May 2004 Archives

This morning, the floor of our bedroom was littered with white fluff, and there was a certain Blue's Clues toy that had a gaping hole where its nose used to be. Maybe I should start collecting this fluff, and start stuffing old socks with it, and use those as toys. It would certainly be cheaper. I could draw faces on them so they'd be cuter, too.

I managed to oversleep a bit this morning - usually, if Marc and I don't carpool in together, he leaves super-early, and calls home on his way to work to wake me up. I was in a deep sleep having a dream about how my parents got me free plane tickets to LA so I could go for a day, and I was walking through the airport with my dad, carrying an orange stuffed animal that was a cat, but wasn't Garfield. When we got to the gate, I realized I'd forgotten to bring my purse. My dad said we could go buy one quickly, but I reminded him that what I really needed was my driver's license. I ended up not really being upset, since I didn't really want to go to LA anyways. I hate last-minute travel.

So anyways, because I was dreaming, I totally didn't hear Marc's calls until it was a bit late, at which point I was jolted awake, went, "ohmigod!", and slapped my hands down at my sides, which resulted in a startled "meow!" from Stubby, whom I'd slapped because he was sleeping on the bed next to my butt. Bandit, who was sleeping between my feet, paused from his de-stuffing of the Blue's Clues toy to look at me.

And that was my morning.

We didn't do much last night - Marc went to the store to pick up some ice cream as well as a big bag of M&Ms, despite the fact that we're supposed to be on a diet (or pseudo-diet, as he calls it). If you're not already familiar with Marc's love for M&Ms (he has a huge dispenser collection), this story should clue you in. So he comes into the office (where I'm on the computer) with his bag of M&Ms. Now, he only likes the plain kind. So he plops the bag onto his desk. He goes, "Now that didn't sound right. Did I pick up the wrong ones?!?!" He picks up the bag and immediately checks. They're the right ones. He opens it up, pulls out a couple, and says, "OH, they made them bigger" (M&Ms is doing a special "Shrek" version of their M&Ms). He's such an M&M fiend, that he can recognize the SOUND they make. He was pretty proud of it too.

We've reached a record in our house. One of Bandit's toys, a stuffed football, has actually managed to survive for what is now three weeks, I believe. This is a record, because normally he manages to rip a little hole and unstuff all his toys within a day or two. He did chew the legs off, but amazingly the arms are still intact, and it's still stuffed. Maybe it's just a tough little toy? Maybe he just likes it a lot? Who knows! Pretty awesome though, for a $3.49 toy from Wal-Mart.

I went to Target yesterday to look for some new workout clothes (since I refuse to pay $60 for a stupid pair of Nike pants from Macy's), but didn't find anything. I did pick up another toy for Bandit - it was a cute Blue's Clues toy that I just couldn't pass up. I also grabbed a copy of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, since it was on sale for $14.99 and came with a coupon for $5 worth of batteries.

I had boxing class last night, and I was sooo tired. All I wanted to do the whole time was take a nap. I got to use the new hand wraps I bought though. I forgot to show Marc how stinky they got. I'll have to remember to do that tonight. They've been stewing in my backpack, so hopefully they've retained the odor.

I finally managed to upload the pictures from Leslie's graduation, which you can see here. I also uploaded the video I took of when he walked up for his diploma. You can hear me screaming.

This morning I woke up with a Blue's Clues toy staring me in the face, and a dog lying on the bed patiently waiting for me to wake up and throw the toy for him.

Last night we went over to Steve and Erin's house to help them finish setting up their computer. We were pretty much done from Saturday, but I had to reinstall the drivers for the wireless adapter to work with XP.

Here's a good time-wasting game I came across: Fishy Game. Just use your arrow keys to move your fish, and the object is to eat the smaller fish to grow. Don't run into any fish that are bigger than you (or the same size), or you'll get eaten.

Oh, and Marc just sent me this really cool video. Make sure you have your sound on, because the music is great.

BTW, yesterday's quote was from The Truth About Cats and Dogs. Cute, funny movie, if you haven't seen it yet. Janeane Garafolo is great.

Hmm, not a whole lot to say today, except to share this picture:

Poor kid!

Last night was another agility class for Bandit, we tried working on turns, but I don't think he gets the concept yet. This class is much nicer, since there's only 5 of us in it this time, which makes it a lot more relaxing and fun. The people who stayed are the people I liked, so it's cool. Yesterday was the third birthday for Cessna, the instructor's dog, so she brought in cupcakes and dog treats for everyone. I told Marc about that afterwards, and his comment was, "love your pets, just don't LOVE your pets" (bonus points to anyone who can name the movie that's from). I thought it was kind of cute regardless.

Friday night we went to go see Shrek 2 with my brothers and Cynthia and Vicki. Originally I had planned to go see Troy, but we changed our minds at the last minute. Marc and I got some combo deal, where we each got a medium soda, a bag of candy, and a large TUB of popcorn. I gave some of the popcorn to everyone, and went back out for the free refill, since everyone turned out to be pigs. I probably should've just had them fill up half the bucket, since I ended up wasting most of it. Anyways, the movie was pretty good, there were some parts that had me rolling.

Saturday I slept in until about noon, and then we took Bandit for sheep herding. I swear, I feel like such a dolt when I'm out there, because I'm so clueless about what to do. Like I know what I'm supposed to do, but actually doing it is another matter, and most of the time I end up in the wrong place and I think I confuse Bandit more than anything else. It's no wonder that everytime we go there he cuddles up to Jan, probably because he'd rather be in there with her than me. ;)

After that, we got home and I took a 2-hour nap. Marc thinks that there's something wrong with me for needing so much sleep. I suppose I could probably get myself to stay up, but I just like sleep a lot.

In the evening we went over to Steve and Erin's house to help them with some computer problems they were having. It took a lot longer than we were expecting it to, and we ended up getting home pretty late, but not before stopping at 7-eleven on the way home for some ice cream.

Sunday morning we got up relatively early, and headed to Independence Park in Livermore to watch part of an agility trial. It was pretty fun to watch, although most of the time Marc sat there making fun of the people who were competing, because a lot of these people were taking it pretty seriously. I guess it was kind of like Best in Show. He said that I was going to be like one of those people. I told him to STFU.

Afterwards, we dropped the dog off at home, and headed to Costco. We bought lots of meat, I got some flip flops, and managed to walk out of there without spending $200. We also picked up a "Healthful Cooking" cookbook, which hopefully we'll use at least once.

While we were waiting in line at the cashier, there was this couple in front of us, with two young boys who looked like twins. One was sprawled face down on top of all the stuff in one of the shopping carts, and the other started screaming bloody murder when his mom tried to take away his box of Fruit by the Foot to put it on the conveyor belt. He also slapped away the Shrek toy his mom tried to give him, proclaiming that he "wanted Donkey!" Is it bad that things like this make us seriously question whether or not we want kids? Heh. I can't totally blame the kid though - Donkey is the cooler toy. C'mon, Mom.

I had a couple weird dreams this weekend. One was that I dreamt that Steve from Beverly Hills, 90210 was dating Andrea, and that Jennifer Love-Hewitt's character (Sarah was her name I think) from Party of Five was fighting over him. It got weirder than that, but that's the only part I can remember. Last night I dreamt that people were driving around with their kids and their carseats strapped to the roof of the car. Probably stemmed from the Costco experience.

Yesterday I left work early to go to Leslie's graduation at Berkeley. Technically, he graduated in December, but he chose to walk in May. This was now our family's third ceremony at the Greek Theater, and this time, instead of being sweltering hot like it was for mine and Kenny's graduations, it was actually pretty darn chilly.

I played with Kenny's Game Boy while all the speeches were being given, and we sat in what has become my parents' usual spot, way up in the top corner. Finally, like an hour and a half later, they called out Leslie's name, and I screamed my head off. I actually got it on video, which I'll try to upload tomorrow. :)

Afterwards, we went to this Chinese seafood restaurant in Emeryville for dinner, which turned out to be pretty yummy. Then Marc and I drove home, and we spent the rest of the night watching TV and playing on the computer.

Marc has conceded to letting Bandit sleep outside of his crate at night now (I win!). Most of the time I don't think he even sleeps on the bed, and I think he actually just goes to his crate to sleep for most of the time.

I have a dentist appointment in like an hour, which I'm not looking forward to. They're going to drill out one of my old fillings and replace it with a new one. Doesn't that sound lovely?

Yesterday I was sooo tired, I thought I was going to pass out before I left work. Hopefully, I'm not getting sick.

I went to boxing class after work, which I think actually helped to energize me a bit, instead of killing me like I thought it might. On the drive home, I listened to the sports news call the last 17 seconds of the Sharks-Flames game. The Sharks lost, and were eliminated from the Conference Finals. Grr.

I got home, showered, and ate a dinner of cream of mushroom soup and toast. If that doesn't sound like a dinner born of raiding the pantry, I don't know what is. Then I worked with Bandit a bit on the weave poles. He's getting better, and I almost got him to do the whole thing without having me run alongside him, but he still stops to look at me before he gets to the end. I'll have to try to work with him in a more open space than our hallway so that I can try to get him to pick up the speed.

