It was a good weekend. The last puppy has gone to a new home. All we have is Dixie left (I made a new web page for her here) and hopefully she will find a home soon! The puppy room is once again my dining room.

I love the end of the weekend, the house always feels so under control, the yard is taken care of, the clutter is picked up, the bills are paid, the laundry is done, the dogs are happy. Then the chaos of the week takes over and the process repeats.

I was pretty lazy all weekend, but I did manage to see 28 Days Later (scary but good) and read a bit and watch some t.v. and movies, and go to Galveston with Sarah & her mom & brother to see the Lone Star Flight Museum.

Yeh for four-day weeks!

The funniest story I've heard in a while (ok, total heresay through Sarah)


Nick applied for a job at Pizza Hut cause its the only place that will employ him for the 4 weeks he's in D.C. at a ballet institute. Sarah finds out about this because he called to ask about the phone number of our boss so he could be listed as the place of his last employment. Probably one of the first times a NASA manager is listed on a Pizza Hut application.


Nick (to manager): Look, I'll be honest with you, I have a Master's degree from Stanford in Aerospace Engineering.

Manager: Well, if its not a problem for you, its not a problem for me.

Where, oh, where, has Karen gone? If you know, e-mail me! Its very sad when her diary hasn't been updated all week! I mean, I can only imagine that she and Brian have jaunted off to an exotic destination. But I like to live vicariously through that.

We think we found a great home for Frankie. The family stayed over for like an hour playing with him. Their younger son's eyes just lit up (his mom says that he is constantly trying to play fetch with his stuffed animals, a very sad thing), and he was not only into Frankie, but also the scary, jumpy grown up dogs. The older son was funny. He liked Frankie. But he also liked examining every random little thing in the house, from some lose screws on the countertop to the metronome. It was very funny.

And, we got a note from Sirius's (who has obviously never read any Harry Potter books, a darned shame!) new family:

Thank you for the pictures of serious and her mom. We renamed her Boots. The children LOVE her! As for our other dog thats a different story. She is doing very well. We are working hard on potty training. She likes her crate at night and also likes to play between 1am - 3am. She is already getting spoiled! I am very happy to have her. I think she makes a great addition to our family! I tried to email Carie, but if was returned to me. Please let her know how Boots is doing.

Thank You & God Bless...

My life yesterday can be described as a record of my sleep, with a few other random stuff intermixed.

9 a.m. to 10:30: Dentist. Deep cleaning of the left side of my mouth. Very painful. Then a filling. The good news is that my insurance covered more than they thought, so it was much cheaper than last time.

11:00 a.m.: Half of my face is not functioning. As the numbness wears off, the pain increases. Attempt to sleep.

Noon, 1:15, 2:30, 3 p.m.: Wake up all groggy. Check e-mail. Think how hungry I am but then remember it hurts to open my mouth. Finally book my flight for a week in Canada. 5,500 frequent flyer miles and two layovers; should it disturb me that its more miles than a trip to Europe?

4:00 p.m.: Drag myself out of bed to go sailing. Lose miserably due to bad strategy.

8:00 p.m.: Call home, man answers phone "You're not Cari!", Response "Yes, I am, had a sex change today, hope you don't mind!", My reply "Well, Cari was always a bit manly." Then Cari picks up the phone, and I say "Who was that? Someone cute?" Turns out it was Paul. He was very insulted when I said "Oh, its only Paul." Return home to sound of Peanuts song being played on piano. I love it when Cari's piano is being played. You'd figure Cari would play it more often. But no. It was Paul. At least he appreciates the piano.

Dixie is sound a sleep in the dining room. She got spayed today. Turns out she was "in season" which may have been the cause of some of her aggression. That, and she's a big bully.

9:30 p.m.: Had an artichoke for dinner. I was starved, haven't eaten all day. Perhaps an artichoke wasn't the best choice for my aching teeth.

10:00 p.m.: Sleep.

1:00 a.m.: Wake up in a cold sweat from a nightmare. I dreamt that there was a drippy shadow on my wall that was a monster called the "Bloodletter". In my dream, or maybe in reality, Bennet and Apache barked at it. Too bad that didn't stop the evil monster from attempting to Blood-let me.

