LOOK!

New photos! over there on the right! A couple new dog photos, a couple added to ephemeral and many added to craftin! see the dino purse, the turtle parade and the little bunnies!
Finally, photos to love and share

the gift

My mother has a friend, Susie that dyes and spins yarn. If you go to her site you can see some of her beautiful handiwork. I particularly like the ‘irises’ and the ‘baby so blue’.
When I got home last night I found a package waiting for me. It was quite unexpected. It was from Susie, who I had met once last fall. Insid the envelope was was a beautiful skein of yarn, hand dyed in vivid candy shades of pink and blue. It’s a very lightweight super wash merino wool. She sent me 1100 yards. I have a skein of hand dyed super wash merino wool that measures 1100 yards! Go to your yarn store and see how many yards are in a typical skein of high quality yarn!
1100 yards of yarn would pass over a football field 11 times! 1100 yards would pass over me 660 times! 1100 yards would kick your mom’s ass and FEEL NO REMORSE!!!!
I immediately pulled out my pattern books to find something worthy of such yarn. I’m still looking though I do have some ideas brewing in my head. Most certainly, this yarn will not be made into gifts. I’m feeling greedy, I want to keep things for me!

PHOTO

I finally got some photos posted!
a new ephemeral photo
a few new photos of the dogs
AND the chenille scarf and the much anticipated robot scarf.
Take off your pants, click the icon on the right side of the page and revel in the new photo glory!
Note to Jason, the robot end of your scarf is complete, if you want it to say something other than beep! please let me know ASAP. Anyone else want a robot scarf? It’ll cost you. email me for details.

