Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Playdate

Last weekend since Tina and Tom were here for their Engagement party, Belle got to spend the weekend with us! All three of the dogs pretty much sleep for a week straight after spending time together because they just go go go... Bailey was too elusive and frisbee obsessed for me to get a shot, but here are the other two:






And notice the size difference from 9 months ago when Belle was here, same pool, different color:
He used to be the same size as Belle! Yeah, not so much anymore.

Oh Warrick Brown... I'm ashamed to share a last name with you

'CSI' co-star Gary Dourdan arrested for drugs

By DERRIK J. LANG, AP Entertainment Writer



LOS ANGELES (AP) — "CSI" co-star Gary Dourdan was arrested Monday for possession of narcotics and dangerous drugs, police said. The 41-year-old actor was found asleep in his car by the Palm Springs Police Department, authorities said.

An officer saw Dourdan's car parked on the wrong side of the street with the interior light on and someone sleeping in the driver's seat at approximately 5:12 a.m. Monday, according to Palm Springs police Sgt. Mitch Spike.

The officer described Dourdan as disoriented and possibly under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The officer arrested Dourdan after locating suspected cocaine, heroin, Ecstacy, miscellaneous prescription drugs and paraphernalia. Dourdan was released on $5,000 bail at 10:30 a.m. Monday. A court date was not immediately scheduled.

Dourdan has played crime scene investigator Warrick Brown on CBS' "CSI" since 2000. Several celebrities were in town for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in nearby Indio, Calif. It was not immediately clear whether Dourdan attended the event.

Representatives for Dourdan did not immediately return phone calls Tuesday.

***************************************************

Ahh, Warrick, after all the second chances Grissom has given you have you learned nothing? I'm so ashamed. And you better get it together before this affects my weekly CSI fix. Also, $5,000 bail? Granted I've never been arrested for drug possession, but it seems like thats cheap after finding cocaine, heroin, Ecstacy, and miscellaneous prescription drugs and paraphernalia. Oh well, what do I know.

Yet one more reason families should have dogs...

Hair of the dog keeps children’s allergies at bay

Growing up with a pet lowers kids' risk to asthma, hay fever, study says

LONDON - Having a dog in the house reduces the risk that young children will develop allergies, German researchers said on Tuesday.

The finding, based on a six-year study of 9,000 children, lends weight to the theory that growing up with a pet trains the immune system to be less sensitive to potential triggers for allergies like asthma, eczema and hay fever.

Just why this should be is unclear but scientists believe youngsters may get beneficial early exposure to germs carried into the house on the animal’s fur, which helps their immune systems develop.

“Our results show clearly that the presence of a dog in the home during subjects’ infancy is associated with a significantly low level of sensitization to pollens and inhaled allergens,” said Joachim Heinrich of the National Research Centre for Environmental Health in Munich.

The same protective effect was not seen in children who had frequent contact with dogs but did not have one at home.

Previous studies have suggested that exposure to pets may have a protective effect against allergies but many of these studies were based on retrospective questioning of subjects about their exposure.

Heinrich’s study, by contrast, was designed before the data was collected. Experts consider such prospective studies make for more reliable results.

Parents answered detailed questionnaires about possible allergic symptoms in their children, from birth to the age of 6, and blood samples were also taken from a third of the group to test for antibodies to common allergens.

The group’s findings were published in the European Respiratory Journal.

100th



Ooooh, the big 100th post! Thanks for sticking with me so long. To celebrate, we had a little earth quake as I sat down to write this. A 3.9 in Atascadero, about 15 miles south of here. I was talking on the phone with someone from UPS and she was like "wow, it sounds like a party over there," and I told her, "oh, we're in CA and just had a little earthquake... people always get all excited and start guessing how big they thought it was." Um, I think she was going to pass out. OBVIOUSLY it wasn't that bad or I would have hung up lady!
Oh, give me an earthquake over a tornado any day. Or a monsoon. What are those all about?

Monday, April 28, 2008

Monday's can bite me.

Fabulous things so far today:

1.My sister Addy spent a few nights with us last week and forgot her school bag. Which means I had to drop it off today. Before I had to be at work. At 6:30AM.

2. I stayed up till midnight last night writing two essays that we have to write on a history test tonight. I thought if I did them in advance I could study them throughout the day and actually be prepared... yeah, left them both at home.

