Wednesdays

I generally like Wednesdays. Not sure why, but I've always had a sort of bond with this day. Regardless of the fact that it's only the middle of the work week, and nothing good really ever happens on it... I still like the day. Today is one of those Wednesdays that I wish had already passed though. I'm working on doing validation on a new document management system at work. The people running this project are all located in California. Which means, when I start working on something at 8am, and I run into an issue, I have to wait until 11am to get an answer. This doesn't make validation easy. It also means that it's probably more useful for me to just come in 3 hours late and leave 3 hours late each day this week so I'm on west coast time with them. I'm frustrated with incompetant people leading projects. That's work news.

Other news: I got a new lens for my camera! We really don't have the extra money for it right now, but it was at Circuit City (which is going out of business this week here) and marked down for their liquidation sale.... So it was about 70% off of the original price. It's a telephoto lens (70-300mm), which I didn't have. And I needed one for weddings that are coming up. It isn't an IS lens, which is unfortunate (image stabilization), but I'll just have to learn to keep my hand steadier! :) Now if only it would warm up enough outside for me to go take pictures.... I tried to on Monday, but my hands froze within minutes - to the point of not being able to hold onto the camera. So much for steady hands!

Tequila is growing, still. She looks like a big puppy now. Still a massive fuzz ball and hyper. She doesn't listen when we call, but does know to stop what she's doing when we tell her "NO!"... it's a learning process. She doesn't get to go outside without a leash on because instead of coming to us when we call her, she runs towards us and past us, just out of reach.... and back and forth like it's a game. So until we break her of that, she gets to be on a leash. Chief enjoys that, because then he can get away from her.

So other than working too much and trying to reorganize our house (still), nothing else new to report....

Rearrangements

We had a rather uneventful weekend, which was very nice. Saturday we basically did nothing. We took the dogs for a very long walk in the park, went out to dinner, took a nap and watched a movie. Very nice, relaxing day.

Meagan came to visit Sunday morning, which brightened my weekend up. We went for breakfast, coffee and a nice chat. And then she had to leave due to the impending snow storm. One more reason I hate Buffalo! Then we had a birthday dinner for Guy's aunt with his family, which was fun.

...Afterwards we came home and decided, at 6 o'clock at night, that it would be a great idea to rearrange our house! We decided to switch our bedroom and our computer/library/office room. This consisted of moving everything from the computer/library/office room into our livingroom, washing the carpet, letting it dry, and then moving our bedroom furniture into the old office. We got that done by midnight, but the old bedroom is disasterous, and our livingroom is now crowded with all of our bookshelves (I have a few of those), 2 desks, a massage table and numerous other things from here and there.

I love how we have the bedroom set up now. Granted, it could be because it's cleaner, but I'd like to think it's because the room has better light and is set up nicer. Who knows. Hopefully it will be more conducive to sleeping than it was last night.... Due to the fact that our livingroom was packed full of everything, Tequila's crate was covered. So she spent her first night out of the crate. I don't think she liked it. She loves her crate and will go take naps in it throughout the day. So at about 4 am she woke up and was freaking out because she didn't really know where she was and didn't feel comfortable. I picked her up for a bit, just to let her know we were there and then put her back on her blanket on our floor.

That wouldn't have been too bad, because she did go back to sleep relatively easily. However, there were other issues that night... One of the fire alarms in the hallway outside our apartment must have a dying battery, because it will randomly beep. That in itself doesn't bother me. What bothers me is when Chief gets scared from the beeping and decides the way to make it stop, or at least alert me to the danger of the mysterious beeps, is to stand on top of my chest and breathe in my face. So at 1:30 and 2:30, I woke up to a dog standing on me. After I threw him off the bed the second time, he must have decided he wasn't getting anywhere with me... He climbed up on Guy's pillow and started pawing him in the face. Guy just pulled him down and cuddled with him. And that's when Tequila decided to wake me up... After finally getting her to sleep, and having Chief calm(er), I got about 2 hours of sleep (maybe) and had to get up. Not a fun night.

