I know it's been a while...

I know I haven't posted an entry in an age. I mean to, but Thor cries when I'm upstairs and Munchie cries when I'm downstairs. No one around here seems willing to leave me alone. I left Thor with the new toy he won as an award at the doggie cookout yesterday, but if he starts to sound too destructive, I'll have to take a break. Hmm. Sounds like he retired to his crate. In an effort to NOT talk about Thor all the time, I'm going to start w/ some other topics and see how far I get. Two months from now I'll be in Italy. I just printed off the #112A bus schedule which goes from Siena to Montepulciano. That's the one that stops in Pienza, which is where we are staying for a week. I think I've posted the link before, but now that it's so close, I'll post it again here . I'm going on a knitting retreat to Tuscany, with the women I've been to the Adirondacks with the last two years. I'm headed over with my friend D, and we're going to hit Amsterdam and Florence on the way there. I guess most of the group is headed to Tuscany via Rome, but I'll take Florence over Rome any day. This will be my 4th trip to Florence, so I know exactly where to go and how to get there without wasting a whole lot of time. D's probably going to want to kill me when we're done, but I'm trying to decide how much can be crammed in a day. Yes to the leather school at Santa Croce, yes to David, maybe a 463 step climb to the top of the Duomo, hopefully the Leonardo da Vinci museum, no to the Uffizi based on time restrictions, but definitely yes to the San Lorenzo Market. I'm almost giddy thinking about it. Luckily I'm getting Invisalign straighteners slapped on my teeth for the next 9 months, or I'd likely spend an obscene amount of cash that day. Yeah, that's it; practicality is better. We have an 18 hour layover in Amsterdam on the way to Florence. We chose that flight so that even w/ getting in an out of customs/security and the train to and from the airport, we'll have enough time to see a bit of the city. D is a photographer and she wanted to do the walking tour of the Red Light District, so that will be the first thing we do. If there's time, I want to do a water tour or at least take a water taxi around for a bit. Neither of us have been to Amsterdam, so the goal will be to take in as much as possible and still get back to the airport in time to catch the flight to Florence.
Yesterday D and I went up to Yarns in the Farms to pay off the balance of the trip. (Shit. Thor is crunching on something... Gotta go.) I'm back. So we went up to YitF, and I haven't been up there lately. To be honest, I haven't knit anything since my dog arrived, and being in the store made me want to knit something. Jill had the CUTEST skirt on - I loved it. She said we might do them as projects while on the trip, so that's cool. Hopefully I can use some yarn I already have. Some of you might remember that I moved all the yarn into it's own bedroom, but I couldn't stand looking at all of it, so I moved it all back up into the attic. Too much. Even I realize it's too much.
I have a gift certificate to YitF which I didn't even spend...I'm trying to get in a zero spending frame of mind now that I'm going to have my teeth moved around. I get my payment plan on Aug 15th, and I can't wait for that day, I'll tell you. I decided to not get my teeth done at the megapractice where I normally go; I went with the Orthodontist here in town even though the price quote was higher. I think my dentist may've been pissed, but the practice is bumming me out lately, and I'm thinking we may not be such a good fit. We might even be headed for a break-up. Sigh.
Wow. Not a single photo yet. I'll fix that right now. When I planted the seeds for my garden this spring, a lot of them didn't take. The day after I planted them, it looked like the local wildlife had dug them up, but I hoped for the best. When I ended up with one pea plant, one bean plant and one zucchini plant, I realized I'd indeed been robbed. Not to worry - I scampered over to Home Depot and filled in with plants. I have zucchini, yellow summer squash, cucumbers, (I thought I'd try...) a watermelon plant, green onions, two kinds of lettuce, (I thought I'd go WAY out there and try...) an artichoke plant, and my ususal six tomato plants, which always do very well here. Damn artichoke brought the slugs back, but they are leaving everything else alone, so they can have it. The bigger problem is my zucchinis, yellow squash and cucumbers. Look at this lovely zucchini flower here to the left. I've had tons of flowers, but no zucchini babies. Upon closer inspection yesterday, I noticed that all the flowers are being eaten.

Click on this picture and notice how the stem (dead center) has been chomped by the local varmints. I don't know why I even do this to myself every year. At least the tomatoes are going like gang busters. I had tomatoes into November last year.

As I briefly mentioned, yesterday G, Thor and I went to a doggie cookout at Leash Love, which is my walking, boarding and doggie daycare provider. It was a riot. Probably 20 or so dogs in all, most of which were greyhounds. This is my favorite photo of the day. The little boy's name was Val, and he was a real cutie. He had pepperoni in his hand, and the dogs were all over him like a new suit. Thor is the moose in the right foreground. Yes, he's sitting, but don't let that fool you. He's not as well behaved as he looks. During the cookout there were contests for the dogs, but they were easy enough that he even placed in one: tail wagging. He's a big, happy boy; I'll give him that.

In this photo, they had set up nine bowls in a line. They were to be filled with water for bobbing for hot dogs. Thor went down the entire row and checked every bowl for food. You'd think he had never eaten before, I swear.

They didn't give an award for eating ice cream (actually frozen yogurt), but if they did, he would've won it. He polished off his, and then moved on to everyone else's. A fun day was had by all, and he snored the entire way home. I was going to write about a couple other things, but I've been at this for a while, so I'm going to sign off. I know people who were regular readers have inquired as to when I fell off the planet, so I wanted to get an entry in. Right before I post this, I'll post an entry I wrote in May (after Munchie bit me) but never posted. It is a mildly amusing description of...well, I'll let you read it if you're so inclined. Thanks for stopping by.