NOTE: I wrote this post last week and it’s been sitting here all this time. At first I didn’t know if I was actually going to post it because I don’t normally post rants. But something happened yesterday that just got me going all over again.

Here are a couple of things that perplex me.

Everybody’s an Author!
I read several blogs where the person is (supposedly) in the midst of writing a novel. We all know that just about anyone can self-publish a book these days and it doesn’t have to be good. The one woman who started out blogging about the same time I did, just posted a new blog entry a few days ago after a lapse of a month. She went on and on describing her “dinning” room in great detail. Frankly, it was boring. Not only was the writing not engaging but she used “dinning” instead of dining at least 12 times. Once she used it three times in a single paragraph. After the 12th “dinning” I stopped reading. Enough.

The other woman has published several self-help books for tweens but didn’t really write them herself. (More like she collected stories that other people had written and put them all together.) She has faked rave reviews of all her “books” on Amazon and someone even called her out on them. Now she claims to be writing a novel which is not an easy feat. She also has lots of typos and misuses of words on her blog which are annoying. Like describing a book she was reading and saying the heroine of the book was “abroad the Titanic.” Hmmm. I think you could be a broad (a not so nice word for a woman) on the Titanic, or you could be aboard the Titanic, but probably not abroad it.

I may not be a writer but at least I have the sense to turn on spell-checker! And you certainly won’t catch me abroad the Titanic in the dinning room. There you go.

Social Media
Maybe I am getting old, but I don’t get social media. I really don’t. I do have a Facebook account but I never post anything. I do read several other people (mostly old dog show friends) but that’s about it. I realize it’s a nice way for people to connect to other people they haven’t otherwise kept in touch with, but ... I don’t get it and I don’t like it.

And, as far as I am concerned Twitter and Tweet are what birds do. Not people. Do people really believe that all these celebrities sit around all day tweeting? If they have that much spare time to engage in such petty activities then they are obviously over paid.

And speaking of social media, who cares if some football player is heartbroken because he learned that he had an online “affair” with a girlfriend who didn’t really exist? I mean, talk about dumb. Yet we’ve heard about this every night on the news.

Or YouTube videos going viral? Isn’t that a word that is normally associated with disease? oops, again showing my age because now “viral” has a whole new meaning in an online dictionary. Pretty sad. Also sad is all those teens doing dumb things that could kill them just to get their videos to go viral.

Teens are bullied online. Photos have been posted that have caused suicides.

Social Media is contagious (for most people) and therefore could be considered a viral disease eating away at the fabric of our society.

{snip}

That was what I wrote last week. Yesterday my friend Carolyn called me to chat. She happened to mention that she had seen what she thought was the exact same photo of Hailey and her dam Diva that appeared on my blog last week on a site called Dog Lover on FaceBook. This one. She wondered if I had taken the photo or someone else did. No, I told her, it was my original photo and thought she must be mistaken.

But there was my photo, on this “Dog Lover” site for all to see and “share”. When I asked them to remove the photo since it was copyrighted on my site (I have to assume this is how they got it?) they replied that “many people have this photo now because we all share on FB, so I won’t take it down.” What? Share? There is no “sharing” when something is not yours to share! I was fuming. Still am since I had some back and forth with this person just a few minutes ago. They are still refusing to remove it. What is wrong with people?

I tried to look up how to report it and just got pages and pages of stuff. To report copyright infringement you have to file a claim, blah, blah, blah. I’m pissed but I’m not sure I want to go through all that. It’s not like I am some great photographer whose photos make them money. But it’s the principal of the whole thing.

The best I could do was click “this is harassing me” regarding the photo which I am sure they will not see anything harassing about a cute little dog and its mother. Sigh. Before I clicked the button “report to FaceBook” a little thing popped up that requested I first ask the person to take the photo down. Been there; done that. I clicked the button. My last comment to the person was that I had reported them. I also told them that I didn’t have access to all those sites that now supposedly had my photo on it, but if they would remove it from theirs at least it would stem the flow of “sharing” to even more sites.

