Happy New Year!

Thanks to everyone who bought my DVD last year. I got so many nice emails back, but none can top this one I received last week:

"Sally, I am thrilled beyond words to find this! My husband courted me in 1983 by playing Quasi at the Quackadero when I would come over. The old beta tape (copied from channel 11PBS) has long been useless/lost, but our 4 children have heard the story often. (They are now 21, 18, 16, and 13). My husband will simply explode when he opens this! "

Santa Massacre?

Santa Massacre?, originally uploaded by Big Chicken.

I drove by this house to show Dinah how overdecorated it was, but they'd turned off their blowers on the inflatables, and the front lawn looked like the scene of a crime, Santas and Polar Bears flattened all over the lawn! To tell you the truth, inflatable decorations give me the creeps anyway.

Charbucks further

On my site I have a flash version of one chapter of my Charbucks saga. It ends proclaiming that more will soon follow. However, the wonderful online source of the voices has been removed. Formerly rhetorical.com had an amazing free feature where you could type in dialog lines and get a specific voice saying it back. Their Valley girl voice was exceptionally good, and they also had a variety of foreign and American voices to choose from. They didn't have the usual Radio Shack answering machine voice quality.

However, the site is gone because it was sold to a bigger fish, I learned recently. It made it so easy to create the voice tracks to animate, and you could just drop the voices right into flash and go.

The Charbucks saga was a multi-chapter adventure I wrote and illustrated with animated gifs around 1997, just when Starbucks were starting to appear all over the place, including some pretty odd places. The story was pretty amusing but the artwork began to look awfully rough as the Flash look came to dominate internet animation.

Anyway, not that anyone's asked me, but just thought I'd report on it.

thai dinner is coming

thai dinner is coming, originally uploaded by Big Chicken.

After the peace event we waited in the car while Jon got dinner to go at a Thai restaurant. I enjoy passing time taking time lapse photos, and especially liked this one.

Peace Vigil 10/26/05

on the way to Sherman Oaks, originally uploaded by Big Chicken.

We took Molly to a peace vigil on a street corner in Sherman Oaks last night. I made the sign. People held candles inside of paper cups. There was a coffin and signs, and about sixty people. Molly almost got in a fight with another German Shepherd on the two feet of available sidewalk. So much for peace in the dog world!

Las Vegas Grand Prix

We drove to Las Vegas on Saturday Oct. 15 to see the Grand Prix of Las Vegas, an incredible international horse jumping event. You can see a full slide show of the event here. These were the most outrageous jumps I've ever seen. The Europeans handled these fences with vigor and authority. The Americans were definitely more challenged, and none made it to the jump-off, which is the final event.

After the Fire

The horses came back last night, and today I went to look at it all.

Passed a lot of fire engines leaving. You can see what a narrow way in, and the only way out, is Bell Canyon Blvd.










The fire came incredibly close to some houses.


Unfortunately there is still plenty of dry brush out there with Santa Ana winds starting up again next week.




But Molly enjoyed her first moonwalk.

Rescuing our horses from the Bell Canyon fire!

The last two days have been very dramatic around here. The little brush fire on the news Wed. afternoon turned into a big wildfire in four hours, and we had to evacuate our two horses and two goats from the Bell Canyon Equestrian Center.



As soon as Dinah got home from school we drove out to the stable. It looked incredible with huge firey clouds, and emergency vehicles zooming around in all directions.


Many people were unaware of the fire at all because it came on so fast.
We knew we were in for a long night.

At first very few were at the stable and it was very quiet. Then various messengers would appear and say, "get out now", but there were no trailers and the barn manager said "Not yet." The sky was getting REALLY red, sorry no photos of that. Then the official word came to get out-- there's only one route out of that canyon. Still no trailers. Then a CONVOY of volunteers driving trailers appeared, maybe 20-30 trailers, and we loaded them up as fast as we could. Our two horses and two goats were good getting in the trailers. And they're not always good! We helped load them all.



It didn't entirely go smoothly- lots of people freaking out, arguing, not sure where to go or what to do-- lots of screaming and accusing-- about 100 horses and four goats had to move-- some had never gone in trailers before-- but we all got out.
Our horses went about twenty miles to Hansen Dam, where they had horse show temporary stalls we could use.



The horses all handled the change well, at least so far. The volunteers were amazing- they ask for nothing. Almost all women driving these rigs. Our driver had just been to a vet clinic with a singed horse. They left in a rush to rescue other horses.

We hope to move back to our stable this weekend. No update on what it's like out there, but it's been snowing ash for two days around L.A.

