April 2007 Archives

I believe Jordan will fit right in once he gets used to all of us. He's started sleeping in my lap off and on, and last night he was running around with the girls when they were on one of their tears through the house. It was cute - Maddy and Max would dance and prance around him, trying to get him to chase them and play, and after a couple of minutes of that, he would jump in, run around for a minute or two, then run back to me. They repeated this a couple of times before he got tired of it. He is still a bit wary of Maddy, but he will let her curl up with him as long as Max is a buffer between them.

After 24 hours Jordan is beginning to adjust to living with us, although I'm sure it will take a while longer before he completely settles in. He isn't quite sure what to do with Maddy and Max (I think he was an only dog at his previous home), and they're not sure what to do with him either, but they'll figure each other out eventually. He's okay with me, but he has definitely taken a liking to Mike - the first night we had him he curled up on Mike's chest and went to sleep...so cute - and, if given a choice, that's who he prefers to sit with. So far he's not loud (he's barked a couple of times at neighbors and such), but that might change as he gets more comfortable with us.

For me the hardest part about the adjustment period is twofold. 1) It's hard for me to give him space to get used to us at his own pace. He's so cute I just want to grab him up and cuddle him all the time, and 2) the leashes. Walking two dogs is significantly less complicated than walking three. I'm hoping I get used to it without tripping over one of the trailing leashes.

As the title says, we have a new furbaby. Well, he's not officially ours yet, but he will be after his vet appointment next week, and in the meantime, he gets to stay with us. His name is Jordan, we got him from DRNA, he is a beautiful wee black and tan doxie, and it is going to take him a while to get used to his new life (read: Maddy and Max). He came from Georgia to live with us, and his foster mom brought him over for a visit earlier this evening. Everything went well, so she gave us the option to keep him until his vet appointment, and after that (and a contract signing + adoption fee) we get to keep him.

Wow. My great-grandmother is going to be 100 in May. I had no idea she's that old.

This has been a very weird, creepy morning. We were woken up at 3 by the doorbell, and when Mike answered the door, our neighbor was standing there. He said that he'd just gotten home from work and noticed that the light in Mike's truck was on, and he was extremely apologetic for bothering us because he hadn't realized the light would go off on its own. Now, Mike and I had gotten home from picking up the puppies before 9 last night, so the only way for the light in the truck to have been on was if one of the doors had been opened. Things got weirder when Mike started the truck and noticed that brights and the left turn signal were both on. They were not on when we parked the truck last night.

Also, it is nice to have a reliable internet connection again.

I really liked this movie. There wasn't anything really original in it, and I'm not a fan of Cameron Diaz as a general rule, but both Jude Law and Jack Black were extremely endearing, and somehow it all came together in a nice little movie that's perfect for watching on an anniversary trip.

I called my sister today to coordinate picking the puppies up tomorrow afternoon and found out they had stayed up barking until 3am the night we dropped them off. Cute or not, I doubt that was appealing. Mouthy little weasels.

In other dog-related news, it looks like Dory has been adopted. While I'm a little disappointed that I didn't hear back about this from her foster home, I'm glad to read that she has a forever home to buy her treats and toys and other things all dogs should have.

Which brings me to my next point. I don't understand how someone can have a dog for 10+ years and then just give it up because they don't have time for it anymore. I can understand if the owner has to go into a nursing home or something, but I cannot understand the people that just decide they don't want a dog anymore. It breaks my heart to see senior dogs up for adoption.

In spite of my lack of a list, I managed to get the puppies packed and off to my sister's last night without incident. I have a hunch that she and her husband will both be more than happy to hand them back over to us on Monday, if only for a break from the squeaking.

Mike and I got on the road today an hour later than we planned, which turned out to be quite fortuitous because it takes two hours less to get to the bed and breakfast than I thought it did. (Apparently pouring rain and inching along a curvy mountain road in a fog bank will double your travel time. Who knew?) Luckily, the owner didn't mind us calling to see if we could show up an hour before check-in, so now we're settled in and ready to do nothing for the next few days.

