Tag Archives: mazie

Animals

2020 Accomplishments: New Dog, Kat

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I’ve been recapping my 2020 accomplishments, including a new book and a sculpture in our art park. But today I want to talk about an accomplishment that’s less of an accomplishment and more of something that happened this year. But it’s still big, so it seems worth including.

We got a new dog. Her name is Kat, short for Katarina. (Yes, we are the best at naming things.)

She’s a three-legged rescue dog, originally from Texas, and came to us by way of Wisconsin. She’s maybe two years old (we’re not sure), she’s most likely a pit bull, and she’s great.

We got her on Mother’s Day, which is fitting because Abby is the dog person, and Kat came to us shortly after we lost Nick and a few months before we lost Mazie (yeah, 2020 sucks).

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Animals

Mazie: 2005-2020

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Last week we had to make the brutal decision to put down our dog Mazie. Oh, Mazie-butt. (Yes, I called her Mazie-butt, a nickname she earned pretty early).

We picked up Mazie as a rescue near the town of Mazomanie, Wisconsin (thus her name). She was a rat terrier/corgi mix, a brutal combination that meant she wanted to herd things while also killing them. It also gave her body a peculiar shape and those awesome radar ears (they started out droopy, then stood up one at a time; unless it was super damp and one dropped again). She was the runt of the litter, and seemed to follow us around in a pathetic “pick me!” sort of way.

When she first came home, she was tiny. Like walk under our first dog, Speak, and he was small too.

But she didn’t stay tiny. She grew into a tank. She wasn’t big exactly, but solid.

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Health, World News

Coronavirus: 5 Months In

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I’ve been too busy to blog. We’re in a weird time here in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic and probably the most important presidential election in my lifetime. That pandemic has caused an economic scare (never mind, you know, death), and things are just weird.

I wrote about it a bit this spring to capture my feelings, and those days feel so long ago. So maybe it’s time to do it again. (This is going to be a bit scattered, so I apologize in advance for that.)

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Just for Fun, Sexuality

Bizarre Stories: Sex on the Beach

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There’s a story in the Pioneer Press this morning about the Wisconsin DNR cracking down on nudists. It seems the nudists are having sex in various public places (you know, the beach, the woods, sand bars…) and exposing themselves to passing canoeists. It’s been a problem for decades and has resulted in bans on nudity on public land, lawsuits and even a pastor protesting at the beach.

Here’s the best part of the article:

“They were having sex right on the islands, the sandbars, when the river was lower,” said Ruth Bender, who owns property directly across the river from the beach. “People can’t understand something like that is going on. That’s a nice section of the river. I don’t know what fun they get out of that.” (emphasis mine)

Um… they’re having sex. I’m pretty sure that’s the fun they get out of it.

Second best part of the article? The offending beach is in Mazomanie, Wis., which is where we got our dog, Mazie, and then named her after the town. My dog is named after an infamous nudist beach town (in Wisconsin of all places).

Daily Grind, Family

A Week of Highs and Lows

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If a week could suck, this one would be it:

  • Found out Milo has been sick for a week with gastroenteritis. He’s doing better, but the little guy doesn’t have much weight to lose (Today we visited a two week old baby who’s bigger than 4-month-old Milo).
  • Lexi threw up in her car seat on the way home from visiting said baby.
  • Friends went through another miscarriage.
  • Other friends in Sudan wait to see if they’ll be evacuated.
  • Confronted a family crisis and the related fallout.
  • A week of workplace drama escalated like a bigger/better party.

On the plus side:

  • Distractions abounded, including the flurry of a U2 album release (did you see them do the top 10 list on Letterman?).
  • I found out exactly how much the Federal government owes me (it’s like my own personal bailout!).
  • Mazie didn’t eat anything she wasn’t supposed to (well, except for the feet of a little plastic girl of Lexi’s, but that doesn’t bother me because Lexi didn’t put it away).
  • Ate at Los Cabos for the first time in months. Mmm… tasty.
  • Two friends welcomed healthy, happy babies into the world.
  • And best of all, I get to meet my son in two weeks.

Sometimes life is hard and messy and ugly, but there’s always beauty. In that sense, I’m an insufferable optimist. Life may not always be happy, but it is joyful.

Just for Fun, Science

Freezing Bubbles in Minnesota

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After vaporizing water a week or so back I thought I should try another cold weather science experiment. This time? Freezing bubbles. It was only -7 this morning when I tried it, so not as cold as it could be. But the bubbles still froze.

It’s hard to see from the video, but when my dog Mazie bites the bubble, you can hear a distinctive crunch. Frozen bubbles.


Freezing Bubbles from kevinhendricks on Vimeo.

For best results, blow bubbles upwards so they have more time to freeze. The frozen bubbles are like thin gossamer cellophane and are very fragile, usually shattering on impact, so it’s hard to get a good picture. Plus, floating bubbles aren’t exactly easy to photograph in the first place. Also, the colder, the better. I imagine doing this at night would have been better, both for pictures and faster freezing bubbles.

For really amazing frozen bubble pictures, check out this set of photos (via boing boing).

And yes, Mazie enjoys eating bubbles.