Your Daily Dose of Duke #10

Yes, I love my dog and I would do anything for him. Including going down to the beach every nice morning to let him run around like a fool. He's also a good jogging partner.

Sunrise pictures can bee seen here: LeilaFace Flickr

Taken 02/27/2012 - Monday

Robot Duke taken on this Leap Year Day

Can You spot the Duke?

Your Daily Dose of Duke #9

Many things have passed since Duke was able to run freely outside. Mostly rain. Mostly fog. Mostly cold. Duke has had many adventures. He's gotten homemade treats (see previous blog post). He's gotten to walk down to the beach and run amok at sunset and this morning he and I finally got to watch one of our sunrises again. Duke also helped me to reach my outdoor running goal but I don't have a good picture of that mostly because I was running.

Pictures of the various sunrises and sunsets can be viewed on my flicker account    LeilaFace's Flickr

Duke is giving me his Paw in the hopes of receiving his Beer nuts - Spent grain PB treat.

The treat massacre begins.

No joke, he licked the floor clean.

Our Sunset walk.

Today's sunrise.

He loves running on sand

Beer Goes to the Dogs

My husband home brews. That being said, we are not “beer snobs,” I seriously hate that word. We’re beer enthusiasts. I still buy PBR at the bar but prefer Saisons or Doppelbocks at home.

 

This past weekend my wonderful husband did many things. He wanted to make a Saison but unable to find the correct yeast, he settled for a Belgium Strong Ale. Before all of this though, he went to Home Depot and constructed himself a little table for a place to host his brewing magic.  

After inquiring the calorie content of his beer, he saw the pleading in my eyes for a low-calorie home brew. Despite stating “There’s no such thing as a low-calorie home brew,” he took my pleading eyes as a challenge and ending up making another smaller batch of beer based off a English Blonde that should be around 150 calories.

All this commotion (our home smells delicious) created a lot of spent grain. I hate to see things go to waste so I made my Beer Nuts dog treats (which barely put a dent in the amount of spent grain). This recipe is everywhere on the internet but here it is again:

4 Cups Spent Grain

4 Cups Flour

1 Cup Peanut butter

1 Egg

I toy with the idea of swapping out PB for pasta sauce or bacon grease, someday. So you combine all the ingredients, mix, mix, mix. Then roll out as thin as you can and you can cut shapes or whatever but make sure you score them. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes then bake 8-10 hours @ 225. The grain is thick if you don’t bake long enough the cookies will mold over in no time.

Last night my dog got his homemade treats. This isn’t the first time I made them for him and it won’t be the last, but every time, he eats the treats so quickly I question whether he tasted them. He loves these things and his big brown eyes are appreciation enough for me to continue making treats that take almost a whole day to make. What grains we don’t use for dog delicacies I plan to give to our neighbors for chicken feed. If we had a garden or compost heap, that is where spent grains would rest.

 

So to anyone who thinks my dog is spoiled, I would say you are correct sir!

Your Daily Dose of Duke #8

We walked (yes walked) from my house down a steep hill to the beach for sunset. It's about a mile. Climbing back up the hill sucked. However, The Duke is happy and we walked 2 miles. Happy, Healthy Pooch.

Your Daily Dose of Duke #7

Took Duke to watch the Sunrise again this morning. We didn't go yesterday and he got super angry at me ... I think I just made this a THING. We went Monday and then hiked 4.2 miles so Duke wants exercise apparently, at least it's forcing me to exercise.

For pictures of the actual Sunrise I have a Flickr account! (There's a lot of my "home" in there too  aka HAWAII and Duke of course)

LeilaFace's Flickr Account

ComiCon is Coming!

To anyone living in the Pacific Northwest with an ounce of nerd in them The Emerald City Comicon is for you (March 30-April 1st)! My husband and I, in true nerd form, have gone to this event every year since we moved here. We make it a production since we live on the peninsula across the sound. We buy 3-Day passes and get a hotel room and spend the weekend meeting Leonard Nimoy, Max Brooks, Felicia Day, Wil Wheaton and more.

This year will be no different. Except, this year is my husband’s 30^th birthday. So I want to do it up right! Last year, as a wedding gift to ourselves we forked over the cash to get put on the waiting list for our Geek Chic hoplight coffee table. The tables are amazing, hand crafted, nerd-designed works of art. We saw them the first year we were at comicon. We should be getting our coffee table just in time for this year’s comicon. This year I want to go big for Tim’s 30^th. Money may be tight because we are also going to Orlando for his 30^th but I will find a way to surprise him. There are tons of vendors to walk around and buy witty T-shirts, memorabilia, comic books, specialty art and more.

I get it; my husband and I are geeks. We don’t dress up, we do sit in panels about the zombie apocalypse or Firefly or The Guild and we do wait in long lines to get autographs from the people we admire. I will wait as long as it takes to get George Takei’s autograph this year. 

It’s 3 days of magic and mayhem, collectables and gag gifts, works of art and cheap humor. My dad thinks it’s a joke and in part it is. We get comic books signed, ourselves drawn as zombies and autographs of actors and authors most people wouldn’t recognize on the streets. But we have fun. We genuinely enjoy it. We barely complain all weekend and we spend the Saturday night that we get the hotel painting Seattle red. 

It’s cheaper than San Diego and less crowded. Don’t get me wrong I’d give my left foot to go to the San Diego Comic Convention but between airfare, car rentals, hotels and tickets it might take a while. Perhaps one year we’ll go for our wedding Anniversary (we got married July 30). Until that day we will happily cross the frigid Puget Sound and spend a weekend full of Star Wars, Star Trek, Comic Books, Sci-Fi, WOW, D&D, Zombies, Movies, beer, love, friends and laughter. What is not to love?

In short this is a call (on a blog called nerdgasm) to get your geek/nerd/role-playing, sci-fi fix this year at Seattle’s 10^th Emerald City Comicon. Even if you only are slightly enamored with the thought of any of these things I guarantee you’ll find something to tickle your fancy.