socialy retarded

Guinness and Cleo “the face”

Posted on 12. Feb, 2010 by Derrick.

I started a series of videos showing Guinness (my dog) and Cleo (roommates cat) who have fallin for each other. This is the second video of the series.

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Love is in the air

Posted on 08. Jan, 2010 by Derrick.

When BFF Floyd asked to live together, I thought. Man Cave, Drinking, Buddies, steaks, and video games. What we forgot about was his 5 month old kitty Cleo.

Moving day was upon us and the time came to introduce my “bull in a china shop” to the china. Guinness was released in the house and Cleo promptly went nuts climbing a solid wood entertainment center. For 3 days they had some issues, but in the last 4 months they have developed a rather unique dynamic. Some would say its love, some would say it’s a young kitty infatuated with an older dog, I just think its cute.

The roommates and I get a good laugh from these two. The next video is the first in a series that shows just some of the more silly things these two do.

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Snowy Bark Park

Posted on 27. Dec, 2009 by Derrick.

In phoenix Guinness was the master of his domain. The Dog Park. Since moving to Colorado however, I’ve been taking him to open space and on hikes. We haven’t had the time to make the drive to to many dog parks.

Now that we are in the new house, we have a dog park less than a mile away and I thought I’d bring the camera along.

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Never to early to go snowshoeing.

Posted on 26. Nov, 2009 by Derrick.

With the amazing winterey season shaping up to being one of the best in years, instead of heading up for yet another day on the slopes. I took Guinness up for what I can only describe as his favorite thing of all time. Or in dog talk “wag wag wag wag, SQUIRREL, wag wag wag”. For a dog who was born in July in the melting heat of the Phoenix sun, he is a child of the snow.

Without being anthropomorphic about my dog, I can imagine that running through the snow is a little like when I get a fresh track on some recently laid pow day, or when I stick a sweet line through a technical downhill on my mountain bike. Esctacy. I have so much fun just watching him run from huge snow drift to huge snow drift. Shoving his face into drifts, looking for hidden pine-cones, elk poop, and tree branches.

Our destination was one of my favorites, Indian Peaks Wilderness Area. Specifically, the Hessie trailhead.Right when you get into the hike, these little cabins tag the mountainside. Perfect for photos.

As you get further towards Devils thumb trail head, you will run across several small streams. I love photographing when its just warm enough to show the running water under the ice.

Guinness finds everything under the snow. Right when this picture was taken, he was eating a pine-cone.

I loved all the aspens in the area. I’d love it more if I could have gotten some decent lighting. All I can say is sometimes photography makes me go grrrrrr.

Great day for snow….

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Backpacking Jasper lake.

Posted on 17. Sep, 2009 by Derrick.

Every Labor day weekend Summer and I go backpacking. We originally had planned a car camping trip to Crystal City Colorado. My procrastination unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it changed our plans to backpacking instead.

I hadn’t backpacked in Colorado for 8 years, and I went a little overboard with preparation and equipment. Once again, I’m a former Boy Scout. I’ve had years and years of  “be prepared” drummed into my head. Even though we were only going for 4 days 3 nights, we were set for a 7 day’er. As Summer can attest. I’m an absolute wreck before trips, and until we actually hit the trail head, I’m like  a Schizo without the Haldol.  We left mid-afternoon and I had hoped to be at the trail head by 4pm. After a couple of wrong turns and a semi 4 wheel drive up to the trail head, we finally made it by 6! I was on red-allert, but all was well, we were finale backpacking.

On our way up to our first night at Diamond lake. We ran across several waterfalls that Guinness took advantage of.

A couple of small wrong turns and we were only about a mile away from our destination. But first we had several water crossings that are tricky to do with a Dog and his backpack.

When we made it to Diamond lake, we had to hustle to set up camp, eat, and hit the sack. We planned on getting up early so we can get over to Jasper lake for the duration of our stay. Guinness loves his backpack, but is an uncooperative bastard when trying to get it on.

