Category: Places

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Friday Guy Day in Denver

Last Friday when we were in Denver…

The Lady and some of her friends with white fur – Ms. Joni, Ms. Becca, and Ms. Cindy -wanted to go shopping at a special store where you buy the fancy sticks and string that they like to use to make stuff.  Ms. Becca is just learning how to play with sticks and strings.  She went along to look at all of the pretty string and because she likes to hang around with The Lady, Ms. Cindy, and Ms. Joni.

Mr. Guy, Mr. Scott F (Ms. Joni’s brother) and Mr. Scott G (Ms. Cindy’s Mr. Guy) don’t know how to play with sticks and string and they don’t have any interest in learning. The boys would all much rather play with trains. Since I am a boy, I spent my day with them.  I think that a little blue and orange furry monster with sticks and string might be a disaster.  I like it when Ms. Joni and The Lady work their magic with the string and I end up with sweaters and hats that are already made!

I knew a little bit about trains. I had been on the light rail train at home in Dallas. It was a big train, not the size of a toy.  When Mr. Guy told me that we were going to go see trains, I thought they were going to be too big for this little monster to play with. Mr. Guy explained that he and the Mr. Scotts like to play with model trains. Model trains are trains that look just like the big trains but are much smaller.  Mr. Guy says he doesn’t have any of these little model trains anymore. He did when he was younger. The Mr. Scotts told me that they belong to model railroad clubs where they live. I got a bit confused.  Railroads?  I thought that we were talking about trains!  Mr Guy explained that trains are the individual cars and the railroad is everything having to do with trains – all the train cars and the track put together in one big package. He said its like when the ladies play with their sticks and strings it is called knitting. Knitting means the sticks, the string, the pattern, and the playing with the sticks and strings!  I think I now understand.

So while the ladies looked at string, we guys went to the Colorado Railroad Museum.  I was a little confused again. I didn’t have my dictionary to look up words and I wasn’t sure what a museum was. So Mr. Guy told me that a museum is a place where people keep special things that they don’t want to be damaged, or that they want lots of people to be able to see. The museum is a place where things are kept safe when they get old or can’t be used anymore.

An art museum has art in it and a science museum has science things in it. I asked if that meant our house was a museum because we have lots of art and things on the walls and The Lady says that there are science experiments in the refrigerator. Mr. Guy said not really because we do not preserve our stuff so that lots of people can come see it. He said that our house may be kind of a private museum for us and our friends.  But, not a science museum.  No one wants to see the experiments in our refrigerator.

Mr Guy told me that the railroad museum has lots of train cars – old ones and newer ones – and special ones that people might not get to see unless they visit the museum. I understand better now…things in a museum are there so that lots and lots of people can see them, even little blue and orange monsters!

W were on our way!  Mr. Guy, the Mr. Scotts and I headed to the train museum. The first thing we did was walk to find the bus that would take us to the station to wait for a real train that we rode to the museum! That was a lot of ways of transportation already!


I have to say that Mr Guy is not as good at picture taking as The Lady but he did his best.

The Lady and her girlfriends were shopping in Denver.  We went all the way to another city. It is called Golden. Golden did not look very golden to me, but Mr Guy said it got its name because they dig up lots of gold there. I wondered if we would get any gold.  In case you are wondering…we did not.

When we got off of the train, Mr Scott G thought there was a button we could push to get us to the museum. He said someone had told him about this button.  I wasn’t sure about that…a magic button? Mr Guy explained that it was supposed to be a button to let someone know that we were there to visit the museum.  I sort of understood this idea to be like our doorbell at home, but we never found any button, magic or otherwise. We did, however, see a green van and the man inside agreed to take us to the Visitors Center, for free!  I thought that maybe this was a  magic man driving a magic van.  Nothing is ever free!  Nope.  Our train tickets allowed us to ride in the magic green van.  Though I guess that means that the van was not really free because we had to buy tickets to ride the train.  It just felt free and maybe a little bit magic.


The van took us to the Golden Visitor’s center…not a golden visitor’s center, and not the train museum. We looked around there a little. There was a big statue of a bear.


Mr Guy told me that there are lots of bears in the woods near Golden, but that the bears rarely ever come into town. I was glad to hear that because this was a very big statue of a very scary looking bear.  Mr Guy said that the real bears are the same size as the statue!  I did not want to meet one of them!

We also saw a dragon!  Well, it was a statue too.   I asked Mr. Guy if dragons and bears were friends and if there were dragons in the woods too.  He assured me that I did not have to worry about meeting a real dragon.


Mr Guy said this dragon was made to honor the president of a special club.  I wondered what kind of president would make people think of a dragon.  I kept that thought to myself.

