Serious case of the Mondays...

I'm fairly certain there is nothing worse than the looming dread of facing another work week that settles in on a Sunday night....except maybe a Monday morning where you went to bed at 1:30 and dreamt about how much you just don't think you can make it through another work week...and pores. I dreamt about pores too (sidenote:In my dream I was looking in the mirror and was like "whoa! My pores are huge!" And then jumped into them through the mirror. I'm fairly certain Biore Pore Strips have expanded their marketing to include subliminal dream implants).


Anyhoo...

We had a BBQ for my birthday on Saturday and while setting a date for a party can be great motivation to get some projects done on the house...it's EXHAUSTING! We'd been working steadily (think 9 hours last Saturday, 8 hours on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights after work until midnight) in order to finish the living room before our BBQ this past Saturday and my only plan for Sunday was to do nothing. Well, not the only thing. My agenda looked like this:

-wake up
-eat breakfast
-do nothing
-nap
-eat lunch
-do nothing
-go to my birthday dinner with Chris

It was everything I hoped it could be and more. I can almost get a glimpse into the future of having no looming home improvement projects and being able to *gasp* relax! I'll have pictures of the living room and party picts probably tomorrow since my Sunday apparently didn't include "upload picts and blog". I know you're probably devastated. Try not to cry.

Where arrrrrrrrr you going with those diamonds??

I was recently approached by an up and coming comic book artist to document my after hours crime fighting adventures. Oh! You weren't aware I was a superhero? Oh yes. Sometimes I like to dress up....and fight crime as my alter ego:

My boss called this "not really working"...

As I drove in to work this morning all my usual street parking spots were taken up by film trucks and crew vans. I figured it was something being shot in our "studio", but the amount of people, equipment and organization made it obvious is was something else. Then we (I've been giving my friend a ride to work while he figures out funeral plans for his car) noticed a Dunder Mifflen sign. Hey! They're shooting and episode of The Office in the parking lot next door!

So I took some mildly stalker like photos from the window of our building...

See! This is the crew!

And look!

My very own Steve Carrell!

See! Can you see him?! He's that short dude in the middle wearing a black mismatched suit. Ok, so that could be any short dude in a mismatched suit....but I promise you, it's him. Damn you iphone and your lack of a camera with a zoom!!!

Maestro? The banjo please.

Our neighbor to the left has a perfectly manicured lawn. Our theory is that just before we moved in he must have completely reseeded his lawn, because there is an even layer of blemish free grass carpeting his front yard. It's a sight to behold, really, and I've started to feel incredibly guilty for our blatant neglect of our front yard. We've been so focused on working to improve the interior of our house that we just felt the front yard could wait. We don't even own a lawn mower yet, so we figured we'd just wait until there was an overgrowth of grass...turns out we'll be waiting a long time for the grass since there's none to speak of. In an effort to bring down property values throughout the entire neighborhood we've established a thriving weed population. I'm not sure if there is a tool known as a "weed mower" (weed whacker you say? Hmmmm) but if such a fancy tool exists we may need to purchase one.

"Legalize weed!", they say.

Just for an extra bit of mustard on the sandwich, the screen door we took down the day we moved in is still sitting happily on our front porch. Oh god. We're THOSE neighbors.

I've got a code in by dose.

Just as I was getting back into my running and working out routine last week... this week I feel like this:

Not that I'm wearing a suit and fancy hat....nor do I have a similarly dressed buddy sharing my congested pain sitting next to me at the moment(I'm hoping maybe later), but this was the best picture I could find to describe how I feel. I couldn't find a picture that encompassed the achy feeling, but I think we all understand. 

If I believed that taking a decongestant would do anything other than make me feel sleepy and/or wired at the same time I would haul ass to my local drug store. Instead I'll continue popping vitamin C and use my blog as a way to seek sympathy for my sucky cold that makes me not want to go running despite the consequences...which are that my dog will pace the living room all night making me feel guilty for neglecting his own exercise needs because "HELLO I'M TRAPPED IN THE HOUSE ALL DAY LONG BY MYSELF, MOMMY!" To which I will look at him and say "go do that crazy running around the tree and digging thing you do to release excess energy. You have my permission. Go dig". I'm an excellent mom....the prime example being when Indy was whining because Chris had left the room this morning to *gasp* take a shower and ohmygoddaddymightnotcomebackeverywherediddaddygomommyyouhavetogetupbecausedaddyleftus! this morning and I sat up and yelled "Indy! Shut the fuck up!".

Why St. Patty's Day Can Suck It.

