Estes Park Cup

Not much going on here... I spent yesterday cleaning and reading. Lovey kept complaining yesterday afternoon and I think the reason was that the wind was very gusty. The winds dropped about midnight, but are scheduled to return this afternoon. There are no clouds in the sky this morning, so there was no colorful sunrise; there is a "mountain wave" cloud sitting just above the Front Range, though. The kits have been running in and out - but no critters have shown up at the feeders yet today. I'll be headed off to walk the Irish kids in a little bit, after picking up my meds.

Yesterday evening a neighbor's fire alarm/smoke detector went off. I was on the telephone and had the TV on as well, so the kits were the ones that alerted me. Seems that the guy across the hall set some water to boil , forgot it, and burned the daylights out of the pan - it certainly stank! The International Space Station was visible to those of us in the greater Denver metro area for four minutes last night. And the Boulder PD are re-opening the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, so be ready to be inundated with all types of suspicions, and, probably, more false claims of guilt. I hope that the guilty party is found just so the family can have closure; but I'm afraid this will turn into a media circus again. - I guess I'm just tired of hearing the same "guesses" over and over.

I need to get back into the work/research mode... but it seems that I really don't care, so I'm going to have to force myself, and then I'll get back in the habit - especially if I find something that I wasn't aware of previously. I was amazed yesterday to see film of the annual Pony Swim from Assateague to Chincoteague spliced into an old Western; it was supposed to show mustangs swimming the Rio Grande into Texas.
The annual Estes Park Cup dog pull competition will take place this weekend. This is sanctioned by the International Weight Pulling Association, which promotes the heritage of the working dog. The dogs are divided into 8 weight classes and are fitted with a special pulling harness. Each dog then has one minute to pull it's weighted sled 16 feet; they will be pulling on snow, which makes it tricky because snow sticks and it's sometimes hard to get the sled moving. The results can be astonishing - in 2008 at the Estes Park Cup, a 60 pound Norwegian Elkhound (named Silver) pulled 510 pounds, and a mixed breed (named King Dukes) weighing in at 150 pounds pulled 1020 pounds!