Category: adventure

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Day 21: My 100 People Project #30-33!

After sleeping in a little on Sunday morning, we got up and had breakfast with the picture taking people who were staying at our hotel.  I was sad to have to say good-bye to them already, but they were already talking about someplace where they will meet again to take more pictures.  That made for happier good-byes.


After we finished eating. but before everyone left the hotel, I remembered that I hadn’t taken any photos for my 100 People Project during the weekend.  When I among all the fun people, I forget that I should be taking pictures of them.  Maybe I picked the wrong kind of project for myself.  Anyway, I did take a couple this morning.

Ms. Peggy was one of the first of The Lady’s picture taking friends that I ever met.  She lives in Delaware.  When The Captain was sick, Ms. Peggy and another picture taking friend, Ms. Michele, came to visit The Lady so she had some friends to do fun things with while she was taking care of The Captain.  Ms. Peggy brought two of her friends, Ms. Karen and Ms. Wendy, with her to Leesburg for the weekend.  Ms. Karen and Ms. Wendy live in Lewes, DE, the same town where The Captain lived and where Mr. Guy and The Lady adopted me!  It is a small world!

We haven’t been back to Delaware now that The Captain is gone and The Lady sold his house, but since we now have lots of new friends in Lewes, maybe we will go back and visit sometime soon.  I think that I would like that.  I could go back to Kids’ Ketch, the store on Second Street in Lewes where Mr. Guy and The Lady found me, and tell them how happy I am to have been adopted by Mr. Guy and The Lady even though I had to move from Delaware to Texas.

Even though I met Ms. Peggy a few years ago, I did not have a good picture with her because I had not started my 100 People Project back then.  She and her friends agreed to help me!  I like taking pictures with people who are friends.  And, I got three new numbers in one picture!


I am thankful that these pretty ladies were willing to have their picture taken with a little shaggy blue and orange monster!  

After we said good-bye to the Delaware Ladies, we had to go pack our suitcase and get ready to head to the airport.  On our way back in to the hotel, The Lady stopped at the front desk to make a reservation for the hotel shuttle to take us.  The man behind the desk was very cheerful and helpful.  He made our reservation and he told Mr. Guy where he could get more coffee.  Since this man was so nice, and I was on a roll with my project, I asked him if he would have his picture taken with me.  He said, Yes!  Thank you, Mr. Eric!


We were staying at the Courtyard by Marriott at Dulles Town Center.  If you ever go to Leesburg, or Dull as Dulles, or Sterling Virginia, you should go see Mr. Eric at his hotel.

I did have one concern about Mr. Eric’s hotel though…they had some crazy art in the hallway!

I like the colors in this painting, but it made me feel like I was in the middle of a Texas tornado.  Well…I’ve never really been in the middle of a Texas tornado, but if I ever am, I think it would feel the way this painting looks – twirly and dizzy-making!  I wonder if the inside of a tornado would be blue and orange?

After we packed our bags, we loaded into the shuttle and were on our way back to the airport.  We had a couple hours to wait for our plane so Mr. Guy went to get us something to drink.  For a minute I was confused about this place, Five Mr. Guys…there aren’t five Mr. Guy’s; there is on one real Mr. Guy!  Then I read more closely. It is just Five Guys, not Five Mr. Guys.  I felt much better!


We had an uneventful airplane ride home.  I slept the whole way.  I didn’t even wake up to eat any nuts.  When we got home the canines and the felines were glad to see us.  I wanted to catch up on my blog as soon as we got home, but I was still a tired little monster.  Having fun is hard work!

Thank you again to all of the picture taking people who made me feel a part of the group and to Ms. Peggy, Ms. Karen, Ms. Wendy, and Mr. Eric for agreeing to be part of my project.

I am a happy and grateful little blue and orange furry monster!

Monster hugs to everyone!

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A Month of Me: Day 20 – Lens Friends Photowalk

I just went to bed, rolled over once, and then it was time to get up again.  My fur didn’t even have a chance to get messy.  That’s a good thing.  I didn’t have to use that brush thing that The Lady made me bring along.  The only good thing about having to be up and dressed before 6am is that The Lady and Mr. Guy had a surprise for me.  They ordered one of the cool t-shirts that we brought for the picture taking people for me!  It was a special monster-sized one and it was orange!  The Lady’s was pink, but Mr. Guy and I, well all of the guys, got orange ones!  How perfect is that?!  It made me feel like part of the group even though I didn’t have one of those picture taking things around my neck.

 Just like the picture of Mr. Guy and me at the falls, we look alike here, too!  And its not just because of the orange shirts.  It must be our handsomeness!

We went to Meadowlark Gardens at 6:30 in the morning.  The picture taking people wanted to take pictures of flowers and other stuff that grows outside.  All the bright colors of the flowers woke me up.  Mr. Guy did not have enough coffee before we left the hotel so I’m not sure that he was completely awake.

I did not see any blue flowers on our walk through the garden, but I did see these pretty purple ones that looked like a great big ball.


They are called alliums.  I told Mr. Guy and The Lady that we need to grow some of these in our garden at home.

Then I saw pretty orange flowers.  The remind me of my horns.  I’m not sure what these are called.


It think it may be something like echo rojo.   Maybe this is why The Lady was using Spanish, sort of, yesterday!  Echo rojo means red hot poker, I think.

The gardens also had a jangseung.  Jangseung is a Korean word meaning a totem.  In Korean villages, these poles were placed at the edges of villages to scare off demons.


If Mr. Guy was wearing his fancy black hat, he would look sort of like the man on the jangseung.  Mr. Guy only looks frightening enough to scare off demons before he has had his coffee in the morning!