I was beginning to think that the only train we were going to see was the one that we rode to Golden. Fortunately, Mr Scott F used his phone to call someone named Ooh Bear, who he said would come and give us a ride to the museum. Mr. Guy had just said that bears didn’t come into the city and he also said that bears are big and scary.  I wasn’t sure why Mr. Scott F called one of them on his cellphone to come get us!  As it turned out, we were lucky.  The Ooh Bear that he called was not a real bear.  He was a man.  I wonder why his mom named him Ooh Bear. Oh well, the Ooh Bear man seemed very nice, though his car was a little small for all five of us. But, he got us to the Colorado Railroad Museum and that was what was important!

When we got there, I saw all of these big boxes and things I did not know about all around.   Mr Guy said that they are trains and that they once carried lots of people and lots of things all over the place. They are what we came to see.


I was very excited because the first thing we did at the museum was buy a new shirt for me!  Ms. Roz sold us my shirt and she agreed to be one of the people in my 100 people project.  She sells tickets and other things at the museum too.


We then headed downstairs. A model railroad club keeps their special train stuff there.  I wasn’t really sure what I was going to see. And then…Wow!  They have a whole set up of small trains, just like Mr. Guy and The Mr. Scotts said there would be. I had never seen trains like these before. They were small but looked just like the big ones that were all over outside. Mr Guy told me that the big ones worked just like these little ones except that the little ones were for people who had to pretend with trains rather than work with the big real ones. He said these are the kind of trains that the Mr. Scotts have. Mr Scott G was looking carefully at all the details of the trains.


When we were done inside, we went outside where there were more train cars to see. Mr Guy showed me how some of the cars were for carrying people and some were carrying things. There were also special trains called engines.  The engine is was what makes the train cars full of people and things go. The person who drives the engine is called an engineer.  I pretended that I was the engineer!


There were so many cars to see that Mr Guy and the Mr Scotts just couldn’t get pictures of all of them.  Mr Guy tried to take a picture of the two of us outside a caboose, but it didn’t really work. He told me that the last car on a train was called a caboose and it was a place for the people who worked on the train to eat and sleep when they were on long trips.


Mr Guy also told me that when he was a little monster like me, his dad worked for the railroad. Mr. Guy’s dad did not drive the trains.  He was a lawyer who worked with people who had been hurt while working for the railroad or who had had an accident with a train.  I don’t think I would want to be one of those people!

Mr Guy shared that he too had worked on the railroad one summer. He fixed train tracks. Mr. Guy showed me how the train cars at the museum were sitting on metal rails. The rails then sit on a metal plate and that plate sits on a big piece of wood. Mr Guy said those big pieces of wood are called ties. I thought ties were something that you wore around your neck. I certainly wouldn’t want to wear one of those ties. They look heavy.  I bet they would choke me!  Mr Guy explained that they are called ties because they tie the rails together. Big nails, called spikes, hold the plate and the rail on the tie. The rails, ties, and plates are called tracks. Mr Guy told me to look at where the tracks ran off into the distance so I could see how they looked like a path for the train to follow.

The last thing we saw at the museum was called a garden railroad. This was sort of like the little trains inside, but the train was bigger and ran outside in a real garden with pretty plants and flowers.  Mr. Guy explained that trains come in all sizes, from tiny model ones all the way up to the great big real ones. He said there are even some that are little blue and orange monster sized like me! I asked him if we cold get one of those  He said we would not have a place for one that big.  That made me a little sad.  I thought it would be fun to be the engineer on my very own train.


After we had seen everything at the museum, Mr. Scott F called our friend Ooh Bear again to take us back to the visitor center.  The guy who came to get us this time was a different person and in a different car than the first Mr. Ooh Bear!  There are two mothers that named their children Ooh Bear???  I guess it is a Colorado thing. I need to remember to ask Mr Guy or The Lady about that.

After we got back to the visitor center, everyone wanted lunch before we loaded back in the not-so-magic green van, and then the train, and then the bus, and then walked back to the hotel.


Mr Guy told me he was sorry he did not get more pictures. I told him that was ok. I had lots of fun and was glad he and the Mr Scotts took me along. I think I had more fun with them than I would have had looking at string with the ladies.

I sure was a tired little monster when we got back to the hotel. I went right to bed and slept all night long.

