Show us a picture of you when you were a baby.
Submitted by yuki.
LOL. My mind is going toward that theory of being born with x-amount of fat cells that never leave you… I had more chins than a Chinese phonebook, and it appears they may be revisiting in my later years.
I posted this at my beagle message board; I thought I'd share here:
A Beagle has just won Westminster for the first time in it's 132-year history. This one single event will change things for every Beagle breeder everywhere – hunt or show. We are most definitely on the doggy world's radar now. We also know how the general public reacts to such things, how the "fad buying" will begin. It has already begun, and even the rescue shelters expect their numbers of Beagle residents to disappear into the hands of adoptive families. I bet "beagle breeder" has been in Google's top ten searches over the last couple of days. I can remember when everyone HAD to have a Dalmation when the movie 101 Dalmations came out. Chihuahuas were suddenly in great demand when Taco Bell ran it's advertising campaign using the breed. If you haven't been approached by buyers yet, prepare yourself for the onslaught…it will come.
I just tonight read this excerpt from a very old book, and how well it applies here:
"No fact is isolated. No event is solitary. No force works alone. No life exists but as a part of all other lives. We cannot separate our fortunes, or arrest the influences by which we touch each other. Society is a ship on which all are passengers, and what affects one affects all." – John Robert Connon
With this in mind, we as beagle owners, will do the breed a great injustice if we do not field the request for beagle puppies by educating the inquirers on the difficulties and true nature of the Beagle breed. The general public has NO IDEA that Beagles are one of the greatest kenneling challenges we know. They do not know that there is a BIG DIFFERENCE between "show" and "field" Beagles. A great many think all Beagles are going to be just like Uno – outgoing, bold, cuddly, and gorgeous in his Westminster-worthy way.
Here is my portend. The shelters will be void of Beagles for a while, but when the proud new owners of your hunting-bred beagle realize they have a dog that's a little on the timid side at times, finer-boned with a longer body and a sparser tail, and digs out of the yard 3 times daily, or bolts out the front door after squirrels…the shelters will fill back up. Hopefully these poor, unsuspecting, experimenting "bandwagon" folks will not put two or three indescriminately-bred litters on the ground in an effort to cash in on Uno's ride before they get a clue that their beagles are not fit to be show, field, or the housepets they expected.
Again, what affects one affects all.
So, I beseech you all to be good stewards of the breed on the hunting side. Resist the urge of supply and demand. We get a bad enough rap as it is (with our hunting ways) from the tree-huggers. The serious show breeders/competitors are much fewer in numbers than we field trialers/hunters are…and even at that, they will have their hands full as well…saying "no, I don't have any puppies that will be born 6 weeks before Christmas…" but I feel like the show folks are better equipped to screen new buyers and put restrictions on sales because they've been stringent all along. We tend to think most folks will want to hunt with our Beagles, when all they really want in 2008-2010 is to show their neighbors that they now own a "Westminster" dog.
These are just my feelings right now. I know that it won't apply to most of us, and some of you will get offended by my words, but if it reaches 1% of the readers here who haven't considered the possible ramifications, then it's worth saying. We don't want to hurt the breed in the long run for a quick buck today. My wish is that we keep to our goals — to produce the best show Beagles we can, the best hunting Beagles we can, and support those who are carefully trying to get the BEST of both in producing a "total Beagle." We are mostly breeders on this board — be it one litter every few years, or on a bigger scale, but we are breeders nonetheless. I hope we all keep to our missions in a serious manner.
Thanks for reading, and again, Congrats to Team Uno! 
For the first time ever, a Beagle wins the Westminster Kennel Club show at Madison Square Gardens. The first time in the show's 132-year history! Uno, officially registered as Ch K-Run's Park Me in First, stole the show with his enthusiam, a big ArrROOO, and just his overall and quite charming "beaglessence."
My congratulations to Breeders Leah Bertagnolli and Cathy Weichert, owners Cathy Weichert, Jon Woodring, Caroline Dowell, Eddie Dzuik, and handler Aaron Wilkerson!
To read how the hunting beagle community is reacting to their "show" counterpart's success, follow this link.
The thread is now 5 pages long. Again, congrats to Uno and Camp!!! It's rubber ducky time. 😀
Just kidding, but I did think of you first. On this post of yours was something that rekindled my curiosity about the book, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and D.H. Lawrence. I've known of the book forever – just never bought it, and the cheesey movie sequels got to me first…forever jaunticing my desire to buy the book.
In any event, I was doing my favorite kind of shopping Saturday (second-hand store shopping) and came across a pristine copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover:
…so what the hell…I bought it for 75 cents.