Mike loves scaring me, and he got me good last night. Twice. The first time was by far the more memorable of the two: we were both in bed - he had just finished Pzizzing and was asleep and I was playing Brain Age on my DS. I finished up the Sudoku puzzle I was working on and was reaching down to pick up my DS case and put it away when I heard a hissing sound and a hand grabbed my arm. I don't remember anything except screaming at the top of my lungs, but Mike says I flung myself back against the headboard, stiff as a board, while I was screaming. He got me again a few minutes after I had finally calmed down from the first scare, but it wasn't quite as bad that time. Small wonder I'm still afraid of the dark.

Still into Good Morning Revival and still sloooowly repopulating my iTunes library. I should be getting ready for our trip, but thus far my only attempt at packing has been to get out my Fox duffle bag and leave it in the back of the closet for when I do start packing. We're taking the puppies to my sister's house tonight, and have I gotten any of their stuff together yet? Not unless thinking about it counts. Hell, I haven't even written up a packing list yet, which is quite an anomaly for me - I usually make that list days before I need to even begin thinking about packing. Time to get out one of my gajillion steno pads and get down to business.

Mike is helping me transfer all of my music from one computer to another, a task that on the surface sounded pretty simple. Naively I thought it would go something like this: move songs to a portable hard drive, hook said drive up to the other computer, transfer files, take a break to make nachos, return to computer, aaaaand success! Easy enough, unless one computer is a Windows machine and the other is a pretty, pretty Mac, because if that's the situation you're working with, things get a bit more complicated...and much more tedious. The end result? I'm moving the mp3s over in batches on the OCZ hard drive Mike bought me, and let me tell you, transferring my music library 2 GB at a time is a much slower process than I would like.

I like the new Good Charlotte album (Good Morning Revival). Sure, there are some songs I like more than others, but the bottom line is it's an album I can listen to in the background without having to worry about diving for my iPod in time to skip a song because I can't stand it. My current favorite tracks are "All Black," "Broken Heart Parade," "Break Apart Her Heart," "Something Else," "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl," "The River," and "Dance Floor Anthem."

I'd like a do-over today. The wee hours of the morning were okay - no aches or pains, I got to work on time, all was bright any shiny with the world, then everything slid downhill without stopping at Go. The day flat-lined shortly before lunch, and now it blows again. I am ready to go home and shut myself in the house.

PS: The current small bright spot - the Amazon rep I talked to today was much easier to work with than the one I talked to yesterday. The whole in that silver lining - if they were re-shipping the right product, I wouldn't have had to talk to anyone from Amazon today, nice or otherwise. (small backstory: I ordered a book and a dvd - both birthday presents for people - back in March. I got a message on March 29th saying the book had shipped and one the following day saying the dvd had just shipped out. I got the dvd on April 3rd; I'm still waiting for the book. I called about it yesterday because the anticipated arrival date of 4/11 - 4/12 had passed and jumped through verbal hoops w/an Amazon rep (she was quite polite, but verbal hoops are verbal hoops) so they could re-send the damn book, already. This afternoon I got an e-mail from Amazon letting me know that they were shipping the dvd out to me today. :sigh:

PPS: fuck. today. hard.

In five days Mike and I will have been married for a year. He and I were talking about it last night, and we both agree that it doesn't feel like it's been that long already. We're leaving in a couple of days for our anniversary trip which means my usual "we're going somewhere that is not here" excitement and flurry of packing panic plus the added excitement because it's our anniversary. My sister and her husband were planning on keeping the puppies for us, but due to some unexpected schedule changes for them, we might end up taking the puppies with us. The suite we're staying in at the bed and breakfast is a pet-friendly one, so the only downside to bringing the puppies would be the travel (Max gets carsick).

I was torn about Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. I wanted to see it but I was skeptical at the same time, hesitant to watch a sequel that I didn't think would hit the same mark as the first one. We Netflix'd Netflix'd it to watch with the kids over the weekend, and when we watched it on Saturday I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked it, in spite of Orlando Bloom (I've had a hard time liking him after seeing him in Troy).