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Play-ing in NYC


I bet you are wondering why I went to New York…

Offspring #2 and The Lady have a friend, Ms. Mandy, they said that she plays right in New York City and they wanted to go visit her.  That sounded fun.  I like to play.  When I asked The Lady where we were going to play  – at Ms. Mandy’s apartment? a park? a pool? a beach? – she said it was not that kind of play.  Ms. Many writes the kind of plays that you see on stage at the theater.  She is a playwright; she doesn’t play right.  Well, I bet she does play right, but that is not what was happening on this trip.  We were going to see the play From A to Double D that she wrote and Ms. Mandy was also acting in her play.  I like the theater so this plan was OK with me.

The title of Ms. Mandy’s play sounded like it was a story about the dictionary, but only a little bit of the dictionary, since it only talked about the the first three letters and part of the fourth.  I thought about it and that makes sense.  That is job security for Ms. Mandy.  At this rate, she can write six sequels to her play before she gets all the way to the letters ZZ!  I did think that it was a little strange that she stopped with “DD.”  I had to go look at the dictionary and see what words even started with two d’s.  All the words that I found were either abbreviations or acronyms.  I didn’t really understand Ms. Mandy’s thinking on this one, but she is the professional playwright so I guess she knows what she is doing.  When I asked The Lady about this, she explained that the play was not about the dictionary, it was about bras.  Bras??  The Lady explained that little (boy) blue and orange furry monsters don’t need to know or think about bras.  They are for grown-up ladies.  She showed me hers.  Boy was that a confusing contraption!!  It was even more strange than my vest!  Not only did it not have any sleeves, it didn’t have much of a front or back either.  I can see why the grown-up ladies wear these weird things under their clothes.  They are funny looking!  The Lady said that grown-up ladies wear bras to keep their breasts in place.  Breasts?  Where is Mr. Guy when I need him?  I needed a boy to explain all this girl stuff to me! 

As it turned out, I learned a lot about bras and boobs breasts and girls while watching From A to Double D.  I don’t think I understood everything, but I am pretty sure that I am glad that I only have to worry about my t-shirts and not trainers, underwires, and sports bras!  There are definite advantages to be a little blue and orange furry boy monster!  

I was happy to be at the play because The Lady, Offspring #2, and The Young Guy were very excited to be there.  Offspring #2 has been friends with Ms. Mandy for a long time, since when she was kind of a little girl and not famous, maybe since after the trainer time and before the double D time.  


And, Ms. Mandy was happy that they were there.  We had breakfast with her the next day.  She  agreed to have her picture taken with me!  Maybe some day we will both be really famous!

During the day before Ms. Mandy’s play, The Young Guy, Offspring #2, and I walked around New York City.  Well…they all walked and The Lady carried me.  Mr. Guy does a little better carrying me. The Lady didn’t do so well trying to hold me and her camera.  She didn’t take very many pictures on this trip.

The first place that we walked was to the World Trade Center and 9/11 Memorial.  Offspring #2 and The Lady explained that sixteen years ago, two buildings called the twin towers, were hit by airplanes that had been taken over by people who did not like our country.  Lots and lots of people died and lots were hurt.  I was not born when this happened and Offspring #2 was only eight years old.  The Lady remembered it very well.  There is a memorial where these two towers stood.  It is a fountain and a reflecting pool with the names of all those who lost their lives on that day.


There were so many names on the memorial.  So many people died.  This made me very sad.


A new building has been built in the area.


It is called Freedom Tower and is the tallest building in the western hemisphere.


It hurts my heart to think about that day in 2001.  I wasn’t even alive back then and seeing this memorial sends chills down my furry spine.  I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for all the people who were right here in New York City or even those, like The Lady, Offspring #2, and Mr. Guy, who watched it all on television.  The people who’s names I read on the memorial here and their families now have a place in my heart forever.

After we visited the 9/11 Memorial we walked some more and then decided to take the subway.  I have ridden the trains in Dallas, where I live, but they are above the ground.  In New York the trains go under the ground through tunnels.  The Lady told be that that is why they are called subways, because sub means below.  I should have figured that out by myself.

We bought our tickets and then walked through this gate that looked like we were going into a sideways jail.

The good thing was that the bars kept moving so it didn’t feel like we were in jail!

Once we were inside the not-jail, I saw the tracks and watched for the train we needed.  Offspring #2 told me which one to look for.


We got on…rode for a few minutes in the dark…got off and walked up some stairs…and we were right where we wanted to be.  It sort of felt like magic.  I guess the same thing happens on the airplane, but since it is usually not dark in the sky when we fly, it doesn’t feel so much like magic.


I wish we had more pictures from our trip. I thought that Offspring #2 and The Lady might be taking lots of pictures with their phones because they were in their hands all the time.  When I asked to see their pictures they said that there weren’t many.  I was confused until they told me that they were using their phones so that we knew where to go.  The phones had a map on them and gave them walking directions.  I wondered how they always seemed to know where they were going!