Marc's new nickname for Bandit is "Ferrari." He was talking to Bandit last night telling him that he definitely would sell him if someone offered us $100,000 for him (which would never happen, but apparently that's Marc's threshold of attachment to the dog - which for him I guess is pretty impressive). I said, "you'd probably go out and buy a Ferrari with that money. You'd trade your dog for a Ferrari." So all last night he was calling the dog "Ferrari."

There's an agility trial this weekend in Livermore, and Marc and I are going to go for at least one day to check it out. I've watched a few on TV, and they're pretty cool, so it should be fun to watch one in person. If anyone wants to join us, you're more than welcome to.

Marc came home last night, although about three hours late, since his flight got delayed from thunderstorms (we don't get enough of those in CA!). So I puttered around the house by myself all night, before going to pick him up at 11:30 pm.

Earlier, my mom had given me a whole box of cherries to bring home with me, and I'd left it on the kitchen counter before heading upstairs. A couple hours later I went back downstairs, and found a slightly mashed cherry on the living room carpet, and little red stains on the carpet around it. There was also a dog standing near it.

I went into the kitchen expecting to see cherries all over the floor, but the box actually looked undisturbed, save for one cherry sitting on the counter. Which happened to have a cat next to it. The other cat was on top of the refrigerator, trying to look as innocent as possible. Hmm, who was the guilty party? I would've expected if the dog had gone after them, the whole box would've been on the floor. And the cats had shown a particular liking for cherry stems before, but it wasn't their style to go and mash something on the floor.

I cleaned up the carpet and put the cherries away. Later, Bandit came up to me with one of his toys in his mouth. When I went to grab it, I noticed a few red spots on the side of his mouth. Aha! Caught red-handed. Or red-muzzled.

I don't think he acted alone. Re-enacting the scene, my theory is that one, or both of the cats went and pulled two cherries out of the box by their stems. One either fell on the floor and the dog grabbed it, or he jumped up on the counter and pulled one off, thereby leaving the box undisturbed. Then the dog proceeded to gnaw on the cherry a bit, before deciding that he didn't like how it tasted, and dropped it on the carpet. He might have rubbed his face on it a little too, which would explain the red muzzle stains, and the flatness of the cherry when I found it.

Anyways, as you can judge by that long story, and the amount of thought I put into it, I had a little too much time on my hands last night.

My boss sent me this today in my e-mail, about "why you should never put your picture on the internet." I was rolling in my chair.

That's not a typo, that's how Marc and I say "funny" sometimes. I'm not sure how it started, but most likely we picked it up from TV (maybe like South Park's "Timmay!") or some form of Internet-speak. Who knows.

I came across this funny thing yesterday, which is basically about some guy who tried to sell a Powerbook on eBay, and had a scammer contact him to try to scam him out of his Powerbook. Rather than just reporting the guy, he decided to exact a little bit of revenge. It's long, but funny.

I took Bandit to agility class last night after work, and this time I cooked up a couple hot dogs and cut them into tiny pieces, since last week he wasn't very into his treats. Cutting hot dogs into tiny little pieces is not the funnest thing to do. But dogs only need a little piece for reward, and I didn't want to stuff him full of 5 hot dogs. Especially not with his particular digestive system!

Either the hot dogs worked, or he was in a good mood, because he did great in class. I managed to even get him to do the weave poles on his own, which was pretty amazing. At one point he started to go fast, but missed the last poles. It was cool though, watching him twist and hop through the poles. We're far from looking like this, but I'm sure we'll get there someday. :) Agility is hard work for the handler - I run out of breath trying to keep up with him!

This morning was kind of nutty - I set both of our alarms to go off a few minutes apart, so at 6 am I got up, freed my feet out from under the dog, and rolled over to Marc's side of the bed to put his alarm on snooze. A few minutes later, I woke up again, freed my feet again, rolled over to my side of the bed, pushed Stubby aside, and put my alarm on snooze. I repeated this I don't know how many times, until it was about 7 am. Waking up sucks.

Friday night I got back from LA around 11 pm, and Marc picked me up at the airport. He surprised me by bringing Bandit along with him. :)

Saturday morning we got up and went to the mall to get Marc some new shoes for his business trip. He ended up walking out of Macy's with THREE pairs of shoes! We opened up a Macy's account so that we could save 20%, so we ended up saving a good amount of money. I don't think he's going to need shoes for a long time now. Coincidentally, there was a salesgirl there whose name happened to be Bonnie Lau! I wish I'd had my camera, so I could've taken a picture of the girl who has my name.

