Fast forward and while no owner has stepped forward, some sleuthing showed that the older (but still very young) dog had likely been used as a breeding dog, and the Samoyed puppy was her son. My neighbor decided to stop trying to reunite the dogs with the owner, had them fixed, and is now trying to decide what to do with them.

The mother dog is a white Siberian husky (possibly a mix) with blue eyes, about eighteen months old. The baby looks like a full Samoyed, except he has one blue eye, and one eye that is a bit of a mess. He had entropion, which is an inverted eyelid. So his eyelashes had been abrading his eye since birth, leading to constant infections. My neighbors treated the infection and had surgery done to correct the eyelid, so now his eye looks nearly normal, except the color is blue and brownish. Not sure if that is how they were meant to be, or if six months of irritation caused discoloration. Regardless, it’s kind of neat looking.

What does this have to do with me? Well, I fell in love with the dogs immediately, and began considering whether we could take them. We’re not really dog people, mostly because we’re lazy but also because we travel a lot. And, we have cats. For Ed, the answer was easy. For me, it wasn’t, especially as my neighbors came to realize that they probably couldn’t keep the dogs either. They have cats too, and a koi pond. And the older dog seems to be a born hunter.

But I have been helping with the dogs, bringing them over here from time to time to give the neighbors a break. I kept the dogs all weekend while they were out of town. As my neighbors start contacting rescue organizations, we’re experimenting with separating the dogs. Even though I love the adorable little Samoyed, I’ve been taking the mama dog because she is of the greater concern to my neighbors because of the hunting instinct and the pond. And she is such a good dog. While the little guy gets into everything and has to be checked on constantly while in the backyard, Luna (that’s what I call her) is very well-behaved and happy just stalking squirrels. She doesn’t bark unless she thinks someone is breaking into the house; she barked when window cleaners used ladders right next door. This isn’t a bad thing, I went and checked and then she stopped. Last night she sat out on the front porch with us and seemed perfectly content.

But, we don’t really have a good place in the house to keep her, and it doesn’t seem fair to the cats (including Timmy and Murray and Lulu). And dogs are a lot of work. And we travel.

January

A year ago today we were in Big Bend, seeing a part of Texas we hadn’t seen before. The next day, New Year’s Day, we drove up to Fort Davis and went for a hike in the Davis Mountains. Then we visited the McDonald Observatory, which was unfortunately closed for New Year’s. But I still got to go into one of the big telescopes, because, well, it wasn’t locked. No lights though, and I didn’t want to start flipping switches. Before leaving West Texas we also visited Marathon, another quirky little old town. We had coffee in a little shop that had stacks of the Santa Barbara Independent (!) to read. Another surprise that day, I ran into my old friend Quinton at a gas station near Abilene!

We also made a quick trip to Orlando for Ed’s birthday, right in the middle of grapefruit season. Yum! And we saw manatees!

I attended a fascinating class taught by Edward Tufte.

February

After our wonderful trip to Taos last year, we decided to try skiing there this year. On the drive there, we got to see the Cadillac Ranch covered with snow, and a herd of mystery animals which I later found out were pronghorns (Texans call them antelopes, but they aren’t really). We saw another herd of these later – they really are beautiful.

This time we rented a house on the Rim Road. A great house in a good location for skiing, but the roads were snowy and Rim Road is called that for a reason. Did you know I have a phobia about going over a cliff in a car? We did not die though.

The skiing was fantastic, not crowded. We also snowshoed one day. While we were having lunch in the lodge one day, our neighbor texting me a photo of our house with snow falling furiously. It snowed 13 inches in Dallas! I was sorry to miss that even though we were enjoying even better snow in New Mexico. When we got home, every other house in Dallas had a snowman in front.

We saw John Prine in concert over at SMU; he was very good (and funny, as we knew he would be).

March

One of our favorite restaurants burned down.

I took Mia to Dallas’ St. Patrick’s Day parade, which is pretty raucous and fun.

April

Ed and I took a Saturday morning bike ride over to the lake, had a great 22-mile ride, but on the way back as he signaled a left turn, he hit a reflector in the road and went over the handlebars, fracturing his collarbone pretty badly. It required surgery, and still bothers him. Quite a setback, as he was trying to get back into shape.

