The new furniture arrived for the breakfast area arrived last night. Since I'm on vacation, I assembled it this morning. Kind of a retro-modern soda fountain set. The size and the angled corner bench fit in the space like they were custom designed for it. I think this puts the proverbial period on Alice's decorating of the breakfast area. Ha! What am I thinking!?
Today, we had a rare Saturday without projects to take up our time.
Alice came up with the idea of making the trek to Millie Bush Dog Park out in the far west Houston suburbs. We go to a little dog park about 10 minutes drive from our house several times a week to give the hounds some room to stretch out and run. But Millie Bush is a 40 mile one-way drive so it hasn't been on our regular agenda. The place is huge, 13 acres, with two big dog ponds, one on each end. And doggie showers so you can wash the mud off before the trip home. Seriously.
About five minutes in, we're mosying in the general direction of one of the ponds and Tucker's ears stand up. He goes "on alert" and then takes off at full gallop towards ... what? There's a little white dog, sometimes he flashes back to racing and thinks little white dogs are that dang rabbit he could never catch. But no, he flies past the white dog and literally launches himself out into the pond!
Over the course of the next hour or so he is in and out of the water. And the really odd thing is, he only goes in when he sees another dog in swimming. Lots of labs running in and out fetching balls and doing normal dog things. Every time Tucker sees another dog in the water he goes flying in after it and follows it out. I swear he's acting like a lifeguard! "Hang on, buddy, I'm coming".
Greyhounds swimming are ... interesting to watch. He's got pretty much no body fat to help him float so it's a lot of work for him to swim. After a while he had really exhausted himself. Also, it was a little cool. So he'd come out and be shivering with his teeth chattering. I finally had to put a stop to it and walk him out away from the ponds.
The last picture looks like "Nessie", Tucker, the Loch Millie Monster.
Got another project knocked out. I started on this one the weekend before Anna was born. Didn't make any progress the weekend of her birth. One final day on Saturday the 8th got 'er done. Plus some spackle and paint in the corners done on Sunday evening.
This is made from 1x12 with crown molding attached to the top and a small chair-rail like molding along the bottom. The long side (to the left) is about 7 feet, the other two segments are around 4 feet. It stands off from the wall only 2 inches as we don't intend to hang curtains behind it.
Tricky bit was figuring out how to attach it. I did some consulting with my neighbor Paul who used to do finish carpentry. He came up with the method I used. Two-inch deep blocks predrilled and screwed into the wall above the window frame where the studs are doubled up. Then I used the nail gun to attach the cornice to the blocks.
Once again it was handy to have both a table saw and radial arm saw.
On the 9th, we went to the 14th Annual Greyhound Reunion at Gulf Greyhound Park. We were there two years ago, just after we adopted Gert but missed it last year due to my travels.
The first picture is Tucker trying to get the rabbit! They ran some practice races just after we got there. Tucker was very excited! He barked and then jumped up onto the table. When the race was over, he had no clue how to get back down so I had to lift him down.
The previous years the reunion had the run of one floor of the track betting areas. This year the other floor was closed due to damage from Ike so there wasn't much for an open space for the dogs. This made the whole thing less fun. We were in the little spaces usually used for bettors to sit and watch the races with dogs laying in the aisles.
We all got to go out on the track and have the dogs introduced. As part of that we were able to get a good look at those wascally wabbits that the dogs chase.
The grandbaby has arrived! On Halloween, her due date as guessed by the doctor back in February. Six pounds, eight ounces and nineteen inches long.
This was my first chance to hold the little tyke. She had mostly been sleeping but opened up her eyes and really seemed to study me. Probably thinking "Oh, please tell me I'm not related to this goofy looking person!". :)