After that, we went over to meet Jan for sheep herding, but when we got there, the farm was filled with cars and people, and there was some kind of event going on. We saw Jan giving a speech to a bleacher full of people, so we figured she must have forgotten to tell us that there were no lessons for the day.

As we were walking in, some guy stopped us and asked us if Bandit was for sale. We said no, and that he was a pet, and he said, "not at any price?" I didn't even think about it before saying no, but I know Marc was thinking "how much?"! The guy was really fond of Bandit, and he told us that he'd owned a few Border Collies in the past. We chatted for a while - he was a nice guy.

We finally got to talk to Jan, who had apparently sent out an e-mail, but since I hadn't been checking my e-mail, I didn't get it. So no sheep herding lesson. She told us that the big event was "sheep shearing" day - apparently lots of people pay $3 to watch some guy cut wool off sheep. Kinda odd, but okay.

Marc and I got into a conversation in the car afterwards about selling Bandit. Marc said that if the guy had offered us $10,000 or something, he would've taken it. I said I wouldn't sell the dog at any price. I couldn't imagine putting a price on him!

After that, Leslie came up, and we all drove to Berkeley to watch Super Size Me, which is a documentary about this guy who decides to eat McDonalds and only McDonalds for 30 days. He ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was a hilarious movie, and I gotta say that I'm glad I've only had McDonalds twice in the past year or so. I don't think I can eat there anymore. I'd definitely recommend people to go see it, it was great.

Afterwards, we were talking a bit about the lawsuits that people filed against McDonalds - claiming that they were responsible for their obesity. Now, I think most people think those are pretty frivolous lawsuits, and I happen to be one of them. People don't take personal responsibility often enough, and they like to place blame elsewhere.

But on the flipside, I was thinking about a segment in the movie where they went to visit a high school, where the kids were buying things like Little Debbie snack cakes, and chips and soda for lunch. I mean, the lunches were really horrendous, and most of us seeing that go, "tsk tsk" at the schools and the school system for serving that crap. I know I never ate at the cafeteria when I was in school. But then again, I had the luxury of parents who had the time and money to make me a good bagged lunch.

So therein lies the rub. I think most people hold schools accountable for serving crappy food, but one can argue that parents have a choice of giving their kids food to bring to school for lunch. But a lot of these parents might not have the time or money to do that, so they rely on their schools to feed their kids.

Can we say the same thing about McDonalds (and other fast food chains)? A lot of people eat there for two reasons: 1) it's cheap and 2) it's fast. For some people, it may be the only viable alternative. Is it bad then, that the only food that's cheap and fast seems to be fatty crap? And should McDonald's feel just a little bit culpable, that when the world's population is quickly becoming so overweight, that they're serving people a half-pound of fries? I think they might just, since they recently removed the Super Size option from their menu.

I mean, I still think the lawsuits are silly, but I thought that was just a little food for thought (no pun intended, and sorry for the long tangent!).

We woke up early Sunday morning, and I took Marc to the airport for his business trip to Virginia. He's going to be gone until Tuesday night. So Sunday I spent most of my day on the computer. I'd thought about being productive, but quickly quashed that idea.

I did go to Petsmart though, to pick up some dog food. I ran into Melanie, the dog trainer there, who came over to say hi to Bandit. He peed on her, again. I told her about the guy who offered to buy him, and she told me some guy had offered to buy her dog too. She told him she'd be sleeping in her car first before she ever thought about giving up her dog (see, Marc!).

We talked a bit about how Bandit's still having problems with kids, and how his fear seems to be escalating (he barks at kids now). It's a big problem for us, because we don't want our dog scaring kids. So she suggested that I bring him in during her classes where she has a lot of kids, to let him just be around more kids and get used to them. Which is awesome, since we don't have ready access to kids ourselves.

I let Bandit sleep outside his crate last night. The first thing he did was plop into Marc's spot on the bed, right against his pillow. He was fine all night, except for when he woke me up at 1:30 in the morning by planting a big paw in my chest.

Man, does it suck to be back at work again.

I got back from E3 on Friday night - I had a really good time. After three days of being on my feet all day though, I was pretty much ready to be home! I got to LA early Wednesday morning, and drove straight to the Convention Center. I had rented a compact car, and had a coupon for a free upgrade, but Budget didn't have any mid-size or full-size cars left, so I ended up driving out in a Mercury Mountaineer. :)

My cousin Kate was nice enough to let me stay at her place while I was down there, so after leaving the convention on Wednesday, I met up with her for a nice sushi dinner in downtown Pasadena. Then we watched The Bachelor, where that crazy Trish came back. At that point, I was pretty pooped, and passed out.

