Whipple Gets Native

Chet Baker leaps up on me (you can tell it's me by the binoculars) with the Heave-a-Beaver the Williams family brought for him. By this next morning, he had chewed completely through the rope ring. But it was a good 18 hours.
The blogosphere is such a neat place. It's full of intriguing, fun people, the vast majority of whom we'll probably never meet in the flesh. So when Susan said she and her family would be coming to the Marietta area, and wanted to visit, we made her welcome. What we hadn't known is that her husband Geoff, a freelance journalist, had interviewed Bill for an Ohio Magazine article perhaps five years ago. In the course of the interview, Geoff was inspired by Bill's obvious passion for the art of attracting birds to one's yard...and not incidentally, by the fact that we'd built a birdwatching tower atop our house! So he bought Susan a bird feeder for Christmas, and that was followed by binoculars, books, native plants...and Susan got REALLY interested in birds, and the rest is enthusiastically catalogued on her blog, Susan Gets Native. It was so cool to discover that my big sweetie had turned this couple on to the joys of birds, just by being his passionate self.

Liam took on the role of SuperMiniHost, and absconded with Isabelle and Lorelei, jealously guarding his beloved guests from Phoebe for the first hour or so. We saw very little of the kids thereafter, which always makes a visit extra-nice, because you know they're engaged and having fun. By the time our guests had to go, Isabelle had ascended to girlfriend status.
I have a sneaking suspicion that when someone from the blogosphere says they want to meet us, Chet Baker is somewhere in the "us" they want to meet. And sometimes I think that if we held a gun to their heads (a form of hospitality not all that uncommon in SE Ohio), they might admit that they were really here for the pooch. That's OK with me. Chet's a full-fledged member of the family, and I try not to be jealous of his beauty, charm, and vibrant charisma. If only he would learn to wash sheets and help prepare food, perhaps serve drinks, the arrangement would be perfect. No, he prefers to be on Welcome Wagon, giving lusty kisses, cuddling, and of course seeing guests off with more kisses. Susan reports that he is "all that and a bag of chips!" which I think means he lived up to advance billing, despite being smaller and brindly- browner than depicted on this blog. Here, he models the camo scarf that Susan brought for him.
Chet says goodbye to Geoff in the soulful way Bostons have perfected. We're grateful that Geoff, Susan, Lorelei and Isabelle came to visit. It was an honor to entertain them.