3. I had to cram drive time, lunch, and a trip to Michaels into a 30 minute lunch break.

4. Ms. Cashier Twelveyearold at Michael's refused to accept $4.25 worth of coins as a valid form of payment. Um, last time I checked that was still a legal form of tender... okay, I'll use my credit card...

5. Cashier Canbitemyass also will not accept a passport as a form of ID for said credit card? What? Nor will she call the manager because there is a line... so, not only was that whole thing embarrassing. I didn't have time to eat because of it. Also I would like to say that it was mostly quarters i was giving her, and a few dimes... not like 425 pennies or anything....

5. The power is out in our panama office which means I have to do everything by phone instead of email. This means I have to use my wonderful *cough cough* spanish speaking skills. Try that on topamax.

6. Its only 1:09 pm which means this day can still get a whoooooooole lot worse.

Where is the alcohol when you need it?

Buddy... sit... good boy!

Since my life is so boring and all I ever do is sit around, watch TV, and sleep, I decided that what I really needed was a dog obedience class to keep me busy on Thursday nights. Just kidding, but Beth wanted to take one and I thought it would be something fun to do and good for the dogs to have a refresher course. So, I drew mental straws and Buddy won. I figured, piece of cake, he knows all this stuff already, he can just practice it in front of all the puppies as distractions....

Beth was a little worried that her lab puppy Diego was going to be the unruly one in the class and she would be kicked out... or something like that. So, I worked for 2 weeks on training Buddy to get super excited when he saw the other dogs in the class and how to rip my arm out of the socket trying to get to them whine and pull to go play. That way if Diego did act out, no one would notice because Buddy is so much bigger and louder. Just kidding, but man was I shocked and embarrassed the first class. Looking back I think he probably saw all the grass and dogs and thought "dog park, lets play!" but still, no excuse.

Also, I think that the excitment to go see the other dogs is what Jerad experienced when he said that Buddy wanted to eat them at the vet. Because the whining turned into barking/grumbling which could have been perceived as growling. He did calm down... sort of... and I guess its a good thing we did enroll in the class so he can be reminded of his manners in front of other pups. Here are some pics from the first class:











He already knows the commands... now we just have to reinforce him obeying them in front of all the other dogs and owners. After everyone left, he calmed down and turned back into his normal, obedient self. I think he just didn't get the memo about "training" and thought it was more of a "meet and greet."

The second class went much better. Our class was so large that they split it in half, so way less stimulating. Also the dogs finally got to start socializing so hopefully that took some of the pressure off. I had Addy with me and she took a turn giving him the commands as well. There was no more trying to pull my arm out of the socket, but there was still some whimpering. Probably the dog equivalent to pulling on my sleeve and repeatedly asking "mom, can I play?' mom, can I play?" Still, a definite improvement.

After class Beth and Tyson had a date with the Walmart so they dropped Diego off at our house. I was kind of unsure how he would get along with Bailey because he is sort of dominant and hyper and she doesn't have the best tolerance for that type of thing. I let him play with Buddy for awhile and he was just a ball of jumping puppy energy. Finally I let Bailey out who seemed fine until he tried to jump on her. She barked and growled and he ran away like a little girl which was super funny because he probably outweighs her by like 15 pounds at least. After that they were great friends unless Diego tried to jump on ANYONE, me, Bailey, Buddy, Bailey would bark and bark and sound all scary and Diego would go back to being the perfect gentleman and I think he liked Bailey even more than Buddy... she is a bit closer to his energy level.

They ran around our yard and played in the kiddie pool for a long long time and much cuteness was had by all.






They were so fast it was really hard to get a clear shot...




Our back lawn looks a bit worse for wear and tear after a year of having the dogs run laps on it. I keep waiting for them to settle down before we fix it but I doubt that will happen any time soon. I guess we could lock them in the side yard on our house which is big enough for them to run back and forth but it seems so mean. I'd rather have a crappy back yard and happy mutts:)

The Lunch

About a month ago I posted this where I was freaking out about getting together with my ex mother in law... well, after a month of both her and I having to cancel because of busy schedules, we finally made it happen on Friday. I was a bit nervous... basically I freaked out all morning. I felt like I was preparing for date or job interview or something comparable... I totally stressed about my clothes/hair/makeup even though I normally could care less.

