Dog Days of Winter

restoman took some pictures of me with his dog, Lily, and Zoe, a dog who belongs to one of his crew. Lily and Zoe often play together in Restoman's back yard. They were both back there on one of the days I came over for my usual walk with Lily, so I joined them. So much fun! Pictures he took of us are over here:

http://restoman.livejournal.com/250428.html

I had a nice four mile walk with Lily yesterday. We walked up to Thornden Park, a large green space just west of campus. We traversed the stage of the WPA amphitheatre, stopping to look out over the seats. The terraced bowl formed of fieldstone and green grass looked strikingly like a classical ruin. Two young women who were also enjoying the site played with Lily for a little bit and pronounced her "the perfect dog." That might be going a little far; she has her issues. But she is pretty wonderful.

We walked to the top of the hill the park centers on, up to the massive municipal standpipe building, and looked out over the city for a while. Rather, I looked out while Lily stared at a small white dog that started bounding up the hill toward us while her people called and chased her. She stopped halfway to us and and was caught and distracted. This is good, as she looked about Lily-snack sized and I'm still not sure about how Lily deals with other dogs.

She interacted pretty nicely, though, with a Pitbull we met on the walk home. I moved off the sidewalk to give room to the man and his very large bully, but he stopped and the dogs seemed interested in meeting. He gave his dog a little more leash, which made me a bit uncomfortable since he hadn't asked, but Lily and Rambo happily sniffed each other. (Rambo looked like a Pitbull on steroids. Not just big, but I've never seen a dog with a chest like that!)

I'm running out of new green spaces to take Lily. I think next time I might go back to Thornden and walk all the way around the periphery. There's an old brick sidewalk that surrounds most of it; at least, on the edges I've seen. It's maintained in some places, but in others its so overgrown that you can barely see the depression in the grass where the bricks underlie the earth. It's one of those very tangible signs of the passage of time that I find so fascinating.

A Giant Collection of Small Versions of Giant Things

This woman follows a sublime calling.

The world's largest collection of the world's smallest versions of the world's largest things.

So. Awesome. I'm so happy there are people in the world who do this kind of stuff.