2:30 a.m.: Wake up because Bennet and Apache decide now would be a good time to wrestle with Frankie, and Frankie was yelping in pain.

4:45 a.m.: Hear garage door open. A little paranoid because there was a random stabbing a few days ago in the neighborhood next door. Next thing I know, all the power shuts down. All I can think about is how stupid the builders were because they put the fuse box OUTSIDE. Stupid stupid. Try to reassure myself that the alarm is supposed to be wired to the fuse box to go off if someone tries to turn my power off. Try to reassure myselfs the dogs would bark at an intruder. Doesn't work, I go wake up Cari. Me: "Cari, wake up!", Cari: "What is it? I need to turn on the light" (I hear her struggling for the light), Me: "Wake up, the power's out!", Cari: "I can't find my light, my light won't work." Me: "CARI! THE POWER IS OUT!". Giggle. So, then we roam around the house looking for a flashlight. Now, you'd think that in the box of nearly a dozen flashlights that David sent me, I could find at least one. No luck. We resorted to a candle. Cari assured me that a breakin was not occurring and that all the houses on the blocks lights were out too. 30 minutes later, the lights come back on. All is good.

6 a.m.: I'm having a lovely dream about how I have telekenisis and I'm doing all the chores in the house by the simple power of thought. I get woken up by Bennet and Apache licking my hands which somehow got hung over the side of my bed. Stupid dogs.

8 a.m.: Finally drag myself out of bed. Now at work.

I am taking a sick day (which, unlike annual leave, I have a lot of unused time) to recover from my dentist appointment this morning (deep cleaning, cavity filling, etc.). Its been a lovely morning (despite the horrible pain) as I basically came home and napped with the last of our puppies. Anyway, now I'm awake and starved, but my mouth is still so numb I can't even open it, so I can't eat. I can't talk very well, either, for that matter. But I guess numb is better than the ache I am certain to feel when this all wears off.

That's my day.

Last night we had a little dog crisis. Actually a fairly big dog crisis. When I got home, Zoya came limping in (Zoya is Gavin and Jen's dog, we've been dog sitting all weekend). Then the rush of all the other dogs came in after her and started to pounce on her. I immediately pushed the other dogs out the door, and discovered that Zoya was still bleeding. None of the cuts were deep enough to be stitch-worthy, but some were pretty bad, and there was a lot of them. So I cleaned her up and let her do the wounded puppy thing (i.e., she went into my bedroom, got lots of treats, watched t.v.- yes watched t.v., and got to eat lying down) - all the while trying to figure out what the heck we were going to do with Dixie (who had to have been the instigator because she has sometimes acted aggressively around other dogs and our four had been together, injury-free many times before) and how we were going to tell Gavin and Jen.

Anyway, it was at this time, I noticed Dixie had a fairly big single tooth mark in the side of her neck. At least Zoya managed to fight back a bit. So, I cleaned her off, now keeping the dogs in several separate places: Zoya in my bedroom, Frankie the puppy on my lap or in the puppy room, Bennet Apache and Roxy in the living room, and Dixie outside.

I'm still mixed about what to do about all this. And of course, Cari has some stake in what we do too. So, as a temporary solution, I don't want to leave Dixie alone with my dog anymore, so Dixie is spending her day in the puppy room rather than outside. Sending her back to the shelter is likely to be a death sentence, and I don't want to do that. However, she won't be an easy dog for someone to adopt because she requires a lot of attention and she can't be trusted around other dogs, particularly strange dogs.

Its sad. I've grown really attached to Dixie, even though from the beginning I knew she couldn't be a permanent dog in my house so she was kind of like the latchkey stepchild in a lot of ways, I still am holding out hope for her to have a good home.

Otherwise, I mowed the lawn last night. It took a really long time and the grass was really high. Who could guess that grass could grown that much in 8 days! I made friends with one of my neighbors by lending her the Harry Potter book, apparently there's not a copy to be had until the next shipment comes into stores sometime this week. Becca's Lending Library is at it again.

Oh, and Rice won the college World Series last night by a landslide. This is their first/only college sports championship since they started in 1912. Even though I'm an alumni of all of one class, I'm excited for them!