I also...should I admit this?.... no, its kind of embarrasing...okay, why not... "pride, what pride?" I actually made a list and went over "appropriate conversation topics" beforehand. In case things got awkward or something hopefully I would remember something from the list. The LAST thing I wanted to spend our time together talking about was my ex which is really the only thing that we had in common for like 7 and a half years. So, I had things like her upcoming grandbaby, my trip to panama, hawaii, my job, her quilting business she always wanted to start... you know, safe topics...

Everything went fine and I think she was just as nervous as I was because her hair was fixed also and she brought me a gift haha. It lasted 3 hours and we had no awkward moments. She did tear up a bit and tell me she loved me and missed me and we made plans to get together in about a month so she can see my cute little house. If I play my cards right my bathroom remodel might even be done by then, hmmm.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Tina and Tom's Engagement Party

Saturday was Tina and Tom's Engagement party. It was a blast. About 28 people ended up coming! I was pretty stressed because I have literally only had the weekends to work on getting ready for it, and the last two weekends were my sister's 21st b-day, and my friend Liz's 25th b-day... so, I had Friday evening (well we stayed up till 2:30 AM) and Saturday morning to get things together.

Saturday I woke up to a flat tire... and of course my car was already loaded FULL of stuff to bring to the house which all had to be taken out to get to the spare.... thanksabunch. After Jerad was nice enough to unload everything in my trunk and change my tire which made him miss a welding quiz in SLO, we discovered that for some reason this Altima didn't come with a full size spare... even though both of the Altima's I had before did. Same model. So I had to fit a tire repair into my morning as well.

Besides being stressed about the time factor, everything was good. The groceries showed up about 30 minutes before the guests were supposed to arrive, but the burgers were still done on time and no one complained.

Okay okay, on to the good part, the pics:


The yard before:





Larry setting up lanterns:And After:


I made these little guys:

And then found these at Michaels. Tina's fav flowers are daisies, and favorite color is green. I pretty much forgot a pic of the food, but we had burgers, salad, chips and salsa.
Some of the guests:






Oh, there we go, a pic of the food!
Later we played something like "The Newlywed Game." We picked 4 couples who had been dating/engaged/married for different lengths of time, separated the girls from guys, asked them questions, and who ever matched the most answers with their partner won.








This is Melinda a little mad that Larry got an answer wrong:And Larry thinking hard so that he gets the next one right:

Some of the questions that the guys had to answer were:
-What dollar amount is spent per month on hair, makeup, and shoes?
-What is the price of groceries per week?
-Who was your partner's best friend in highschool?
-How long after marriage should you wait to have children?
-What percentage of the diapers should the husband change?

And the girls:
-What dollar amount can be spent on recreational vehicles per year?
-What are your partners dream vehicles (limit 3)?
-Who was your partner's best friend in highschool?
-At what age was your partners first kiss?
-How many times a week should you be "intimate" with your partner?

some of the answers were pretty funny, but for the most part people were really close. We actually had to have I think 3 tie breaker rounds, but Tina and Tom won after answering "How many children, what genders, and what names?"

The dessert, chocolate cupcakes w/ chocolate frosting.
Homemade butter cake with homemade buttercream icing, whipped cream and strawberries.
Anabelle was a BIT excited:)



Alex:
I just need to take a minute to make a shout out to Alex and how much he totally ROCKS and scored me not 1, but FOUR PBR tickets for the fair this year. Besides the normal rodeo on Saturday, they are bringing in PBR on Sunday... So, Jerad, me, Taylor and Dom will def be there this year! Sooooooo excited!!!!! And not just in the stands, down in the corrals. Holy crap, I think I just peed myself. I may be a bit obsessed with Professional Bull Riding. Can it get any sexier? Oi. Even though I apparently pretended like I didn't know him 5 years ago when I waited on him in a cafe (bitch I know). Thanks Alex!!!
I was slightly in love with this wrapping job:
Tina is slightly in love with this one:

The girls:
Anyways, I think everything went well and I'm glad so many people made it. I'm pretty sure I might be looking forward to their wedding more than if it was me getting married... hmmm. Haha anyways, congrats guys and hope you make it home safe!