Smackdowns and a Contest

The weather has turned fall-like; it's raining as I type and snow is in the forecast for tomorrow. Mom is muttering something uncharitable about muddy paw prints, and how we may be sent to daycare until mid-December. She's not serious about that. At least I don't think she is... Hmm...

Anyhoo. My dear sweet sister and I got out and raced around the yard a bit before it started raining.




Good times!

Oh, and speaking of good times, Abby's 'Hippo-Bottomus' name tag won third place in the name tag contest from Fetching Tags so I get a new name tag!!!! Since I have apparently NOT lived up to my 'Dogzilla' expectations. So... Does anyone have any suggestions for a new name tag for me? Every suggestion will be considered! Thanks!

CHANGE OF PLANS!!!!I AM GOING TO RUN A CONTEST!!!

To make this interesting, I am going to hold a contest for my name tag. I am going to invite submissions from now until Sunday, October 17th at 9pm. A winner will then be picked (possibly by popular vote, if Mom can figure out how to do the voting thing) and the individual who submitted the winning name tag line will get a $25 donation to the animal charity of their choice. Please promote this to all your friends - the more submissions the merrier! Put your thinking caps on, and come up with a new tag for me! If you need ideas, Fetching Tags has some popular tag lines to get your creative juices flowing!

Good luck, and may the best tagline win!

Finally, Brutus was saying that a little video might help give him a better sense of the Human Zoomies that Mom and Dad do. Mom and Dad failed to have the camera running during their runs, but lots of people video their runs, and here is a video from the races on Sunday. This guy is a pretty fast driver in a Mazda Miata.



Seriously, this is what Mom and Dad call fun. Heehee. Actually, Mom says it is A LOT of fun, and as much as they do it, I'm inclined to believe her!

For those of you who can't see the video, here is the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FWSWR7ASZ4

Oops! It's dinnertime. Gotta go. Bye!

*kissey face*
-Fiona and Abby the Hippobottomus

Another Weekend in the Books

Another busy weekend for the House of Fiona. Heehee. I like that name. Maybe I'll talk to Mom about getting a fancy sign made to put over the garage: "Welcome to the House of Fiona". Heehee.

*ahem*

Mom and Dad had Yet Another Car Race (yes, there was a race last weekend in Pocatato, too...). While the weather has been great, most of the leaves on the trees are gone (only the aspens are left - and they are always the last trees to 'go') which means that summer/fall is coming to an end and we could see snow (seriously) at any point now. So the autocross season is coming to a hasty end (we have one more weekend - and I say 'we' because we are taking the House With Wheels out to Miller Motorsports Park for the event) and Mom and Dad are trying to sneak in the last few events.

Anyhoo, our regular dog-sitter (Jessi, the lady who is teaching Mom to feed us turkey hotdogs) had other commitments, and Mom had to find someone else to take care of us. Since she knew about this in advance, Mom found a local "doggie day care". Being a Sunday, the doggie day care opens at 8am, and closes at 5pm. Unfortunately, an autocross day starts much earlier than that (Dad was running the event again, and left the house at 6:10am), and by the time Mom and Dad get home from Salt Lake City, their day ends about 6pm.

So.... Mom brought us to the day care a few times in advance to make sure that we liked it (we do - I've got some pictures to show you in a few moments), and discovered that there is an older couple (the parents of the people who own the place) who lives on-site, and takes care of the doggies who are boarded during non-business hours. Mom, being Mom, met the woman who lives on site and chatted with her for a while, and bribed her made nice with her, and got the couple to happily agree to meet us at 7am, and let us stay as long as we needed. Mom did give the couple a little 'thank you' for extending their hours Just For Us - because Mom is nice like that, and was very happy to know that we were taken care of, and she didn't have to worry about us all day.

Here is the entrance to Doginhaus, the day care place:


I don't know if we are really 'well-heeled', but Abby and I both passed the 'temperment test' (i.e. we play well with others and don't run with scissors). And the place is great. It's a got a huge indoor area, and another huge outdoor area, and we get to mingle with all sorts of doggies. The people running the place took the pictures, and so they didn't get pictures of the myriad of other doggies, including an Irish Wolfhound (who makes me look like a Chihuahua), a very handsome St. Bernard, and a very cute Rottweiler...

Abby and I have a great time there, and it doesn't make us miss Mom and Dad so much while they are off doing their zoomies.

Here we are inside...

And chaos outside! As you might be able to tell, there are a number of other 'doodles, so we fit right in. As if we wouldn't fit in anywhere, any way!


Yep, we have a GREAT time at day care!

Heehee! And since yesterday was Such A Long Day for us (usually we just go for 4 hours or so), we got fed both lunch and dinner, so by the time Mom picked us up (around 5:45pm), we were fed, and tired and happy doggies. Of course, we were very happy to see Mom and Dad, but we had a great day while they were off doing their thing...

And speaking of Mom and Dad doing their thing... Dad set the course, and Mom was doing all sorts of 'organizational stuff' (getting the computer set up for timing and results, etc., etc.) and then they drove together, so, of course, they didn't get any pictures of themselves. However, other people got some pictures and Mom likes to post zoomie pictures, even if they aren't of her or Dad, so here goes...

This is one of the faster cars in the region (and if you can't tell from the picture, this was a very technical course - everyone had fun, but it was tough!).

Mom likes this car, particularly for the amount of rubber (i.e. the width of the tires) you can get on this thing. Mom also has a secret desire for a muscle car, and this "prepared" Camaro fits the bill.

Uncle Charlie going Very Fast in our "prepared" Miata. "Prepared" apparently means being gutted and then having the biggest possible engine you can get stuffed in it.

Heh. Notice the cone that was knocked over? It was a pretty technical course, and a lot of cones were "killed" as people tried to figure out how to go fast.

