Our Child: Sagan

I thought I would do a post about Sagan, as several interesting things have happened in regards to him recently. 

First, oddly enough, Sagan’s picture has become the Facebook profile picture of a Vet’s office in Richmond, Midlothian Animal Clinic!  The picture was taken by my good friend Luci while her and Ricky were out here visiting. You may remember reading about our journey into the wilderness of theOlympic National Park. Luci does photography work for this Vet and submitted this picture of Sagan to them and now he is FAMOUS.... and he doesn’t even know!  Sagan never checks Facebook….

Sagan is the Posterchild for a Richmond, VA area Vet!

Second, we had a biopsy done on a re-occurring lesion that shows up on the roof of his mouth (towards the back of his throat). We had spoken to some Vets about it previously, and the consensus was that it was Eosinophilic Granuloma Complex, which they believe is caused by an allergic reaction, presumably to food. It is common in cats, but not too much with dogs. Apparently it can be common in Huskies, which is weird b/c the Craigslist post (where we got him from) mentioned he was part Husky, however we wrote that off, as he grew up to have no Husky-like traits. He has been on a special restricted diet for 1.5 years, since we first noticed it.

The lesion came back again, this time about the size of nickel, so we had a biopsy done. The results came back confirming the allergy hypothesis, showing it is Eosinophilic and Neutrophilic Stomatitis, aka… he probably has an allergy. It's NOT cancer…yeah!  So basically we may end up doing nothing, and see if it goes away naturally, or maybe switch his food again in an attempt to find a protein/grain that doesn’t affect him.

Third, a Vet technician mentioned that Sagan looks like a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. I had never heard of it, but I think she may be RIGHT! Upon reading up on it, I think that Sagan is part NSDTR and part Golden Retriever. 

Sagan is gold in color, whereas they are usually are more “red”, and he is slightly bigger/heavier, but other than that, he looks just like them, including the EXACT same white markings, fits the description, and has very similar mannerisms (based on the videos I have seen about them). 

A Google search for “NSDTR” will return some pictures that look very similar to Sagan. It is so cool have some idea what he is!

Here is a drawing I found of a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever that looks EXACTLY like sagan!

Jason and Harrigan Visit

My brother Jason and sister in-law Harrigan came out for an extended weekend visit. I would say they managed to cram in the full Seattle experience in that weekend. 

The Bowmans

All of us.

Picnic on the beach.

Brothers.

At Gasworks Park.

Random cool artwork.

Jason and Harrigan

We were all over the map, experiencing samples of the things that make Seattle…Seattle. Such as:

‘Green’ Living

We stopped by Seattle Tilth’s Harvest Fair which is where a lot like minded people converge to share/educate/and benefit from: urban farming, composting, green building, organic produce, CSAs,   pesticide-free zones, urban beekeeping, collaborative consumption, and locavorism. You know… the kind of common sense things that we would all get behind, if wasn't for the looming fear of being labeled a hippie.  Luckily for us all, there is more contemporary term: ‘Granola’ – has the values of hippie but with the amenities and financial means of the average, modern, middle-class, family. This was definitely a Granola-lifestyle type of event, although a few hippies and yuppies may have infiltrated.  :)

Art

We saw Samsara, a film for which I have been waiting to be finalized, for years. It is a fantastic look at the contrast of how fascinating and bizarre civilization/society is. I absolutely recommend it to everyone.  I think it is a bit edgier than Ron Fricke's previous work (which is all also spectacular).

We checked out were the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and the Olympic Sculpture Park. Both have been on my to-see list and each had some very interesting pieces.

Inopportune: Stage One by Cai Guo-Qiang. He directed the visual and special effects for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics! 

I really like these masks.

"We all wear masks, metaphorically speaking."

The Porcelain Room of SAM

Split by Roxy Paine. 2003.  Stainless Steel 

Eagle by Alexander Calder. 1971

Unfortunately, Jason and Harrigan had already seen several of the installations before, either in Central Park (in the case of the sculpture), or in some museum called the “Guggenheim”. Maybe you have heard of it, but frankly…it sounds made up. So if we can’t impress them with Seattle’s art scene, maybe we can appeal to some other interests that Seattle is better known for:  food, coffee, and music!

Food

Jason and Harrigan are what you might call ‘Foodies’, so we directed some time into eating a lot of delicious food. When I say delicious, I mean DELICIOUS. The places we ate spanned many neighborhoods and cuisines, but had one common theme… it was all really stellar food. But don't take my word for it, ask Yelp!

Some of the places we ate included Paseo, Bitterroot BBQ, Honore Artisan Bakery, Pike Place Chowder, Beechers Handmade Cheese ,and OddFellows Cafe. When we weren’t dining out, we were cooking up our own dishes: several fantastic breakfasts and one evening we bought mussels and cooked them down at the beach! Gourmet even at the beach!