***SPOILERS***

Godsmack is scheduled for a concert in DC in May, but it's on a kid weekend, so we're not going to be able to go.

I was so excited when I heard about Edy's Loaded ice cream, particularly the chocolate chip cookie dough flavor, and I was even more excited when I learned that the Giant closest to our house carried it. It wasn't worth making a special trip to the grocery store for, but you can bet that I put it near the top of the grocery list I made for this afternoon's stop. It was in stock so I grabbed a carton of it (and two cartons of the cookies 'n cream flavor for Mike) and was quite pleased that I'd actually been able to find it. When Mike got home we each had a bowl of our respective ice cream; he seemed to enjoy the cookies 'n cream, but I'm very disappointed with the chocolate chip cookie dough. I didn't even like it enough to want to finish eating the bowl of it.

Watching Casino Royale got me thinking about my tv/movie star/celebrity boyfriends list, and I realized that I needed to update it. Chad Michael Murray is no longer one of my go-to hotties, and neither is Colin Ferrell. Chad's off the list because his breakup with Sophia Bush kind of tarnished his shiny hotness for me, and while I still think Colin Farrell's hot (especially in American Outlaws. I love you, Jesse James!), he's just not at the top of my list anymore. I'm sure I'll add more to the list as I remember some of my crushes, but currently my top famous(ish) boyfriends are:
Ryan Reynolds
Warrick (CSI)
Daniel Craig as James Bond
Christian Bale
Greg (CSI)
Sully from Godsmack
James Lafferty (Nathan from One Tree Hill)
Matt Czuchry (Logan from Gilmore Girls)

Ryan, Warrick, and Bond are all tied for first place (I can't for the life of me pick one of them over the others; if I had to play marry/fuck/kill with them, I'd have quite a dilemma), but the others aren't in any particular order at the moment.

Wow. We finished Casino (is it too much to ask to be able to spell it right the first time, just once?) Royale Tuesday night. I put it in the mail yesterday afternoon. Netflix has it back already and is shipping out our next movie (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest) today.

If you have a strong preference for one type of oatmeal over another - say, for example, the old fashioned oats instead of the 1 minute quick-cook kind - you would do well to double check the container before leaving the store so you don't get stuck with a couple month's-worth of the wrong kind of oatmeal.

I'm feeling blah today in spite of staying home. I did make some better eating choices today (not counting the Butterfinger eggs that tempted me throughout the day), so at least there's that. I've got to get to the grocery store soon though so I can pick up some more fruit.

Holy hell is Daniel Craig hot in Casino Royale. We watched it last night, and he is, without a doubt, my favorite Bond. The movie was good too; even though I knew Bond wasn't going to die, I was still caught up in the suspense. I kinda thought he was going to give up the password and was happy when he didn't. Yay, Bond! And I was extremely upset at the way things with Vesper played out.

Erin sums it up nicely: Bond, Hot Bond.

I have got to be better about taking care of myself. Staying up until after 10 does not lead to getting up at 3:30 to go to the gym like I need to. I want to fit so much into the last few hours of my day, but that's unrealistic. I need to start spacing that shit out throughout the day so I can get to bed early enough to get some actual sleep. Why is this so hard?

Since we no longer have a fenced yard for the puppies to run around in, when they need to go out, I take them out in the front. More often than not I leave the poo out there when they're done because I will pick up after them when they crap on a common area or someone else's lawn and clean up after any puppy accidents inside, but if it's on my own lawn it can sit there until I feel the need to get out there and pick it up. The result? A thick green jungle of a lawn in desperate need of mowing while every other lawn on our street is a dead-looking yellowish-brown patch. Thank god the lawn guys visited our neighborhood today.

I'm fairly certain there were more grass clippings on the sidewalk in front of our house than there were in the rest of the neighborhood combined.

