Look who’s figured out that there’s a perfectly sized little jungle room for her in the kitchen, and discovered that it’s quite nice to sit there and soak up the spring sun.

Well, I took the dawg (aka Hilda) and walked to the petstore today. Good times, she was really excited and behaved mostly well. Unlike some other dogs I’ve encountered she understood that it was not dog-heaven and she wasn’t free to play with all the toys, other dogs or eat all the candy. But it was exciting, none the less, and a good walk.

Bought a orange rubber ball that we had fun with earlier tonight. Man, throwing a ball and watching this dog chase after it is like firing a cannon. She shoots off at the speed of sound, I kid you not.

Here’s a picture of her and the cat chillaxing in the couch. The cat is extremely uninterested in the dog but tolerates her. The dog is curious about the cat but is a little nervous after being hit in the face by aforementioned animal quite unexpectedly the other day.

There’s a labrador sleeping right behind me. This is her first time away from home, and I think she’s a little scared. But she’s quite easy-going anyways, I guess it’s just weird being away from master and mistress. She’s about two years old, more charming than a smiling piglet and very social.

The dog in question is Hilda. Normally she lives with the couple where I got to see The Zapper, and I suggested that she live with me while they’re off on a midwinter vacation for two weeks in Tenerife.

We’ve been bonding today. Earlier in the evening we went for a short walk and managed to meet no less than five other dogs who also were out stretching their legs. One of the dogs was the somewhat more grown-up version of the puppy I blogged about back in May. The dogs immediately became good friends, playing around in the snow. The owner of the dog in question suggested we go down to the field and let them play in the snow. Sure, why not? We walked down, I unleashed Hilda and the dogs played for a while. Meanwhile me and the owner of the other dog –which was a (I think) American Cocker Spaniel– chatted for a while about dogs and the various intricacies and pleasures of owning a dog.

After a while we decided it was time to go home, and we took our respective dogs and headed back to the apartments. Goodbye greetings to the man and then we were inside again. Hilda being quite snowy but very happy having made a new friend.

Who knows what the morrow will bring?

Here’s a photo of the girl just ten minutes after her arrival here earlier today.

I’ve been trying to salvage the contents of a friends dying laptop. Unfortunately this has not been possible since something corrupted the filesystem (NTFS) beyond functioning, and the dying harddrive didn’t make it any easier.

This project begun last night, some time after midnight and when I decided to take a break for sleep and such things I began to wonder where my cat had gone. I couldn’t see here in any of her usual spots, so I turned on the light and discovered that indeed she was in one of her usual spots. The only problem was that I’d placed my friends laptop-bag on that very spot, and apparently the cat had figured it was a decent place for a nap anyway.

Of course it was mostly since I’d put the bag in her favorite spot, but amusingly enough she kept sitting in it even earlier today when I moved the bag from the couch and dumped it onto the floor. She simply moved into it and it wasn’t until about an hour ago that she lost interest in it.

I’ve temporarily become the custodian of a Great Dane named Bamse. In normal cases he belongs to two friends of mine, but due to various circumstances I was asked to watch him for a few days.

Which I happily accepted, since Bamse is one cool customer. In the past I’ve had some fairly bad experiences with this breed and I settled into the opinion that Great Danes are lazy, spoiled and high-maintenance type breeds. I knew this was somewhat prejudiced since I only could base this opinion on three dogs, and three dogs couldn’t represent a breed as a whole.

Bamse changed this opinion. He’s very easy-going, extremely charming (in a big elephant-wants-to-cuddle type way) as well as low-maintenance and with a generally cheerful disposition. He’s trying to make friends with my cat, but the cat regards him as a clumsy nuisance and mostly ignores him.

Here’s a picture of him, burrowed down into my couch with his head on the backrest, having a snooze and snoring in a manner reminiscent of an idling diesel-engine.

The summer is over. One of the minor annoyances with living this far up north on the globe we call home is that the summers are short and intense. Sure, we get high temperatures and can enjoy shorts-weather, but the window is limited. End of May until end of August.

Before the end of May there’s the neurotic and twitchy north-swedish spring. After the end of August the slow and dull north-swedish fall takes over.

Well, it’s not all bad. September is a great month actually. Leaves turn into sparkling oranges, yellows and browns. But October is a wet and dull month, at least here in Umeå. November, the snow still hasn’t arrived in full and that means an intense and very harsh cold until the snow might finally wrap the surroundings in white.

But now it’s September. It’s been an intense summer, and while I feel a slight pang of sorrow for not doing some of the things I set out to do, I’m trying to enjoy September for what it is. It’s a cool month, literally. I try to take a walk each day, and even if they’re not always of the long variety there’s always at least an hour or two when I’m not at home.

Today is the exception.

However, that doesn’t stop my beloved cat from enjoying the balcony. Even though she’s limited to the apartment she sure does enjoy the balcony. At least once a day –if the weather is bright– she scratches the door and insists on sauntering outside to sit in one of my awful plastic chairs for a bit. Every time I imagine that if she smoked, she’d have one of those yellow french Galois-cigarettes attached to a slender mouthpiece, like some diva from the 1920s might. She’d sit out there, enjoying the fall-sun, taking in the fresh air while ignoring the irony of how she pollutes the same with her cigarette. Because that’s how cats function. They accept the paradox. Just like I imagine a 1920s style diva might accept the very same paradox.

Earlier today I went for a walk. I needed to clear my head and get some exercise. I wished Micke was still here, hanging out. It sucks walking by oneself, but I needed to get out. So I went alone.

I went down towards the meadow and when I took a right I noticed two ducks hanging out in the ditch. They were having a grand old time, swimming around in the clear puddle of water that the melting snow is still producing. The were obviously a couple, one male and one female, although I always get confused as to if it’s the male that has the fancy coat, or if it’s the female.

Good times anyway. They weren’t bothered with me even when I reached for my trusty ol’ K750 to get a snapshot. I’ve loaned my camera to a friend who needed to take a few photos, so the in comparison quite crappy camera in the phone had to suffice.

I like ducks. There’s something easy-going about them. They always seem somewhat laid-back. I like that. So I continued my trek down the walkway and after a while I spotted… another pair of ducks. Weird.

Now, I’m not sure if these are the same ducks as before, but I do know that if they flew here I would’ve noticed their landing. The only way they could’ve gotten here while I was walking would’ve been by covertly sneaking through the ditch real quiet like.

Guess I had all my ducks in a row today.

This is such a vapid post, really. But I just can’t stop myself. The other day I saw some guy in the neighborhood playing with (what I assume is) his puppy. This puppy was so amazingly happy that I immediately felt filled with a warm fuzzy feeling.

So, kinda covertly I whipped out my lovely camera and shot a little movie of him with his puppy. It’s just so dang cute, I hope he doesn’t object in case he finds this film. Also, I finally found some use for you YouTube-account other than making sure the “HQ” option is always enabled.

Generally I’m more of a cat-person than dog-person (even though I love dogs and occasionally want one) but this happy little puppy is just off the scale when it comes to adorable.

Audio is essentially non-existing since I shot this through a window. All you get is the sound of my grubby fingers pawing at the camera and occasionally bumping it against the glass. Hope y’all enjoy.