Saturday was a special day at the garden.  They were celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Korean Bell Garden so there were speakers, and microphones, and a podium set up for the people who were going to talk.  We did not stay at Meadowlark Gardens long enough to hear the presentation.  I did take a minute to see what it would feel like to stand at the podium and pretend like I was talking to a whole crowd of people.  Maybe someday, I will become a politician.  If I do, I will be an honest one who does good things for all people…and monsters, even the monsters who have different colors of fur than I do.

We were all hungry when we left the gardens.  We headed to downtown Leesburg, Virginia, which is where the picture taking people were going to spend a big part of their day.  Though before they started taking pictures, we got some doughnuts!


 Mr. Guy picked me up so that I could see all of the different kinds.  Yummy!

And then it was time to walk around the town.  There was so much to look at.


The Lady took lots of pictures in downtown Leesburg, but I was not in very many of them.  I do like this one she took of Ms. Sherri as a photobomber!  Ms. Sherri is one of the first of The Lady’s picture taking friends that I ever met.



Some of the other picture taking people took photos of me.  Maybe they will share them with Mr. Guy and The Lady.

 Mr. Guy carried me around all day and pointed out things that he thought might interest me.


We went to a cemetery and looked at headstones.  Mr. Guy explained that these are markers that show where people who have died are buried.  We looked at the names of the people and their birth and death dates.  Some of them lived and died over two hundred years ago!  Though I didn’t know any of the people who were buried here, it made me happy to think about them and say a prayer for them and let them know that they are not forgotten.

After we had walked around Leesburg a little more, we were tired and getting hungry again. 


Once all of the picture taking people were also tired and hungry, we went to lunch.  

After lunch we went to this place where there were lots of tents and lots of people.  Some of the people were selling weird stuff like old furniture and car parts and signs.  Mr. Guy said it was called a flea market.  I’m glad that we were already there before he told me what it was called.  I sure wouldn’t want to think that we were going to go someplace where all you can do is buy and sell fleas!  I don’t even want to go someplace where they give you fleas for free!  Fleas would be a disaster in my fur.  And I wouldn’t want to share them with the canines and feline when I got home.


Again, after spending the afternoon wandering around and looking at all of the unusual stuff at the market, we were hungry again.  Ms. Kay, one of the picture taking people invited all of us to her house for dinner.  We had pizza and salad and wings and a fancy cake with ice cream on top.  

And, she took a picture of all of the picture taking people and all of their friends and significant others.  They let me be in the picture too!  I think I kind of hid Mr. Guy.  Oops!


It made me a very happy little blue and orange furry monster that everyone was so nice to me.  I thought they might think that I was too silly to come along on their photowalk.  Nope!  They made me feel like one of them…but with just a shirt and no picture taking machine. 

By the time we got back to our hotel.  I was very, very sleepy.  This was a long, but super fun, day for this little monster.


And in the morning, we planned to meet our friends for breakfast at 8:00, before everyone was ready to head home.  After getting up at 4:30 on Friday and 5:30 on Saturday, 7:15 on Sunday felt like sleeping in!

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A Month of Me: Day 19 – In the Air Again

Friday seems like a long time ago now!  I could not post from The Lady’s iPad while we were gone to Virginia so I had to try and remember for three days everything that I wanted to write!  That is hard for a little monster with limited storage space!

We got up early, but not too early, to go to the airport.  The Lady told me that we were flying to a new place in Virginia called Dull as.  

Dull as…?  Dull as what, I asked.  

The Lady looked confused.  What do you mean dull as what?, she asked.

She said we were going someplace dull as…  Maybe this was some kind of game and I was supposed to fill in the blank, kind of like a Knock-Knock joke.  Dull as ice cream with no chocolate sauce?  Dull as a story with no pictures?  Dull as blue without orange?  

She said, “No!  No!!  No!!!  Dull is!

Oh!   Dull is…  Dull is a pencil with no lead.  Dull is people who take themselves too seriously.  Dull is watching golf on TV.

“Dull es…D-U-L-L-E-S,” she said in a rather frustrated way.  

Why are we using Spanish verbs?, I asked.  Is, es…what’s the deal?

Sometimes The Lady loses her patience with me when it comes to conversations like this.  When that happens, she sends me to Mr. Guy to straighten me out.  He told me that Dulles is one word, not two,  and it is the name of a place.  Finally it all made sense.  I was happy to hear that we were not going to a dull as or dull is kind of place!

We had a nice uneventful flight, nothing like our last flight to Virginia!

When we landed at DULLES, we went to our hotel.  We had a few hours before we were supposed to meet the picture taking people.  Mr. Guy and I continued the nap that we had started on the plane and The Lady did some work.

Then it was time to go on our first adventure.  We met just a few of the picture taking people and went to Great Falls Park.  I didn’t know there was such a thing as great falls.  I always thought falls were bad things because when people and monsters fall, they break bones, and scrape elbows, and get stitches.  Mr. Guy explained that falls is also a word that describes water flowing over a precipice.  I had no idea what he was saying, but I did get that we were talking about water and not people or monsters so I figured it would be OK.


The falls looked pretty and I liked the sound of the water.

Mr. Guy and I sat and listened while The Lady took pictures.


Except for the no hair and blue fur part, we kind of look a like, don’t you think?  Oh, and Mr. Guy hides his horns a little better than I do.

