Sunday, October 23, 2011

Babysitting


I am watching a friend's dogs while she is on vacation.
She has watched our dogs so many times
that we were happy to have
Iggy and Max over to our home!
Iggy is our dog's littermate (Buster).

I remember going to the hospital
to see the two little pups in their kennel.
One of B's associates at the hospital was the owner.
We had recently lost our Holly dog so we were looking.
My sister went with me and
we oohed and aahed over the two little guys,
finally deciding on the smaller one
who became our Buster.
Our friend, AJ, took the bigger one
who became Iggy,
which is short for Ignatius.


Our other dog is Buddy.
He is Buster and Iggy's older brother.
It is interesting to watch the three brothers together;
you can tell they are related.
Buddy is very tall in the legs,
Buster has an incredibly short tail,
and Iggy can sit on his hind quarters, so they are unique too.

Max is an older dog; I think he's about 10 years old.
Max is short for Maximus
He is all white with black eyes.
And he loves food,
especially human food!


Since we couldn't really have all four dogs in our bed
(I don't know how AJ does it)
we have them sleep in a big blanket nest
together in the laundry room.

They are pretty cute
and it has been fun to have a sleepover with the dogs.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Interesting


While I was at the cabin I read two books:
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty
by Caroline Alexander
and
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
by Tony Horwitz

Both are books that I've read several times.
I knew some of the history of the Mutiny, but the big question still is:
Why did Fletcher Christian do it?
What was his motivation?

I've seen the 1962 Marlon Brando movie version
as well as
the 1984 Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson version entitled The Bounty.

(In light of recent events, it is a little difficult to admit
Mel Gibson is my favorite actor
and the movie The Year of Living Dangerously
is one of my all-time favorite movies,
but his personal life may be what makes him a great actor)

In The Bounty, his love for his Tahitian wife
seems to be the outward motivation
but there is something deeper going on.
The straight-laced dutiful English society
vs the laid-back devil may care Island-time society of Tahiti
are at odds.


There are two amazing endings to the story:
Bligh made it the 47 days and over 3600 hundred miles
from the middle of the Pacific to the Dutch East Indies in a 23-foot boat with his crew
and
there was a little surviving community on Pitcairn Island where
Christian and the other mutineers made their final destination
(albeit mostly women and children and only 1 man)

I guess that is the whole point:
it was almost too incredible to be true.


When I got home, I started reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
mainly because I had recently viewed
La Jaconda (otherwise known as the Mona Lisa)
at the Louvre.


And Madonna on The Rocks.