Obligatory Posting #2

So once again, it's been quite a while.  I apologize, but since I just spend about 15 seconds searching for the hash/pound key (#) on Adam's laptop, that's my excuse.  Yes, ladies and gents, British keyboards are different from US ones, and even after about 2 months of using Adam's computer daily, I still can't find stuff.  But soon, my dears, soon, I shall have a computer of my own again.  I'll be ordering a new MacBook Pro, to be delivered to my folks shortly before Adam and I arrive there.  Which happens in just under 2 weeks.  Yay!!  Most excited.  Lots of tasty food, a better bed, and a puppy who (hopefully still) loves me.  However, I fear Adam may be right; after Faith sees me, she'll look behind me and see Adam, and then look behind Adam in the hopes that she'll see Mark, whom she loves because he played with her several times each day when he went out for a smoke.

Beyond that, I'm sick.  I have the plague.  I'm blaming one of our regulars at work, who had a cold last week.  Carmel wanted to know what we were doing.  Hell, for that matter, I'd like to know what we were doing.   I'm coughing up chunks (yeah, it's more unpleasant for me than the image is for you). The cold nicely matches all the other physical crap that's been going on for the last few weeks (strained groin muscles, leading to a pregnancy scare, which, if I decide to write about it, is it's own whole post and strained intercostal muscles, which led to a prescription of nice high-powered drugs).

The good news, though, is that Karen is back at work.  She came back last Friday, and is working her regular schedule this week.  It's really great to have her back.  She's doing as well as can be expected, which is good, but it still makes me sad; she told me that she cries her eyes out each night before she goes to bed.  It's only natural, but it's heart-wrenching.  Even so, she's coping pretty well at work.  And it's really nice to have her and her sense of humour back with us.

Lastly, I'm envious of Mom and Dad.  They abandoned the puppy--to be left at home, in the care of an apparently very nice British woman who's house/dog sitting--and headed off to Napa Valley for a week.  They're staying in the same B&B that Adam and I stayed in for our honeymoon, and are actually staying in what was supposed to be our honeymoon room (we were upgraded because there were "plumbing problems").  Monday they went to Conn Creek and blended their own wine--as Adam and I recommended, because it's the most awesome experience ever--and last night were supposed to go to La Toque, where Adam and I also ate, and was also fabulously delicious.  I am most envious, and both Adam and I want to go back to Napa (actually, we've decided we want to move there, but that's down the road).

I'm tired of writing, so I will abandon you all for now.  Again.

In lieu of blogging about the explosion down the street...

...I give you these pictures of capybaras.  Why?  Because they're the most awesome creatures on the planet (well, after hippos and pygmy hippos and Faith).  They're giant rodents.  Seriously.  They're huge.

And because I mentioned them, here are some pictures of hippos, followed by some pygmy hippos.

And to end with, my puppy girl.  She's extra adorable for your love (and for treats).

Weird coincidences

Well, really only one weird coincidence in this case. But Adam's watching 1408, so in my head it's multiplied. I'm not watching 1408 because a) I've already seen it, and much as I love Samuel L. and John Cusak, the movie isn't all that great and b) it's not a great movie, but it is after midnight and I'll probably be freaked out if I watch it and then go to bed.

But I digress. My weird coinkidink is that almost exactly a year ago, I split my head open on a wrought iron curtain frame in Scotty's Castle (like a shutter, but inside, with the curtains attached to it). It bled a whole lot, as head wounds tend to. Particularly when you slam them with rather a lot of force into the corner of a piece of wrought iron. I didn't need stitches, but I did need to fill out a nice government accident report form. Let me tell you how not popular I was with my supervisor: he hated paperwork--luckily, Beth the office manager/tour guide/awesome person extraordinaire did everything except sign his name.

So that happened almost a year ago. Yesterday evening a spot on my head started hurting, and had a slight bump. Nothing too bad, but you know, the kind that you poke at to try and figure out why it hurts (usually because you kept poking at it). To my credit, it started hurting before I poked at it, and I don't even remember how I found it. It was just this evening that I remembered last year and where on my head the injury was. I'm sure it's the same spot, just not sure why it hurts now.

Still, kinda cool in a weird, head-injury sort of way.

And in other random health-related news, my teeth suck. I think a filling came out. It doesn't hurt, but I know I'm not supposed to keep a supply of 3 raspberry seeds in my molar (they were jammed in). Luckily, I have a cheap knock-off of those evil pokey metal hook things that dentists use, so I can remove stuff from the hole. No, that is not how my filling came out. Also, my teeth are badly stained; I blame the water here, even though everyone says I'm wrong, but I brush my teeth and take care of them. Namely because I don't have dental insurance, and fillings are expensive, as are x-rays. And cleanings.

And for the final bit of health news, Faith had a blood workup to renew her heartworm/flea medication (all in one tasty beef-flavour coated pill...that she sucks the flavouring off of and spits out), and apparently everyone commented on how pretty she is (true!) and well-behaved (well, she doesn't wee or try to bite people at the vet, so...). And apparently she is nice and healthy :) Yay! Wish I were. Between my teeth and shot knees/ankles (I've taken up Wii Fit jogging) I'm just fan-damn-tastic.

No links for movies and such tonight. I'm lazy. Sorry.

Why won't the Fates stop messing with me?

