Greetings and welcome to Dinosaur Bear,
While the holidays might be behind us now, I feel like it’s important to pick up were we left off in the last post as there was a bit of a cliffhanger regarding dino #2’s hatching process.
What could it be?
But first! Let’s discuss a few other things as well in the spirit of keeping that suspense building. 😛 For starters things have been pretty chilly here lately. As I’ve discussed before a lot of the temperature variance here is related to whether the sun is out. Yes, “duh” you are thinking – but it’s more pronounced here than anywhere else I’ve lived in my life. Plus our light snow has continued since the last post, or at least it had continued. We haven’t gotten much super recently, but what we did get lingered for more than 5 minutes which is saying something. I think our roof even maintained a small dusting overnight once.
Most of the time the snow is gone by the next morning, though especially shaded areas do maintain small snow clusters from time to time.
That said, a couple of mornings have been.. well, bonafide winter mornings complete with lots of frost if not much in the way of snow.
Even Felicia was not spared Mr. Frost’s efforts – which led to the comical realization that ice scrapers are not easy to find here (not even Walmart has them).
Of course I can’t complain too much as this is all still pretty mild compared to the winters I’ve grown used to in the past. Plus we almost always get really nice sunsets, save for the most overcast of days.
Of course on the flip side, one of our palm tree friends (we have two, Pauly and Paulina) got a major New Year’s trimming and now doesn’t block nearly as much late afternoon light as it used to. The previous shading was really nice as the sun tends to shine straight in your eyes when you sit on the couch unless you close the blinds, which we don’t like to do most of the time.
Anyways, that winter has kept a grip on us isn’t surprising considering that it’s, you know, still January – but it’s also been fitting since a few more holiday cards have trickled in!
Yes, they are of course for the Boys, not us. 😛
Lawrence has begrudgingly accepted winter’s embrace, though I am also pretty sure that his pile of acorns keeps growing as opposed to shrinking.
Anyways, back indoors we’ve (sort of*) moved on from tamales and instead ventured into the realm of sweet potato and black bean enchiladas.
Pig, as usual, is a big fan of anything with beans and/or sweet potatoes, so I have an inkling that these were the result of duo meal planning by SB and Pig. Speaking of Pig, he has resumed teaching his yoga classes to his online friends.
Mountain pose with the Barley Bros and Bonsai Buddy Jr.
He had been in a hiatus with his online classes for a bit but he and SB have decided to get back into it. Plus, when you have delicious Chakra chocolates to look forward to it makes it a bit easier. 😉
So, at this point you might be wondering about the “Birthday” in the title of this post. Yes, it seems like we’ve had a lot of birthdays lately! Intriguingly all of our dinosaurs have birthdays within a 1 month period, not sure how that happened exactly, but the result is a bunch of dino-birthdays around this time of year. This time Pigsten was up to bat and boy a lot has changed since his last birthday. Pigsten is turning 3 this year, though of all the Boys Pigsten is probably the one whose age is most disputable. This stems from the idea of “self.” In actuality, the dinosaur that would become Pigsten came to live with me in Denver in 2015. Yet, while Pigsten and his other tiny-dino siblings resided near the window of my lofty Denver apartment it wasn’t really Pigsten yet, just a tiny t-rex. Pigsten became Pigsten in Santa Fe in 2016 and if it wasn’t obvious his name comes from a combination of “Pig” and “Tristen” (this was Pig’s idea as he wanted a buddy for our New Mexico adventure). So, with that explained, Pigsten is now 3 and since it was his birthday Pigsten would probably want me to remind you about his construction site post (a project which is still ongoing).
Pigsten and friend Broli atop Pigsten’s birthday “throne.”
As a celebration of Pigsten reaching the age of tres años we treated him to our usual forms of celebration: food, sweet food, and alcohol!
While not Pig’s birthday, he was rather fond of Pigsten’s birthday scotch bottle.
Now, Pigsten is awfully small to get an entire bottle of scotch to himself – this is true. However, he specifically requested scotch because that is what Tristen got for his birthday and we can’t let Tristen get ahead of us now can we? 😛
As for those delicious looking cupcakes – and they were very delicious – those come from a local bakery that SB found!
Pigsten’s birthday package included four different varieties of cupcake. From the back left clockwise, we have: carrot cake, cherry cream, ice cream sundae, and chocolate peanut butter chip!
Despite Pigsten’s (and really all the Boys’ protests) we wouldn’t let them start with the cupcakes and instead made them eat an actual dinner first. For that we decided to get Jason’s Deli (our second time doing so). Pigsten wanted something “that Broli would like too” so we got him a salmon salad which resulted in a very difficult to deal with Valentino, but we managed.
After our proper dinner we broke out the cupcakes and gave Pigsten the ceremonial first bite of the sundae cupcake!
After that we did what we also normally do during a celebration – watch Adventure Time!
We’re nearing the end of Season 7, but there’s 10 seasons in total so we’ve still got a decent amount of adventuring left to do. A bit later on in the evening we decided to have a bit of a scotch tasting party that even SB joined in on! This time we were comparing Glenlivet 12 and Pig’s Nose.