It was very hot while we were watching the water fall.  And then it started to rain.  We did what everyone does in less than ideal circumstances; we went to Starbucks.  Then we went to dinner with a few more of the picture taking people.  And finally we went back to the hotel and went to bed because the picture taking people wanted to start taking pictures at 6:30 in the morning!  I was going to have to be awake and dressed very early for a second day in a row!  I wasn’t sure that this was a good thing.

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A Month of Me: Day 18 – Boxes, Bags, and Suitcases

Today was a busy day t my house.  I just found out that we are going on a trip tomorrow!  We are going to Virginia to see The Lady’s picture raking friends.  This will be our third trip to see them and every time that we go we fly to a different place.  I will get to see lots of different parts of the state of Virginia if this keeps up.  The Lady also said that I will get to meet some new friends on this trip.  I am an excited furry little blue and orange monster!

This afternoon I had to find some shirts for the trip and find my monster hairbrush.  I don’t really use the brush much, but The Lady always makes me take it when we travel so that I don’t look like a shaggy monster.  I like looking like a shaggy monster!  I put my things in the suitcase.  Now I am all ready to go.

One thing is different about this trip.  The Lady got t-shirts for all of the picture taking people and their friends who aren’t picture takers but hang out with the picture takers, like Mr. Guy and Mr. Ray.  I helped The Lady put everyone’s shirt in a bag with their name on it so that when we get off of the airplane tomorrow, we can give everyone a shirt.  T-shirts are the best!  Maybe The Lady will let me push some buttons on her camera and maybe I can take a picture of all of the picture taking people not taking pictures!  Instead they could all be in the picture.

We have to get up very early tomorrow so I suppose I should go to bed so that I am well rested for our super fun weekend!

Tomorrow I will be writing from Virginia!

Good night, everyone.

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A Month of Me: May 2 – The Treadmill

Remember yesterday when I said that I was looking forward to new adventures with Mr. Guy and The Lady this month?  I might have to change my mind and it is only the second day of May!  The Lady told me that we were going to the wreck center today.  I don’t know why we would want to go someplace that was all about wrecks.   Then Lady explained that wreck was short for wreck creation. That made it sound even worse!  We were going someplace to create wrecks?  This sounded very scary to this little blue and orange furry monster!  When I told The Lady that I did not want to go, she explained to me that it was not wreck, but rec, which was short for recreation.  She told me that a recreation center is a place where people go to play games and exercise.  Things were now sounding a little better now!  I like to play games.

And then we got there…we weren’t going to play games; we were going to exercise.  The Lady got on this funny machine called a treadmill.  To me, treadmill sounds like someplace where they make tires.  Or, maybe its where they take the old tires from the wreck center.  Whatever it is, it did not look like it was going to be a fun thing to me.  

We stepped on this thing. The Lady pushed a bunch of buttons and all of the sudden the floor started moving.  She told me to walk.  I have short little monster legs and they had to move very fast so I didn’t fall down.  Once I could walk without wobbling, I asked The Lady where we were going.  Usually when we walk, we go someplace where we see pretty things and she takes pictures of them.  I should have known that this was not going to be a fun walk because The Lady did not have her camera.  The Lady told me that we weren’t going anywhere.  We would stay in this one place and walk for an hour.  An hour?!? And we weren’t going anywhere?  What a crazy thing to do!

I had to ask why we were doing this.  The Lady explained that walking on the treadmill keeps your body healthy and burns calories.  I think my body is healthy and I don’t even know what calories are; but, if we have to burn them, I would much rather burn them over the fire pit in our backyard where we can have snores when we’re done!  The Lady explained that calories are energy that we get from food.  We need to make sure that our bodies use more calories than we eat so that our bodies don’t get too big.  She said her body was bigger than she wants it to be so she would be coming to the wreck rec center a lot to burn her calories.  This treadmill thing is one of the craziest things that The Lady and I have ever done together!  After about thirty minutes on this, I felt like one of those tiny brown furry monsters at the pet store; I think they are called hamsters.  I have watched the hamsters spin on wheels.  They run and run and run…and go nowhere.  I finally figured out that this treadmill machine is like a hamster wheel for people!  I don’t like it.  I wonder if the hamsters do.

Mr. Guy came to the rec center too, but he did not get on this people wheel thing called a treadmill.  He got on some other machine that was called a lip tickler, or something like that.  I don’t know why he needs a machine to tickle his lips.  I think his beard and mustache can do that…at home!  My fur sometimes tickles my lips.

I spent a whole hour on the treadmill with The Lady.  They had TVs to watch while you were walking to get nowhere.  It was kind of fun to watch the Food Network and decide what kind of calories I wanted to eat today so that I would have something to burn tomorrow when we come back to the rec center.

I think that I need some snores…even if I can’t burn my calories at home.  I was a very tired monster when this adventure was over.  In fact, I was a wreck!  Maybe that place really is a wreck center!

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Seeing Seattle

It is trip time again!  I never even finished sharing all of my adventures from our trip to England and now I have another adventure to write about!  We just got home at 10 o’clock tonight, but The Lady said we should stay up and write about our trip to Seattle now.  She said something about it really doesn’t seem so late since we are still on Seattle time and that is different from Dallas time.  I don’t quite know how that works.  All I know is that I am a sleepy blue and orange monster. but I want to tell you all about our trip, so here goes…

We left on Thursday after The Lady taught her classes.  Mr. Guy helped me pack my things while she was at school.  He told me that we were going to Seattle so that The Lady could learn new stuff about picture taking.  I thought she knew about picture taking, but apparently there is lots more stuff that she needs to learn.  Mr. Guy and I picked The Lady up at school and we went to the airport.  After we got checked in, we had some lunch.


