L-double O-N-Y

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Do you talk to yourself?  I do.  In the car, in the kitchen, at the mall, out loud and in my head.  When I catch myself talking out loud (That’s the second time in two sentences I’ve typed “out load” instead of “out loud”.  Issues.) and I’m not alone (walking down the street, through the grocery store, in the parking lot), I tell myself to cut it out, usually in some kind of crazy-sounding hiss.  “Stop talking to yourself!”  It doesn’t keep me from looking crazy.  I hope no one notices.  Is it weird?  Or normal?  I really can’t tell.

Things I Learned About My Dogs This Weekend

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  1. Both dogs are pretty good in the car.  It helps that it’s only a three-hour drive.
  2. Roxy can’t be trusted off her leash when there’s no fence.
  3. Riley can.
  4. Except when Roxy takes off.  Then he goes with her and loses his hearing.
  5. Roxy is great in the house and with other dogs, mostly because she’s totally indifferent to everybody.
  6. Riley is a challenge in the house.  Not the greatest houseguest.
  7. That’s putting it politely.  He was nervous and Mabel (the resident dog) thought he was challenging her authority (he probably was).
  8. Then he peed on the sliding glass door.  From the outside (small miracles).  In front of everyone.

John and I went to visit his parents this weekend.  Normally, we wouldn’t have brought the dogs, but I forgot about this trip until last weekend, and by then, the kennel was fully booked.  So it was either stay home with the dogs (we can’t use a pet-sitter anymore) and have John go by himself (the point of the trip was so  he (and his brother, coming from Connecticut) could help his dad do some car stuff) or figure out how to handle the complications of bringing the dogs.

Complication #1: John’s parents have a dog who, the one time they met, didn’t get along all that well with Riley.  We think it might be because they first sniffed each other out in the kitchen, Riley’s territory, and not somewhere slightly more neutral, like the yard.

Complication #2: No fence.  They have an invisible fence, and while Mabel has a collar and is trained to it, our dogs are not.

Complication #3: We needed a secure place to lock Roxy up if we all went out so she’d be separated from the other dogs and unable to hurt herself if she were to have a seizure.

Complication #4: Is it really okay if we bring the dogs?  I don’t want to force our animals into anyone else’s household.

All of these issues have solutions (say hello in the yard, keep them on their leashes, use Mabel’s old crate, be direct and ask the question), and after I talked with my mother-in-law, I felt better about most of them, so we decided to try it (obviously).  We’re not in any hurry to do it again, but at least we know it’s possible.  I think Mabel was happy to see us go.  🙂  I know Roxy and Riley are happy to be back home.

Update: Apparently, Roxy was SO happy to be home she went into convulsions.  Just one seizure, it’s been about two and half weeks since the last one, and I’m relieved she waited until we got home to do it.  I can only imagine having to deal with this on the side of the road with a frantic Riley.  She’s in the last stages of getting back to normal right now.

Failed experiment

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John and I tried an experiment with Roxy today.  We had her outside, no fence, on a leash.  We showed her (and gave her) cheese and regular dog treats and basically tried to convince her that hanging out with us is the best thing in the world.  Riley had already proven that he could be trusted off the leash and would come tearing back towards us if we called.  It was Roxy’s turn, so I unclipped her leash.  For about a minute, she stayed right by us, eating cheese and dog treats, but her normal greed wasn’t as strong as the pull of all that freedom.  She took off, with Riley right behind her, and me and John chasing after with the leash and the treats, calling her name and basically just trying to keep her in sight.  We did eventually get her (only about two minutes later – felt longer), but we’ve learned our lesson.  LOTS more training before we try that again.  If ever.  She might just be a runner.

Blah blah blah

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Why have I been having such a hard time writing lately?  I’d like to blame it on not having much free time, and spending what free time I have reading (although I haven’t been doing much of that), or…honestly, I don’t know what I’ve been doing in the evenings.  Making dinner, eating it while watching some show with John, and then what?  Cleaning up and going to bed? Writing a short paragraph here and then quitting for the night?  The only time I’ve spent reading is before sleep and over breakfast.

