Ramble tagged 'Robbie'

We tried riding with Robbie for the first time the other day. I was pretty impressed with him. He just got up and ran. No biting or barking at the bike, no pulling me in the wrong direction.

He enjoyed himself what’s more. Now we have a good option for running the shit out of him when he gets hyperactive.

This is towards the end when he ran out of beans and it started to stray from “running the dog” towards “dragging the dog”.

We cut his food back; he’s looking much leaner now.

It has been some weeks of heavy computer time for both of us here on Sister Lane. Jon’s working on slickifying his blog and Brute pages as well as getting the Gruffhouse thing started. We’re both really excited about that one. I’ve been helping him where I can.

I wrapped up the WordPress integration of this site, put the Stuff page in hibernation (nothing was happening with that space any time soon) and cleaned up the sidebar (check out my sponsors!) and some other odds and ends. My image viewer got updated along the way and wiped my colour-matching customisation, so I found a neat new viewer called shadowbox (I just had to correct my spelling of colour; I have to spell it “color” for html code and I guess it is becoming an unconscious act now).

Whipped up a quick site for cousin Mike at interactivehealth.com.au. Nothing fancy, although I was quite impressed with myself when I got the dynamic content, in user controllable/addable modules, to fill across the footer like that. He hasn’t done much with it yet (he’s still got the WordPress default links in the sidebar).

Integrated WordPress with the Bear’s site and tweaked the design while I was at it. Said tweaking lead to a little more doodling of bears and various plants, and even a truck. This guy is my favourite though, I think.

Did I need WordPress on such a low-content site? Yes. Yes I did.

There’s a couple of Jon’s old songs kicking around that I plan to play with and publish to the Bears music pool soon-ish. We’re overly focused on the money-making ideas at the minute though. I’ll get to that in a second.

During our breaks from the studio I made the stands for the photography lighting, freeing up the tripod and mic stand for tripodding and mic standing. I nailed some cardboard to the two bedroom windows that have been rudely letting morning light in; the result looks quite OK. Jon made a cake. We ate a cake. We went for a walk on a particularly beautiful day. All of that, looked like this.

The dog has finally stopped freaking out over the growling fridge (ice maker), which makes for a generally happier household. A scared whining dog is a bigger bummer than you may think.

Speaking of bummers, the one I alluded to above and in an earlier post is money related and, as such, not worth much discussion. In short, during my recent trip to Australia, the accountant hit me with an extraordinarily large and unfortunately unexpected tax bill (leftover from year old business activity and due for payment this July) and, just last week, my (ex-)real estate agent has informed me that my investment property (the sale of which was going to fund the tax bill) is worth a whole lot less than what I paid for it a year ago. Between the accountant and the real estate agent, the funds we assumed that we had for the next year are gone. One could say “flushed down the toilet” in the case of the “investment” property.

I was barely functioning for the first couple of days after getting the news on the house, it was hard to escape thoughts of packing up our life here and return to engineering in Australia, but, you know, fuck it. I’ve thrown those thoughts out now.

We’re gonna sell the car. I love that car, but we don’t need it. I’m gonna get more for the property than the quick-sell douche-bag real estate agent quoted and we’re gonna pour ourselves into these business ideas – we’re passionate about them and we’re gonna make them work.

So no whining about money and the economy and that bag of shit. Just getting busy.

New Shoes!

New pants too.

I love how the dog shows nil sign of giving a shit. He’s more than used to our antics around the house.

We’re back home, safe in San Francisco. Obviously. There was some sadness to the end of our travels last night. The last time we would drive into the city with the feeling of coming home. As much as I have been blowing Portland’s horn of late, I am no less fond of San Francisco. I would hope that it’s obvious how much I love this place from the random bits and pieces I’ve posted over the last year.

It was also sad thinking of all this shit we have to pack into boxes. Moving is not cute for anyone.

The “Frying Pan” being Perth of course. The “Freezer”,

No doubt my posting will continue to be sporadic as we focus our efforts on finding a new home here in Portland. I’m taking the opportunity this morning, while Jon makes a slow rise from bed, to get a few notes down. I’m writing from the room of a janky hotel, picked out specifically for its dog friendliness. In fact, the mutt is curled up quite contentedly on the bed this very minute.

Given his continued restlessness in the back of the car, I would say that he didn’t enjoy the trip up. He did greatly enjoy the snow when we stopped, as can be seen from the photos. For the humans, it wasn’t such a bad trip. There was an odd road block just before the mountains, with a radio alert informing the 6 mile bank up of highway traffic that all cars without tire chains on board would be turned back. After more than an hour of crawling forward, we got to the road block and were simply waved through without  any inspection or explanation. Very weird.

So we were somewhat tentative as we drove upwards and the temperature headed down towards freezing. After a few miles of ice free road I eventually followed the example of the other maniacs that passed me by at break-neck speed, as if nothing had ever happened, and put the foot down. I figured my indicator for ice would be those same maniacs piled up in a ditch on the side of the road.

Yesterday and today are all about driving past available housing and getting a feel for the neighbourhoods we could live in. We’ve already thrown a good handful of listings out based on location. We’re very much in love with the Hawthorne / Mt Tabor area, but living there means a sacrifice of quality and quantity over a place in the suburbs.

The leading contender for suburban living is Beaverton. Ironic I know. Unfortunately there were no listings in Cockton. Today will be our first look at the Beaverton housing and neighbourhoods. Looks like we’re ready to go.

After minimal tears and minor discomforts, I’m back home in San Francisco and mighty glad to be with my boys again.

Well who wouldn’t be?

I am also very pleased to report that I managed to slip a bike box in with the luggage at nil cost. I believe I owe my thanks entirely to the inexperience of the check-in staff at the Perth Airport. So thank you Qantas girl! Now I get to ride this bad boy (on the left) in Portland with an extra hundred or two in my pocket.

I’m caught up on sleep, catching up on to-do’s and about to get started on planning next week’s house-hunting trip to Portland.

Stay tuned!

Well, the doggy has been dropped off. He didn’t seem too worried about it. They’re all in bed now, but you can see him during the day here http://www.fogcitydogs.com/dogcam_lodge.html

I suppose I should get busy packing.