The weekend went as planned, except not exactly. We were supposed to go for haircuts Friday afternoon, but we were feeling super-lazy when it got close to being time to leave so we postponed them until Saturday afternoon. Our friends did come over on Friday, but it ended up being less about scary movies and more about hanging out (although we did watch The Grudge 2). It started flurrying before they left, and when we woke up on Saturday we were greeted with 1.5 inches or so of snow, so we had to reschedule our picture-taking trip until Sunday. When we arrived for our haircuts on Saturday our stylist wasn't feeling well and was running behind so she asked if one of us could reschedule. Mike has big important work things on Tuesday (and it takes less time to do his hair) so he went ahead and had his haircut and I'm going back this week. Hopefully I won't hack my hair off myself in the interim; these split ends are AWFUL. After that we went straight to the restaurant to meet B and S for dinner, but when we got there, the restaurant was closed due to a water outage. We coordinated with them and agreed to go to another nearby restaurant only to find out that they, too, were closed because of the water outage. We agreed on a third restaurant a little bit down the road, but sure enough, they were closed too. The fourth restaurant we went to was open, thankfully, and we had a fantastic time. Mike fell in love with their stuffed mushrooms, and my favorite part was dessert, although the dessert menu was so long it took me forever to decide what I wanted. When I finally made up my mind, I chose the strawberry la bamba - a mix between strawberry shortcake and cheesecake, and it was delicious.

We left the restaurant, made a brief stop at home to get the theater gift cards and Mike's glasses (and pet the puppies), then it was off to the movie theater to meet A and see Grindhouse. I really enjoyed the movie - partly because both parts were well-done and partly because no one sat in front of us so I was able to put my feet up for as much of the movie as I wanted. Surprisingly, there were no obnoxious movie-talkers at the showing we went to, which is a pleasant change from what seems to have become our usual movie experience. After the movie finished we headed home for a visit with my brother who was home from school for the weekend, but as we came over the hill into our neighborhood we were surprised to see a checkpoint. There were no less than 15 cop cars there, and I think the count was closer to 20, but there were quite a few cars with their lights off which made it difficult to determine conclusively whether or not they too belonged to law enforcement people. The cop that stopped us asked for my license, which I had with me, thankfully, then asked where we were headed (home! to our lovely little townhouse right here in this very neighborhood! in fact, if you listen carefully you can probably hear our bad little wiener dogs barking, officer!) and waved us through. Sobriety wasn't a concern for me because I hadn't had anything to drink except for an eensy sip of Mike's martini with dinner, but I always get nervous around cops and the like, even when I haven't done anything wrong (I'm sure this makes me look suspicious as hell). I called my brother as soon as we went through the checkpoint to give him a heads-up so he didn't speed into the neighborhood, and a few minutes later he stopped by with his girlfriend and her brother. They couldn't stay too long because it was late but we still had a great visit.

Even though it was miserably cold on Sunday, we got up, stopped for doughnuts, and drove to DC to take pictures of some of the monuments. We started off at the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington then drove into the city to stop at the Lincoln Memorial and the Korean War Memorial. We also took some pictures of the cherry blossoms and stopped in the West Potomac Park for a few more pictures before getting on the road. By the end of our trip, I was quite sorry I hadn't brought Benadryl. I'm sure I would have had a lot more fun if I hadn't had hives on my face. When we were back in town we stopped by a couple of local cemeteries; Mike prowled around snapping pictures while I shivered and thought about warm things such as hot chocolate and curling up under covers with snoogly wiener dogs. We both began uploading our pictures when we got home, and every so often I took a break to tend to our Easter dinner (ham, potatoes, and biscuits - the veggies were not meant to be, apparently). The dinner turned out wonderfully, although the biscuits were a tad bland, and I'm looking forward to leftovers throughout the week. We had originally planned to watch Casino Royale, but by the time dinner was ready, we didn't have enough time so we went back to playing with our pictures before going to bed.