Wah wah wah.  Stop whining already.

I took the dogs on my hill workout this morning and let them drag me up the first two.  By the third one, I was dragging them.  You know how, when a dog steps over the leash so just one leg is on the wrong side, they’ll sometimes do a little hop to get free?  Roxy’s pretty good at that, but this morning she managed to get the leash wrapped around her leg, not just crossed under.  She tried to hop out of it a couple of times and when she figured out that it wasn’t going to be that easy, she stopped and picked her little paw off the ground and held it out to me.  SO cute.

Somehow, that reminded me that we need to renew our passports soon.  Can’t believe it’ll be ten years this November.  Must mean I’m getting old.  That’s getting a little close to whining again.  Time to quit.

Big thunderstorms

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It was pouring rain for a while here.  Still raining now, just not as hard.  Is the world ending?  We’ve had a lot of extreme weather lately (crazy snowstorms, severe thunderstorms, power outages nearby, flash floods, record-breaking heat), and that pattern has been worse other places.  There’s been major flooding everywhere, it seems.  Maybe The Day After Tomorrow is happening, just a little slower than in the movie.

Or maybe not.  It’s entirely possible that this is fairly typical summer weather that I just happen to be old enough to pay attention to and think is unusual and that the freak snowstorms were just that.  Freakish.  Likely, even.  (That it’s typical, not that it’s freakish – wait.  Not that the snowstorms were likely…Did I just contradict myself?  Ignore the badly worded thought, please.)

Am I really talking about the weather?

Forgive me

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It’s been kind of a hectic evening, and I haven’t had the time or the head space or the whatever to sit down and write, so this is going to be short and not all that great (way to entice the readers, Zannah).  Other than about 45 minutes while I was eating dinner, I’ve been on the phone nonstop since I left work at 6pm tonight.  All good things and all good conversations, but now it’s time for me to have a cookie and some milk and go to bed.

I don’t like Emilio Estevez

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We watched Pretty People With Problems (that’s St Elmo’s Fire for those of you who haven’t seen most of VH1’s I Love the 80s shows) over the last couple of nights, and I found it really hard to like any of the characters.  Emilio Estevez bugged me more than anyone else, but Demi Moore ran a close second.  I’d like to take Andrew McCarthy home, though.  Sad puppy dog eyes.

Maybe it’s just as well I never lived alone

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This is going to be one of those posts.  Those posts.  You know, the ones that don’t really have a point or any cohesive thread and are mostly about me banging away at the keyboard, listing every thought in my head.  For the hell of it.  Maybe because today was a normal and unremarkable day.  What am I supposed to do with that?  Besides enjoy the lack of drama.  Which I did.  And do.

It’s so quiet.  It’s rehearsal night, but the band is practicing somewhere that’s not in my basement.  The only sound I hear is from the refrigerator.  And my typing.  The dogs are outside, the TV is muted – I thought it was off, but then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and freaked out a little ’cause I thought someone was in the house with me, and then I realized that the someone I saw had a ton of makeup on and kinda looked like a member of Kiss, and hey, wait a minute…  Right.  It’s quiet.

I’m going to take advantage of all this quiet and read.  READ.  I’m reading now.  Stop looking!  I can’t read when you’re looking at me.

There aren’t enough hours in the day

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It’s hard to prioritize sometimes.

A somewhat blurry picture of the stage at Wolf Trap, right before we got in trouble for taking pictures.

