The dogs have been getting restless since I haven't felt up to being out lately, so I made myself load them up in the truck and take them to the park. I'm really glad I did, they had a blast. Here they are in the truck, ready to go. Ares is in a hurry. This is the "open space" park on the other side of the river from us. They love it here. Usually we throw the ball, but they lost the last one and I haven't bought new ones yet. They had a great time just wandering around smelling everything today. Oh, and the water. More pictures below the fold, click "More" to see them... enjoy!

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I'll take my rainbows any way I can get them. This one is just from watering the lawn, but it makes me smile. As you can see, it is also time to mow the lawn again. It's out of control.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to best photograph a rainbow? I'm not so good at it. If I try to zoom in on it, it goes away or I can't focus on it. Sad.

Progress has been made on Brian's sweater. I finally found a pattern I liked, that would work with the yarn I had. The sweater is called "The Fog Sweater", based on a sweater the designer saw in the movie "The Fog". It's a simple drop-sleeve sweater with a LOT of ribbing; the body of the sweater is all 1x1 rib. It's not too bad now that I've done about an inch of it, but I can see that it will probably drive me crazy before I'm finished. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="470" caption="The Fog Sweater by Tiennie"] [/caption] So far, I've done all the bottom ribbing and about an inch or so into the main body of the sweater. I haven't been able to do it as fast as I like, because all that ribbing hurts my hands. So, maybe I'll have it done by Christmas. I'm using KnitPicks "Wool of the Andes" worsted in Coal (which is about as black as you can get yarn). If I could buy the yarn again, I would choose a lighter color, because knitting black yarn in anything but bright sunlight is a pain in the butt. Oh well, live and learn, I suppose. I really like how it's coming out, though. It's a nice fabric, not too heavy, and not too scratchy. He'll probably be able to wear it without a shirt underneath if he wants to. We shall see. [caption id="attachment_480" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="The Fog Sweater bottom ribbing"] [/caption] It'll be fun, right?

Just realized I was missing a few final updates, so I'll fill you in. Clyde went to go stay with his owner's cousin last Friday. He was a great dog to get to know; if I didn't already have a houseful of pets, he would have been an awesome dog to have. It was hard to have him here, though... Apollo didn't want him near us, and would park himself on the floor so he was between Clyde and us. I couldn't let Clyde off the leash in the house, because he thought cats were something to chase. If I'd had time, I could have trained him not to do it, but I knew he wasn't going to be here for long. I really enjoyed having him here, though. He was a gentleman, and just a super sweet dog. Good luck, Clyde and family! The swamp cooler was finally installed last week, and that made me VERY happy. The guys who came out (to replace the guy who couldn't be bothered to show up) were polite, professional, and wonderful to have here. The installed the cooler, fixed a few problems we didn't know we had (oops, broken water line), and were very reasonably priced. My recommendation, if you live in the area: AWR Maintenance are great handymen. We will definitely call them again. Great work, guys. The swamp cooler was really nice this past week. It got a bit warm around here. Of course, it's been cold and icky the past few days, but summer is on the way. We'll definitely get our money's worth out of this. Oh.. thanks, Mom and Dad, for paying for the installation. That was a big help. That's been our excitement here. My son and his wife came out for the weekend, which was very nice. We really had a nice visit, and it was very relaxing and fun. I'll post pictures of our drive up the Monument later; I still need to pull them off the little camera.

Welcome to springtime in Colorado, I suppose; I let the dogs out this morning, and it was snowing. Not a lot, but snow all the same. I think I'm going to go back to bed.