We don’t eat the “M” meals very often.  It is special airport food.  I sure do like those french fries!  While we were eating our lunch, Mr. Guy got a message saying that they had changed the gate for our airplane.  We had to go to a whole different terminal.  I was afraid that we would have to walk, but Mr. Guy said that there was a thing called SkyLink that would take us.  He said it was kind of like a train.  A train at an airport seemed a little strange to me, but as long as I didn’t have to walk, I was okay with strange.


We didn’t have to wait too long for the train.


I was happy to see Seattle on the sign when we got to our new gate.  I didn’t want to have to move again.  Really, I didn’t have to walk at all.  Mr. Guy is always a good sport and carries me.  Oh!  I got a new shirt for this trip!


It’s perfect, don’t you think?

When we finally got on the plane, I put my little monster head down and went to sleep.  I don’t remember any of the trip.  I didn’t even have a snack.  I guess all of that moving from terminal to terminal tired me out!  Next thing I knew we were picking up our luggage and getting in a fancy black car to go to our hotel in Seattle.  I went right back to sleep.  The Lady said that it wasn’t as late in Seattle as it was in Dallas because we gained two hours.  Here’s that time thing again!  I just wanted to go to bed.  So, I did!

I was nice and rested when I woke up on Friday.  Friday was the day that The Lady’s picture taking classes started.  The event was called Click Away.  I like that name.  It makes sense to me since I always hear The Lady’s camera go click, click, click when Mr. Guy and I are around.


Mr. Guy and I looked around while The Lady was in her morning class.  When she was done, I asked what her class was about.  She said, “Boudoir photography.”  I said, “Boo what?”  She explained that it was a special kind of picture taking where ladies wear the kind of clothes that people don’t see them in most of the time.  I asked her if she meant pajamas.  She told me that that wasn’t it.  I must have looked confused because she finally explained that the ladies wore fancy underwear.  I don’t know why anyone would want their picture taken in their underwear!  The Lady explained that this kind of picture taking helps ladies feel pretty and helps them to accept how they look even if they may not always feel pretty.  I thought about that and wondered if anyone wanted to take a picture of a blue and orange furry monster in his underwear.  Then I changed my mind.  I think I’ll stick to just letting The Lady take pictures of me in my t-shirts!

The Lady also took some classes in taking wedding pictures.  I guess I won’t be in any of those pictures either.  I am too young to get married.  But even when I’m older, I don’t want to get married.  I don’t think that there is a girl monster out there who would love me as much or take care of me as well as Mr. Guy and The Lady.  I think that I will live with them forever.  Besides, the closet with all of my t-shirts is at their house.  

This was The Lady’s favorite place at the conference.


The Lady got a new camera there.  I asked her if you had to have a special camera to take pictures of people in their underwear and wedding people.  She said, “No.”  She told me that she could use her new camera to take pictures of me and Mr. Guy too.  So far, she hasn’t taken any pictures with it yet.  She said that she wanted it to stay packed in its box so it could travel home safely.  I bet she will take some pictures of me this week…I will be wearing a t-shirt, not just my underwear!

On Saturday night, Mr. Guy, The Lady, and I went to The Seattle Space Needle.  We had to walk almost a mile from our hotel to get there.  That wasn’t so bad, but it was raining.  The Lady said that it rains a lot in Seattle and that she likes the rainy weather.  I don’t mind the rain, but I sure wish I had had a raincoat!  Mr. Guy did his best to keep my warm and dry.


When we got to the Space Needle to buy our tickets, they said it would be two hours before we could ride up the elevator.  That is how you get up high so you can see the city.  While we waited, Mr. Guy and The Lady took me to the Chihuly Gardens.  I asked them what  grew in the Chihuly garden.  The Lady said it was a glass garden.  They grow glass?, I thought.  That sounded a little strange to me.   The Lady told me that it is a glass sculpture garden.  Dale Chihuly, the glass artist, makes all kinds of beautiful shapes with colored glass.  I was a little nervous to go to a place where everything is glass.  I am a careful monster, but I was still worried that I might break something.  Mr. Guy said that it would be fine as long as I didn’t touch anything. He held me very close so that I wouldn’t trip and fall and break something accidentally.


Some of the glass looked like Christmas trees.  They were brightly colored and had lights shining through them  They were beautiful!

The light bouncing all around through the glass was really neat looking.  I liked the place where the glass was on the ceiling.  I knew that I could not break anything if the sculptures were up high!


While we were looking at the glass on the ceiling, I met a really nice girl named Lindsay.  She was from California and she wanted to be my friend.  Though I have done a terrible job with my Hundred People Project, Lindsay made me want to get back to it because she asked to have her picture taken with me.  That made me a happy little monster.  Her mister friend took a picture of us and The Lady took one too.  Now I have twenty-five people!  I will make it to a hundred.  I will.

After I had my picture taken with Lindsay, I saw something that looked like a big glass bowl.  Mr. Guy said that they should put Chex Mix in it.  I don’t think that is what it was for!


It was a very pretty blue bowl!  I liked Mr. Chihuly’s glass because he used a lot of blue and orange, the best colors for almost anything!  I was nervous being this close to Mr. Chihuly’s big blue bowl.  I didn’t want to stay in this spot for very long!

Next we saw more glass sculptures up on the ceiling. More orange glass!


This part was in a great big glass building, but it was just plain building glass not the cool kind of glass used for the sculptures. 

There were also lots more glass sculptures outside.  I don’t understand how they don’t get broken.