Last night, John wanted a pretzel.  They don’t allow food or drinks in the pavilion (only on the lawn, which is where we wanted to be, but I waited too long to buy tickets, and we were forced to sit in actual SEATS with backs and arms and everything), so he didn’t have time to finish his giant pretzel.  That’s where my purse came into play.  It’s my summer purse, and I’ve hardly used it, so it was basically empty.  Unusual for me.  Wallet, phone, keys – that’s it.  Plenty of room for a half of a giant salt-covered pretzel.  I’m a criminal.  I run red lights and I smuggle food into theaters.  And when I got up this morning, I had to turn my purse inside out and upside down to get all the salt out.  For the record, he appreciates me.

Bugs Bunny rules!

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I love Bugs Bunny.  Always have, always will.  We went to Wolf Trap tonight to see Bugs Bunny at the Symphony, this concert series that’s been going on for 20 years and has live orchestras playing the classical music to Bugs Bunny (and other Looney Tunes) cartoons.  It was SO much fun.

I’d probably have more to say about it (and might tomorrow), and I’m very very happy we went (Bugs Bunny alone and classical music (particularly live) alone make me very happy – combined I got a little teary at times), but it’s late and I’m fending off the dogs (they’re a little crazy – past their bedtime) and somewhat distracted.

Today was a good day.

Troubleshooting

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Mom has laptop troubles.  Mom eventually has troubles with each laptop she gets, but this one is weird.  She was connected to the internet this morning, and when she came back, she wasn’t. John and I spent a couple of hours over the course of the evening on the phone with Dad, trying everything we could think of. We don’t have Vista running on any of the 5 dozen computers here (I may be exaggerating), so that made it a little harder, and we eventually (it didn’t take that long) resorted to Google. And that reminded me of this www.xkcd.com comic:

This isn’t exactly how it goes when our parents call us for technical help, but it’s close, and it makes me laugh every time.  Anyway, we weren’t able to get her connected again, but we’re pretty certain we could have if we were local.  I say we, but at this point in the process, it would really be John.  Funny flowcharts aside, we like being the go-to tech experts in the family.

I can get lost on Etsy

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I think I share that problem with many many many many other people.  There’s so much cool stuff!  I mean, check out these earrings.  How cool is that?  Geeky, yes, but there’s a whole category called Geekery, and I’m very tempted by those earrings.  They might be a little too long for me – that’s the only reason I’m hesitating.  And these owl magnets…I’ve been looking for magnets for my desk at work, and these are adorable.

Etsy is on my mind more than usual today because two of my favorite bloggers, Bridget and Spokeit, have Etsy shops for their photographs.  I only found out about Bridget’s today, and so we have today’s post.

Bridget’s Etsy shop

Spokeit’s Etsy shop

Go, browse, buy (or at least admire and send them nice notes).  Send Etsy some love.  🙂

Do It A Capella

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We were listening to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and that reminded me of Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s version (with some other a capella group (turns out it was The Mint Juleps) on Spike Lee’s Do It A Capella (a PBS special from 1990), so I had to go download the album.  I used to have the CD, but I haven’t seen it in years.  And the special itself (maybe an hour?) isn’t available on DVD, so YouTube will have to suffice.  I LOVE this album.  Here’s a clip of The Persuasions doing “Looking For An Echo”.

This one is more doo wop than some of the others, but you can watch the whole show on YouTube, track by track, if you’re so inclined.  I was.

Here’s the version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” that started this trip down memory lane for me:

Ambient Noise Problem

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That should be the name of a band.  Two things (not at all related to band names):

  1. New phone!  New phone!  Send me to the head of the class, I’ve got the newest phone out there!  (For the next day or so.  That could be out of date already…)
  2. I’m expecting a ticket in the mail.

Let’s address these in order, shall we?

  1. (I’m into organizing my thoughts right now.  Kind of.  We’ll see how it goes.)  Anyway, 1. After our phones crapped out on us again this weekend (they don’t even make it through one 20-minute conversation anymore, and when the beeping starts (low battery indicator), the phone dies before we can lunge for a charger.  (We had the same phone.)  Say goodbye to the old cell phone, the phone that was pretty much just a phone (It had a camera, but the camera sucked.  It had an mp3 player, but after a while, we stopped using it.), the phone that made us think we don’t need our cell phones to be more than just phones because we’ve got laptops, right?  And mp3 players.  And other stuff.  And we’re dinosaurs.  So say goodbye to the cute little antiquated flip phone that couldn’t anymore.