More on this next week when I can write more.  But seriously, I swear that higher powers, fate, whatever just like confusing my life for fun.  Remember boys and girls, it's not paranoia when they are actually all out to get you.

And in a slight bit of funny/sad news, Faith got her head stuck under my bed today.  I'm not quite sure how it got under there in the first place since her nice bed with walls is in my room this week.  Yet somehow, it did, and then when she woke up she couldn't remove it, I think because her head first went over the side of her bed, and then under my bed frame.  So that was a bit exciting for a moment.  But then she freed herself.  And looked very confused when she finally appeared.

I'm on my way...

I cannot deny that I'm excited to be moving back to the UK and to live with the boy.  Since I've made that decision, I've had to make a rather large number of other decisions.  The first one takes effect tomorrow, and I view it as a mixed blessing.  Because Greenhill needed to provide firm dates for my replacements (instead of the vague "end of January, beginning of February" that I had been feeding them), last week was my last week doing the KEZI Pet of the Week gig.  I'm sad that I no longer will be spending time with doggies who need homes, but it is nice to not have to get up at 5:30am.  And I do have a wonderful puppy of my own (who's asleep in my bed next to me right now).  Even so, it's a little sad knowing that I won't be actively working (in this way) to help these wonderful dogs get homes.

In other news, an early happy birthday to my mother, who turns an undisclosed age on Wednesday (her birthday present from me is cocktails at a local martini bar and parts to fix the dishwasher...lame, but what she wants), and also happy birthday to my darling Faith, who turns 3 right around now.  The real date for us to celebrate her is July 24, which is when she first came to live with us.  But happy birthday to both of them :)

Oh, and if I liked babies half so much as I love, adore, and dote on Faith, I'd be a fantastic mother.  Too bad I dislike babies.  Kids aren't quite so bad.

Slight Stumble

So I did achieve two days of research and writing after my last post.  It fell apart last night, not out of desire, but out of having too much shit to do and needing to go to bed early.  I failed on the early bedtime miserably, but had I stayed up to write anything I would have failed even more dramatically.

What was I doing, you ask?  (Ok, maybe you don't ask, but as this is my blog, I shall tell you whether you wish to hear it or not)  Because we celebrate both Xmas Eve and Xmas Day (I don't go in for the whole Christ bit, sorry), I needed to get some presents sorted.  This meant cooking, and I didn't have a chance to get into the kitchen until after supper last night.  As Adam and Ms. Luther and her husband will tell you, suppers at my house are a long, involved, and drawn-out affair.  So about 8pm I finally was able to start making reheatable lasangas and other casseroles for my grandparents.  Both my paternal grandmother and my maternal grandparents are in the mid-to-late eighties, so they neither need nor want much of anything.  However, they do still need to eat, and age makes it difficult for them to cook.  So I make nice tasty reheatable foods for them on a semi-regular basis.  That took me up until about 10pm, when I then had to take a shower.

As for why I had to get to sleep early?  Well, I had to get up early.  If you don't already know why I have to get up at 5:30am on Tuesdays, check this out.  Faith is my personal favorite (she's mine! and there was an outbreak of kennel cough that week), but Noah was also fantastic.  And Abby.  But I like pitbulls :)

Winter Wonderland

And of course, no winter wonderland would be complete without idiot drivers who think that 4x4 means they can drive fast on ultra-packed snow. But I digress.

It's less pretty here than it was late Sunday night and yesterday morning, but it's still kinda pretty, and there's more snow predicted for tomorrow. The puppy is having fun in the snow, though she seemed to have more fun last year. But if it snows again tomorrow, it'll be deeper and she'll probably enjoy that more. For some reason she really likes having to work to get through it. I think it might be the pit bull and rottweiler in her--she liked using her chest to push through it. And to be fair, we like it when she has to work harder, since it means she burns off more energy.







And from last year's snowfall, possibly's Faith's first snow. Certainly her first winter with us.

Safe and Sound Part II

So Adam has safely made it back to the UK. I'm glad his journey back home was easier than the one to get here, but I still miss him terribly. But we did have a good time while he was here, and lots of talks about the future, our finances, and so forth. We still don't have much of anything set in stone, but the current hope is that I will be heading out there in a couple of months.

I'm not really sure there's much other news, other than I saw a friend of my from elementary and high school a couple of days after Thanksgiving. Adam and I were walking Faith, and making loud, pointed comments to people who let their dogs shit in public and not clean it up (that's a $180 fine here in Lane County, Oregon, by the way), and we ended up in the new park that's been put in near my house. I saw a guy with a dog--who wasn't pooing--and he looked really familiar; it turned out it was my friend Shelley's father. So I talked to him for a bit, as well as her sister Kelsey (who has a cute guy), and then Rhonda (Shelley's mom) came over because Dale wasn't interested in watching his grandson (!!!) swing for the first time. Turns out that not only is Shelley married, which I did know, but she had a baby boy back in July. And she's already lost all her baby weight. Always had a freakishly high metabolism, though. She's also eating meat again, which I was somewhat glad to hear. Not for any reason other than it's probably healthier for her and the baby right now.

In general, it was really great to see her. We really haven't seen each other or spoken since we graduated from high school, so it was nice to reconnect--and to find out that she didn't go to our 10 year reunion either (nor did another friend, who was past her due date at that point). Hopefully we'll all end up at our 20 year reunion. But we've got 10 more years for that, so no point in worrying about it right now :)