My nephew, Mason Tikkanen, is afflicted with Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome and needs a bone marrow transplant to beat it. If you would like to help him, please consider donating. My brother set up a special page at tikkanen.us to allow people to donate to help our nephew.

Donate to help Mason Tikkanen

Normally when I get a comment posted to this site I approve it but don't make much of a comment one way or the other. Today I got a different sort of comment that I felt really needed to be highlighted by me making a regular post about it (emphasis is mine). You can read the project it is commenting on here (fleece neck gaiter pattern).

 I'm proud of (and insanely humbled by) the amount of work this young man put into his Eagle Project.

Neck Gaiter Eagle Project

Submitted by EJ (not verified) on Sun, 2008-11-16 00:50.

Hello Im new to the whole commenting bit.... but I must thank Uberpest, so I'll give it a try. Uperpest I just finished one piece of my Eagle Scout Project which involved making Neck Gaiters for the military. I successfully made 301 Neck Gaiters from 40 yds of fabric and thanks to your ingenuity 301 of our Armed Forces will be receiving Neck Gaiters in Christmas packages this year. Thank you Uberpest, I and surely many others are in your debt. Respectfully, EJ

 Thank you to everyone who uses these patterns for this type of work. I keep thinking this site is just a little hole-in-the-wall, but it's nice to know there's a ripple effect that helps out so many.

This post is to update some news I posted about back in September.

The episode of Across Indiana (WFYI/Indianapolis PBS 20) has aired. The segment can be seen online here. It is the segment titled "Travels with Darby."

 You get to see me both in my spiffy uniform, as well as sporting a kicky orange PFD.

Some of the other segments are interesting, too. Especially if you like zombies.

Links:

This morning I was putting some chicken in the slow cooker for dinner and I decided to use a little sea salt to flavor things. When I gave a quick twist to the plastic grinder I realized it was pretty similar to the hand crank grinder my friend Nora gave me for my birthday.

Me being me, (and I think this is a Scandinavian trait, so please correct me if I'm wrong--it might also be OCD or something) I had to take it apart to see how it works. Sure enough, inside the top is a plastic burr grinder, just like in a regular coffee grinder.

 What does this mean for you? Well, if you're like me and you like to have good coffee wherever you go, this means you can carry along coffee beans and have fresh grind anywhere--especially if you have a French Press coffee maker (most outdoors stores sell different varieties of these, including the JetBoil coffee kit which makes your cookpot into a coffee pot/mug). It can also come in handy if you are without power due to a natural disaster (I'm lookin' at you, Ike). It's not as quick as using ground coffee, but grinding your own never is.

About a week ago I was contacted by Daniele at Petable-Portraits.com regarding Daniele doing a portrait of one of my dogs. Since I have a ton of pictures of Beau, and Ranger isn't done turning into a little dog yet (he's going through some crazy growth spurts), I chose Beau as the subject of the portrait.

I sent her several pictures with Beau NOT wearing his pack, but she chose to do the portrait with Beau in his pack since it shows he's not just out for a jaunt, but he's out with his person as a working partner.

 Today I got to briefly meet a very cool Cowboy, Mr. John Wayne Haynes. He is traveling from his home in Michigan to New Mexico to visit his family. His is no ordinary road trip, however, as he is on horseback (2-year-old Misty, and Appaloosa). and is accompanied by his pack horse (Harley, 23, another Appaloosa) and dog, Sheila. I didn't get to talk to him very long, but heard about his stop from an online friend many states away. Her hometown is nearby and Mr. Haynes stopped to spend the weekend in my neighborhood.

Mr. Haynes is hoping to make it to NM to spend Easter with his family.

I'm quite pleased with how Ranger is adjusting to his new life here as well as the new skills he's learned in the past few weeks.

He was having issues with housetraining (he still has a few, admittedly), however that has gotten better now that he understands what the bells that hang on the door are for. The problem now is that he rings the bells about every five minutes to get to go outside.

He also has learned to offer a sit to get a treat or praise. That's awesome since I want to do performance with him in the future, as well as conformation. He's also working at learning to walk on a leash now that's he's big enough for the smallest collar I have for him. He's had his nails trimmed once and that went much better than I expected. I can show his bite/examine his bite one or two times, then he's very done and fights me a little bit. I'll work on that so when we go to shows he can handle being looked at often.

Mr. Ranger has started Puppy Kindergarten at a local trainer, Training Tracks. This past spring Beau completed a class through Training Tracks to help me learn the basics of clicker training and he did very well--he's a much faster learner than I am. Ranger is taking to the clicker very well and I can see the benefits to the method for the show ring, the trail, and being a good companion.

 I will make updates on his progress  as he grows, learns, and accomplishes new things.

Last night I was visited by some friends (Carlye and Craig from Cross Check Catahoulas). They left a new little friend at my house, a littermate to their own little girl "J Cross' Ammunition".

 J Cross' Currahee--a.k.a. "Ranger".

I thank Tori Earls and Justin Starnes at J Cross Catahoulas for allowing Ranger to come join my family.

The PBS Program "Across Indiana" (produced by WFYI, Indianapolis) came out at the end of August to shoot some footage of the park where I work and live (well, the Park end of it. the other end, Brookville Lake, is 16,000 acres with 5,000 of that in water).

We spent 8 hours out on the lake (Whitewater Lake, 200 acres), on the horse trails, in the campgrounds, etc. gathering interviews and just cool looking footage of people enjoying themselves.

At one point while on the lake I was asked why I like to work here and I gave my canned response of "This is my office!" as the camera panned at the scenery (Whitewater is very calm, it's trolling motors only). A few minutes later Jay, the camera man, was still rolling and I was still miked while I pointed at some trees. "My house is over there. I'm really lucky that not only do I work here, but this is my back yard." Which, of course, is the sound bite they liked better than the canned response.

Included with this was the host's dog Darby (a 13 year old Lab/Husky mix), who is the mascot of this segment. She got to go on the boat, on a hayride, and walk around a bit as we visited with people.

The segment is somewhere in the 4-5 minute range and will air on WFYI (Indy channel #20) on October 27 at 7:30--the season premier. Other Indiana PBS stations will carry it either that week or the week after.

For folks outside of Indiana, or outside the reach of any Indiana PBS stations (yours truly--Dayton and Oxford, OH stations here), it's also going to be available online at :

Across Indiana

It's under the archives section at the bottom. Program #1901.

Beau didn't get to do a cameo. Oh well.