I brought it home, left it on the dining room table, then brought it to work with me today to perhaps read on my lunch hour. I read the back cover, opened the back cover, and in there – left undisturbed for almost eleven years, was the receipt from Barnes and Noble back to the original purchase of the book. I bought the book in Indianapolis, IN:
I'm quite sure nobody else in Minneapolis, Minnesota would have bought this book in 1997[/sarcasm], it was just a good excuse to show you all something kind of neat, except I can't figure out why the stinkin' thing won't show full-size. I'll keep trying.
I managed…somehow, to get the saved phone message from my phone to a .voc file, then convert it to a .wav file. It's kinda shitty-sounding, but I think you can still appreciate it:
He called me "Sugar Puss." Weurrkkk! *shudders* LOL.
It's Self-Portrait Thursday.
This is about as good as it gets…
…without doing a bit of stage makeup and over-exposure, like this:
..or the same basic pic/pose below, with all my 50-yr-old wrinkles cleverly removed (*snorts*) and a desaturation for an old-time effect. As you can see from the above photo, the "clothing" was actually a bright, lipstick red. I've made this one viewable by neighbors only (since they already know I'm an OLD camera whore…lol)., There's no nudity or obscene gestures, but….
Have you ever been on either end of an unrequited love?
Submitted by 怒涛の鮫.
UGH. I'm in it now, and I'm on the hurtin' end. It sucks, especially since we've already been intimate, he knows how I feel, I know that he is very, very "fond" of me, and he continues to do things – very sweet and kind things out of friendship, which keep us in each other's daily lives. I used to think 800 miles and a country border between us was a curse. I'm starting to think it's a blessing, but the daily e-mails and semi-weekly, 3-hour phone calls are enough to keep the fires stoked…and the chain around my heart.
I just watched my local news. An 8-year-old girl had been shot and killed by her father who then turned the gun on himself. It happened next door to the home where I grew up — about 200 yards from where I live now. It happened in a home where I had played with other children, and when they moved away, I subsequently babysat for the next family's kids during my teenage years. I spent a lot of time in the house where two people just lost their lives needlessly.
As they showed the video clips, my childhood home naturally, was in view. In 1962, 1974, and as late as 1990, it was a "Leave It To Beaver" sort of neighborhood. I led a Leave It To Beaver existence. Eventually my sisters and I grew up and moved away. My father died in '95 and Mom stayed only a couple of years in the house before building herself a new little house in a new neighborhood. When my world imploded a couple of years ago, I moved back into the neighborhood…I could hurl a rock from my back yard and it would land in my childhood back yard. They say when you're hurting and feeling insecure, you tend to go home – where things are familiar. That's what I did, but in the busyness of working and living, it took a while for me to notice it was only 50% home now.
One should move away and stay away, so the good memories can remain in the forefront of one's mind. Seems most everything here has changed. The houses and buildings and layout of my old stomping grounds are the same. The park where I played is still here, the "sledding hill" looks much smaller, but it's still there…the creek where I waded, ice-skated, slipped on mossy rocks and caught crawdads…still here, but the old spirit is gone. It has been replaced by a cold, bleak and desperate spirit, where people don't speak, and children don't dare play Flashlight Tag after dark in the summer anymore. All the same houses are here, but I don't know anybody in them anymore. The inhabitants don't really know each other. They had no idea there was trouble brewing. I remember a day when four mothers came out of the house at once to scold a child for crossing the street without looking.
All of this made me yearn for the childhood memories…just to see them and feel them again; I needed validation that life was really as I remembered, that I didn't just imagine it all. My largest source of childhood memories in one place is the memorial video I made for my Mom when she passed away. It was shown on a flat screen in the funeral home (as they do these days). I watched it. Along with making me weep tears of sorrow, it reaffirmed my believe that life WAS INDEED different back then. I do take comfort in that. I'm lucky to have grown up when I did, to have been her daughter, and to have felt in the summers, the grass of every neighbor's yard between my bare toes – when I played as a child.
As I watched the video again, I saw so many people who have also passed. My Dad, my kids' Dad, some cousins, all of my uncles and aunts. At age 52, I am now the oldest generation in my family. It's a confounding thing, watching what seems would be forever, disappear. And yet, all I can be is wistful of the losses, because I know that none of us are guaranteed another day.
So, it's time to stop and remember.
I have been reluctant to post the video of my mother's life, (which would include mine to a large extent) butI feel like posting it tonight. It's 13 minutes long with 3 songs, the third segment being chronological from her black and white beginnings to her very colorful last days with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My mother was a remarkable individual who along with my father, (the most perfect man to ever draw a breath) gave my sisters and me a remarkable childhood. I don't expect you all to sit through the video because it is long and I realize folks have limited time, but I feel better having posted it, Maybe a few will watch and if nothing else, it will spur them to journalize in some way…be it verbal, written or video, all of the days when their lives were good, and the world was okay.
Sue Sparrow
Cheeps 