A nice time was had by all / If you're in Chicago, look for me in Sunday's Trib- H&G

After months of urging from Snark, I finally made it down to a meeting of the "Granville Girls' Club" at the Anvil, of course taking my dogs along. They were big hits... though they kept trying to go around the bar to be with Snark and Frankie, and... true to the breed slogan "Having a papillon means never having to go to the bathroom alone"... tried to accompany anyone who went to answer Nature's Call.

Buried at PhotoCasket.com

(I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, but it was fun!)

I'd met Snark once before, but it was nice meeting Frankie and GungaDean... hope we can make it down there more often on Fridays. I can't promise I'll stay a lot later, but it was fun. Staying out till 11 is pretty unusual for me these days. I usually get up at 5am, as by 6, Tess usually needs her first injection, and by 8, she's in "dark quiet room" hellish pain.)

Plus... bar's aren't exactly the natural environment of the introvert, so there's only so long I can be in one before I need to see the sky, feel the breeze (even if it is a -20 windchill breeze coming off the lake), etc.

• ***gasp*** He didn't
• He did
• He isn't
• He is.... *grin*

Yes, believe it or not, for all my loquacity, for all willingness to talk with anyone anywhere about anything, I'm an introvert. Contrary to popular perception, introverts aren't misanthropes, but we do find crowds draining. The way I handled it as a pastor was to imagine the congregation as a collective singular. I highly commend that technique to anyone who has to do a public speaking event... its much better than imagining everyone in their underwear... especially if you have as wild and crazy an imagination as I do! *grin*


Hope you guys have something big planned for Mardis Gras, but if you do... please don't pay retail for cosmetics... there's just no need. For one night's use, even the cheap stuff from U'NJoy will work fine (they have some really wild lipsticks and nail polish for 99 cents each, mascara for 2 bucks.) If you are more in the mode I'm in, you'll want higher quality for daily wear so it doesn't ruin your skin or flake off into your eyes, but Ulta's house brands are as good as any for half the price.

AS for the Trib... I hope I'm not counting my chickens too early, but I wrote in a letter in response to their bride's maid dress article to tell them how my rug craft can be used to get good out of old clothes you can't wear but can't part with either, and they asked permission to run the letter and print a picture. I submitted three- one of the rug I made to celebrate our marriage made up of the clothes we wore when wooing 13 years ago, one of my leather shoe/blue jean rug, and one of my umbrella/plastic shopping bag rug.

Anyway, thought I'd mention it now, since tomorrow I need to recover from today's craziness, and get ready for my all day Anatomy and Physiology class which kicks off Sunday.

Finally, here's some artsy videos I shot last time I was back in Indiana visiting my mother in Indianapolis.

Puppies and the porch
We got to visit my mother just in time for a major winter storm. Good for her- I was there to shovel, drive her around, etc., and good for the puppies... they got to romp.I shot this in B&W as I was trying to conserve memory space on my card/computer, and it lends a nice artistic touch.
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Snow circles... not due to aliens, but papillon
This is another artsy B&W I shot back in Indy as my papillon enjoyed being able to run free (amok?)
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Time lapse B&W- Birds at a bird feeder in a snow storm
And finally, a time lapse B&W of the birds flitting around the birdfeeder right outside my mother's picture window.
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Monsieur et Madame papillon et ma Reine

Snark suggested I post some pictures and video of the rest of the Rug Goth family, my wife and Papillon (butterfly) dogs.

The Papillon is one of the older of the toy breeds. They go back to about the time of Columbus and are descended from Spaniels. They were bred for one purpose- to be companion dogs. Originally they were the favorites of royalty- Marie Antoinette had one (hers was floppy eared, the original ear style now known as the phalene or moth.) So they are relentlessly even aggressively friendly.

In our neighborhood, they are even more well known than I am, I dare say! They sniff out who needs some puppy love, and if they need a shoulder, some prayers, etc., then I provide those too- hence my conversations with street people, beggars, and Wincrest folk in many of my videos. I've always had a passion for society's rejects and misfits, and the pups are often my entre into their lives. I've found many a dear heart and deep soul among these people who most go out of their way to avoid. When Tess was most recently in the hospital, one went out of his way to ask after US every day he saw me.

Every night our dogs- Killian the black and white male and Hilde the tricolor female- sleep on our chests and give us a puppy facial.

In the videos and stills you also see the rugs I make. You can read more about them at my main blog which Snark so kindly added to the links- Tess' chevalier Listig. I also have a dedicated blog about them on blogger- toothbrushrugs.blogspot.com

(My favorite thing with the rugs is to take clothes which are being discarded and use them to make something useful and artistic. I've found clothes laying around here many times which were unwearable, but worked great in rugs. On my rug blog or main blog, you can also see my masterwork, a rug I made from the clothes Tess and I wore when we wooed and wed. They didn't fit anymore, but they had great sentimental value. The rug is now the centerpiece of our bedroom, as you'll see in the pix and vids.)

As for my beloved wife Tess, I hardly know where to begin! We've been in love 13 years, married 12+. She is disabled with chronic daily migraines, which is what brought us to Chicago and to Edgewater in specific. Her occupation from which she is disabled was as a professor of theology and Biblical and modern languages.

She's having a rough day with the front moving through and is eagerly waiting for me to come back and cuddle the pain away, so I'll save more gushing about her for later, and just dump some pix and vids on you. Enjoy!

This first video is new today... it shows a typical and touching scene in our home

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This was us doing what I call "Word nerd foreplay" yesterday- we flirted by correcting each other's grammar, and took scrabble along on our honeymoon, and here we are, still going at it, *grin*

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And here's a slideshow and some pix of the pups, often with Tess and my rugs.

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I tried to embed the pictures as static images like I did on my multiply blog, but when I looked at the post, they came out looking awful, so to see the static images from the slideshow, click here.