Feeling Much Better

I got the cast off last Thursday and it's wonderful. I'm swimming again and driving and stumping around quite handily. Even back at my favorite hang-out, the dog park again. I haven't made it to the stable yet, but I sure hope to get back on my horse Pepper soon.

Last night we saw the Werner Herzog movie, GRIZZLY MAN. It's terrific! The guy was so nutty, like Michael Jackson among the grizzly bears. People were howling at the 4:15 matinee in West Hollywood. Great footage of grizzlies too. If you live in California, you'll feel as if you met this guy somewhere or other.

I've also been reading several Mormon books this summer. Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven", and Vardis Fisher "Children of God". I liked the Vardis Fisher "Mountain Man" better.

I posted a series of photos of Molly swimming in our pool on my flickr page here.

One problem we don't have!

Hey Martha, we have goats too!

It goads me that Martha Stewart and I share a few things, (not the $) but yes I have a nasty Chow though I've moved on to German Shepherds, and yes I am under a form of house arrest because of my broken ankle, and yes, I grew up in New Jersey and love horses.

And now I learn that Martha is upset because at her big new house they won't let her keep her goats and chickens. What? I have goats and chickens.
eeeeh. However, Martha would despair if she walked in the door. Besides, the Chow would probably bite her.

However, I have been having fun with flickr, loaded some goats pictures, plus paintings I did a long time ago.

All at my flickr site/

Things are looking up.

Yesterday I got a neon orange walking cast, and now I can stump around the house like Frankenstein's monster. I am really enjoying my new freedom. I was rather feeble with the crutches, and approached stairs as the human worm.

One of the best things about the Internet for me is hearing from people I knew long ago. A reason for everyone to have a site, just so people you've lost touch with can reach you through google. It's quite amazing, and unimaginable in the past. Although I missed the Chatham High School reunion this summer, I have heard from many old classmates and loved seeing their pictures on flickr.

messing with firecrackers

labels, that is, in Photoshop.

backyard madness

like wearing a Martha Stewart anklet

geez, this cabin fever is getting to me, two weeks in on the fracture and at least 8 weeks ahead I guess. Well, I'm getting back into reading fiction, loving a giant book of short stories by my favorite contemporary author, T.C. Boyle. Random picture:

Some Blaine Basin pix

I've just been experimenting with the free photo hosting available on yahoo's beta flickr. Seems like a cool way to publish photos. I put a slide show of my fateful hike here.

Good Vacation turns BAD!

All was idyllic in the Rocky Mountains with family and dogs, beautiful weather, wildflowers everywhere. We heard there was an incredible avalanche sight at Blaine Basin, which is near timberline, near Mount Sneffels.

So we hiked in, took about three hours with incredible climbing. Most hikers on the way out were using ski poles. At Blaine Basin there was a beautiful meadow and also incredible devastation from the avalanche, still lots of snow. After eating lunch, Jon wanted to head right back, but Dinah and I wanted to explore this somewhat surreal landscape. I was trying to leap through a strong stream when my foot got caught in a hole much deeper than footing around it, I twisted my ankle and sort of passed out on the stream bed.

Coming to, I decided it was a sprained ankle, and we had no choice but to hike back down, over logs so slippery you had to crawl across them, over scree fields, awful. It took soooooo long to get back down, I felt like I'd aged 40 years by the time we reached the bottom five hours later. Next morning I went to an emergency clinic in Telluride and learned I'd fractured my ankle in two places. There goes summer. I'm supposed to have surgery to get pins in it on Friday. We're back in L.A. Aaah!

Colorado next stop

We're off to Colorado in the morning, with both dogs- just hoping they get along, otherwise one will get the front seat and I'll sit in the back like the Mormon wife.

hole lotta shakin

Wow, the earthquakes keep coming, yet somehow I have yet to feel one. Goal today is find all the flashlights and make sure they're working.

My favorite neurotic earthquake site is here. 300 quakes a day seems to be the baseline!

Whinsey won third place in the latest world chatterbox contest. I keep on tweaking that code.

Whinsey the Horse

I've been sweating on the code for my bot Whinsey, trying to make her smarter and more responsive. She's at http://www.funonmars.com/mywhoo.html and I've been working on her off and on for years. She may not be the smartest bot but I think her conversation is livelier and less automaton than others. Here's a real life example logged tonight:

you said: are you alone
she said: totally alone!
you said: who's in the tv then
she said: I just hate all the remotes you need these days.
you said: stick a remote up your ass
she said: they turn each other on!
you said: wild idea
she said: Better than no idea at all!

don't worry, I don't log who you are, just the responses so I can figure how to make her smarter.

There's an ongoing contest at http://www.worldchatterbots.com/ that helps keep up interest and bot iqs! Check it out!