Did I say I hate FaceBook? Am I alone in this?

I was also going to talk about cell phone usage but maybe I’ll just save that for another day.

I am still not certain how my photo ended up on FaceBook anyway. Just a reminder to anyone that reads this blog, there is a copyright notice under my “About” in regards to usage of photos. Please do not use any photos on my blog without my permission. Please ask before “sharing”. I guess I am going to be looking into putting copyrights on my photos themselves.

P. S. This just in from the person on FB after I said I had reported them. (misspellings are theirs, not mine!)

dog lover wrote: “Everrything on the internet is not secure state public.If you have dogs ,you may be proud of. I wish you many fun by Dog lover. greetings”

 

And now I have steam coming out of my ears!!!

UPDATE: I have figured out (thanks to Rick B.) how to report this person, so now I have a copyright infringement filed with FaceBook against this person. We’ll see how it goes!

(photos: Alone on Thin Ice) Green Turtle Pond

Today our house will be without power for about five hours. On purpose! Today is the day we have a new electrical panel installed complete with a transfer switch for routing our generator into the household circuitry. It’s not the best planning since it’s still below freezing during the daytime, but today is the day the electrician had the time.

We’ve bumped the heat up about five degrees higher than we normally keep it to get the house really warm and the wood fire is burningly brightly.

We plan to hang out in the sun room around the wood stove for the duration of our power outage. We’ll put up the card table and start a puzzle. I’ve got plenty of books for reading (thanks to my library visit) and my iPad is fully charged. For lunch we’ll probably load the dogs in the truck and eat somewhere in town or maybe we’ll venture up to the winery café.

It’s an inconvenience, but one we hope we’ll be glad we did next time the power goes out for real. Until then we’ll just do all we can to stay warm!

(photo: eBay last night cuddling with Rick’s wooly hand-knitted slippers [knit by me!])

Who is Black-Eyed Pea you might be wondering? Why, Hailey of course! Bernergarden’s Black-Eyed Pea is her official AKC registered name. Ms. Hailey with the blackest of eyes. The most perfectly shaped almond-shaped black eyes per the Bernese Mountain Dog Standard.

Hailey came to us from Minnesota. Instead of taking the money from a breeding with my beloved Sailor I opted to take a stud puppy back.

Hailey is nine years old today! A pretty darned good age for a Bernese, and she’s still going strong.

Hailey is a silly dog. We don’t really have all that many photos of her because it seems she’s always in motion. She’s “lurping” as we call it, all the time. Her tail wags the rest of her body while she “slurps” you with her tongue. Hailey loves to give kisses, therefore that makes her a lurper. Here she is lurping Rick.

Here are some photos of puppy Hailey.

 

 

Hailey’s favorite things are:

Food. Any kind of food. Dog food. People food. I can’t grab any kind of food without Hailey magically showing up at my side, looking at me soulfully with those black eyes.

Bones. She will also take everyone else’s bones when they aren’t looking and I always end up re-distributing them so everyone has a bone instead of Hailey having three.

Barking. She’s our alarm clark in the morning. When Bella and Alex are tugging on toys her job is to be cheerleader and encourage them by barking. Her staccato little barks come out at perfectly timed intervals. Rah! Rah! Rah!

Riding in the truck with her head out the window.

Her dog couch. Wouldn’t you know she’d pick a vintage loveseat as her dog bed?

She was a great nanny when Bella was a puppy. Very patient and a good playmate.

 

She’s a sweet dog and tends to stay in the background (unless she’s barking).

 

In honor of her birthday Hailey will be going to McDonald’s for a hamburger for lunch and tonight she’ll dine on steak.

Happy Happy Birthday to Hailey the Black-Eyed Pea! We love you, silly girl!