Mr. Guy got mad at The Lady because she let me sit on the wet rain covered bench.  I didn’t mind, but  my monster underwear did get a little wet.  That was OK because nobody was going to take pictures of my underwear!   I do definitely need a raincoat before we again visit any place with lots of rain.

After we finished touring the garden, we still had an hour before our elevator time.  We went and had a snack, fried cheese curds.


The words “curds” is kind of an ugly sounding word.  I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to eat anything called “curds.”  Mr. Guy said that they were good and that I should try them.  I did and they were, but the word curds still does not sound appetizing!

Finally it was time to get in the elevator line to ride to the top of the Space Needle.  The Space Needle is 605 feet tall.  That is like 600 hundred of me standing on top of each other!


I was a little scared, but not too much so.  We got in line with lots of other people.

The elevator ride to the top was super quick!  It took us longer to ride the hotel elevator to the twelfth floor where our room was than it did to ride all the way to the top of the Space Needle.  When we got off of the elevator, I felt like I was in a giant spaceship.
We then went outside to walk around the outside of the spaceship Space Needle.  It was rainy and cold and SO WINDY!  I was a frigid little monster.  Not only did I need that raincoat, I also needed my orange sweater that Ms. Joni made for me. 
I didn’t even think about bringing my sweater because when I was packing in Dallas, it was almost too hot for a t-shirt, forget a sweater!  If I had my own cellphone with all of those fancy app things, I could have checked the weather in Seattle while I was packing.  I mentioned this to Mr. Guy.  He said no phone for me.
Back inside, there was a great big map that showed all of the places where people have traveled from that have visited the Space Needle.
Mr. Guy added our names to the map.
One of those yellow dots is me!

After Mr. Guy signed our names, we walked back to our hotel.  It was still raining, but it was not nearly as cold and windy on the ground as it was 605 feet up in the air!  We needed to get back and pack.  The Lady got lots of new picture taking stuff and Mr. Guy was not sure where it was all going to go.  I got a new t-shirt and the Space Needle, but it did not take up much room in our suitcase.

When we got up on Sunday morning, it wasn’t raining anymore.  We took a short walk around our hotel.  There were lots of pretty orange flowers, and the leaves on the trees were also turning orange.  The trees in Texas do not have orange leaves.

We took a few pictures and then it was time to leave for the airport and our trip home.

When we got to the airport, I was hungry.  Mr. Guy bought me a sandwich on funny a bread.  It had a hole in the middle of it.  That seemed strange.  I was worried that Mr. Guy got defective bread.  He told me that it was supposed to be that way.  The bread was called a beagle, or a bugle, or something like that.  


It tasted good, but I still don’t know why all of the sandwich insides didn’t fall out of the hole in the middle of my bread.  I like un-holy bread better.  Is that right?  Well, you know what I mean.

When we finally got on the airplane, I fell asleep in Mr. Guy’s lap.  I didn’t wake up until we were almost back in Dallas and the flight attendant starting talking to me.  

She wanted to know my name and where I had been.  I got excited because I thought that maybe I could have my picture taken with her and I would be up to person #26, but nope.  She said that she was not allowed to have her picture taken while in her working clothes, something about 7-eleven, or costing nine dollars and eleven cents, or something.  I didn’t want to get her in trouble, so I will have to find another person #26.

Finally we were back in Dallas.  We waited for our suitcase to come around the racetrack.


Once we had our bag, we headed home and I started writing.  And that is my story about Seattle.

THE END!



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Me in Ely and Cambridge

Here it is Saturday. I think I am starting to catch up with the days. Even though it is already Saturday, I’m writing about Friday.

Today we had breakfast in the hotel. The Lady said that breakfast was served every morning in the hotel!  I thought it was nice of them to give us breakfast everyday. Blue and Orange monsters need to start their day with a good breakfast. 
After breakfast, it was back on the bus. The people in Britain call it a “coach”.  I thought a coach was someone who taught game players how to beat up other game players.  That is not what it means here.  Mr. Martin was there waiting for us. He is the coach driver, not the coach.  Mr. Martin drove us to a place called Ely. There is a big church there called a Cathedral. The Lady and the singing people were going to sing a concert there. 

We had to park a hundred miles away and walk to the cathedral. Well, it was not 100 miles really, but it seemed like it. Mr Guy carried me all the way from the coach (see I’m learning to speak British!) to the cathedral.  When we got there, I was surprised. The only churches I had seen were small ones like the one in Delaware next to store where The Lady and Mr. Guy adopted me. Ely Cathedral is GREAT BIG. It is all stone and colored glass windows. As we walked it seemed to get bigger. It was almost a scary place. 


Some nice folks there gave us a tour. That made it seem less scary. Ely is very old. Because it is so big and made of stone, things echo everywhere. All the voices sounded louder.  We learned a lot about the history of the cathedral. I did not get it all. I think there are things I needed to know before I got there about Norman (whoever he is) and some other guy named Henry D8. Maybe he is related to R2D2.  Even though I was confused, Mr. Guy really seemed interested. So I guess it was all good. 

In the afternoon the singing people did their concert. It was really good. I had never heard them sing before. I was a little worried that they would not let blue and orange monsters in to the concert. The cathedral people were very nice.  A couple of them asked Mr Guy all about me. He told them how I go places and have this blog. They thought that was great! So I got to go.  When we got to the chapel where the singing people were going to do their concert, there was some blue there.  The Chapel was called The Lady Chapel and the blue lady was The Virgin Mary.



If you want to hear what the singing people sounded like, here is a link to one of the songs that they sang in The Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral.



