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Susan Getgood's personal blog

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Balloons, K9s and TwinkieBook

08.15.2010 by Susan Getgood //

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Image by sgetgood via Flickr

This weekend, there was a balloon festival in our sleepy little town. I haven’t done much editing on the photos I took of the balloon glow last night or the balloons cruising over town at 6am this morning, but I have loaded them on Flickr (my back-up server!) if you are interested. There’s also a set Dave took with my camera yesterday morning.

Douglas, my mom and I also went over to the fest part of the event yesterday afternoon. It was a just a few booths and local bands– nothing like the annual balloon festival we’ve gone to in Quechee Vermont a few times — but people were having a good time.

The highlight was a demonstration by two officers from the State Police K9 unit. Our favorite part was the Belgian Malinois bitch subduing a suspect. The other officer puts on a special arm glove, and you can see by the dog’s attitude in the photo series below, she knows exactly what’s up as soon as she sees it. We figured that the dogs also have a clear sense of when they are on demo and can play a little, versus the job.

Her handler told the crowd that once she gets hold of the suspect she won’t let go unless he attacks her. She’s not biting to harm, just to assert control.

Calmly sitting:

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Sees the suspect (and the glove):

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Gotcha:

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And I’m not letting go:

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Until my handler says it’s okay (and gives me my toy):

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The full set of images is on Flickr.

Now I’m sure you are wondering about  TwinkieBook.

I find it amusing how the top 3 social networks keep copying each other and presumably think we are too dumb to notice. As one example,  LinkedIn added groups (copying Facebook), recently Facebook added questions (copying LinkedIn), and just this week Twitter began suggesting people to follow (copying both Facebook and LinkedIn although the Twitter implementation looks more like Facebook’s).

So, I joked on Facebook and Twitter that I was thinking about starting a pool to guess the date when we couldn’t tell one from the other. A good friend from college suggested the name TwinkieBook:
 

How perfect is that! It includes elements from all their names and adds the “twinkie” element– light, insubstantial, artificial. It’s going to be my new category on this blog for the social networks. Especially when they add a new feature that looks suspiciously like a feature from another site.

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Categories // Dogs, Social Media, Summer Tags // balloon, balloon glow, K9 unit, TwinkieBook

You’re Invited: the 2d Annual pre-BlogHer Boston-area BBQ

07.04.2010 by Susan Getgood //

The New York City fireworks over the East Vill...
Image via Wikipedia

Happy Independence Day (and a belated Happy Canada Day to my friends north of the border).

It’s hard to believe that BlogHer 2010 is nearly here. But before we convene in New York, we have the Boston Area BBQ on July 17th.

Date: Saturday July 17th
Time: 1-5 pm
Where: 171 White Pond Rd. Hudson MA (my house)

You don’t have to be a member of the BlogHer community to come — just someone  (male or female) who wants to meet fellow Boston-area bloggers in a family-friendly environment. Kids, friends, spouses, partners are all welcome.

Like last year, we have sponsors covering the burger/dog and dessert portions of the day, so all you have to bring is a side dish/salad and your chosen beverages. A big thank you to food sponsors Peapod, Friendly’s and Dancing Deer for their support.

And we have door prizes too. Au Bon Pain, Stride Rite and Kaspersky Lab have stepped up with prizes. If you have anything in your swag or regifting closet that you’d like to contribute, please do. I’ll be contributing a Mominatrix t-shirt, some music CDs that a promoter continues to send me even though I no longer write for the blues blog and a few photo printer cases from HP that are the perfect size for a travel toy bag or spare camera case. Last year, all the kids walked away with a little gift and were so excited to win something.

We wouldn’t be able to pull this together with so much sponsor support without the help of our friends at PR agencies 360 Public Relations and The Castle Group, so a big thank you to them as well.

To RSVP, leave a comment here or on the previous announcement on BlogHer. Please let me know the number of adults and children, and the side dish/salad you are thinking of bringing. This isn’t a binding commitment – if something comes up and you can’t make it on the day, it’s perfectly okay. Knowing how many people just helps us in the food planning for the hamburgers, hot dogs and dessert. We will have a vegetarian option.

Hope you can come!

Categories // BlogHer, Summer

September 1st

09.01.2008 by Susan Getgood //

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Douglas at Shelburne Museum. More Shelburne pics.

Where has the summer gone? Tomorrow we pack up to go home after a month up here in Vermont. My husband has been going back and forth but Douglas and I have been here since August 2d with the dogs. I’ve been working all week while Douglas was in camp except for this last week when my mom came up, and I took a little time off.

We hit our usual haunts — VINS in Quechee and Shelburne Museum out near Burlington, and also checked out the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor.

I used my telephoto lens at VINS and was amazed at some of the pictures of the raptors — if the bird was toward the back of the cage, the bars of the cage literally dissolve in the picture.

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More pictures from VINS.

On Friday afternoon, we drove over to the Hathaway Farm in Rutland to do the corn maze.
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Douglas and Dave, about 3/4 through the maze. More here.

Saturday looked a bit threatening weather-wise, a promise that was mostly delivered in the evening as we were driving through Rutland and the skies opened up. But we decided to take a chance and drive over to Fort Ticonderoga NY to see the King’s Garden, which was not open when we went on Memorial Day weekend.

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Then we drove down the western side of Lake George to the town of Lake George and took a one-hour cruise on the paddlewheeler Minnie-Ha-Ha. Lake George looks like the typical honky-tonk beach town — think Hyannis, York Maine or Center Harbor on Winnepesaukee, including more mini-golf than you would ever want to play, but the cruise on the lake is very pleasant with quite a lot to see.

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The boathouse is a smaller copy of the house.

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Quite a bit of Victorian architecture along the lakeshore.

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And of course the Adirondacks.

More garden photos,Ticonderoga’s park and waterfall, and Lake George.

Today, we may go over to Billings Farm; they do special activities on Labor Day that Douglas enjoys. Or I may just read my book. I find that I read more when I’m here than I do at home for some reason. Maybe I’m more relaxed. Right now I am reading the new James Bond novel Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks, and I just finished two novels in Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie series, The Right Attitude to Rain and The Careful Use of Compliments. You may know his Africa-based series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency but I find I enjoy the Dalhousie tales set in Edinburgh even more. The new one The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday is due out later this month.

I’m also looking forward to Brisingr (Inheritance, Book 3) by Christopher Paolini. While the second book in his trilogy was a bit disappointing, and the movie based on the first book Eragon was AWFUL, I’m hopeful that the conclusion of the tale will be better.

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Bye, bye summer.

Technorati Tags: Vermont, Lake George, King’s Garden, Fort Ticonderoga, VINS, Shelburne Museum

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Categories // Birds, Books, Douglas, Gardens & Flowers, General, Photo Contests, Summer, Travel, Vermont

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