 

(Photos from Top:)
Hailey with her mom Diva @ 8 weeks old; March 2004
Hailey kissing Rick; Cabin June 2012

Puppy Hailey:
Hailey (sitting up on left) with litter mates @ 8 weeks old; March 2004
Hailey @ 9 weeks old; April 2004
Hailey at White Sands (New Mexico) 3 months old; April 2004
Hailey @ 4.5 months old; May 2004

Hailey on her bed; January 2013
Hailey with puppy Bella; November 2008 (both pics)
Hailey at the cabin; June 2012
Hailey (left) Alex (right) with me at the Snowy Range, WY; June 2012

 

 

7 Degrees F, that is. That was the temperature when I got up this morning. Now it’s a big 16 degrees out there. BRRRRR.

When I took the dogs for a ride to the grocery and library this morning I noticed some interesting freezing going on in the little stream that runs alongside the main road. I got the hare-brained idea to try and get some photos.

I am determined, if not crazy.

So, when I got home I suited up in my warm parka, thermal gloves, boots and camera. I added in a pair of fingerless gloves for switching to when I wanted to manipulate the camera. I shrugged into my parka and zipped it up as far as it would go so that it covered my chin. As I stepped outside I flipped up the hood of the parka. I had flashbacks to when I was a child and my mom would put me in my snowsuit, my little legs so padded by layers they could barely move.

At first I was warm enough and the exercise felt good. I’m sure the people passing by me in cars thought I was crazy, but I couldn’t see their expressions because my field of vision was hampered by the faux fur of my hood, which is all I could really see as I trudged along.

My first stop was a spot where I had seen ice globes previously, but there weren’t really any to be seen and the ice was nothing special.

Further down there were some interesting frozen areas of the stream but I soon realized that it was too cold for the fingerless gloves, even for a few short minutes. For me this is not a good thing since I do suffer at times from Raynaud’s syndrome and the tips of my fingers were indeed white and painful. Time to head back and put on heavier gloves.

I got a few photos but all in all, photographically speaking, it was a bust.

Thankfully I had stoked the fire in the wood stove before I left so I could come home and warm my hands up over its cozy warmth. I don’t think I will be venturing back out again today.

(photos: Icy Stream)

I feel like I should be blogging about something. Anything. But I can’t come up with anything anyone (including myself) would care to read. My mind is pretty much blank.

I could tell you I saw a huge hawk in the tree this morning, just waiting to make a snack out of the birds feeding below him. At first I thought it was an owl because it was so big, so white, and so round. But it was just a cold hawk with his feathers all fluffed out. He spooked when I saw him and flew to another tree. I got the camera out but for whatever reason the photos were all out of focus. You’ll just have to envision him for yourself, or you can look at the out-of-focus shot. (It’s a Broad-Winged. They nest in our woods.) He’s beautiful even if he does like to eat little birds.

I could tell you it’s below freezing out there today and spitting fitful little snowflakes. Pfffftttt.

I could tell you that the dogs have had their second treatment for their scabies and are greatly improved. Good news for sure. The itching and scratching had pretty much come to a halt until we treated them on Friday whereupon they immediately started scratching again. The vet told us that as the little mites were dying off they would cause bouts of scratching, and so they do. No more ugly hot spots though.

Did I tell you that my neighbor Kim and I got to talking and I found out that she’s been treating her dog for the same condition? Yup, Finn has scabies too and she went through the same round of vet appointments and treatments (on non-treatments) that I did. No coincidence there since she has had to chase the fox away from their back deck too.

Hmmm … let’s see what else …

I could tell you we made a great Beef and Guinness Pie last night for dinner. Yummy.

I could tell you the lakes are finally freezing over. The ice fishermen will be happy about that.

I could tell you that over the weekend most of our last snow melted away. The snow squirrel has been reduced to a blob of white. Alex will have to resort to bushes and trees again.

I could tell you that it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and I’ve already started a fire in the wood stove because it’s cold in the house.

That being said, what the heck am I doing sitting here telling you uninteresting things that you could care less about when I could be sitting by the warm fire reading?

I’m off …

(photos: top & bottom: Blank Windows @ Long Pond : Mr. Not-In-Focus Broad-Winged)