When the singing was over, we got back on the coach and Mr Martin took us back to Cambridge. We had the whole afternoon to look around there. Cambridge has a big and old college. It is bigger and older than the college where The Lady teaches or either of the colleges where Mr. Guy and The Lady went to school.  The Lady got me a new shirt just so I don’t forget about Cambridge!! YAY!!! 


I’m not really going to go to Cambridge for college. I would have to leave The Lady and Mr. Guy. I don’t want to do that.  And, I am not really good at school things.  I like it when The Lady and Mr. Guy teach me what I need to know. 

One thing that Mr. Guy taught me about while we were in Cambridge was telephone booths.  I thought booths were someplace that you sat with your friends at a restaurant, a place where you were supposed to eat and talk to your friends who are right there with you.  Telephone booths are places where you do talk to your friends, but you have to pay money to talk to them on a piece of plastic that is attached to the wall of the telephone booth with a big thick piece of wire.  This all seemed very strange.  Mr. Guy’s telephone booth is much smaller.  He can carry it in his pocket wherever he goes.  He does not have to stay attached to a big red box on the street corner to talk to his friends.


While we were in Cambridge, we also did something called punting.  I thought punting was something that those coach people did to help their team beat up the other team.  Apparently in Britain, punting means something else too.  We rode on a funny boat where a guy stood on the end and pushed us along the river.  



It was fun and we got to see more of Cambridge.  It was a little like bumper cars though because not all of the boat drivers were good and boats kept running in to eat other.  It was not scary, though.

Neither was this dinosaur.


We had a snack with Mr. Mickey and Ms. Robin.  They liked me and were not embarrassed to walk around with me.


After our fun afternoon and evening, we went back to the hotel. We were going to leave Cambridge in the morning and we needed a good night’s sleep. 


So that is what Friday was like. I will tell you about Saturday (which is really today) tomorrow!

I know…the time and days are all confused because I wrote this on time but did not post it on time and now it is several weeks later.  After I wrote this post, I realized that it was going to be hard to get this done while we were in England.  I will tell you all about the rest of my trip, but I will write about it from where I am now, back in Texas!
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England Bound!

This post was written on Friday July 22. We had trouble with getting the pictures to my blog. So Mr Guy and the Lady are helping me catch up.   I have so many pictures and so many things to share!  It is going to take this little blue and orange furry monster lots of minutes to write all of these words!  Please be patient with me!
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Wow I’m a little confused. I think it has been three days since we left home. It was Wednesday, but now it is Friday! The Lady says we lost six hours on the plane. Disappearing time is too much for a little blue and orange monster to understand. 

You may wonder why we are going to London. Actually we are only going to the London airport and then traveling by bus to another part of Great Britain. Mr Guy told me London is a city in Great Britain. The Lady sings with her church choir and they are singing at churches in Great Britain.

The last few days have been a go go go time. We got on the plane in Dallas on Thursday, Wednesday, I looked at the sign and it said we were going to London. 


The Lady and Mr Guy had told me that we would be going on a long trip some time ago. We had even looked it up in the Atlas at Mr Guys school before he retried retired. Until I helped Mr. Guy and The Lady pack a whole bunch of stuff at home, it did not seem real.   

They let me put a few shirts in their bags.  I did not take too many because I knew I would find some new shirts in England.  I was afraid that if I took any more shirts, there would not be enough room to bring any new ones home.


The Lady had to take lots of special singing clothes that took up a lot of room in her bag.  She packed something that she called vest mints or investments or something.  They looked like a long black dress and a short white bib or something.


We got to the airport very early and then waited a while before we got on the biggest plane I have ever seen. The Lady and Mr Guy said they had never seen one that big either.   I wish we had taken a picture!


We were in a section called “business class”. I wasn’t sure this was good because I thought Mr Guy had retired and The Lady was off for the summer; I did not think they would be busy in classes while we were on the airplane. Mr Guy explained that class is a word with a lot of meanings. In this case it means a type of space you get on the plane. The Lady said that this was like first class we had flown before, but maybe even better. 

It think business class really was better! There were lots of buttons for me and Mr. Guy to push and we got lots of space and the seat folded out into a bed! 


They gave us great food for dinner. 


Mr Guy and I watched a movie.  Our TV also showed us where in the world our airplane was flying.

This map didn’t look quite like the atlas that Mr. Guy had shown me.


These screens had lots of numbers on them!  All of this made my eyes tired so I took a nap.  Or maybe I went to bed.


The Lady worked on her pictures and on her own blog. When Mr Guy and I woke up it was time for breakfast! And it was already Thursday morning. I thought it should be Wednesday night still because we didn’t sleep that long. Mr Guy tried to explain time zones and the lost six hours to me, but I just did not understand. 


When we finally got to London and got off of the plane, we went through this place called imagination, or something like that. There we told the Great Britain person (Mr Guy says people from Great Britain are called “British”) why we were in Great Britain. The Lady and Mr Guy had to show their passports. These are little books with terrible pictures of The Lady and Mr. Guy that say that they came from the United States and that they are allowed to travel to other countries. Mr Guy said I did not need a passport because everyone wants visits from blue and orange monsters. 



Once we got our bags, everyone from the singing people group got on a bus. Most of these people had not met me so there were a lot of introductions. I will tell you more about the bus another time. The most important thing about getting on the bus was that everyone was excited because Mr Simon is our guide and Mr Martin is driving our bus. These two did the same things for the singing people three years ago when they came to Great Britain. The Lady and Mr Guy had not adopted me yet so I wasn’t on that trip.  It was BBB – Before Blueper B.

Mr Martin is a good bus driver. He took us all to a city called Cambridge. 