Coffee

We did our fair share of consuming coffee throughout the weekend as well. Not that we necessary were seeking out great coffee, but great coffee kind of finds you in Seattle. Some of the coffee shops we sampled included Caffé Fiore, Honore, Fonte, Chocolati, and of course Starbucks! [wow, what a pretentious sounding list of coffee shop names... but they can back it up].    : )

Music

A band we know from Blacksburg, Wild Nothing, who subsequently have made it big in the indie music world, was touring through Seattle, so we all went to check it out. It was fun evening, and a good show, but I wouldn’t call it a great show…. The keyboardist had a recently broken arm, along with a few technical snafus, contributed to a lack-luster performance. But a fun night, none-the-less.

Wild Nothing

Throughout the visit, all four of us took pictures using the photo sharing app Instagram.  Some of us took more pictures than others and some of us might have an addiction to Instagram…but it paid off.  In an attempt at an experiment in modern technology and social media, I have combined all of the pictures we took into a collage. They are without description or context, and there is no rhyme or reason to the organization to the pictures.  Just 270(!) pics, documenting all of the things we did, the food we ate, and what we collectively experienced. Enjoy!

Another fantastic bunch of visitors! Who is next?!




[Photos courtesy of Harrigan, Jason, and Tess. I would also give some credit to Instagram!]

Christmas in Greeley, CO

To those of you who have checked and found nothing here for a very long time, I apologize. The lack of content here is partially due to lack of content in my life as well being busy and lazy. So I will catch you up on the goings on.

We didn’t make it back to the East coast this winter for any holidays, but we did decide, last minute, to  venture halfway back across the continent to Greeley Colorado to stay a few weeks with Tess’ family. When we packed up the car and went to put Sagan in, he just looked at us like, “are we really doing this again?”  It was nice to spend the holidays with her family: mom, dad, sister, niece, 2 nephews, and several dogs and cats.

The following pictures show what went on in Greeley.

So several of these probably need explanation.... We dressed Lela up as an Ewok. I found a rad snowsuit in a Greeley thrift store, which I later wore to snowboard (see future post). The others are the of the niece (Cypher) and nephews (Bastion and Chance) and aunt Tessy. We kept the kids in that dog cage for the majority of the time. : )

This is a picture of elk from a day trip we made to Estes Park.

We also took the opportunity to visit several friends in Denver, which was really great. We went to watch the Sugar Bowl at a large bar in Denver where the Hokie Alumni gather to watch games. It was fun to hang out with 100’s of other Hokie fans and alumni and interesting to see the Denver Hokie scene in comparison to what exists out here in Seattle. 

We visited Tess' Sister in Temecula, CA

We traveled down to Temecula, CA for 3.5 weeks to visit with Tess' sister Jenny and her family. The family members included Jenny and Kriket and their 3 kids: Cypher (4 yrs), Bastion (2 yrs), and Chance (1 month). We enjoyed spending time with them and hanging out with the kids. Temecula is hot and desert-like. It didn’t rain a drop the whole time we were there.

A quick visit to San Francisco

My cousin Heather, her husband Mark, and their adorable daughter Charlotte, were gracious enough to host us for the weekend on our way down through California. They gave us the whirlwind tour of their part of San Francisco, and showed us just how amazing San Francisco is.

San Francisco is a fantastic place. Maybe my favorite place. It is hard to describe just what it is about it, but I thoroughly enjoyed our short visit and can’t wait to get back.

These fascinating flowers are called Dahlias and the pictures were taken in Golden Gate Park at the Dahlia Garden.

We ventured out into the Haight-Ashbury district and had lunch at the Magnolia Pub and Brewery. Mark and I then took a bike ride up through Presidio Park to the Golden Gate Bridge, (which let me tell you is much more or a sight to see in real life, than in pictures), down to the hidden China beach, up a killer San Francisco hill, then back down to Ocean Beach (a silly name for a beach), and then back through Golden Gate Park to end up at their amazingly-located, beautiful row house on the Park’s panhandle. We ended the day by having dinner at an interesting Mediterranean restaurant on Haight Street.

The next day we cheered Heather on as she passed by during her half marathon, and then we were off, to hit the road for Temecula in the hot California sun, pondering how we can one day afford to move to San Francisco….

Tess’ Dad visits

Tess’ dad was passing through the area, so we took him to this interesting restaurant/place where they converted an old middle school into a restaurant/theater/community center /hotel/etc, called The Kennedy School. A very interesting place. We then caught a movie.

It seems that there is nowhere in the States where you can escape a potential truck route, which is great because we enjoy his visits.