This image was gross enough that I didn’t want to put it on the front pages of my site – if you’re interested in seeing how this is progressing, check it out, but be aware it’s pretty disgusting. It actually looks much worse than yesterday, though I suspect this is because the topical agent I spray on her three times a day is drying it out and what’s happening is scabs are beginning to form.

Credit where it’s due – she’s a total trooper about all this, with her lampshade on and having to deal with me spraying her injury with what must feel like acid to her based on her reaction (this from a dog that normally seems pretty immune to pain). She’s moping a bit and seems to crave affection a bit more than usual but is otherwise coping pretty well with it all.

So Soolin and I go swimming. Afterwards, she goes to the bathroom, and I collect it in a poop bag and deposit it in the cargo hatch under the floor of my car, then forget about it. It spends a day baking in the sun on Sunday. Monday morning I open up the car and yyyyyyeeeeech! My car reeks. Dunno yet what I will do to clear that out of my car but was I ever bummed on the way to work Monday morning.

We’ve been to the vet and Soolin actually had two things going on. She had a skin infection on her neck that she’s recovering from on her own, and she had a different kind of skin infection, a hot spot, on her leg, which you can see in all its disgusting glory below. She has to wear an elizabethan collar to keep her from licking the thing which makes her miserable, and she has to take pills for a week and have the infection sprayed with something that stings like hell, but she’s already on the mend.

<a href="http://www.metamusing.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/soolinshotspot.jpg&quot; title="Soolin

So after several weeks of manic activity – hiking, traveling to Cape Cod, Long Island, and upstate New York – I decided to take a breather this weekend. Friday I went out with a match.com connection in Lee, MA and had a great time. We went out to dinner at the Bombay Grill, during which I tried the Hot Lemon Pickle soup. Who can resist a soup with that name? Turns out I should have, it was (intentionally) served cold and was inedible – very spicy with a terrible texture and taste. When they first set it on the table I took one look and ‘cat food’ sprang into my head. I couldn’t get it out, even though it tasted nothing like cat food. The dinner was otherwise very good however. Afterwords we

I’m back. A tree fell on my house and knocked out power and internet. I was away and was getting on the ferry when I checked my voicemail Sunday night and discovered the police had taped off my house because a tree had fallen and there were live power lines jumping around in my driveway. That problem was cleared up by the time I got home 3 hours later, but I had no power and no access to my driveway. I also had police tape across my door but I was exhausted and figured they wouldn’t mind if I took it off. I was right, though when I woke to flashlight in my face at three in the morning at first I thought the cops were there to bust me for breaking into my own house. Turns out the power company was there at 3AM to get the power working again and the guy in the bucket truck was on the other side of the window from me trying to find the power connections.

Anyway things are back to normal now, though the house took a minor beating and I lost some things to broken glass – some of my winter jammy type clothes, most of my exercise clothing, and Soolin’s dog bed, all of which were encrusted with glass chunks and powder. It could have been much much worse – had that tree fallen a few more feet in the wrong direction it could have taken the front of the house off or even knocked it over. 3 days without internet was ultimately the worst of it.

Well, had another great weekend. Saturday was standard domesticity. The weather had promised mostly cloudy and dim, so I hung home, ran errands, and cleaned. Of course the weather turned out to be wrong and it was mostly sunny, but what can you do. Sunday I headed to Haystack mountain which is near Wilmington, VT, and summited it with Soolin. You can check out my route there and back again, and check out the part I was sure I would get turned aroun and lost in.

The hike itself was decent. The summit was great – exposed rock, scruffy pine everywhere and nice views of a lake and the region to the east. The trail itself wasn’t that challenging. A big piece of it followed an old gravel road bed and there were only short sections of significant incline. All in it was about 4 miles round trip and the toughest thing about it was the heat. Fortunately it was a very breezy day which helped with the bugs and to cool me off.

I saw no one on my way in, but I ran into a lot of folks on my way out. I took some decent photos with my new camera including a couple of panoramas – I’ll post here again once I’ve got those online.

[edit] I forgot to mention the height. ~3100 feet at the summit if I recall correctly, although in this case I only personally ascended about ~1k of that because the drive to the trailhead was where most of the mountain was climbed – some seriously steep roads too, there were a couple of places where I thought the car simply wouldn’t be able to climb without slipping.

So I commute to work on my bike as often as I can. There’s this great bike trail that pretty much runs door to door from my house to my office, and it’s tree lined, shady, and has water running alongside portions of it. These are all good things because they help to keep it cool and comfortable. There’s one downside though, which is that there are tons of bugs flitting about under the trees, and almost every time I ride to work I end up with one or two in my mouth. Sometimes they get caught in my throat and until today I thought that was the worst of it, but on the way home a (beetle?) smashed like a grape against my upper teeth. Talk about the ultimate bug gross out, I had no water on the bike and ended up pulled off the side of the trail trying to cleanse the bug slime out. Gross! Still, never one to be ashamed, I’ll just fess up: my name is Dave, and yes, I eat bugs.

😉

Check out this chart of real estate values over time. It’s hard to believe we’re not in a bubble when you see it diagrammed like this, not just any bubble either, a bubble to end all bubbles. I’d love to see this compared to a chart of what happened in Japan to get a sense of just how bad the landing is going to be.

[via reddit]

Home. Also, never made it on my ambitious hike. Met a beautiful woman for a hike in Lenox MA, had a great time, spent more time than I expected, and then my Mom preferred to do dinner Saturday instead of breakfast or lunch on Sunday, so I never made it up to the Siamese ponds. A trip for another day I guess. The blind date was great, which probably means I’ll never hear from her again based on how the other connections I’ve made have played out. We did go on a nice hike though in Lenox, MA in Kennedy Park.

A breadcrumb trail just in case – I’m headed here, to a trailhead just south of Persnns road on route 8, to hike back in along the Sacandaga and eventually to the Siamese Ponds.

Just in case no one hears from me by monday, that’s where I was headed, after a blind date in Lenox MA mid-morning on Saturday.