First we had lunch…or breakfast…or a midnight snack and then had a tour of Cambridge. 

The singing people had special blue shirts so that they could find each other.  I like that their shirts were blue!  I did not have one of their special shirts, but by accident, I wore a blue shirt that was the same color as theirs.  That’s good.  I didn’t want to get lost in this city that was way far away from home.


It was fun to see this very old city even though we were very tired because we lost our nighttime, which meant we lost our sleep time!  

After our tour, we finally went to our hotel, ate dinner and went to sleep.  We woke up and the it was Friday.


That is what we have done so far. Today (Friday, really) we are going to a place called Ely Cathedral where The Lady and the rest of the singing people will make music together for the first time in England. I hope I get to go. Then we will go back to Cambridge and have the afternoon to look around.
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Me and Ms. Joni

Last week I went on another trip.  Mr. Guy, The Lady and I went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the 2016 NOAH conference.  NOAH stands for National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation.  It is a gathering for people who, like The Lady, have white fur and trouble seeing.  I met a few of The Lady’s NOAH friends last year in Philadelphia.  (I wonder why they always go to Pennsylvania?).  I met Ms. Joni then.  She has white fur like The Lady.  Ms. Joni was very nice to me while we were in Philadelphia and when I got back to Texas, she messaged me on Facebook and always seems interested in what I was doing.  I was very excited when I found out that I was going to get to see her in Pittsburgh!  Ms. Joni told The Lady that she was bringing me a present.  That made me even more excited!  

As soon as we got to our hotel, I found Ms. Joni.  I gave her a great big hug.  Or, maybe she gave me a great big hug.  We shared a great big hug!  It was good to see her again.  


The next morning, she gave me my present.  It was wrapped in pretty blue paper.  


You know that you have good friends when they pay attention to the things that make you happy.  I like blue and Ms. Joni remembered that!  Ms. Joni held me while Mr. Guy helped me unwrap my present.  

As usual, The Lady was taking the pictures.  As I started to tear the paper, I saw orange.  Blue and orange!!!!  Yep.  Ms. Joni knows me very well!  I thought my present might be a new t-shirt, but it didn’t feel like a t-shirt.  Now I was a little puzzled.  


I pulled the rest of the tape off of the paper so that I could see my whole present.  It sort of looked like a t-shirt except that it was heavy and the sleeves were long.  It was the opposite of my vest and my tank top, which have no sleeves. 


The Lady told me that it was called a sweater.  Hmm…I wondered if a sweater was something that was supposed to make you sweat, kind of like a portable sauna, maybe?

This is a super special sweater.  Ms. Joni made it especially for me with her very own sticks and orange string!   The Lady knew all along what my present was because Ms. Joni sent her a letter asking what size monster shirts I wear.  Ms. Joni made my sleeves exactly as long as my arms and made sure that my claws had just the right amount of room at the ends.  I tried my new sweater on right then!  I must say that I am a pretty dapper looking monster in my new orange sweater.


Then I started to sweat.  I wanted to keep my sweater on because it made me smile, but it was too hot in Pittsburgh for a sweater.  My fur was getting all soggy because I was sweating.  Ms. Joni is from Wisconsin, where it is cold and snows a lot in the winter.  Up north people wear sweaters to keep warm, but not to sweat.  It will be a few months before I can wear mine in Texas.  Maybe Mr. Guy and The Lady will take me somewhere cold so that I can wear it sooner!  My new orange sweater is soft and cuddly and I want to wear it now!

Ms. Joni told me that in Wisconsin, the hunters wear orange so that they are safe.  I am not a hunter, but I want to be safe too.

While The Lady and Ms. Joni were doing all of the official NOAH stuff, I caught up on sleep and HGTX in the hotel room.  When they weren’t doing official conference stuff, we had lots of adventures.  

We were in Pittsburgh for six days, but it felt like about two.  It seemed that one minute I was unwrapping my awesome new sweater and the very next minute I was having to say goodbye to Ms. Joni.  That made me very sad because I don’t get to see her very often.

Ms. Joni and The Lady told me that we will all see each other again next September in Denver when the adults with white fur get together like they did in Philadelphia.  That is a whole year away!  I don’t want to wait that long to see Ms. Joni again!  But, she is my friend on Facebook so at least I get to talk to her through messages.

Thank you so much for my awesome orange sweater, Ms. Joni!  Every time I wear it, I will think of all the hugs that you gave me!


I wonder if it will be cold enough in Denver to wear my sweater???



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My Trip to Virginia!

Friday was the day!  Mr. Guy is not tired anymore.  He is officially retired!  To celebrate, we went on a trip Norfolk, Virginia to meet some of The Lady’s picture taking friends.  Well, I’m not sure that Mr. Guy thought of it that way, but I was excited to get to go on a trip and I think that Mr. Guy had fun once we got there.  He met The Lady’s picture taking friends and their Guys.  

When we fly on trips, we usually leave very early in the morning.  This time, because Mr. Guy had to go to school one more time, we left at night.  When we got to the airport, they were glad to see me. The computer told me that!


This is where we got our tickets.  There was one for Mr. Guy and one for The Lady.  They called me a lap baby so I didn’t get my own ticket.  I guess they know that I prefer to sit in Mr. Guy’s lap when I’m on the airplane.

Everything went smoothly until it didn’t!  Our plane was delayed because there was lots of rain.


We waited.  


And then we waited some more.  Then they changed our gate so we moved.  Then we waited some more.  