But, I got an iPad!

May

Mom and Dad visited for the world premiere of Moby Dick at the Dallas Opera, and I think they would say it was worth the trip. How the heck can you make a stage set about a whaling ship? Well they did it, and it was spectacular.

June

So hot. It got up into the 100’s early this year. I was going to try riding my bike every day again this summer like I did in 2008, but gave up.

July

Ed, frustrated by not being able to exercise and continuing to gain weight, decided to go on a diet. I, who had gained weight in sympathy, agreed to join him. We cut out alcohol and most of the usual things you don’t eat on a diet, and lost weight rather easily. Who knew?

August

Still hot, so I went to California! It was great to see the Steeles. I arrived during Fiesta, which was something I hadn’t seen before. There were cascarones (confetti eggs) smashed everywhere. In Texas you only see those on Easter. We attended several dance performances and ate some great food. I also went kayaking one day at Campus Point (with Kevin), went to the Botanical Garden (with Aidan), biked down Gibraltar Road and at Ealings Park (with Nico), went on a few hikes (with Linda), saw the movie Inception and went climbing (poorly).

September

By this time it should be obvious that we really like Taos. We went back yet again for two weeks. This time we rented two houses for two different experiences. The first week we stayed in town, which was nice because we could walk to restaurants and into town. The second week we stayed at an isolated house up a private road in the foothills near the ski mountain. This house was phenomenal, we liked every detail. It had a little writer’s cottage out back, and we tied our camping hammock out there. One night we slept outside on the second-story deck under the stars. In the mornings we could see the hot air balloons rise and then dip into the Rio Grande canyon. The only downside of the house was it was a one-mile drive down a very rutted dirt road just to get to the road to town, which was another six miles or so. The road was not bikeable (up anyway).

So this trip we went on several hikes and one backpacking trip. It was cold backpacking, but we were well-prepared. We even brought our iPads and watched a movie in the tent (just to say we did it). We went biking one day, Ed’s first time on the bike since his accident. He had a tough time; it was windy and he didn’t feel stable on the bike. We tried to bike another day, but after driving about 45 minutes, we got out to start riding and he felt it was too windy for him, so we drove back and I rode by myself up to the ski area, which is now an annual tradition for me. We also both bought new climbing shoes, and went bouldering. I feel better about my limited climbing skills now; it had just been so many years since I had climbed anything.

Yesterday one of my friends on Facebook posted “When was the last time you did something for the first time”? Well one thing I did for the first time this trip was fly fishing. Ed has wanted to do this for a long time. I thought I would be bored to tears, but I actually loved it. It’s nothing like regular fishing. You don’t stand in one place for long, you have to be smart and use strategy and skill, and the scenery is beautiful. And, I caught a fish!

Last year I was successful in my attempt to get cheap tickets for this year’s Austin City Limits Festival. They give out a few hundred for $50 (regularly $185), and I snagged two by watching Twitter and refreshing the page constantly. The festival was fun, we saw Black Keys, Spoon, Beach House, Broken Bells, Phish, Flaming Lips, Mountain Goats, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Sonic Youth, Gogol Bordello, Pete Yorn, Lucero, Black Lips, Manchester Orchestra, Temper Trap, Deadmau5, M.I.A., Devendra Banhart, Portugal, the Man, Trombone Shorty, Robert Earl Keen, White Rabbits, Blind Pilot and Lance Herbstrong.

October

The two big October events here are the State Fair of Texas and Halloween, and we participated in both. The Phantom of the Opera was back on Swiss Avenue:

We were invited to Ed’s cousin Nicole’s wedding in Buffalo, so we combined that trip with a visit with Mom and Dad. I flew up ahead of time and spent some time with them, and then drove their jeep up to Buffalo and picked Ed up at the airport there. We stayed at the Roycroft Inn in East Aurora, something Ed has wanted to do for a long time. The inn was built by the Roycrofters, and Arts and Crafts guild. Ed’s sister Colleen stayed there also since we were. She didn’t know anything about it, thought it would be a regular hotel. The funny thing is that it turned out she used to work across the street from the place and didn’t know what it was.

