P-p-p-polka face?

Fiancé: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say your Puma Face is different from your Poker face. Which is also different from your Polka Face.

Oh God, Polka Face does exist. We had no idea.

My first "publication": on Dogster.com

I have my first publication!

Well, kind of. On Dogster.com, they accept reader confessionals for a section called Dogster confessionals. I'd emailed awhile back (November?) to see the kind of thing they looked for in that spot, and then mulled it over for awhile. I was surprised to receive a follow up email (or two!) asking if I had anything for them. Okay, surprised and flattered. Really flattered.

So, I came up with a little number that they entitled (because I didn't really have a title) "I'm Not Hearing Voices: My Dog Talks To Me".  It was fun to write, as writing about Elka mostly is. I'm not a great photographer, but having a striking dog makes up for that fact, so I did have some good ones that I was able to include. There's even a video they embedded from The Elka Almanac Youtube channel, of her playing in the snow (don't get too excited; she is very cute, but if I'm a bad photographer, I'm not all that great a videographer either. If that's even a word. Blogger doesn't think it is, but also has trouble with things like "isn't" at times.)

So, if you read it, hope you enjoy! I'm fairly chuffed to have the coverage, anyway.

 

(This is Elka's "Did you just see that?!" and/or "Wasn't that great?!" face)

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

One of my favorite things to do for dinner is to throw some kind of Protein in the crockpot before I go to work, season it appropriately, and come back several hours later to something that I pair a starch and veggie to and serve.

You can do it with a whole chicken, which is kind of cool. You can make pulled pork. Most frequently, I'll get a likely slab of beef, liberally garlic and black pepper in it, and voila. I salt it on the cutting board when it's done cooking and whispers apart when fork tines touch it.

One night, I pulled the beef out of the crock pot and it maintained its structural integrity for the ordeal, unusual in and of itself. When I laid it on the cutting board, it looked like this:

My fiance and housemate were in the next room, and I said "Hey guys, you know how people see the Virgin Mary in toast and stuff? Well, the roast looks like Cthulhu."

My fiancé, dear heart, came to look. "Holy crap, it does look like Cthulhu."

We stood and admired it for a few moments, and I took pictures (they pretty much all look like that one.) We asked said housemate if he was going to come and see. He said "No thanks, I'd like to keep my sanity."

(for reference, the title quote translates to "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." You can read Call of Cthluhu by H.P. Lovecraft at hplovecraft.com. You can also listen to it read on Youtube, which is freaking cool.