    His had a blue faceplate. 'Cause we're cute like that.

    And say hello to tomorrow!  (Okay, maybe it’s an hour ago.  2pm?  Come on, it’s still the new thing, right?)

    Once again, we have the same phone. So we immediately chose different backgrounds so we can tell them apart.

    Hello, Evo 4G! I picked them up late last night, and I’ve hardly had time to play yet. The way this evening is going, I’m not going to have much time again, and it’ll have to wait until after work tomorrow. How can I possibly concentrate on work when I have this cool new toy?

  2. This ticket.  Not the good kind, where you get to see a band or a show, oh no.  The bad kind.  And it’s so totally John’s fault.  I had to go to DC this afternoon for work, and there’s this left turn that has a really quick green arrow.  In the afternoons, it only lets two to three cars through at a time.  John always gives me a hard time about stopping for yellow lights, so I did the mildly aggressive thing and followed the second car into the intersection.  Naturally, the light turned red while I was in the middle of the intersection.  All of a sudden, I was blinded by the flashes of two traffic cameras.  Cameras I hadn’t seen before I made the turn.  Cameras I didn’t see until they flashed and took a picture of me running a red light on a left turn.  Cameras that I would swear weren’t there just last week when I made that turn.  That’s neither here nor there, I know.  But now I’m anxious.  I got caught doing something I know is wrong.  To make matters worse, I have to WAIT before I can take care of the fine or whatever.  How long will I have to wallow in my wrongdoing before I get the ticket in the mail?  When can I be put out of my misery?  What if the picture didn’t get my license plate and they never send it?  Will I have to deal with this anxiety forever?

Did I got a little too far there?  Am I being too melodramatic for you?

The essentials

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I didn’t go to the grocery store this weekend, so I stopped by Giant on the way home today to pick up the essentials: milk, cereal, dog treats, and Entenmann’s mini chocolate chip cookies.  What?  I bought dog treats and people treats.  Very important.

I wouldn’t say I’m bored, exactly…

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I’m between books again.  I picked up Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi, but it’s a retelling of The Last Colony from the teenager’s point of view, and I’m not really in the mood for that.  On the other hand, it’s a quick read (and enjoyable), so I’ll probably finish it now, rather than put it back down.  But that doesn’t solve the real problem.  What’s next?  What am I in the mood for?  And I don’t mean just for my next book.  This has been kind of an aimless afternoon.  We called a few Sprint stores to find out if any of them had the EVO (EVO or Evo?) in stock.  None of them do.  We’re thisclose to ordering them.  I’m not really sure what’s holding us up right now.  I read out on the deck with the dogs for a little bit, but since I’m feeling all wishy-washy about my book, I got distracted easily.  I came in and watched an episode of Dead Like Me (yay Roku!), and then John asked me to play around on the electronic drumset a little, so I did that…  John is installing upgrades on his studio computer, and I’d like to curl up on the couch next to him with a book, and here I am.  Back to the book issue.  I might be able to settle down if I had my next book all planned out.  The books I really want to read, or at least the ones on my mind right now (the next Jim Butcher, the next Sherwood Smith, the next Jasper Fforde), I don’t have.

I’m making this harder than it has to be.  The solution?  A mystery.  And I’m going with a Dorothy Sayers mystery because I haven’t read any of hers yet.

Fixed!

