Gone where?

Gone from my sight . . . that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
” There she goes! ”
there are other eyes watching her coming . . .
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout . . .

” Here she comes! ”

for Ginger and Molly – Always in our hearts

Rest in Peace, our beloved pet, Molly, the mini-schnauzer, who died yesterday of congenital heart problems and stroke.  She’s been the loveliest dog ever, a friend to our Ginger, and the love of our lives for many years.    She was a typical little dog who thought she was big and tried to scare off most of the big dogs in the neighborhood, but loved all of the people (and even a few dogs in the last month or so).

Her favorite thing had to be eating (even though she strangely never got fat doing it), and looking out the balcony to see what was going on in the world.    Her favorite spot to sleep was always on our bed between us.

We miss her so much already, but she’ll always be in our hearts.     Run free, sweet Molly.   Find Ginger at the Rainbow Bridge.

I am a person slightly affected by a flooding river from afar.    Frankly, I can’t see puppies floating down a flooding river.    My field of vision goes black and I feel like I”m going to vaporize.    Ok, it just makes me sad, to understate the feeling, to think about.

So, living withing 20 miles of a river that has previously flooded didn’t help much, because I wasn’t in danger from the flooding.    But in this case, I started to research by reading this site:  http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lbf/?n=southplatteriver.   If you scroll down to South Platte River at Roscoe, you will see a history of how the river has flooded recently and detail of what the anticipated affects were.

In the impacts section, you’ll see what various water levels affect different areas of the city.   At 10″, the flood water would reach something called a “gage house floor”.   A gage house is something the USGS builds to house equipment that can measure the flood water height, velocity and discharge.  It can also record various other things, like weather conditions and precipitation.   I read about it here:  http://nd.water.usgs.gov/gage/how.html.

In the end, we end up with a chart like this, that shows how quickly the water is rising.  As you can see, this one rose about 11.5 feet in just a matter of hours.   Now, the water is receding, which is good.  Just a little higher, and it would cover i-80, which is a main travel corridor.   It’s already caused flooding to quite a few houses and businesses, I’m sure.     We’ll see when the news comes on.

I’ll be looking forward to hearing from our breeder.  It will just be nice to hear the people and the animals are safe where she is.

This week, our new puppy will be born.  Our breeder is Perfect Peace Golden Retrievers, and it appears that our new puppy will be cream colored or very light golden, according to the coloring of Praise and Estes.  No matter the color, we are looking forward to our next family member.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a puppy.   I don’t think Ian’s ever had one, but we’ve done some reading and we’re getting prepared.   We can’t wait.    Wish us luck!

After calling the “support line” for Dell (which happens to be mostly for software support, by the way), being transferred twice and explaining my story and troubleshooting steps 3 times, I have a new power supply on the way.
The Dell Gold Support guy said, “And we’ll send a new one out with a tech to install it, is that right?”, at least realising that I probably did not actually need help, even though we seem to have paid for the super-spectacular bells-and-whistles support plan.

Erm.  No.    You may send someone over with a nice latte, though.

The good news is that one of the workers brought in a kitten.  I love kittens.   They don’t drool too much.  

We spent part of Sunday at the Omaha Zoo. It was a warm day, and a good one to see all the outdoor animals milling about.

In the winter, we still go to the zoo. Even when it’s -20F outside, there are still some pretty amazing indoor exhibits to see: The Leid Jungle, the Desert Dome, The Aquarium, Butterfly House and Kingdoms of the Night.

We took loads of video in the gorilla enclosure. The gorillas were quite active, and chasing each other around. In one of the hallways, a mother was standing by a window getting ready to put her toddler in a stroller, and one of the gorillas slowly peered into the window from below. It was hilarious!

Here’s a video from the day: