Somebody's daddy gave him a funny haircut.

Finding ourselves to be too lazy to take the dog to the groomer every 6 weeks, as well as too cheap to continue spending several hundred dollars a year on baths and clips, we decided to try grooming Toby ourselves. A couple of weeks ago we bought clippers and a how-to video, and yesterday Sean began the grooming process while I spent a couple of hours at my office.

It's not a good sign when your husband greets you at the door with a sheepish "Ummmm, I'm sorry...". The dog was about half-shaved at that point, with some parts more shaved than others. (I may have to make some pants for him until the fur grows back, it's pretty obscene.) Between the puffy hair on his head and a few bald spots on his sides and back, Toby looked like Lyle Lovett with a bad case of mange. He was also visibly embarassed, which was not helped at all by my uncontrollable giggling.

Being the sympathetic "parents" that we are, we took pictures of this. Lots of 'em. To the right is a picture after I trimmed the top of his head. The gray spots on his side are bare skin. As you can see, his legs hadn't yet been trimmed. We'll be finishing the trimming over the next couple of days (and hopefully getting the hang of this thing), and Toby will be busy growing replacement fur for the next few weeks. If there's one thing that we can count on, it's that the fur WILL grow back!

June 23, 2002

It looks like the webhost switch is finally completed!

May 13, 2002

Greetings from HOME on a sunny Monday morning. I took vacation today partly to work on some home projects and partly to recover from last night's Cowboy Junkies concert. If you're not familiar with the Junkies, check out two albums in particular, The Trinity Sessions and Lay It Down, for good representations of their music. I've wanted to see them in concert since college, and now I have, yay! Good show, too.

My concert-going experience is fairly limited and if memory serves, it had been about 6 years since the last concert I attended, which was the 1996 HFStival. Last night's concert turned out to be a nice, mellow show, particularly on a rainy Sunday night after a full day of family acitivities. The vast majority of the audience appeared to be in the age range of about 28 to 34, with a smattering of folks in their early 20's and another few in their 50's or early 60's. Translation: the crowd was generally polite and focused on the music. There was a lot of silent swaying on the floor.

For a Junkies fan, this was a great show IMHO. Margo Timmins is really witty and skilled at segueing conversation into songs. There were two songs that I had hoped would be performed and I was somewhat disappointed when the show ended and neither "Angel Mine" nor "Sweet Jane" had come up. Silly me, I had forgotten about the encore! The very last song played was "Sweet Jane", a different variation than recorded on The Trinity Sessions (and on the "Natural Born Killers" soundtrack), and I liked it at least as well. I went home very happy.

Okay, time for the human behavior anecdotes... No matter where we go, if there's one jerk in the crowd, somehow that person ends up near us. There turned out to be two jerks at this concert, a guy and a woman in their early or mid-thirties who were THE ONLY PEOPLE STANDING IN THE BALCONIES. These people were about as wide as they were tall and occupied much more space than necessary---even the guy's baggy pants and the woman's frizzy hair were oversized. To simplify, I'll refer them "Meathead" (him) and "Hair" (her). Apparently Meathead and Hair needed to have up-close views and for some reason neither the floor near the stage nor the seats/railings at the end of the balcony were acceptable locations. Both of them planted themselves against the railing in the balcony directly in front of two rows of risers, which meant that several people got a lovely view of their large butts during the show. Gotta love America's in-person nonconfrontational culture, whereby people who paid something like $30 per ticket would rather suffer silently for several hours than tap somebody on the shoulder and say, "Hey, would you mind moving your GIGANTIC ASS?!" (Say that in a Will Ferrell voice, it's much funnier that way.) Even before the opening act came on, Meathead had drained a bottle of Corona, turned around to find a trashcan, which was all of 10 feet away through ABSOLUTELY NO CROWD (it was still early and most people hadn't arrived yet), and judging that to be too far to walk, he set his bottle down on the floor and went back to drumming on the railing. Hair amused herself throughout the show by continously going for more food and beverages and restroom visits (I guess), which meant that everyone in the balcony was treated to a Traveling Large Butt (TM). Finally about 3 songs before the end of the show, Meathead got the bright idea to move to the very end of the balcony where he wasn't blocking anyone's view. Hair continued to stand in front of people until some lady who was attending the concert with her adult daughter tapped her on the arm and said, "Would you mind sitting so that others can see?" Hair looked really surprised by this and wordlessly turned and lumbered to the end of the balcony to join Meathead, who was by that time kneeling on the floor and resting his chin on the railing, looking very much like a Golden Retriever. So at least we had a butt-free view for the last song of the main show and the encore songs.

Next concert, Nickelback in June!

April 26, 2002

Once again, the Friday Five.