Shortly after we discovered I was allergic to artificial food coloring, I was in either Kindergarten or 1st grade and the teachers called us all in to the gym for a St. Patty's day party. As we walked in we saw a long fold out table set up with green decorations. At each place setting was a green sugar cookie with green icing and green sprinkles....And next to the plate?...A tall ice cold glass of green milk. Everyone took their place at the table and began to dive into their green treats. I...was handed a dixie cup (with cartoon characters on it) and pointed towards the water fountain.

The answer is.....(drumroll)

Alrighty....for all you those waiting with bated breath...wringing your hands in sweaty anticipation of the answer to the math problem.....

I'll tell you tomorrow.

Just kidding. It's 10,990.

You'd be surprised how many people don't get this...

So I guess I've lost a little bit of steam in the posting every day thing....I do apologize to my adoring fan. I guess there's just not much to say and I've been a little preoccupied with changes here at work and sorting out the dramatic lives of my friends. So I'll give you all a nice little game to play while I come up with something interesting to say. Sort of a "look at this shiny thing!" (*scurries away*)

Normally this little math problem comes with a spreadsheet that is password protected. The answer is the password. But that doesn't work very well on a blog so I'll just provide you with the answer later.

This is a 5th grade math problem. This is not a trick question. So the answer isn't "buses have no legs!" or "the front legs of a cats are called arms!".

There are 7 girls in a bus.

Each girl has 7 backpacks.
In each backpack, there are 7 big cats.

For every big cat there are 7 little cats.

Question: How many legs are there in the bus?

** The bus has no driver. (he jumped out just before the bus drove off a cliff. don't worry, the cats make it out just fine.)

Awkward Life Moment #16,278

When you enter into a single person public bathroom only to find it stinky as all hell. But you have no choice, so you use it. Then when you exit there's someone waiting to go in right after you...and you just KNOW they think you funked the place up.

Yea. That IS awkward. Glad that's never happened to me!....at work....where I see that person all the time.

Weekend Warriors

Work began this weekend on finally fixing up the living room. We had sort of burned ourselves out with the buying of a new house, moving in, fixing up the bedroom and bathroom and we had been using the last few weekends to entertain family and friends as well as just relax. 

But I put an end to all that relaxing by having a minor freakout that we were going to spend the rest of eternity with mint colored walls accented by spackled holes and baseboards that weren't actually attached to the walls and insisted we get to work. We didn't get anywhere close to being done, but we made significant progress and I think one more weekend of working and I'll be able to post some nice before/after photos. 

The upside is that this weekend gave me a good opportunity to work on my sanding skills.

Always wear your protective mask and safety sunglasses

Pop! Pop!

I don't have a terrible lot to report today...although I wanted to keep with my promise of posting every day. I came in to work today at 7am to make calls to South Africa and by 2:00 am hitting my 4pm slump. Ugh. Maybe it's time for a pop tart. Anyone that knows my slight obsession with high fiber foods will be able to understand how excited I was to find this!: 

They taste just like regular pop tarts but have less fat and more fiber! My coworkers brought in cheesecake for a birthday and I passed it up in favor of one of these suckers...which doesn't say a TON since I don't really care for cheesecake, but damn I do love brown sugar pop tarts.

Botany Fail

This is one of those kits where they provide you with the bulbs and soil and detailed two step instructions. It even says on the box "there is virtually no way to fuck this up". Nature really does all the work....and you should have a beautiful plant that looks like this:

...and yet I have proceeded to create this Frankenstein of a plant. I have no idea what I did.It started out in my kitchen, but I've moved it outside to see if that would help. It hasn't. It's not wilty or droopy. It's just growing like that...with little bits of dying sprinkled on top for an added kick to my maternal instinct. I should not be trusted to care for living things...namely children...I heard once that you don't even get two step instructions with them.

Heaven is a wagging tail.

I was reading through Post Secret and came across this "secret". I don't really believe in a heaven or a hell, but this idea makes me want to.

To Pinch or Not to Pinch.

Chris and I have made a somewhat controversial decision in terms of our doggy parenting. At approximately 90lbs of pure muscle and instinct Indy can be somewhat...ahem...of a challenge at times. We've worked so incredibly hard to train him and tame the supposedly domesticated beast within him and I think we've done a damn fine job of it. He knows a variety of party tricks ranging from "boxing" to "bowing" to a nice solid "high five". He waits for the OK to eat his food and if I tell him to leave it while he's eating, he'll stop and look at me for permission to continue. On walks he trots mostly right by my side trying hard to resist the urge to sniff and pee on every passing leaf, blade of grass or lamp post. The one thing we haven't seemed to conquer is his crazy behavior when encountering other dogs on walks. He used to be just fine.