Pig after Pig’s Nose.
Unlike Glenmorangie 10 vs. Glenlivet 12 (where I had a preference for the 12), this match-up was a bit less clear. On the whole I think I preferred the 12 over Pig’s Nose, but these two were also quite distinct. For instance, the Pig’s Nose was more smooth with a big of spiced sweetness to it, but the overall feel and taste of the 12 was “better.” So this is probably an apples and oranges situation. I didn’t dislike either of them, nor did I dislike the 10 for the record. In fact I’ve yet to have a scotch I disliked, though much of that can probably be distilled down to doing my research in advance. For his part Pigsten liked Pig’s Nose, if only because of the name and because he got a bottle of scotch just like Tristen did.
Since it was Pigsten’s birthday weekend he and Broli also got the coveted position of being able to go out with SB for Saturday adventures in Felicia.
Though Pigsten, being Pigsten, had to be very ornery about the whole affair:
After they had gotten some out of the house things accomplished (in spite of Pigsten’s dashboard escapades) we had some homemade tamales for dinner. This is why I put the “sort of*” in there earlier. We had intended to put a pause on the tamales for a bit (and had frozen the other half of what we did have) but then one of SB’s coworkers brought in actual 100% homemade tamales to give to SB after SB had asked about a good place to get tamales (which resulted in the brand we had gotten at the store for last post).
These things were amazing. Maybe not for the ole’ bowels, but definitely for the taste buds. Easily the best tamales I’ve had. Plus, we still had 2 of the cupcakes left over from the night before so with Pigsten’s permission we busted out the carrot cake and chocolate peanut butter chip cupcakes!
Pair all that with some more Adventure Time and it makes for a good second day of birthday celebrations. 😀
In addition to all of Pigsten’s birthday fun, there was the ongoing hatching process of dino #2 that we should get back to. It was right around Pigsten’s birthday time that dino #2 really started to emerge from its shell.
We became somewhat infatuated with its cute little arms.
It was also around this time that I realized it was a Parasaurolophus and not too long after that Tristen decided it was time to help release it from the egg – a process that Pigsten and Broli assisted with.
Once dino #2 was free from its egg we skipped the second pitcher-tube incubation period and took dino #2 directly to the bathtub to chillax with dino #1 who was still growing in there.
And that’s where they still are as I type this: just growin’ in the tub.
I think they’re very near their maximum growth potential at this point, but who knows. If you hear about an apartment exploding due to giant dinosaurs, that was me.
With Pigsten’s birthday shared and dino #2’s identity revealed, it’s time to move on to the “Ascension” portion of the post’s title. If you are a really diligent reader of Dinosaur Bear and have a good memory for fantastical/mundane details, you probably already know who ascended: Thomas V.
Yes, like Thomas IV (and III, and II, and I) before him, Thomas V has transcended from the mortal plane into the great eldritch pumpkin cosmos of the beyond. Unlike say… Thomas III, Thomas V was one of the quicker (if not the quickest) Thomases we’ve had to ascend. Part of this might be due to the fact that he was physically a different kind of Thomas from those who came before, or, more likely, because Thomas V was just a fast-paced Thomas. Thomas V was starting to get a few soft spots on him and rather than have him secretly mold into the spot he is sitting on (which Thomases are wont to do) we decided to go ahead and take him to a more suitable location for ascension. Since we are located in a desert, it’s not as easy to find a satisfactory Thomas transcendence location since a lot of what is around us is rock – and I mean quadrillions of little red rocks. Even sand is preferable to the rocks, so we sought out such a location. This involved SB and I carrying Thomas V around looking for a good spot, a journey which took us to new areas of our neighborhood. The plus side of that was that we saw a bunny on the way!
Eventually we found an old gate which led out into an open desert area (and spotted another pumpkin on the way, no less!) and there we found a suitable location for Thomas V to begin joining the cthulhuian Great Pumpkin who lurks beyond the perceptions of mortal men.
Come to think of it, Thomas V has probably got to enjoy the most scenic spot for transcendence of all our Thomases so far.
His bush is the one to the left there.
So, there you have it – a birthday (Pigsten), a hello (dino #2), and a temporary goodbye (Thomas V). I say temporary because Thomas is very much part of the wheel of Ka, and as such we will see him again someday in this life or the next. Also, Thomas V wasn’t the only resident of Dinosaur Bear that we recently sent off on an adventure – but that is a story for next time.
As I mentioned before I’ve recently taken up a new case which is keeping me a bit busier than expected. So I’m somewhat doubtful I’ll maintain a Monday-to-Monday schedule for Dinosaur Bear, but I have at least one more post mentally planned (but not written) after this one and then I still have a much larger post simmering on the back burner as I continue to gather information for it – though that one is looking to take much longer than I originally anticipated. In the meantime, you can expect more juicy Dinosaur Bear weirdness, so keep an eye on those inboxes.
Until next time,
-Taco