Catsup…ketchup

So, my laptop is still broken which means I still have to use David’s computer. David’s computer is in the basement and with our local temps reaching close to absolute zero, I hate venturing into the basement to use it. Hell, I hate even going down there to do laundry!
Instead of the bulleted list or the endless paragraphs of “first I did this then I did this and then this” I’ll try to break is down into subjects and you can just skip ahead to the subject that interests you most.
Dogs
Maddie’s definitely on the road to recovery. Every day she becomes a happier and more responsive dog. As such, she’s not putting up with Chester’s exuberant shit anymore. It’s good for the little dogs to get their asses kicked sometimes. They scrabble and wrestle and chase each other around. The massively cold temps make it hard for them to spend any time outside, the dog park is definitely out for now. Chester especially is going a little stir crazy. He has class tonight, hopefully that will wear him out a bit.
I’m terrible at homework, I always have been. I can test well and I learn stuff pretty quickly, I just hate homework. Even easy community ed dog obedience class homework. I hate doing it. Today I will hurriedly make up dog training journal entries for the past week. I suck. But I just can never do homework.
Superbowl
Went to April’s for the Superbowl this year. I’d say the first 14 seconds were way exciting, the rest was just meh. Dang yo, that girl can throw a superbowl party. She stuffed us full of snacks including trashy velveeta dip (the kind with the chili) til we were ready to burst then at half time she and Keith broke out the handmade sausages from Kramarczuk’s and went out on the deck to grill them. It’s 80 billion below and Keith’s out there grilling. To cover the sausages they offered up kraut, and Keith’s wonderful 9 chili chili! I totally wanted to pukify. I’m fat for a reason and I love it.
But it doesn’t end there, no it doesn’t. My sister produced one of the best apple pies I’d ever eaten. Seriously, if ever I need a pie for an occasion, I will go to her.
After the Superbowl they indulged me and we watched the Puppy Bowl. The Puppy Bowl is simultaneously the greatest and most retarded thing on television. Take a room, fake it out to look like a football stadium, hire some cheap actor to pretend to be a ref and fill the place with puppies. It’s like 2 hours of puppies playing. There was a kitty half time show that sort of looked like a dirty titty bar, they should have called it the Pussy Half Time Show, but whatever. During the halftime show we watched the World’s Strongest Man competition and we watched gigantic Swedes flipping cars and running with torpedos. Then back to the Puppy Bowl to watch the cutest puppies do stupidly cute things. I think my favorite was the French Bulldog who was too snooty to play and only peed on the logo midfield.
After that, I waddled home, took two shits and died. That’s how these things happen.
Pancakes
If you keep mentioning pancakes over and over you can convince your boyfriend that you will die without pancakes and he will agree to take you to pancakes. Then you have to convince him that the only pancakes you can eat are OPH pancakes. Nothing else will do. Nothing even comes close to the OPH pancakes and you are willing to stand in the super crowded lobby for 45 hours to get the pancakes. He will agree because he’s a good egg and he won’t even realize you have ulterior motives!
The pancakes were excellent, of course. I do love me some OPH on a Saturday. The ulterior motive was that OPH is by Joann Fabrics, purveyor of cheap mass market yarn. As opposed to my Local Yarn Shop (LYS) which has a plethora of beautiful but super expensive yarns.
Craftin
With the bevy of new yarn I made a prototype robot scarf for Levi (pictures soon), a super dense ribbed chenille scarf for April (pictures soon) and I am working on a second robot scarf for Jason and another fat pink bunny for a baby in California!
Still working on the lacy beaded scarf, but I needed a break from that. The work is tedious and progress is slow.
In the hopper, a dinosaur purse, a godzilla scarf, a monster scarf, a totally different flower purse.
Work
My boss threatened to call a department meeting and have me voted off the island. In response I pointed out that I only need to show up with a platter of maple nut sticky rolls and I’d win. Also, in retalliation for his betrayal of my heart, I told everyone that his birthday is tomorrow. Threaten me and I’ll jack you big time.
Of course, now he’s all “let’s form an alliance and split the money!”.
Sex
Valentines Day is coming up and I’m so psyched (can I still say PSYCHED? do the cool kids still say that? Is there a different hip work I should be using? I never know.). I am one of those truly irritating people that loves Valentines day so very much. I don’t know why. I don’t usually go for Hallmark cutesiness or anything, but I love candy hearts and paper flowers and special dinners. So, the dilemma is that I need to dye my hair and I was thinking of doing green streaks but someone pointed out that I should do pink for Valentine’s Day and save the green for St Patrick’s day. I don’t really care about St Patrick’s day, so being green for that isn’t really a goal and also, I usually don’t go for color coordinating things.
So I guess I’m going for green.
Ponderings
Every time I go to Blockbuster I see a DVD for a guy called Larry the Cable Guy and in this movie he is a health inspector. I’m so fucking confused about this. Why is a cable ‘guy’ working as a health inspector? Are health inspectors allowed to wear ripped, sleeveless flannel shirts? I would think there would be some sort of dress code to be a health inspector. But why does he call himself a cable guy if he is a health inspector??? What the fuck is this? The best I can figure is that his true calling is to install cable but it doesn’t have good health benefits so he has to be a health inspector which doesn’t pay well but does have health insurance. With the two jobs he is able to make enough money to live on and maintain and modicum of health.
I would like to believe that the movie itself is a commentary on the absurdity of living in one of the wealthiest nations with one of the best healthcare systems and not actually being able to access it because you somehow have not “earned” enough money.
Sadly, I think I am wrong.

watch me…

I know I talk about my dogs too much, but yeah, they’re cool. Also…other things
1) tonight Chester started his obedience training. He’s smart, he took to it right away. He also started to calm down and not be so scared of other dogs. By the end, he was wanting to follow the dogs around. Not ready to ‘play’ with the dogs, but at least he wanted to be by them.
2) practicing his training at home means a million tiny cut up treats. it also means maddie gets many treats as well. It’s been a good day for them.
3) Pierce Fleming, International Vet of Mystery called me today to follow up on Maddie and see how she was doing (he actually made the follow up call, he didn’t just say he would). We discussed her drugs and adjusted doses accordingly. Also, Dena told him that I call him the IVoM and sent him the url. Hi Dr Fleming!!
4) Maddie is actually getting better. sometimes you know your dog is miserable but it slowly fades into place and you don’t realize just HOW miserable they are until they start to get better and suddenly they are BETTER. She’s brighter, more responsive, she wants to play with chester. There was a point last month where I was looking at her and trying to weigh her quality of life. Just how miserable and in pain was she? Was this ever going to get better? Is it fair to never feel relief from this pain. It was a really hard time, a terrible thing to have to think about. I only want my dogs to be happy and comfortable. Pierce Fleming, IVoM, might just make that possible for me.
5) April’s friend Nate was on Jeopardy today! Weird! I think he won. I’ll have to go over to my sister’s and watch the tape.
6) I’m making robot scarves, beaded scarves and little beaded bags. I can’t work on the finger puppets until I get that yarn untangled from when Chester got ahold of it.
wooo I need me some dinner and some sleep.