Talking about the dream

Like the dream is over

Talk like that

Won't get you nowhere

Everybody's trusting in the heart

Like the heart don't lie



I had a fabulous weekend, though a little more sleep would've been nice.

Friday

Friday night was the longest night I've had in a long time. People came to pick up Bonnie & Feivel. Then, Sarah and I went to the Matchbox 20 concert, which, well, rocked. I don't even know what words to use to describe how good they were - I mean, real entertainers. A highlight included "If you're gone" where just the lead singer and the guitarist (oh, he was so my type!) stood out on the middle of the stage, with just two spotlights, and sang & played (respectively), nothing flashy, no sound board, nothing. And during another song, they played questions on the screen, and you'd have to be there to get the right sequence, but basically by the end of the song, (Sarah and I discussed this after, because she had a similar reaction), all I wanted to do is move to New Zealand and open up a bookstore. I'd say that's pretty powerful stuff.

Saturday wee-hours-of-the-morning

But the night didn't end there. We went to Barnes and Noble to meet a group of friends that were having a Harry-Potter party of their own. The funniest part of this whole thing is Sarah, who was mildly embarrassed to be nerdy enough to be heading to a Harry Potter party in the middle of the night (obviously, she hasn't been de-sensitized to nerdiness as I have - she just needs to attend a few Star Trek conventions, and then she'd realize a Harry Potter party is practically mainstream). One of her friends called to ask what she was up to, and I could see her hesitate for a minute before telling him she was on the way to buy a midnight copy of Harry.

But, most unfortunately, we were greeted by a woman in a witch's hat telling us that the books were sold out unless we pre-ordered. So we called the on-going party and told them not to bother coming over. Then, as we drove out, I remembered the Walmart mention in the newspaper. So, off to Walmart we went (by then, Sarah was starting to actuallly get enthusiastic about purchasing a copy of this book ASAP - a fact I'll probably have to remember to tease her about at the most inappropriate times). And by 12:30 we had it!

As if it wasn't late enough, we went to meet some people at the bowling alley, though we didn't stay there long and somehow ended up at a Waffle House with a couple of the guys from the bowling alley until 3 a.m.

Of course, I couldn't go to sleep until reading at least a FEW chapters. So, it was a late, late night.

Saturday

Saturday morning, I dragged myself out of bed at 10 a.m. to help Cari take our zoo over to the shelter. We put all the unadopted dogs on display for the day there. We were surprised to find that when we arrived there were several families already waiting for us to get there with the pups, and we had two adopted right away. By the end of the day, all of them but Frankie had been taken. 5 pups. We set a shelter record. Now all we have is the mom, Dixie, and Frankie. It was kind of shocking. We figured we'd get a couple of them adopted on Saturday. But almost all of them! It makes the house feel a little empty. But I must admit it was nice to wake up in the morning and not spend 20 minutes trying to herd the pups outside and clean up the puppy room and stuff. Though, its no longer the puppy room anymore, its back to being just the boring dining room.

Then, I went to a movie (the Italian Job, which was entertaining enough) and quick dinner, before crashing by 11:30 (ok, well, I got a few more Harry Potter chapters in there somewhere too).

Sunday

Rather than get some much deserved sleep on Sunday morning, I got up at 6:30 a.m. and went flying with Marissa. Its hard to believe that its been nearly two years since I've been in a small plane. I've always said that flying is not like riding a bike, and I've been really concerned that it will take a lot of training to get me back up to a competent level when I do start flying again (oh, I miss it SO much!). But, I was really surprised at how quickly I spit out the right words over the radio, easily flipped the right switches, identified where gauges were, remembered airspeeds, and when Marissa let me fly, I didn't even have a death grip on the controls, but did a pretty good job maintaining altitude and heading. AND I circled over my house. That was a first, I circled over my very own house! And apparently, I didn't even wake Cari up doing it, despite being at like 800 feet (we were flying scarily low!).

Anyway, I got home, read about a chapter, and took a really long nap. Then went over to George & Ginger's beautifully well-decorated, coordinated house to discuss laminate flooring (yes, I am SO boring).