The wedding was nice and it was nice to see all of Ed’s aunts and uncles and cousins again. I hadn’t been to Buffalo for a long time. We also went to see the Darwin Martin house, a Frank Lloyd Wright house. The main house is still being renovated, but we got to go into two of the other houses on the property. House house houses.

November

We went back to Austin to visit our friends Mike and Carla, and we had a relaxing traditional Thanksgiving with just the three of us. Last year it was just Ed and me, and we decided to do South American food instead of turkey with the fixings, but I missed it, so this year it was back to the old standbys.

For Erica’s birthday we took her and four of her friends out to dinner here in Dallas, which was fun.

December

It was a good year (fractured clavicles notwithstanding) up until the first of December, when Ed’s stepdad passed away. We made another trip to Orlando for the funeral. We were glad we have been going there more often lately, and Ed will always treasure the trip he took to Ireland with Bud et al three years ago.

Unexpected travel in early December means a rather frantic holiday preparation season (at least for me, who procrastinates until December). But I (kind of) got everything done by Christmas, and we had another relaxing day. We had to laugh at all the winter gear we got each other as gifts. We had lobster pot pie instead of fondue for Christmas Eve dinner, and prime rib for Christmas. Yum.

I think that’s it. I’ll try to do better next year.

It was set to Sports Center because our cable died last night as Ed tried to watch a Syracuse basketball game, and today they had a special about John Lennon. I did not realize that Lennon’s death was announced during Monday Night Football way back when. So now it’s part of sports history.

The way I remember it, our principal announced it during home room. It was news to everybody. Isn’t that odd?  Apparently none of us had watched Monday Night Football, and our newspapers were out of date then the same as they are now, but did we listen to live news on radio in the morning? Apparently not. No internet, no texting,  no Twitter trending topics … we were all caught off guard in home room.

But wow, think about how easy it is to find this picture now:

Lennon signing an autograph for Mark Chapman hours before his death

127 Hours is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, the guy who amputated his own arm after being trapped by a boulder while hiking in Canyonlands National Park. I read his book (Between a Rock and a Hard Place) last year and was curious to see how it could possibly be made into a movie. Guy trapped by himself in an impossibly narrow canyon for 5 days followed by a gruesome self-surgery? Yikes. And yet they pulled it off. It was a great movie. And I am doubly impressed, because they further restricted themselves by not using any narration (but plenty of dialogue), and by including only the timeframe of the hike itself. The book had a lot of biographical build-up that was needed to establish the adventurous (and cocky, careless) nature of the protagonist. And to be fair, that stuff was justified because it was, after all, a memoir. But the movie accomplished all of that character development with just great acting, direction and writing, and with much better results. Not to knock the book, which was very well-written, but watching the movie on the big screen made me cry, and not just at the end.

Which begs the question, is this a movie most people would even enjoy? I wanted to see it because I read a review, and I read the review because I read the book, and I read the book because our friend Brian had seen Ralston speak at a charity event he attended despite reservations due to the subject manner. Brian raved about it. It’s an incredible story, an inspirational movie, and the arm is fake, you know.

That said, Ed and I both had related nightmares that night. But they weren’t about the amputation. They were about the rest of it.

One thing that troubles me about Dallas is that the whole identity of the city is 1) the Kennedy assassination and 2) the Dallas Cowboys and 3) the really, really old TV series, Dallas. If I mention this to Dallasites, the response is “That’s not true!” … silence … change of subject.

Anyway, every November the local newspaper starts up with the assassination stories. I don’t know how they keep thinking of new things to write about, but somehow they do. Over the three Novembers I’ve lived here, I’ve gradually become aware that November 22nd is a non-official city holiday, and certain resident (and non-resident) conspiracy theorists fetishize it, and that is something interesting I should probably observe while I live here. So yesterday I talked Ed into riding our bikes down to Dealey Plaza to see what there was to see.

We saw: a book signing, altars, TV cameras, tourists, a LOT of police officers, hot dog vendors, carriage rides, surveying equipment, clipboards, maps, signs, candles, finger pointing (lots), binoculars. We heard: “obviously”, “that doesn’t make sense”, “show trial”, “Moron Commission”. And then some people in a really old Lincoln convertible drove through the plaza and pretended they’d been shot in the head, laughing. Classy.