I love ham. And potatoes. We took a ton of pictures today, and Mike was extremely patient while showing me how to play with them in Lightroom, so I'll write about our weekend tomorrow. Tonight is for eating too much and playing with pictures.

My iPod knows me so well when it comes to Bryan Adams. I'm listening to So Far So Good on shuffle and it started by playing my favorite songs from the album ("Run To You," "Heaven," "(Everything I Do) I Do it For You," and "Summer of '69") in a row.

This is the busiest weekend I can recall us having in a long time. Tonight we're having friends over to watch horror flicks, tomorrow we're going on another picture-taking trip, meeting friends for a birthday dinner, and going to see Grindhouse with our oldest if he can get someone to cover his shift, and Sunday is Easter, the day of ham and baskets of candy. In between all of that we have to get vehicles washed and their oil changed, go to the post office and grocery store, and I have to get a haircut because I feel like a damn scarecrow. While I know it will all work out and we'll have a fantastic weekend, right now I feel like the white rabbit.

The cold weather we've gotten the past few days has drained my energy. I have no motivation. I need to take care of the dishes, put away the whites I washed the other day, and tidy up the clutter that has crept back around the edges of the house, but I don't want to. All I want to do is crawl under the covers with the dogs (and Mike, if he's home) and read. Sadly, my book-love will not take care of the housework for me, although I'm sure the puppies would be thrilled to help with the dishes.

So we finally signed up for Netflix today. I think it's quite possible that we are one of the last households in America to do so. Hell, even my parents have been part of the Netflix community for a while, which is saying something. The first movie our new friend Netflix will be sharing with us? Casino Royale, of course.

To the gentleman who rang our doorbell just before 8pm:

Starting off with "I'm not trying to sell you anything" is nice, but when you immediately follow that with "Our alarm company is running a promotion in your neighborhood," that comes off like you are, in fact, trying to sell me something, which irritates me. It especially irritates me when the alarm company you're representing is ADT.

Our dogs are lovey little creatures, but they also have the capability to turn into furry obstacles. Sometimes I wonder if they do it on purpose. This evening the puppies were lying next to me while I played online, and after a while of this, Max seemed to have had enough. She put both front paws on my chest and leaned against my face, completely obscuring my view of the keyboard and screen. I was able to move her so I could see, but only briefly, getting a couple seconds of unobstructed laptop interaction before she leaned back against me. Maddy has her own version of this manuever as well - she comes up and curls up on my chest so her neck is against my face - and hers is every bit as efficient as Max's. They're so cute when they do this type of thing that I hate to move them, but then again, when I'm on the laptop, I'd actually like to be able to see what's on whatever site that's currently caught my interest.

Mmm, Kashi's pumpkin spice flax bars are tasty. Almost like a crunchy slice of pie.

Mike rescued my lost pictures! I can't wait to get home and upload them.

I'm not much on church lately so I don't observe the religious aspects of Easter, but I do like the secular ones. I love Easter baskets (they're almost as fun as Christmas stockings), and I've been working on Mike's for a while. I also picked up some stuff to make little Easter baskets for my parents and siblings/their significant others. I have to
pick up containers to put everything in, make a wee bunny-ear headdress for something in Mike's basket, finish the Easter cards I started over a month ago (I move slooooowly when it comes to crafts, unless it's a last-minute birthday card), and assemble everything. Since my mom loves peeps, I found a peep in a chocolate egg instead of a chocolate bunny for her basket, and I am ridiculously excited about it and the SpiderMan and Bond-related goodies I found for Mike's basket.

Easter falls on one of the kids' weekends with their mom this year, so it'll be just me and Mike here for Easter, but I'm still going to dye eggs. That and the egg salad sandwiches that inevitably follow are some of my favorite things about the holiday. I also love Easter dinner, and this year I picked up a spiral cut ham to make for us. I haven't thought too much about the sides, but I'll probably make either boiled potatoes or potatoes au gratin (from a box - I haven't worked my way up to making those from scratch yet), some kind of vegetable (preferably corn on the cob, if I can find any fresh), and bread, of course. No meal is complete without bread.

