Angel's Big Day - The Louisville Dog Competition

"If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater. . . suggest that he wear a tail."

- Fran Lebowitz

While Angel was only one of two "hot dog" breeds, there were many hot dogs on this 90 degree day. My camera doesn't do justice to the event - since the battery pooped out in the middle of the most unique dog competition-, but I promise you little Angel shined like a star and he was robbed blind during the the most fashionable competition. (He had it...we know the truth.)

A very fun event, part of the Louisville Days events, held in Community Park and hosted by The Huckleberry, a very scrumptious restaurant in town.

Proud mom Karen and handsome Angel

Big. Small.

Angel, Karen, and Tamtam

Meet Crystal...the dog. she won the best trick competition by riding a bicycle with the little girl. Sadly, I didn't see it.

A very tolerant dog.

Our neighbor Victoria with her teacup Pomeranian in the smallest dog competition.

The smallest dog line up.

Contestant for Most Unique...the dog.

Angel in the Most Unique dog competition.


Daisy, the old English sheep dog, looks on and cheers wildly for Angel.

See Angel?

Thanks for the fun, guys!

Late Summer Day in Louisville

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.

—Bill Vaughn

There is no there there.

- Gertrude Stein

In planning school, we revelled in suburbia bashing, bashing the stronghold of the cult of domesticity, sprawl, disaffected teenagers-gone-wild, Walmart, and Republican, fear-inspired, self-promoting, white, Caspar Milktoasts. Since we decided to move to Louisville, which we decided to move to because it has good access to public transportation, a great historic downtown, and lower housing costs, I have begin to ponder just what suburbia is and isn't.

Louisville has been called a Boulder suburb, but is it the suburbia that planners worry about? What do you think?

Front of our house, which rents at the same rate as our last basement level apartment in Boulder. The house was built around 1983 and about 1,300 SF. While these aren't multifamily homes, they are all built on fairly small lots similar in size to much of the housing that is found in Denver and Boulder.

See our neighbors' house through the peep holes? Pretty close, eh?

We live on West Hackberry Street and this hackberry is our shade tree in our back yard. Unlike the suburbias described by Bill Vaughn, trees were added to rather than subtracted from the landscape.

This bike path and open space is on the north side of the houses that face us across the street. We use this path day and night to go to downtown Louisville.

The preserved open space behind our house.

Notice the countdown: guess non-Republicans live in the "suburbs", too.

Louisville is an historic mining town founded in 1882.

And Louisville benefits from an historic downtown. There was and is a there there.









Community Park - there's a there there, too.

Louisville Days 2008.


So, what do you think? Is it a bad suburb?

DNC Convention Denver 2008: Images from the Street

The dream realized.

- Obama political button
Denver Convention, 2008

I'm tired after a long day's work, followed by walking around in downtown Denver to check out all of the activity around the Democratic National Convention, but thought that you might be interested in my plebeian view of Convention activity in downtown Denver.

Mitchell Lake Trail/Blue Lake Trail

The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.

-Claude Monet

This morning, Steve and I woke up around 9:30AM, after a good night's sleep, and casually drove to the Indian Peaks Wilderness Area, part of the Roosevelt National Forest and about one hour from home. I'm going to keep my words to a minimum because I think the pictures will tell a better story than I can.

One little treat that wasn't photographed: I saw a pica and thereafter heard continuous scolding by picas leading to and near Blue Lake, the destination on this hike.