2010 Annual Report

If last year was the Year of the Dog, I guess 2010 was the Year of the Poop.  Well, that seems a bit harsh; it really was a pretty good year, with just a few scatological episodes.  We had quite a thrill, and, after it was all over (literally), a good laugh, down in the Virgin Islands.  Then I spent a whole lot of the summer slowly digging out the Dog's Breath Acres septic system.  I won't go into detail about what I found down there; let's just say our experience in the Virgin Islands was good practice.  Both our dogs observed the Year of the Poop religiously.  Daphne has a talent for instantly dropping into any fresh pile of horse poop she comes across, regardless of the hosing down she surely must know she's going to receive immediately thereafter.  Lydia seems to have a taste for kitty litter; I don't believe she follows the five second rule.  And then I backed Patti's car into a tree in a campground.  I at first thought it was just a little bumper bump, until I turned around and saw a large part of her (the car's not Patti's) rear end lying on the ground next to the tree.  And finally, bringing up the rear, I had a colonoscopy.  (Oh, almost forgot, there was also the election, glad to have that behind us.)

By the beginning of 2010 we were edging toward getting a second dog; Lydia seemed pretty bored lying around all day.  By June the opportunity arrived; a friend of a friend had to move out of his home and give up his pooch, a mostly yellow labrador, just 1 1/2 years old.  We drove down with Lydia, they hit it off, and suddenly we were a two dog family.  Daphne's a bit of a fireplug, but gets along wonderfully with Lydia (best of friends), and is very obedient, unlike "Miss L" who sometimes seems to ignore us.  We take one or the other on our daily three mile walk.  (When we take both, they tend to wander off, mostly at Lydia's instigation.)  It's taken nearly half a year, but Phoebe's finally getting used to the dangerous beast in our midst, and Daphne is managing to restrain herself from playing toss the kitty.  And Daphne's just great (as is Lydia) with the grandkids.  Pictures, of course, in the Family Photos section.

I didn't get in as much hiking as I would have liked, particularly with a whole month in the middle of the summer taken up with other important things (watching the World Cup).  And it appears I will go tic-less for the year for the first time.  (No new birds to be ticked onto my ABA Lifelist.  Except that they did divide Winter Wren into two different species, so my list did go up one.  Nobody seems to have asked the wrens if they minded being split in two).  I'm running out of new birds to see in the USA, but hope to add at least an Island Scrub Jay in 2011, and maybe (pretty unlikely) a California Gnatcatcher.  A close observer will figure out that Patti and I are planning a February trip down to southern California,  including a boat ride to Channel Islands National Park.

[Urgent Update: 28 December 2010!  After searching all year all around the USA for a new bird, without success, I ticked a Harris's Sparrow, a lifer, not 10 miles from Dog's Breath Acres.  It was located exactly as described on "Tweeters" (the Washington bird chat), less than 10 feet from the Snohomish/King County line; good for my Snohomish County list too.]

In April Kate and Ger drove up to look at an Alexander Calder exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, and also managed to do a little birding with us up in the Skagit just north of here, where many thousands of snow geese spend the winter

Watching soccer also impacted the amount of time I had for yard work.  Here are before and after World Cup photos.

Quote from Patti: "I wouldn't want to be in the hospital the same time Dick Cheney needs a heart transplant."

We get to spend a lot of time with the grandchildren.  Sienna and Kiara come over for the occasional sleepover, always a kick, and every once in a while Patti heads down to Gig Harbor for baby sitting Andrew and Michael.  We helped Kiara with a school project, "Flat Stanley Takes a Hike".  Stanley had a skateboard accident, just like Kiara, who managed to scrape a good patch of skin off her face (but is all okay now). Kate was kind enough to send us a vuvuzela, which we put to good use at Sienna's soccer practices.

While driving down through Vermont on our trip East in August, I persuaded Patti to let me stop at the American Precision Museum in Windsor.  It was full of all sorts of neat early metalworking machines and tools, but my biggest thrill was seeing Bridgeport Milling Machine serial #1.  (I suppose you've got to be an engineering nerd like me to understand the feeling; it was like when I spotted a Colima Warbler high in the Chisos Mountains of Texas.)

Patti and the Garden Girls are always getting together for some sort of project, local trip, or even an arts fair.  They've purchased a tent for a booth and have started selling their artful crafts.  Patti's latest are small glass terrariums, which are quite something.  A terrarium may cost more to make than what it sells for, but Patti plans to make it up in volume.  I'm slowly building cabinets and shelves for her little studio downstairs, a nice project for both of us.

Patti and I recently watched "Winnebago Man", a documentary about Jack Rebney, "the angriest man in the world", who became an internet legend for a (quite profane) YouTube video.  Jack played defender in front of me (I was in goal) for the Lake Sammamish Soccer Club one season back in the 1980s. He was great fun, a bit outspoken at times. One game (his last with us, as I recall) after he was fouled a bit hard, he started a fight with the hapless opponent.  Jack was red-carded, but wouldn't calm down on the sidelines, screaming loud threats and challenges across the field, so the referee finally sent him off to the parking lot.  The last thing we heard from Jack, echoing through the trees around the pitch, was "I'LL FIND YOU!"; a legendary tirade that went down in team history.

And as always we headed down to Neskowin for Thanksgiving at Kate and Carol and Ken and Ger's, loaded with desserts and stuffing.  We brought only one dog, Daphne, for romping on the beach with Boswell (Carol and Ken's labrador).  Strange as it may seem, it was raining down there on the Oregon coast, so we took the annual photo with the camera perched under Carol's porch.