When I got home, I had planned on mowing the lawn, but decided to get in a few more chapters of Harry Potter first. Yeh right. I didn't move from the couch until 9:30 when Cari got home from her soccer ("Le Foot") party. She came in all chatty, but I only had like 100 pages left and had finally got to the point in the book that had been released prior, where Dumbledoor says "Harry, there's something I should've told you a long time ago..." But, boy, can Cari talk (which, I admit, I usually encourage, cause I like to talk too!), until I was finally like "Cari, you need to shut up and let me finish the book." Hopefully I didn't sound TOO rude.

Well, I did finish. It was good, on par with the other Potter books, and I can't wait for the next one, which will probably come out sometime in the next decade.

Now its Monday. Blah.

And then there was one.

2 pups went to new homes on Friday. 5 found homes at the shelter today.

Now, all we have left is Frankie and his mom, Dixie.

Its strange. We were hoping to find as many homes as possible today, but I didn't really expect to get more than 2-3 out. Its weird having almost all of them gone forever.

This is going to be a me-weekend. Hopefully completely housework free. The cleaning lady was at the house yesterday, and now, its practically sparkling. And we've been leaving the raging hoard of puppies outside all day, which definitely contributes to the inside cleaniness (of course, my backyard could be better). Hopefully a couple of the puppies will go to new homes tonight and tomorrow.

Tonight, Sarah and I are going to a Matchbox 20 concert. I'm really psyched about the concert. Then, a Harry Potter book party! Yeah! I need to find a lightning bolt tatoo for my forehead. Ok, I'm a nerd. But I figure if, back in the day, I could go to Star Trek conventions, I can definitely do something more mainstream like going to a Harry Potter book party.

No plans for Saturday or Sunday. Maybe a pedicure.

Ah, the life!

My stories apparently aren't funny enough to keep my reader's entertained. That's probably true. But writing these entries are so habitual, I can't stop. Its like a terrible addiction. I should really save them all one day.

Last night we lost pitifully at sailing. It was a kind of slow race, but it didn't stop us from nearly colliding with several boats and being almost knocked over with a boom while we were doing a 720 turn during one of those almost collisions in which we were in the wrong. It seems the source of the pain is this Nomad, a three-person crewed boat sailed by three young (and I might add, very cute) guys who I have never met (because they don't come to the post-race) and apparently work for some boat dealer. Anyway, there was constant screaming along the lines of : "STARBOARD TACK", "OH NO YOU DON'T" "720! 720!" "BEAR OFF BEAR OFF" "HOLD YOUR COURSE", etc. at each mark. Plus my skipper really likes to get close to other boats, which is ok, as long as you give them "room and opportunity" and its good racing tactics (or strategy, I can't remember what is the right word). But it scares me to death. I have to bite my tongue rather than yell "oh no, we're going to hit him!"

So, yes, it was still fun.

Boy did I sleep last night. I went to bed at 9 p.m.! Read for about 45 minutes and crashed. Because I slept so long, I had some very weird dreams. I dreamt that people were calling me from a big red phone. I dreamt that Sarah, Karen and I climbed a mountain, and then from the top we had to take a zipline down, but the zipline broke. I dreamt that I quit my job and moved to New Zealand (that might have been a waking dream!).

Tonight, sailing!

Work yesterday went really well, as I was on a mad coding fest that was actually fairly productive. Unfortunately, the end of the day resulted in some not-so-good news, and I'm going to have to dig into simulations I did way back in November.

2 puppies have homes. 6 + mom more to go. Hopefully we'll find Dixie a home soon, cause Apache is starting to get kind of afraid of her.

Sarah and I might buy a sail boat this weekend. A picture is here.

I'm feeling really awake today. This is a stark contrast to yesterday where I drifted through the morning in a trance.

Productivity

I had a very productive weekend. The list: shampooed the carpets, mowed the front lawn, edged, weedwacked, weeded EVERY bed in the front yard, did some general tidying up, and did all my laundry. With Cari's help, the rest of my lawn got mowed too (well, at least half of the backyard, and then it started raining, and with the whole electric lawnmower, we figured mowing and water wouldn't mix).

I also had some relaxation this weekend as well. I went to Aida, the musical by Tim Rice and John Elton. It was lovely. It wasn't quite what I expected (I didn't expect parts to be so comically over-done), but I really liked it. I cried at the end. I love tragic romances. And then I had sushi. Mmmm. Raw dead fish.

