Jazz Brunch at Dazzle

Great brunch at Dazzle in Denver this morning. Family, food, and great music. Sunday brunch puts The Julie Monley Quartet on stage. Nice stuff! And, the buffet is superb with tons of specials like pulled pork, stupendous Mac-n-cheese, gnocchi, pork enchiladas, and so much more.

Gun Dog Training Continues -- Puppy Style

The Platte Valley Hunting Retriever Club hosted an introduction gun dog training class this weekend. They did a great job! Lots of good folks were there, learned a lot, and our little retriever Inara had a great time. And, as you can see, it's not all work! The puppies had a blast!

Fondue at the Melting Pot

My daughter's 19th birthday was this weekend. We got her lots of neat presents, but the best part, I think, was going out to dinner for fondue. We went to the Melting Pot and had cheddar fondue, vegetable broth fondue for the entree (which included shrimp, chicken, salmon, and two cuts of beef). We wrapped it all up, of course, with a chocolate fondue. Had a great time.

Ducks and Geese on Easter

Had a great day on Easter! The weather was fantastic. After training Inara that morning and spending time with family for a fantastic brunch, we relaxed for a bit. What's that mean? We cleaned decoys and cooked goose wings! The goose wing recipe is on my Squidoo Recipes for Goose page. We marinaded them for nie on 36 hours and then slow cooked them for over two hours. Helped make them more tender (though some were still a bit chewey). They tasted fantastic! It made for a fantastic day. Lots of good prayers.

 

Ducks and Geese on Easter

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]Had a great day on Easter! The weather was fantastic. After training Inara that morning and spending time with family for a fantastic brunch, we relaxed for a bit. What's that mean? We cleaned decoys and cooked goose wings! The goose wing recipe is on my Squidoo Recipes for Goose page. We marinaded them for nie on 36 hours and then slow cooked them for over two hours. Helped make them more tender (though some were still a bit chewey). They tasted fantastic! It made for a fantastic day. Lots of good prayers.

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Easter Eggs!

Doing the Easter Egg thing! This is a great tradition -- art you eat, and food you play with. We did about three dozen this year to share with family tomorrow.

One bummer: PAAS is the kit I've always used from as young as I can remember. Year after year the general kit you get in the store has fewer Christian symbols. And this year, none. Time for another decorating kit.

Senators vs Hurricanes

Wow! Visiting Ottawa on business and get to go to a Senators game! Absolutely awesome'

Loving Ottawa

Arrived in Ottawa, Ontario yesterday for business. Had enough time for a walk on Parliament hill above the St Laurence River. (Think that's right -- my geography is shaky as I get older.) I come here fairly often and always like the city. I find the locals friendly, the food fantastic, and I love the architecture and art so prevalent here.

Retriever Training is going great! Well, sort of....

Inara's now three months old. She's taking to training really well. I've been using every reference I have time to review -- Dokken, Wolter, Avery, others. House training and basic puppy obedience has gone great. We need to get her into a group training session, but I want to wait till the third set of shots and her rabbies is done for that. Colorado has a huge number of dog owners -- but that doesn't mean they're responsible! Retriever pre-school has gone reasonably well, too. Inara came from Ruffwinds Retrievers and they specialize in "pointing retrievers'. She took to pointing instantly. I couldn't believe how easy it was to get her to point to a bird wing. On the other hand, her "drive to retrieve" needs a bit more work. Probably too many toys and bird wings. In any case, I'm happy with her and loving each day -- except when traveling, like to day. Keep track at these resources: Pictures of Labradors and Puppy Safety.

Sunnyvale, California

I'm on buiness travel to Sunnyvale, California today. Sunnyvale is an interesting place because there is so much of our high tech history here and history is still being made today. But, its really kind of a suburban area. All the great businesses we know from "The Valley" are mixed in with communities of various level of income housing.