When he was a puppy he was overly excited when he would see a dog, but with very little real FREAKING OUT involved. Last May(ish) when we had moved to the apartment Chris and I were taking him out for a walk when we were standing near a man with poor hygiene and his large german shepherd. The german shepherd took one look at me and Indy and started going NUTSO. No exaggeration this dog was incredibly aggressive and it was directed towards either me or Indy. Indy snapped. At the time we had just started using a choke collar on him and as he strained and snarled against the collar while Chris pulled back his eyes bulged and I saw a side of my sweet little shmoopy head that I had never really seen. The owner of the other dog mumbled something about that being typical for his dog and walked across the street. This was not typical for Indy. He was clearly provoked and being protective. I'm not 100% sure this is what triggered his recent behavior but after that incident I noticed a change. When we walk by a house and a dog starts barking and going crazy behind a fence Indy lunges and barks back.


If we pass a house with a passive quiet dog he's fine...he may be interested in playing but he'll stay cool. We've seen an in house trainer (who came to the house, stayed for 3 hours, did not take Indy out and then charged us $75. awesome. thanks.) and have taken him to group "Good Citizenship Training" class. He did really well and was even mostly fine with the other dog in the class, but we decided to postpone the final test until this spring.

So back to my point...we made the decision this weekend to try using the prong collar with Indy. 

We started off with just the traditional leash and collar for him and had a lot of success with traditional training methods when he was a smaller puppy. Then as he started to pack on the pounds and became much stronger than me we decided to try a gentle leader. I highly recommend the gentle leader for people with strong dogs since it takes the power out of any pulling they do. We decided for a brief while to try the simple slip/choke chain collar but when Indy saw a squirrel or another dog he wanted to play with he could drag me around wherever he wanted...resulting in some pretty gnarly injuries and me crying like a child while Chris cleaned gravel out of my gaping wounds and scraped knees.

Needless to say I went back to the gentle leader.

Over the weekend a good friend of mine brought her dog and her husband over for a play date and recommended the prong collar. I've been opposed to this method for a long time, but everything else we've tried doesn't seem to get through to our mutt. He's responsive until he sees another dog or feels threatened. So far I have mixed feelings about it. The collar makes him MUCH more responsive and most of the time he just needs to hear the sound of the chain and will move back in line. Not to mention he's much calmer. 

We had a big test last night as we were about 30 minutes into our 40 minute walk we passed a house with a guard dog who started barking his ass off the minute we walked by. Indy lunged and growled. I corrected him and he still pulled. I'm not afraid of me hurting him. I'm afraid of him hurting himself. The collar is just supposed to pinch their neck, but as he pulled against the collar and let out a whimper, my heart broke in two. But I didn't back down. I gave the collar a firm snap and told him to heel. He obeyed. He wasn't pulling as hard as he would with any other collar and I had much more control. His neck didn't even show a mark and with all that extra skin and fur he wasn't hurt, but I'm sure he felt it. I know the point is to simulate the firm "you better behave" snip of a mother, but when I heard that little guy whimper as he pulled I cringed and when he finally fell in line I scratched his neck and chest and showered him with praise.

I have confidence that this may be the key to communicating with him and correcting his behavior and we're using it correctly and conservatively, but I can't help but hold on to those feelings that a metal chain with prongs all over it is just cruel and I hope we're doing the right thing. Ick. 

"I don't understand what all the fuss is about." 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....OH HI!! Sorry....just a little sleepy today. 

I decided over the weekend that I need to be better about posting on this blog. So...I came up with a new resolution. I'm going to post something every day....ok...I take that back. I'm going to TRY to post something every day. I make no promises as to what you'll see here...but there will be something. I debated whether I should make this a 40 days of lent thing and commit to it for that amount of time, but that seemed strange since I'm not religious and the only reason I even noticed it was lent was because someone brought in treats for Fat Tuesday. It is lent right? 

So the point of this post is...

I haven't had a vacation in almost 10 years. The closest I've gotten is a long weekend in Yosemite with T and N, but I don't think that really counts since two of the days were spent mostly in the car driving to and fro. (yes. fro).

So I've been perusing airlines and various travel websites for ideas and prices on a nice long vacation. I'm thinking sometime in June and taking a whole week. The problem I have is that since I don't vacation and don't travel anywhere fun for work I have no idea where to go. Before I open the floor to suggestions here are the criteria:

*sun and beaches. somewhere tropical or tropicalish (not mexico. too dangerous right now, plus I'm not about to ruin this one vacation with a bad case of Montezuma's revenge).

*relaxing, but with activities if we so desire (ie snorkeling, caves, hiking, or just

sitting on a beach)

*affordable. I'm well aware that vacations are expensive (that's why i haven't taken any), but I'm looking for a good deal. Most bang for my buck here.

Ok. Here is where I ask the intranets for advice...where have you gone? where have you stayed? would you go again? was it worth it?