But today we get to finish the house rearrangement! And then, as Guy said, it will be like we have a new place to live!

winter blues

I hate winter. Have I mentioned that? I love the look of snow falling. I love the snow on the trees. I love the beauty of it. I even love the fun (sledding, snow ball fights, snowmen, etc). But even all of that love isn't enough to make me want put up with this. I can't stand the cold. It makes my fingers ache. I feel like I haven't been warm in 3 months and like I have Raynaud's Syndrome. Although, there are 12 other serious health issues that have cold hands as a common symptom. The interesting ones are Marine turtle poisoning and Naked brimcap poisoning. Since I haven't eaten any turtles or wild mushrooms lately, I've crossed those two off of my "potential disease" list. But I digress... Winter and I don't get along. It makes me hurt, and I make cruel statements about it for 7 months. So here I am in January, getting bitter about the negative temperatures (today's high is 14... the low is 4... and it's been much lower than that recently), and still having 4 more months of this.

Other than the temperature and ice, I'm doing well. The puppy (henceforth "Tequila") is growing fast. And she's quite a fiesty little one. She is in the process of learning (and relearning and relearning...) not to bite or growl or bark at us. She wants to play all the time (and particularily at 5 AM).... we're teaching her to "sleep in" till 7 as well. Chief has finally come around and has begun to play with her, which is adorable. But when he barks (playfully) she gets scared and runs and hides, only to stick her head out from under the chair and growl and bark at him... as long as she can get out of his reach quickly. But she's mine, and an adorable little ball of fluff and energy. I love her to death.

Last weekend we went on a wine tour with Guy's family (mom, sister, cousin and cousin's bf). It was an ice wine tour... I'm not a huge fan of ice wines. It tastes a little bit like drinking honey. But it was fun (and cold!). Guy and I got stopped at the border (we were in Canada) on our way home and they searched our car. Fun times. This next weekend my company is having their winter party. I'm trying to convince Guy to wear his kilt for it, but I'm having a hard time being persuasive enough... Although he has promised to wear it to our friends wedding in March that he's DJing (and I'm photographing).

Other than work and sleep, life is slow here in the Arctic. We're working on our summer travel plans, which I'm pretty excited about (July = wedding in PA, then NC for a week to check it out, and back home - hopefully incorporating visiting some friends in there as well). Until then, I think life will continue to be pretty slow...

End of September....

So "my" house sold. Sadness. It was on the market for over 6 months and then 15 minutes before our realtor called to schedule a showing, they accepted an offer on it. I was pretty sad for a bit, but it's just not meant to be. We looked at other houses, crossed all but one off our list and are now just kind of waiting. We both liked the last house we looked at. It's in our price range. It's in the town I want to live in (and was the only house we looked at in that town). It's HUGE and was kept up well (except needs a new roof), even though it was a foreclosure. It has a good sized yard... but we both feel like we should wait a little bit and see. Our realtor said he's going to do some background checking on it and get back to us with more info. So we'll see.

We have decided to move into Guy's cousins house. We took Chief over for a play date with the German Shephards again on Sunday. They were still curious about Chief, but by the end of the night they all calmed down and laid down. So that's good. It probably won't be till December, which made me realize we won't have Christmas in our own place this year... kind of sad, but oh well. Maybe next Christmas will be in our own house, which is even better!

We're headed to Philly next weekend (Oct 10th)... So if you're out there, reading this and want to see us, oh friends in Philly, let me know! We're coming down Thursday night (late-late) and staying till Sunday sometime. We'll be going to homecoming, which I've never done before. So let me know if you'll be around and want to get together!

Sculpture park and weekends

A few days ago we went to Sculpture Park, which is actually just a bunch of fields that these people decided to put random sculptures in sometime in the 70's, and which has now turned into an extremely modest tourist attraction, for those in this area that know about it... And are able to find it. It's down a bunch of back roads, misleading signs (at one intersection it tells you to turn both right and left to get there, with the bigger sign pointing to the right, but you have to actually turn left or you'll get completely lost), and then you come to what looks like another driveway, except there is this very large structure of crates piled on top of each other in the shape of an oval. That is how you get there. Then you wander around these fields full of statues. No maps are handed out (indeed, no one is there to even tell you it's open or closed... payment is on the honor system). There are some maps on plaques around the park, but not many... and some of the plaques don't even have maps on them. Regardless, the maps that are there don't help all that much... unless you are there with someone who has been there before, which I was!

Naturally, I took pictures... here are a couple of my favorites:

I'm having a problem uploading the rest... so more to come :)

I also photographed a wedding on Saturday and will be putting them on my wedding photography website, which is in complete "in process" stages and I haven't had the time to fix it up the way I'd like to... so take it as a practice and not as all I've done or am able to do... RSG Photography

Oh, also - Andrew and/or Don, you may or may not read this, but it will remind me later - I need your expertise, advise, wisdom and help (yes, all four of those)... should I mention I love you dearly?