1. What are your hobbies?  Decorating, baking, quilting, gardening, having parties. All the little "Donna Reed" things. I also dabble in webdesign.
2. Do you collect anything?  Uggggh, I'm not a "collector", it's just more stuff that would need to be dusted. I try to discourage folks from giving me knick-knacky things. Technically, one could say that I collect tabby cats, which are moving targets and collect no dust. To a certain extent, I collect reproduction Steinlen posters.
3. Is there a hobby you're interested in, but just don't have the time/money to do?  Yeah, many things I would do if I had more time: painting, photography, riding, hiking. I'm not sure where all my time goes...I don't watch TV...
4. Have you ever turned a hobby into a moneymaking opportunity?  Well, I tried beading/jewelry making in college---in fact, I still have a box of beads: turquoise, tigers eye, hematite, etc. Currently I'm doing some freelance webdesign work.
5. Besides web-related stuff (burbs, rings, etc.), what clubs do you belong to?  Believe it or not, we joined a local gardening organization this year. Other than that, nada. I *refuse* to join my college's alumni association; those people soaked me for four unnecessary graduate credits!

April 19, 2002

It is raining pollen (literally) in my backyard, and THAT is a disgusting situation for everyone. I don't have noticeable allergies, but I went outside for about 5 minutes this afternoon and choked on the air. There are puddles of yellow-green pollen on my patio table and chairs. No wonder the dog's fur was starting to look dusty...

Well, greetings from Amandaland on this yucky Friday! We had some insanity this morning around 5 AM when Mia decided to knock over a vase of dried flowers and somehow managed to get a plastic bag wrapped around her neck/head. We were alerted to the problem by the sound of glass hitting the tile floor in the kitchen (amazingly, the vase didn't break) and rolling, followed by the flapping/galloping noise of a cat with a plastic cape rocketing up the steps and into our bedroom. Fortunately, it only took a few minutes to assess the event and remove bags from cat necks and dried flowers from the kitchen floor.

And finally---because all the really cool kids are doing it---the Friday Five.

1. What's your favorite TV show and why?  ER. It's the only TV show that I really make time to watch.
2. Who is your favorite television star?  Hmm, I think the guy who plays Niles (David Hyde Pierce) on "Frasier" is hilarious.
3. What was your favorite TV show as a child?  I don't recall watching a lot of TV as a kid. Captain Kangaroo when I was really little, and The Cosby Show when I was in elementary school.
4. What show do you think should have been cancelled by now?  All soap operas.
5. What new show do you hope escapes the axe this season?  Scrubs on NBC.

April 16, 2002

Temps in the 80's-90's this week, and we've been taking advantage of the summer-like weather by spending our evenings on our deck. Fired up the grill for the inaugural barbecue of the season on Monday, and we're inviting 2.5 friends over for dinner (grilled Polynesian chicken) tomorrow night. The ".5" refers to our friend's toddler, who's getting to be a regular around here (the neighbors were asking when she'd be visiting again), as is her mom. Sean bought a super bubble wand and other bubble-making toys in anticipation of her visit. We tested them last night and found everything to be in good working order. :)

Other random news:

• We had a dinner party last weekend, complete with handmade placecards and a toffee cheesecake for dessert.
  
• I completed my first webdesign project for CarBen.
  
• I still haven't restored the passwords for this webpage (sorry, folks).
  
• Also haven't gotten my new car yet.
  
• I started sewing the baby quilt for my friend's baby due in July. Yay!

April 6, 2002

A few of you may have noticed the long span of time since the last update. A number of factors contributed to that, not the least of which is the fact that we are in the process of moving to a new webhost. Soon your password-restricted access will be restored, my pretties!

It has been a rough couple of weeks, what with jetting to Ohio for a family funeral, the ongoing fun at work (don't even get me started), some freelance work, and sundry other things requiring time and energy. Actually, it's been a rough past few months. I'm having the type of year that makes a person wonder why "vodka" isn't one of the four food groups.

And now, on to the main attraction...

We used to joke that there should be a "rent-a-baby" program for childless folks to test-drive the parenting thing. Earlier this week, we babysat a toddler for 3 days---quite the experience! It might not be representative of the opinion of our pets to say that a good time was had by all, but I think the rest of us had fun.

For those of you not used to spending time with small children, be forewarned that the quality of conversation really decreases when there's a little kid around. We spent a lot of time sorting out the hugely important questions in life, such as where animals conduct their bathroom activities (the litterboxes are now known as "Mia's hole") and why Toby's tail is brown (an area of major concern for The Kid). Sean and I are working on returning to normal English language and not adding a "Y" to the end of every noun ("cuppy", "cribby", etc.). Kind of like linguistic deprogramming. On the other hand, we learned a lot of things from our tiny guest, including that (1) paint-with-water is kind of beyond the artistic grasp of a 2-year-old but still entertaining, (2) cats don't like to be hugged and are capable of giving their owners the DIRTIEST looks, and (3) smashing peas is a truly riveting mealtime activity.

The funny thing is that I thought it would be hard to wake up earlier than usual to get the kid dressed and fed and ready for daycare, but it wasn't a problem at all...although 3 mornings is not necessarily a reliable gauge of how I'd feel about it on a permanent basis. (So don't get excited, Potential Grandparents!)