Mike and I took today off, primarily to go out and take pictures, which is what we did. We drove to Kenmore and the Mary Washington house, then walked by the Rappahannock river and took some pictures there. Mike treated me to ice cream when we were done taking pictures there, and the day was so nice that we ate it on a bench outside. After we finished our ice cream we went into a store downtown so I could look at body jewelry. I didn't find a ball for my belly button ring, but I did find the nipple rings I'd been looking for. (I've wanted curved barbells for a couple of months now, and until today all I was able to find locally were straight barbells.) I felt awkward for a couple of seconds when the lady helping us asked what I was looking for because she was old enough to be my grandmother, but that passed as soon as we began rummaging around trying to find the right gauges.

We uploaded our pictures when we got home, which led to the one disappointing part of my day. Something went wrong while I was transferring pictures from the Finepix, and all of the pictures I'd taken with it today were lost. I was particularly upset about this because I'd taken a lot of pictures at the river, and I had been quite pleased with the way they looked when I reviewed them on the camera. With Mike's help I was able to get the pictures off my Nikon without any problems, so I did end up with some of my pictures from our outing.

Mike showed me some of his tricks in Adobe Lightroom before I got overwhelmed, and the rest of my evening was spent uploading, installing, and playing with various programs on the Powerbook, with a little reading thrown in for good measure.

I can't put into words what a wonderful day I had without gushing or sounding redundant, but I can say that it was as close to perfect as I can imagine.

I'm a sucker for marketing that uses little wiener dogs. The best ways to get me to buy something that I don't particularly need are:
a) put a dachshund on the item itself
b) put a dachshund somewhere on the packaging (I bought a container of pet wipes because of this. They have been used exactly three times.)
c) put a dachshund in an ad for it

I am almost as weak when it comes to products for wiener dogs, and when products for doxies are combined with one of the tactics above, I am lost. Case in point: Even though my sister told me about this ad ages ago, I saw it for the first time this morning, and now I am fighting the urge to run to PetSmart and buy three of those - one for each of my fur-babies and one for little Dory. The little doxie in the ad is adorable, and I love the part where they pick the dog up and wave him across the scanner to scan the toy in his mouth.

Or perhaps my stomach just didn't like their mac 'n cheese, which, by the way, is the worst mac 'n cheese I've ever eaten. I suppose it also could be that I'm just not used to greasy food these days.

I'm always up for snoogling the puppykins, but more so today because:

1. Mike and I were in the process of adopting a little black and tan rescue doxie named Levi, and we had a home visit set up two weeks ago that had to be cancelled because his foster mom had to go out of town unexpectedly. I followed up with her on Friday to find out the status of our adoption and was completely blindsided with the news that another family had adopted Levi while she was out of town. I'm thrilled that he has a forever home but heartbroken that it wasn't with us.

2. I was looking at other doxie rescue sites this morning and ran across puppy mill pictures and a snippet of a puppy mill story that made me tear up. I want to do something to help all the dogs in all the puppy mills, and knowing that I can't makes me even sadder. Every dog should have a home, damn it.

"Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time." Mark Twain

This weekend I got a ticket (from a rent-a-cop in Karinne's old neighborhood), lost my belly button ring, made lasagna in my shiny new four-quart baking dish, used my mom's lemon pound cake recipe and successfully added to it, attempted making a lemon glaze for the first time ever and realized that I have a ways to go before my glazes turn out glazelike, found my belly button ring, sniffed every lotion in Victoria's Secret, successfully kept my goal to not raise my voice this weekend, took care of all but two (and a half) of the errands on my list, remembered exactly how much I hate shopping on the weekends, got two different sets of scratches from puppy nails, went shopping for jeans and bought two pairs that I am completely "meh" about, tried on a bra that made my boobs look two sizes smaller than what they are, forgot it was April Fool's until the day was almost over, had some random chick knock on my dressing room door to exclaim over my haircolor and request to touch my hair, and did six loads of laundry.