On Sunday, Cari, Katie, Fred and I went to the "Animal Planet Expo" to watch one of Cari's co-workers perform with his Australian Shepard. You know, stupid human tricks-esque. So, we got totally lost in the ghettos of Pasadena, and completely missed the dog's performance.

But we arrived just in time to be briefed on how Cari could teach Bennet to do all these flying frisbee tricks and more. Its going to take a lot of work on Cari's part, because Bennet seems way more interested in chasing the dog that is playing fetch than actually chasing a frisbee or a ball. But I guess he can be taught. This is about where I tuned out.

Personally, I want to teach my dog to play fetch LESS not more (which seemed to baffle these professional trainers - but you try waking up in the morning with 5 tennis balls waiting for you one the bed and then we'll see how you feel about fetch!) Anyway, I already spend way too much of my free time taking care of dogs (which, don't get me wrong, I really enjoy), I'm not ready to add to that by making it a full fledged hobby. So, I wondered off to pet the rare African millipedes and cockroaches while Cari tried to convince Bennet that frisbees are interesting.

Morning rituals

I had one of those mornings. The alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. And somehow I rolled back over and then it was 8 a.m. without noticing the passage of time in between (usually when I "oversleep" its a conscience act of me hitting snooze every 15 minutes or so). When I finally dragged myself out of bed (8:05) and showered and was ready to be out the door at 8:20, I realized that Cari had left long ago and the pups still needed to be taken care of, Bennet was still in her bedroom, etc. Good thing I didn't stay in the morning wakeup trance or all hell might've broken loose when I left the puppies all day and Bennet inside and everything. But, that said, I didn't get out the door until 8:45 after doing the morning puppy ritual. Plus I had to change clothes (generally, not good to clean out puppy messes in work clothes). And, now, I still feel out of sorts.

Peru is calling

I mentioned before the Machu Picchu seems to appear in everything now that I'm thinking about going. Karen e-mailed me this article from the STA travel bites this month.

The Inca Trail

by Holly Zanville, University of Pennsylvania Graduate

[Having explored much of Europe, Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, the Caribbean, and more, Holly's favorite travel experience was hang gliding in Byron Bay, Australia.]

In April of this year, I got to fulfill one of my lifelong dreams: hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. The entire experience was amazing, nearly perfect. We began our journey from Urubamba, Peru where I've been living and volunteering for four months. We drove through the stunning scenery of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, with the Andes peering down upon us, through Ollantaytambo and all the way to kilometer 81, where the four-day trail begins. We then began the twenty-five mile trek to Machu Picchu.

The second day of hiking was by far the most difficult I've ever experienced. It took four hours to ascend straight up 13,000 feet. They don't call it Dead Woman's Pass for nothing. (In reality, they call it Dead Woman's Pass because it has the shape of a dead woman, but I like my interpretation better.) Fortunately, I wasn't the only one who was having difficulty. Everywhere I looked there were people perched on trailside rocks catching their breaths and attempting to put their hearts back in their chest cavities while pretending to admire the beautiful scenery.

The view all along the trail was stunning. The topography kept changing from snow-capped mountains to jungle to forest, and every once in a while we came upon Incan ruins, which were a tease for what was to come on Sunday.

Sunday morning, we arose at 3:45 AM to start the final ascent to the Sun Gate, which affords you a spectacular aerial view of all of Machu Picchu. Our group was the first there because we literally ran and cut what should have been an hour and a half hike to forty-five minutes. (Luckily, no one slipped off the edge, where an 800-meter drop awaited.) When we arrived, we had a clear view of the ruins and the surrounding mountains, but the sun was not yet high enough to illuminate the ruins. Unfortunately (and this was the only down side of the whole trip) by the time the sun rose, the clouds had rolled in and set up camp for the entire day.

After holding out for over an hour, we finally gave up and headed down to tour the ruins. Although the four days were nearly perfect, trying to wander around and enjoy Machu Picchu after three days of hiking is a challenge to say the least. Justlooking at all of the steps made my legs and knees cry out, "Please G-d, no more!"

Fortunately, I chose mind over body and forced myself to explore the ruins, which were truly amazing. It was an unforgettable trip that I would recommend to anyone and everyone.