Pig Hunt Photos (viewer beware)

We got copies of some of the pig hunt photos from Rocky's friend, Kris. Here is everybody on the last day with all the pigs. After seeing these photos I've decided that these were not very close relatives of our pig, Petunia. She was cute, but I wouldn't give any of these critters that title.

This is the whole gang except Kris. They were all given pig names. There was Polio Pig because he had a limp while there last year, Boss Hog was the ranch owner, Safety Pig got his name because on the first day he was the only one dressed in safety orange, there was a Piggly Wiggly and that was about all that Rocky could remember.

This is Rocky (on the right) and his friend, Kris:
This is Ken Helfrich and Rocky:

Duck Soup

Actually it wasn't soup. The other night Rocky's friend Ken Helfrich came by and left a couple of ducks that he had hunted earlier that day. I have never eaten duck before so Rocky cleaned and cooked them for me. They were different. They are all dark meat; it looked more like beef. The flavor was a lot like beef liver, but the meat was tender. I can't say that I really liked it, but it was edible. I'd never order it in a restaurant, but I wouldn't mind eating it occasionally if Rocky decided to take up duck hunting again.

Today's agenda includes scooping poop in the barn since it has been raining for the past couple of days; and then I get to go to the Good Earth Home Show with my good friend Sharon.

Still Here

My how life has a way of whizzing by!

I'll try to pick up where I left off. October ended with Rocky rupturing a baker's cyst. That put him almost completely out of commission for a week and then limited ability for another week. Of course, it didn't help his moral level that it had to happen during hunting season.

November was pretty uneventful, just too much work as usual.

December was an exciting month. My 40th birthday was a non-event, but Rocky's sister gave me a book on cheese making that I've been wanting. I haven't attempted any of the recipes yet, but I am reading the book and learning a lot about milk and rennet and cheese.

On the 15th my neighbor's husband finally decided that he was tired of being sick and went to the doctor. He was almost too late. The doctor booked him right into the hospital and by the next day he was in ICU on a ventilator. He spent three weeks like that and almost another week in a regular room before he got to go home. For about three weeks leading up to that he kept having digestive problems that would come and go. He thought he had a bad strain of the flu that was just being stubborn. Turned out that something happened to his bowels and they leaked, infecting his abdomen and even up into his chest cavity.

The only reason I share this with you, is as a warning that if you get sick and don't seem to be healing as fast as you should, please go to a doctor. This poor man went through hell and still has a long recovery ahead which possibly could have been shortened if he wouldn't have kept toughing it out like we all think we can.

In the middle of this Rocky and I decided to take a different approach to Christmas this year; we went to Las Vegas. Here we are at the Flamingo:

It was cold there, but the weather was dry and sunny on all but our last day there when it rained a little.

Getting there was a little interesting. We were scheduled to fly out of Eugene on the 18th at around 1:00, but the plane was coming from Vegas where they still had snow on the ground from the previous day. It turns out that the airport in Las Vegas doesn't have de-icing equipment so the planes were grounded until everything started to thaw. In Eugene the word was just that the plane hadn't left yet and they would let us know when it did. We sat around in the airport for an extra four hours. We could have gone to work that day. By the time out plane made it to Las Vegas we could only see little patches of snow here and there.

We had a fun week. Neither of us gamble so that wasn't much of a thrill for us. We stayed at Harrah's which is kind of lame (although, there was a tv in the bathroom which we thought was cool, and they had a good piano bar), but located right in the middle of the strip so we could walk almost everywhere. One of our first stops was the MGM Grand where I could have stayed the entire time watching the lions.

They were so beautiful. They rotate the lions twice a day so they spend most of their time on the ranch where they were raised. Most of the time they are in the exhibit they like to lay around and sleep. We watched one of the handlers scratching the belly of a lioness while she was resting and when he stopped she reached over and put her huge paw on his shoulder as if to ask him to continue (maybe there was a little "or else" in that gesture as well).

We watched the fountains at the Bellagio a few times. They played one routine to music that made you think of Egyptian times and they played another to the song "Santa Baby". It was very pretty.

This is the Christmas tree in the Bellagio. I took this photo for my mother-in-law. Nobody loves Christmas more than her.

We went to Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden in the Mirage and saw these beauties:

There were also some tiger cubs. They were about five months old. I can't remember how many were in the litter, but some were white and some weren't; they were all from the same litter.

Besides the lions and tigers they also had a dolphin habitat, panthers, leopards, and (we found this rather ironic) alpacas. We wondered if they might double as tiger chow.

We went to see Jubilee, which we both enjoyed, and we went to the Cirque du Soleil show: KA. KA was a little disappointing. It was entertaining and there was some excitement, just not quite as captivating as we thought it would have been. Unfortunately, since we were there during the slowest week of the year, a lot of the shows were what they call "dark" (on vacation).

New York, Las Vegas was fun. Rocky had to go on their roller coaster. It was very scary and I refused to do it a second time.

Oh, how could I forget, we went to the Hoover Dam. We took the tour inside the dam where you can hear the water rushing through the huge pipes and see the turbines. Rocky said he'd love to work on them. Afterwards we splurged and took a helicopter tour over the dam. It was pretty neat, but our photos didn't turn out very well through the windows. I don't think I would pay for the helicopter again, but we didn't have enough time in the dam museum.

Our return flight was scheduled for Christmas day evening so we had Christmas brunch at a wonderful French restaurant in Paris, Las Vegas.

We both decided we would go back for a long weekend sometime. There is a lot of different stuff to do. I was surprised at how much there is for children, but they get to look at porn as you walk the strip.

Go Ducks! My football nut father-in-law had this big party for the Holiday Bowl. (I thought Sandy handled it all very well since she didn't even know about it until it was already planned and people were invited.) I don't even know how many tv's were in their house, but they were everywhere. We're guessing that there were close to 30 people there. It's a good thing the Ducks won.

One of Rocky's buddies was there and invited him to go on a New Year's pig hunt. They went to a large cattle ranch near Merced, CA, slept in a barn at night, and hunted wild pigs in the day. He said it was a lot of fun. He came back with quite a bit of meat and the nick name "Rocky Top Pig".

My only excitement so far in 2009 is that I adopted another spinning wheel. This one is so cute. It is hand crafted and called the Pocket Wheel. Mine looks like the one on the right. It is surprisingly smooth for a direct drive (belt less) wheel. Rocky was impressed with it since there isn't much to wear out or go wrong with it. It is an incredibly simple design.

Now we're back on the same old grind of go to work, come home and work. I don't even have a knitting project in progress.