(This sign isn't usually here.)

Next we decided to continue on to Oak Cliff, where Lee Harvey Oswald lived. After the assassination he traveled that way, shot a police officer, and was subsequently captured in the Texas Theater. We stopped at both of those sites on our bikes, and then headed back across the Trinity River toward home, stopping at a bar with a big backyard we’d heard great things about, Lee Harvey’s. Seemed appropriate.

Next up: Tour de Bonnie and Clyde.

I started to go through and pick out favorites, but I just started clicking back and re-reading them all so I’m not going bother listing them. Although I liked this recent cover letter quite a bit:

I knew Dallas had tornadoes, but it was unnerving to hear tornado sirens going off last night. Luckily we didn’t get a tornado, because I asked my 7-year-old neighbor for advice on what to do if the sirens went off. She said “we usually go into the bathroom, but you have a lot of windows, so you probably won’t make it”.

And we thought that was that. But then this morning the storms started again. The power was flickering, and then suddenly the winds got really strong, the power went out (as it turns out, for over eight hours),  it started to hail, and the street became a river. It was like Tropical Storm Alison. Garbage cans were floating down the street. I tried to go out to take a video, but the wind literally blew me back in. Twice. The wind settled down a bit after about ten minutes. My neighbor’s car was about to flood, but he was able to pull it into our driveway. He and I sat on my front porch for awhile and watched in amazement as our intersection disappeared under water.

After the storm cleared, I drove over to the lake to check on the boat. All of the traffic lights were out (not flashing, completely out). Trees were down all over Skillman. I was worried because the winds had been so high since last night, and I knew the lake would be severely flooded.

The lake was way over its banks, into the road. But because we chose a bright yellow boat cover, I could tell from far away that our boat was okay (fun fact, you can see our boat from an airplane!). I took some pictures and videos, and then, with another boat club member, used the club’s pedal boats (he had hip waders and could access them even though the docks were way under water) to rescue a small board boat that had broken free and washed up onto the road. We then rode the pedal boats right into the clubhouse, which was knee deep in water. I wish I had my camera for that! We stacked chairs and other items onto the tables and secured some of the disheveled smaller boats. It was actually fun, even though I later fell in the lake because I thought I was in the parking lot but was actually standing on the dock. Tomorrow the level will be low enough for me to go and make sure everything drained okay.

Tonight I walked up and down Swiss Avenue. There were so many big trees and limbs down there. I talked to a guy clearing a tree at one house, and he said the limbs displayed the spiral fracture pattern he sees in tornadoes. I don’t think we had a tornado, but it was close.

Tonight we had a beautiful sunset.

Eventually he did take it down, but in its place went a large sign he’d had printed that said “Taking Away Little Girls’ Treehouse? Shame on You! This is a Neighborhood, Not a Museum!”. That stayed up a couple of weeks, and then disappeared.

And then, as I was being dropped off after the MS150, the camera crew showed up. Yep, he managed to get the local news to cover his story. I watched from my office as he climbed the tree and rehung the sign for the cameras. When the reporter arrived just before the news started, I turned on the news and lo and behold, it was the first story!

And this is why I do not watch local news.  Here’s the news clip.

Saturday morning we went to the first work party of the year for the boat club. Several davits were rebuilt, a new toolbench with a sink was added, and lots of cleaning and reorganizing went on. Unfortunately, Ed overdid it and hurt his back again.

Later that afternoon we had a severe thunderstorm with violent winds. The Dallas Cowboys practice facility collapsed during a rookie practice, and about a dozen people were hurt. We had torrential rain.

Sunday after going out for breakfast, we went to check on the boat. We found the docks of both boat clubs under water, so there was no going out to check the boat, but we could see that it was okay. About an hour later I rode my bike back to the lake with a camera and the water had already receded quite a bit. A few people were at the club hosing things down. The docks out to the boats were still under water. What a poorly timed work party! I took more pictures which I’ll post when I get a chance. Apparently the lake floods like that once or twice a year, which is why the boats are up on davits. The davits are set up so the boats can drain, and we keep the plugs out.

Here’s a picture I took with my iPhone the first time we went out. By this time it had stopped raining for at least five hours, so the level was higher than this.