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Today, we took Step One in the Cancel the Cable Already! Plan.  Actually, we took Step 1 a few days ago when we ordered the Roku.  It arrived today, we set it up, we’ve tested it out, and tonight we’re going to watch a movie.  How exactly does this help us in the Cancel the Cable Already! Plan?  Um…I won’t be DVRing movies from Comcast anymore.  It doesn’t help with current TV, either.  Really, I think it’s a mindset change.  We have a Roku!  Next step is to put together a nice-looking, unobtrusive computer that can live near the TV and provide the link to the internet.  Soon.

Speaking of the internet, we had to go to our local Comcast office this morning to pick up a new modem.  That fixed our connection problem.  I’m so relieved.  I didn’t want to have to wait until Monday night for a technician to show up (or not show up) and then tell us they can’t fix our problem (which is what they were saying on the phone last night).

A little housekeeping, figuratively speaking: Roxy had four seizures in 15 minutes Thursday night (late, of course).  The vet probably considers that one seizure.  She hasn’t had any since then, so technically, I think it doesn’t count as a cluster.  She desperately needed a bath after that, so I brushed 2 tons of hair of her (the furminator is awesome), and then gave her a bath on the deck this afternoon.  She’s all clean and sparkly now.

Some literal housekeeping: I helped John sort and clean out a big part of the basement today.  We boxed up all of our inventory books and stacked them in a corner, got rid of some trash, put a few more things aside for donation, and rearranged the whole east side, giving the band more room in their corner and making it easier for John to get to his weight bench.  More importantly, John used the shop vac to get rid of a lot of dust and a TON of dog hair.  The basement looks a whole lot better, unfinished as it is, when it’s not coated in dog hair.  I could say that about everything, I think.  Except dogs.

I’d be more productive if I worked from home because I wouldn’t have to go to any meetings

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Today was not a bad day.  It was just like every other day this week, though, with a breakneck pace and no actual work that got done.  By me, anyway.  Other people might be having better luck.  And I get it, kind of.  I’m managing a process now, and I have other people (will someday have other people – that’s part of what we’ve been having meetings about this week) who have to do the stuff that needs to get done, so I’m not as hands on as I’m used to being, but deadlines are looming and I feel like I need to say I’ve accomplished something!  I’m a little worn out.  A little frazzled.  A little (a lot) in need of extra hours in the day with no meetings.  Except who wants more hours at work?  Also, who wants to keep talking about work once they’re at home?  Not me.

John called to tell me he was  just leaving the office and to apologize for how late it is.  I’m feeling weak-willed because I have no energy and my head is pounding (and not just the part that’s still tender from my encounter with the window yesterday), so I asked him to be the voice of reason and say “No, we can’t order Chinese food.  We’re having ravioli or stir fry or something that’s already in the house and is relatively good for us.”  But since it’s so late, and neither of us wants to deal with cooking and cleaning up, he failed in his duty (as the voice of reason) and told me that if Chinese food is the only thing that will make me feel better, then that’s what we should have for dinner.  And I gave in.  Because I’m weak.  Our local Chinese place should hang our picture on the wall.  (This hasn’t been a good week for healthy dinners.)

Which came first, the stupid or the wall I ran into?

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I ran into a window today.  Smacked my forehead HARD.  Seriously, I have a bruise.  I had lunch at a restaurant with my supervisor today, and we left through the revolving door.  I put my sunglasses on while revolving (“while in the middle of the revolution” sounds more militant that what was happening) and tried to exit the door before I reached the opening.  The glass wasn’t THAT clean.  I’m just THAT stupid.

The knock on my head apparently killed some brain cells, too, ’cause words, thoughts, ideas…I don’t have them tonight.  I’m stealing an idea from MommyByDay and just posting a picture.  Or two.

These were the greatest jeans ever.  Unfortunately, this picture is eight years old, so even if I could remember the brand and style, I’m sure they don’t make them anymore.  Too bad.

Here’s Mom playing Marine:

I wouldn’t say no to this view from my window.

Or this one.

Well, that’s enough.  Gotta give Roxy her medicine and go to bed.  Off to the busy life I lead…