Once we finally got our asses in gear we were on our way to the other lake. Since we kinda thew this trip together I wasn’t sure what to expect going from one lake to the next. I sure wasn’t ready for another 1000 feet in elevation though. Its a good thing that I didn’t know because Summer constantly has to be in the “know” on how many miles/elevation a hike or bike ride is. So when she asked me. I got to say “I don’t know” without lying to her.

We took our time and smelled the wild flowers, and we found so many cool things on the way.

Some of the items we found. Owl Pellets, which are the masses of animal bones, and fur that after digestion, an owl horkes it up. Animal droppings that could only be Coyote or Mountain Lion. And one of the coolest moments was when we saw a pair of red-tailed hawks hunting.

And then from the majestic to the bizarre. We came across these really fat grasshoppers on the top of the pass. They were the size of my thumb and when they kicked around they flopped around like drunken gymnast. Later we googled it and found out it was a cricket called the sagebrush grig (Cyphoderris strepitans). They appeared to be eating the elk poop. I apologize for the poor picture, but they wouldn’t stay still and the lighting wasn’t great.

After getting to Jasper lake we relaxed and took it easy. The hike from Diamond lake to Jasper lake is mostly technical terain and has a decent elevation gain. We explored a little to the end of the lake after eating a little to much.

The next morning I decided to show Summer the water falls and natural glaciers that fed jasper lake. But before we headed off, Summer watched the sunrise on her “warming” rock.

and then let Guinness swim a bit

Once you get to the end of Jasper lake, follow the water up the trail/game trail. It will take to three naturaly occuring lakes with glaciers feeding into them. This is what we saw on the way.

Once we got to the top the weather started to whip up some nasty wind. Summer said that she had seen enough of the little lakes and wanted to go back down. From this picture you can explore about another 3/4 of a mile up.

Once we found a nice place shielded by the wind we decided to eat a light lunch and do what we always do, take a family picture.

On the way down from our little day hike we came to discover two things that was going to make the rest of the trip interesting.

Guinness’ was having trouble sitting. I didn’t think much about it until the light bulb in my head went off. A co-worker of mine has Labs and she told me about “Cold tail” syndrome. Its when a Labrador over exercises or swims excessively in cold water. Both of which our dog did. It appears as though his tail doesn’t work at all. We could no longer tell if our dog was a “happy” pup. So for the rest of our trip we called Guinness “Broken Tail”

Notice I have food in my hand, and his tail isn’t wagging. This is positively the oddest thing I’ve ever seen a dog go through.

Summer had her own problems. Like I said. I’m an Eagle Scout. I always have an over abundance of gear. Ready for everything from a minor wound to a full on leg amputation. The scouts never covered menstrual cycles in their handbook. It never occured to me to always have tampons with us. With all of our hiking/biking/backpacking that we have done, In the 3 1/2 years we’ve been together, we have never been on vacation when “aunt flo” was visiting. The literal meaning of “on the rag” is officially going to be changed to “on the sock”

Lets just say that I’ve never been so happy to have extra cotton socks with us. With Summer using her backpacking rendition of a maxipad, she wanted to get home on our last day. So we put our head down and did the 6.2 miles home in just about 4 hours.

Aside from our minor afflictions, we had an excellent time. One of our best trips to date.

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Fantasy Football Roundtable

Posted on 01. Sep, 2009 by Derrick.

I do my fantasy football every year with several guys and mostly from the online group orangemane.com, This year, several friends and family teamed up to do a live draft and have a local league.This was going to be a beginner league with  girls and first timers.

Ever since watching the “whozyamoma” fantasy football commercial, I’ve wanted to do a live draft. It was everything I thought it would be. We had good food, yelling, and laughing.

Check out our league “The Gridiron Glory Hole” if you have a chance. Most of the people who read this blog are already part of it.

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