We weren’t in New York very long.  I wish we could have seen a little bit more of the city, but I was also glad to come home because I missed Mr. Guy.  Hopefully Ms. Mandy will do another play right and we will get to go see her and one of her plays again!


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Orange You Glad To See Me In NYC!

This week was both fun and a little strange.  I went on an adventure.  And The Lady went on the adventure.  But, Mr. Guy did not go on this adventure with us.  We went to New York City.  Mr. Guy had important stuff to do here at home.  Plus, he said that he doesn’t really like New York City.  That made me a little nervous.  I was afraid that I wouldn’t like it either, but I decided to be a brave little blue and orange furry monster and go.  I hoped that The Lady, Offspring #2, and The Young Guy would take good care of me.
     


Mr. Guy always carried me in airports and I always sit on his lap on the airplanes.  It felt funny to sit on The Lady’s lap, especially because we had kind of a bumpy ride to New York and I got a little scared.  It all worked out, though.  The Lady did OK but I hope that next time I fly somewhere that Mr. Guy goes too.

We landed in New York and had to take a taxi to our hotel.  

I have never ridden in a taxi before.  It was like the fancy black cars that have picked us up at airports before, the lemonzines, except that it wasn’t fancy and wasn’t black.  It was yellow.  That was all OK.  We crossed some bridges and went in a tunnel and passed lots of big buildings.  Then we got to our hotel.  The Young Guy picked the hotel and made the reservations.  It was called the Mobile Noble Den.  We have a den at our house, but it doesn’t have a bed.  I thought maybe The Lady and I might have to sleep on a couch.  We don’t have a bathroom in our at-home den either.  Maybe that’s because it is just a den, not a noble den.  Hopefully the noble part means that it has a bed and a bathroom in addition to a couch.

The Lady and I shared a room and Offspring #2 and The Young Guy had another room.  The room that The Lady and I had was perfect for us.  It was all orange!!!  Everything was orange.  I didn’t think The Young Guy knew me well enough to know that I love orange, but he did.  I still missed Mr. Guy, but the all orange room did make me happy.

Look at all of the orange!


Our bed was orange…


Our shower was orange…

I guess that you noticed that our den has both a bed and a bathroom.
Our telephone was orange…
Our sink had an orange stripe, though you can’t see it in these pictures.  I think that you can in the one above.  Even without the orange, this was a cool sink!  It was sort of in the middle of our den, but that was OK.  It had a fancy light up mirror.  I had fun looking at my fur in this mirror.  I didn’t even mind brushing it because I could watch for tangles so that I would not pull my fur and hurt my little monster body.

Eben “my office” was orange.  I sat here and made notes about all of the things that I wanted to tell you about.
Can you see my orange chair?
This is the view from my window.  We were staying right between Chinatown and Little Italy, whatever that means.
I really did miss Mr. Guy on this trip, but I have to admit that it was nice to have an entire half of the bed to myself rather than being squished between Mr. Guy and The Lady.
Speaking of having lots of room in the bed…now that I am home, I have my own bed back and I am very tired tonight.  Tomorrow I will tell you all about what we saw in New York.
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A Month of Me: Day 29 – Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day.  I didn’t know that when I woke up this morning, but I know it now.  Memorial Day is a special day when, as a country, we honor all of those men and women who have given their lives in service protecting the freedoms of all people.  Mr. Guy told me how many Americans have died during all of the wars in which America has been involved…about 660,000 battle deaths.  That is a lot of people!  It makes me sad.  I don’t like wars.  I don’t like people killing people.  Supposedly sometimes wars are necessary, but I don’t really understand why that is.  Maybe when I am a grown-up monster I will understand this better.

This evening The Lady and Mr. Guy took me to a park in our city.  It is called Liberty Plaza.  It is where we can go to say thank you to all those that have died in the service of our country.  There is a great big flag pole, some plaques, and some statues in the park.  The statue above is The Lady’s favorite.  She explained that when a serviceman or service woman has dies and is buried, their casket is draped with an American flag.  At the end of the service, the flag is folded and presented to the family.  The Lady got a flag like this at The Captainb’s funeral and Mr. Guy got one at his father’s funeral too.  They keep their folded flags in special triangle shaped boxes.

Even though this is just a statue, it makes me cry thinking about all of the little boys and girls whose moms and dads are killed during wars.  I hope that some day there will be no more wars and children whose parents serve in the armed forces won’t have to be scared that their moms and dads won’t ever come home again.

I do want to say “THANK YOU” to all of those men and women who serve our country and also to their families.  The sacrifices that they all make are tremendous, the breadth of these sacrifices is unimaginable for most people.

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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: 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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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.