Five Acres with a View

In spring, the sunrises become less extravagant, but the afternoon cloudscapes pick up the slack.

I had to take Mia and Lody for a walk this afternoon. I let Mia see me pick up a leash to put away that I had bought earlier in the day, and I find it almost impossible to resist a Dalmatian doing her “oh my gosh we’re going for a walk” happy dance.

Despite having used Linux as my primary operating system for two and a half years, I have never been completely comfortable with the idea of adding a new fixed disk to a system. Jack added a new IDE drive to his desktop, and after reading the tutorial which starts at The Theory Behind Hard Drive Management, I was able to partition and format it, and actually feel as though I knew what I was doing.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

Want to strike a blow against scam agents? Link to the 20 Worst Agents list. While you’re at it, link to Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors. You could even link to Everything you wanted to know about literary agents and On the getting of agents. But the 20 Worst Agents list—that’s the important one.

Heather Jansch makes very beautiful Driftwood Horses.

One of the fun things to do at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is to hand feed the giraffes. I just recently discovered the Live Giraffe Cam at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, which allows one to see giraffes (including their purple tongues) on pleasant days.

Jack rescued four plants at work that were due to be discarded, in blithe disregard that we have a limited number of windows that get any sunlight, since our house was built with deep eaves so it would stay cool in the summer. Two of them required immediate repotting because they were falling out of their pots, and two will require bigger pots when I can get some. After wandering around the house for a bit, I decided to use the south facing window seat for the newcomers.

The Evolutionary Timeline allows you to scroll sideways in your browser to see when major groups evolved. (Via Pharyngula, a blog about science, evolution and development.)

A new picture of Rufus, the Australian Shepherd puppy, is up at my sister’s weblog Caroline’s Journey.

Actually, Mia has two beds. This is not one of them. She has given me additional motivation to get the bed made in the morning.

Mia has been here just a little under five weeks, but figured one thing out almost immediately. Twice a day, after the horses get fed, the dogs get fed. Therefore, in Mia’s view, it is critical that she helps me get out to the barn to feed the horses. This isn’t so bad in the morning, but in the afternoon Mia starts about 3:00 (and I don’t normally feed the horses until 6:00.) First, she sits by me and looks intensely at my face. When that doesn’t work, she insinuates the top half of her body into my lap, with the same concentrated stare into my eyes. Any time I actually get up, she starts doing her happy dance, and trying to lead me to the door.

Occasionally, I tactlessly go to the mudroom (which is also our laundry room) for some reason, and then go back into the house instead of continuing on to the barn. When that happens, Mia looks somewhat baffled, as though she is thinking “Damn, I got her to the mudroom, now how do I manage the next step?”