Madeline's Great Escape

This is a picture of Madeline covered in dirt after her escape into the backyard on Friday afternoon. After work, I took the laptop and a cold beer, and sat on my Adirondack chair in front of the house. After 10 minutes I heard a jingle of a bell that sounded suspiciously like the bell on Maddie's collar. I looked back, and sure enough, there was Madeline, totally covered in dirt, sneaking along the rock wall on the right side of our house. I picked her up and took her inside, at which point I noticed the sliding screen door at the back of the house was open about a foot. Jason mentioned last week that he thought Madeline had figured out how to open the screen door with her paw, but I didn't believe it. Sure enough, she has figured out how to open the door, escaped into the backyard, and jumped the fence to the front of the house. To get the dirt off of her, I stuck her under water in the bath -- you can imagine how that went. She wrestled away, spraying dirt all over the walls and floor, and ran straight for the screen door, and out the back again! After a quick chase, I brought her back in, and rubbed her down with a towel -- locking the screen behind me this time! Madeline always manages to surprise us with her tricks. We have learned our lesson though, and now the screen door remains locked.

After that adventure on Friday afternoon, Jason arrived home from San Francisco and we went downtown Flagstaff for dinner. We finally tried the German restaurant, The Matterhorn. We shared a plate of various German sausages, saurkraut, and spatzle...YUM.

Switch to Jason -- I had a great time in San Francisco this past week. In between taking care of stuff for work, I had the chance to explore quite a bit. I took a long walk, stopping off in Chinatown, City Lights Bookstore (a famous beat hangout), Lombard Street (known for being one of the hilliest and curviest in the world), Coit Tower, and Fisherman's Wharf. In my continuing search for regional cuisines, I found a restaurant called Sotto Mare that had amazing cioppino, which is a San Francisco specialty consisting of a variety of seafood in a tomato based broth. One of the hospitals that I had to visit was right near wine country, so after the case was over I took a sightseeing drive by the vineyards. All in all, it was a successful trip, as everything that I had to do for work while there went extremely well.

Saturday we had a really lazy day. We slept in until about noon, went to lunch downtown, bummed around some stores, and then grilled some shrimp for dinner. Our friend Greg came over for UFC 101, and we enjoyed some homemade mojitos. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any fresh mint (we tried multiple stores!), so we had to use mint extract, but it turned out well.

Jason is traveling this week to Reno, NV, but only over Thursday night. I take the red-eye flight Wednesday night to S.C. I'll get into Charlotte Thursday morning, and join in the wedding festivities for my friend Angileigh and her fiance, Eric. I am in their wedding on Saturday, and fly back to AZ on Sunday. I'll post pictures when I get back!
XOXO