I was unable to find a copy of David Weber's A Rising Thunder at the airport yesterday. I wasn't going to wait for this next volume in the Honor Harrington series, however -- and I was saved by Audible. Its turning out to be a great book -- you can order a copy from my Squidoo lens, Honor Harrington. In any case, that gave me something to listen to during my flight. Got in and got checked in and worked for awhile. When I finally got hungry, I went to the Sunny Buffet -- given the price and the fact it was a buffet, it was pretty good, as you can tell from the picture.

David Weber's A Rising Thunder is Out Tomorrow!!!!

I love David Weber's series on Honor Harrington. Amazon shows the next volume in the series, A Rising Thunder, available tomorrow. I'm traveling this week, but I've got to find a way to get it! You can order the entire seires from my Squidoo page, Honor Harrington.

Inara's training fine -- and safely!

So, we're coming to the close of our first month with Inara. She'll be 12 weeks tomorrow. She's wonderful to be with and she's already sleeping through the night for us. So, I get 7 hours of sleep and then have a good reason to get up at 5:30 and get my day going! Check out pictures at Pictures of Labradors!

 I've also put together a nice Squidoo lens on Puppy Safety. You can see my philosophy on how I'm going to keep my puppy safe and flourishing. And there's stuff to buy, too!

 

Inara's training fine -- and safely!

[[posterous-content:hshFJqruatlHrhzcuiDh]]So, we're coming to the close of our first month with Inara. She'll be 12 weeks tomorrow. She's wonderful to be with and she's already sleeping through the night for us. So, I get 7 hours of sleep and then have a good reason to get up at 5:30 and get my day going! Check out pictures at Pictures of Labradors!

I've also put together a nice Squidoo lens on Puppy Safety. You can see my philosophy on how I'm going to keep my puppy safe and flourishing. And there's stuff to buy, too!

Great Goose Recipes

My wife and I made a great Goose Korma last night. That brings us through about a third of the goose from the 2011/2012 waterfowl season. We've been enjoying it so much, I put together another Squidoo lens: Recipes for Goose. I'll get this curry recipe on there sometime thi s week, along with a few other geese recipes. For the time being, you'll have to make do with our Hot n' Spicy Goose Legs that we made the weekend before last!

 

Pictures of Labradors

Bought a brand new Nikon D3100 the week we picked up our little yellow Labrador retriever Inara. I've taken hundreds and hundreds of photos. I've posted many of them on my Flickr page, but I also created a new Squidoo lens, Pictures of Labradors. I'm pretty happy with the camera and really enjoyed sharing the pictures on Flickr.

Inara's been doing great. She's training mostly very well. Only reason it's "mostly" is we've been having a bit of challenge in potty training her -- mainly, us being consistent with getting her into a routine. But, it's been fun, and she sleeps longer at night each day. 

Benelli Nova Pump Review

Last spring, I bought my first shotgun. Actually, I bought it twice. My first priority was something tactical for home defense. I got a really good deal on a major manufacturer's entry level tactical gun with a laser and light. I loved the package, but the shell extractor on the bolt tended to fowl against the receiver when cycled home. Never even took it out to fire it. So, I returned it and after four weeks screwing around with Firing Line, got them to replace it and got a tactical Benelli Nova Pump 12 gauge. 

It's been superb! Put in a mercury recoil absorber, a gel pad, and it shoots great. Next upgrade will be Hi Viz or tritium night sights. I've written up a review on Squidoo at Nova Benelli -- Awesome Benelli Nova Pump tactical. 

Inara -- our new yellow Labrador Retriever

We picked up our new yellow Labrador retriever from Jeff Rooney at Ruffwinds Retrivievers Saturday. Our little puppy was named Inara after we watched her play awhile at home. We had a great first day, a long night, and then a fantastic second day. She did even better last night. As she's going to be a gun dog, and she's going to be a fairly energetic lab (though you can't tell from this picture), we're crate training her and that's going well. I've lots more pictures on line at Pictures of Labradors.