I’m glad that Mr. Guy always carries me in the airport.  There are lots of things with wheels in the airport and they don’t always watch out for people, let alone little blue and orange furry monsters.   It is kind of scary.  People pull and push and roll boxes with their clothes in them and they don’t watch where they are going.  Then there are these wagons that drive inside, right down the middle of the sidewalk; there isn’t a street.  They make lots of noise.  “Beep,  Beep,  BEEP.  BEEP!!!’  They always seem to be in a hurry but they are full of only empty seats.  They never seem to stop to let poeple on.  They just beep their way through the airport nearly running over people and their boxes of clothes!

I was getting to be a hungry and tired little monster.  The good thing about the new gate was that it was right next to a pretzel store.  The Lady went and got me a cinnamon sugar pretzel, but just as she got back with it, they called us to board the plane.  FINALLY!  But then I had to wait to eat my pretzel.


Just as we were about to step on the plane, we had to wait again because something spilled on the airplane and they had to bring a special truck and a special person to come suck it up.  While we waited, I got more hungry and more tired.

Then finally we got on the plane!


And I ate my (cold) pretzel.

The good thing about being an hour late leaving Dallas was that the storms all passed and it was time for sunset.  Sunset above the clouds is so pretty!!!  The Lady let me borrow her phone so that I could take some pictures.


Look at all that beautiful blue and orange!!!  My monster belly was full and my monster eyes were full of pretty sky.  In the end, everything was good!  Then I went to sleep and slept through the rest of our flight.

We got to our hotel very late and all of us went to bed because The Lady told me we had a very exciting day the next day.  Well actually, it was that day because it was 1:30 in the morning!!!

We met The Lady’s picture taking friends at the Norfolk Botanical Garden.  I remebered The Lady telling me last week that I was going to have a chance to see lots more pretty flowers. I could tell exactly who the picture taking ladies were because they all had cameras around their necks and carried boxes of stuff, but not like the boxes with wheels that people pulled around in the airport.  They carried them on their shoulders.

The Picture Taking Ladies were full of smiles and laughter and headed off together to take pictures.  Fortunately, one of The Picture Taking Ladies, Ms. Sherri, brought her Mr. Guy with her.  So, my Mr. Guy, Ms. Sherri’s Mr. Guy, and I spent a lot of time sitting on benches talking and watching The Picture Taking Ladies run around pointing their cameras at anything and everything…including us!  At least they didn’t forget we were there!



The Lady thought the flower was prettier than us, but there we are in that blurred background!


We were happy on our bench talking to Mr. Ray  Well, really we sat on lots of benches; this is just one of them.

We also walked around and saw lots of green stuff.

The Picture Taking Ladies saw lots of things.  The Mr. Guys and I sat on our benches and enjoyed fresh air, the fragrant flowers, and conversation with each other.


I did see a funny looking water monster!


We had lunch under a tree.  We got our lunch from a truck.  The food guy piled a bunch of ingredients on a long paddle and stuck it in a big box on wheels.  This box on wheels was much bigger than the boxes on wheels that people had in the airport.  It would not fit in the airplane’s overhead bin and it wasn’t full of peoples’ dirty clothes.  It was a magic box!  


The food guy put the pile of ingredients in it and when he pulled it out, it was pizza!!  He cut his pizza into nice even pieces.  I liked that.

After we ate our magically made pizza, we went to look at the roses.  These are the flowers like we have in the gardens in our town.  The Norfolk Botanical Garden had rose rows of rowses roses.  That was hard to write!  I don’t like all of these phonehomes or homephones or whatever these words are called!  


I saw pretty colors that weren’t roses, too!


And I found this funny dead flower.

Mr. Guy said it was a pine comb.  A pine comb??  I asked Mr. Guy how I was supposed to use this to comb my fur.  It didn’t look to me like it would work very well.  

“Pine CONE!”, he said, “Not comb.”

I was so glad that I didn’t have to use it to brush my fur, but I still didn’t know what it was for.

The Lady told me that is the female, or seed bearing part, of a pine tree and…

I told her to stop.  This seemed like more information that I really needed.  The most important thing is that I don’t have to use this female seed thing to comb my blue boy fur!

I had a super fun day at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens and I think all of The Picture Taking Ladies did too!

Ms. Sherri, the lady that goes with the guy, Mr. Ray, asked to have her picture taken with me.  That reminded me that I have not done well with my 100 People Project.  Almost a year ago, on my “birthday” I decided that I would try to have my picture taken with one hundred people before my next birthday, which is next week.  That isn’t going to happen.  I got sad and disappointed about that.  Mr. Guy and The Lady said that it was okay and reminded me about our conversation about disappoinment a few months ago.  They said that we could just continue from where we are and eventually we will get to a hundred people.  That made me smile!

So, Ms. Sherri is #24 in my 100 People Project and I am on a roll again!  Thank you Ms. Sherri for helping me get back on track!


Sunday morning while we were at the hotel, someone knoecked on our door and gave us food, already cooked!  It was another magic food moment.  


I wish the mailman in Dallas would bring our food to the door already cooked!  Then The Lady would not have to make meals when she is tired.  Oh wait…Mr. Guy is not tired anymore so he can fix the meals and the mailman doesn’t have to bring them.  

Another thing that was not a disappointment on this trip was that Starbucks in the Norfolk airport is open 24 hours, unlike the one in the Dallas airport.  When we got to the airport at 4:40 in the morning to come home, Mr. Guy got us all a cup of coffee!


Oh, and if you want to see more of The Lady’s photos from her visit to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, check out her blog!  Give her a day or two, though.  She has been busy sorting through her photos and she is not retired and had to go back to work this week.