee.  And I wasn’t terribly keen on her drinking any of the water.