And the course workers were pretty busy all day!

But it sounds like a good time was had by all; Mom and Dad certainly had fun. They were tired, but it sounds like they had a lot of fun, too! So it was a busy, but good weekend on all fronts!

I hope everyone else had a good weekend, too!

*kissey face*
-Fiona and Abby the Hippobottomus

PeeEss: For those of you who have been paying close attention, Abby did get her "bath", and she is now back to her normal color.

Pretty nifty "bath", huh? At least now she doesn't look like she's trying to be me! :-)

Pocatato and stuff

Wow. I've been, like, totally busy! We were up in Pocatato this last weekend for 'OctoberFast' - a big race between the Utah and Idaho regions; it's always a big rivalry. And usually, the weather is awful. When Mom and Dad first went up there 3 years ago, it snowed. Seriously. Mom was Very Happy that she was driving a MINI - because they have great seat heaters!!!! :-D

This year, however, the weather was spectacular! Cool at night, and nice and warm during the day. And the drive up in the House With Wheels was pretty.


Clearly, Abby and I were Most Interested in the scenery.

Mom's attempt at an aerial photograph....

I was interested in their music selection (some blues channel - I heartily approve):

We were towing the trailer, so we were 64.5 feet of rolling death (as Dad likes to say).

Pretty cool, huh?

Anyhoo, as usual, Mom and Dad didn't get any pictures of themselves driving because they were driving together and too busy to get any pictures. But here are a couple of pictures to give you the feel for things...

Uncle Charlie in the Miata

But Mom did manage to get a few pictures of us (for a change...).

Here's Abby thinking she's a lap dog (and Dad totally laughing at the idea):

And here's me and Abby thinking that Mom would be Much More Interested in a front-row seat for a round of bitey-face than in reading her book.

Heehee.

Oh, and Mom did manage to take both of us on walkies at the same time (and lived to tell the tale, I might add!):

So it was a fun weekend!

And when we got home, we discovered that the roof is Almost Done...

And now that we are back home, Abby and I are right back into the routine!

And now that we are back, we are back to our walkies and bitey-face-ing, so life is good!

BTW, I would really like to thank Mango for re-starting the voting for the 'I Wanna Be Like Mango' contest due to a clerical error - he's super cool! (Which is all the more reason why I wanna be like Mango!)

*kissey face*
-Fiona and Abby the Hippobottomus

Much Excitement!

Okay, so in my long absence (even if it has only been a couple of days, it feels like I've been gone for ages!) there has been Much Excitement going on. Especially if you consider booming and banging and the moving of ladders around the house "much excitement". Which it is. Kind of. In an annoying sort of way.

There has been much painting and yard work, and organizing of the inside of the house. So much work, in fact, that we got our own dumpster. You're jealous. Admit it!

There has been much pruning and digging and whacking away at things...


In addition to general pruning, and digging out (our back hillside is a landslide waiting to happen!) there was some Major Tree Removal. See these trees at the back of the house? Note: yes, there is snow on the ground, and Abby is a midget. Which means that Mom and Dad weren't really thinking ahead, and failed to get a 'before' photo...

Here's another picture of the top part of the trees:

The point is, there were aspens on the back side of the house. They look all pretty and everything, but they were growing soclose to the house that they were banging against the side of the house and beating up the wood, they were also growing funny because they were close to the house. So... Mom and Dad decided that they had to go.

And Uncle Larry The Crazy Intrepid made them go away.


And mostly managed to not have them land on him or take out the little satellite dish in the process!

Here's the After Picture (despite not having a before picture...)

Mom assures me that the stumps will be removed, too. Which is a good thing, because it seems to me that if the trees are supposed to be gone, they should be ALL gone...

In addition to all of the yard work, Uncle Larry has also been painting. Our house was painted during the last Ice Age, and not since then, so he's had his work cut out for him. Mom and Dad decided that this would be a great time to change the color scheme from a weathered, flaking, urban decay theme muted color scheme to something with a little more "pop".

Here's the final result:


The house is a light tan, the fascia is darker brown and the 'accents' are red. It looks WAY better than it did before.
You might have to biggify this picture to see the red accents. And no, there wasn't an earthquake - the photographer was just a bit off-kilter!

Apparently we are to be getting a new roof (the house has the original roof, and apparently the wood shingles are past their sell-by date, or something..). But since Abby and I were a little miffed when Uncle Larry was crawling around on the roof working on our chimney and painting, Mom and Dad have elected to move into the House With Wheels when the roof is being done. Mom says that this is supposed to happen tomorrow. Wow. In a week or two, it'll be like we have a whole new house!

In other excitement (I told you there was a lot of stuff going on!), Mom and Dad had a car race yesterday, so Abby and I stayed home and played with Jessi (the woman who is teaching Mom to feed us turkey hotdogs) while Mom and Dad got up super early, drove around a parking lot, and came home after a very long day. They were racing together (co-driving), so they didn't get any pictures of each other. Again. But they managed to drive together and are still talking to each other, so it must have gone well! Heehee.

Here are a couple of random pictures Mom managed to get:

But, enough of all of that. This is MY bloggie, and there has been a serious lack of pictures of me in this post. So... Here's one more house picture and then some pictures of me and Abby playing fetch today...


Lookit me! I can fly!!!!


Heehee!

So there you have it; Much Excitement!

*kissey face*
-Fiona and Abby the Hippobottomus

PeeEss: Mom wanted to state that while Abby is most certainly a Hippobottomus, she's not fat. She's just big boned. Heehee! Okay, to be fair; she's all muscle. Like me. I'm just a bit more gazelle-like, while she's a bit more, ah, Hippobottomy! Oh, and while she gets a bunch of treats, so do I. We are equally spoiled!