Friday Night Dog Blogging

Posting too cute doggie pictures isn't something I do regularly here, but tonight afforded us an opportunity that we just couldn't resist. Pepa and Rolly often snuggle together on their couch, but we rarely are able to catch them like this because invariably one or the other will notice the camera and then hop down, thus ruining the cuteness factor ... but this evening, as we were watching a particularly exciting new episode from Season Four of Dr. Who, they decided not to share in our excitement and took a long nap instead. So we got lucky and took a series of them while we could ...

I was never a fan of the original Dr. Who series when I was younger because it was just too cheesy for me ... I couldn't get into it, no matter how I tried. Fernymoss, however, has been a long time fan and knows all the arcana regarding the history of the Doctor in many of his incarnations. As you may know, the BBC revived the series in an entirely re-imagined (with vastly improved production values, writers and actors) conception in 2005, and we've both been hooked since BBC America started showing it here in the US. Sure, the SciFi Channel throws us an episode here and there, but doesn't seem (at least to me) to show the episodes in their proper order. Anyway, Season Three concluded last week with a hum-dinger of an episode, and I'm already wanting to see Season Four, which is currently playing in the UK. Tonight was one of those lucky finds from SciFi and they broadcast the first (official) episode of Season Four. In a word, it was captivating for humans ... not so much for dogs, apparently.

Of course a Dr. Who episode always sets me to thinking about Space and everything that's out in there in its depths ... the wondrous beauty as well as the darker sides of the Universe. Earlier today on My Yahoo page, one of the featured photos caught my eye ... an image of two colliding galaxies called 'Arp 148' taken from the Hubbell Telescope ... so I obviously had to check that out. Wow, the Hubbell has been taking some breathtaking photos of galactic oddities! For those interested, I'm going to include a couple of links here ... the photos are really worth an admiring look! Here's the link to a gallery that displays some 59 incredible photos, each of which has a link to a more detailed page about its location and what is currently known about them.

And to think that a couple of years ago we heard talk that they wanted to just trash the Hubbell Telescope completely and de-fund it ... I'll try (and fail) to refrain from political diatribe here. The knowledge we've gained from it since it has been in orbit is almost unimaginable, except to those scientists who dedicate their lives to analyzing the data ... to my mind, it's a national treasure that attests to what we can attain when we aim for the stars. Instead of Middle Eastern oil deposits.

Of Leather and Sleeping Dogs ...

Constant flux in our living room configuration is now again at play at Casa IVG. In fact the whole house is in flux, as my job is going to a virtual office, so I have to be set up at home to do everything I did in the office ... it's been a bit daunting and I'm nowhere near done or happy with the space at present. But it's progressing --hey we have a wireless network set up now, even though it's incomplete one computer for a few days more-- and another week or so, it should be in more than workable shape.

So, what did I have to go out and do? The second picture explains that quite well without words.

Some of our nicest pieces of furniture have come from World Market (dining table, a CD cabinet and the media armoire and the other leather recliner 'Bruno.') ... so this recent sale was a bit hard to resist, seeing that we needed a new good chair anyway. (You might remember the other flux time when we were getting rid of all the old hand me down furniture ... we're not done yet and that loveseat is soon history!) Anyway, this new one -- 'Tosca,' companion to good old 'Bruno' that I got a few years ago -- is a fantastically comfy recliner, well worth its sale price.

Now, I know some people drop by to see the occasional shots of the dogs (usually snoozing these days), so the first picture is probably of greater interest ... Pepa took an almost immediate liking to the piece of foam packing material and proceeded to claim it for the night, snoozing happily. As always it's difficult to catch her in her absolute cutest moments (the camera's never handy!), this one shows pretty well how she and Rolly spent most of their Saturday night.

Oh yeah, another 6" of snow and some ice and slush came in overnight, so that's how Fernymoss spent most of the day digging us out of the latest big snow. So here we are again, with over a foot of snow cover ... don't think we'll see the snowdrops much before March now unless things warm up drastically, which is certainly not in the short term forecast. Nor the crocus ... nor the squill ... we're done with this winter! I guess it's still not done with us ....