Thursday was another full day spent at the Expo, which was a lot of walking around and checking out the new games, and playing some of the demos. I also managed to pick up a bunch of free stuff, like 11 t-shirts and 2 cute little Pokemon toys. When I got home, I took a photo of all my loot:

Thursday night I had dinner with all the Mythic Entertainment people and the rest of the Team Leads that had gone down to E3. We ate at RJ's in Beverly Hills, and I had a big platter of beef ribs and baby back ribs. Yum!

Friday was a slightly shorter day, and I spent most of my morning waiting in line to see Nintendo's new portable hand-held system, which they're calling the DualScreen. It was pretty cool, and featured two screens, one of which was a touch screen. I was pretty tired by that day, so I spent a lot of time sitting around resting my feet. At one point, some guy from the press came up to me and asked if I could pose for a picture with my Pokemon toys. After the convention was over, I met up with Kate for dinner at the Standard, and then it was off to the airport for my flight home!

I took a bunch of pictures, which I'll upload to the gallery. The photos include a couple shots of Vin Diesel, who showed up to sign some autographs to promote his new game. It was a busy 3 days!

I've finally finished getting the bulk of the new blog done - I've tried to keep everything looking as much the same as I can, although there are certain things I still haven't quite figured out how to do.

Right now you can only get to the 10 most recent things I've written from the left-hand menu, because I still haven't quite figured out how to get everything to list the way I want it. But if you need to go back and browse through old things, it's all still available through the "stuff" link above, which will take you to the old entries the way I had them, up until yesterday.

Well, it turned out that about 25 people got laid off last Thursday, although thankfully that didn't include me or my mom. It was a pretty dour day, and Friday wasn't much better, especially when I showed up at a meeting, and only half the people who were supposed to be there showed up.

Marc and I went to eat at Outback on Friday night for dinner, which was really bad of us, since we're supposed to be dieting. That baked potato was pretty darn good though. I think we pretty much vegged the rest of the night.

When we got up on Saturday morning, we discovered that we didn't have water in the house. It turned out that no one in our neighborhood did, and we think it was because of an accident that had happened on Friday night, where someone probably hit a fire hydrant. They managed to turn it on for like 10 minutes, during which time Marc took a shower, but then they turned it off again, and informed us it was going to be off for a few hours. So we ended up having to go to my parents' house so that I could take a shower.

Saturday was Marc's neice's 1st birthday, so we went to Steve and Erin's for the party. She's starting to take her first steps, which is pretty cute. Kids are really cute at that age. Especially when they're not mine. Aww, alright, I'm just kidding. Mostly. We took lots of pictures, but I never got around to uploading them, so maybe I'll get one up tomorrow.

Marc's parents came by the house afterwards to pick up Snoopy. We put him on a diet while he was with us, and we think he lost about 10 pounds. So hopefully, the next time we see him, he'll be nice and trim! (When I let Bandit out this morning, he ran out into the backyard, expecting to see Snoopy I think. With no daytime playmate now, I'm sure he'll go back to ripping up the backyard.)

In the evening I went with Vicki, Deepali, and Deepali's brother, Amit, to see Van Helsing, mostly because Hugh Jackman is in it. It wasn't the greatest movie I've ever seen. It was at least entertaining, but sometimes it was downright cringe-worthy. Someone should've told the actors that were playing Dracula and his brides that they were doing film, not theater, because the dramatic overacting was way over the top. It was pretty painful. I mean, when the main bad guy in the film is horrible, it's hard to enjoy the movie. There were also some horrifically bad plot moments in the movie.

On Sunday we drove down and bought my mom and my grandmother some flowers for Mother's Day. My mom had an upset stomach, so we didn't go out to lunch or anything. We got back home later in the afternoon, and I took a short nap.

When I woke up, we found out that we had no electricity. First no water, and now no power. It was like a weekend spent camping. Marc was asking me what we should do for dinner, since we couldn't cook. I reminded him that we had a gas stove, not an electric one. Still, we decided to go out anyways, just because the power was out. It's as good an excuse as any, I suppose. As we were driving out, we saw the street lights come back on. The power was back! I asked Marc if we should go back and cook, but we decided we didn't feel like cooking anymore.

Our company is going through this massive reorganization right now, and the announcements about the changes are supposed to happen today. We have a meeting this afternoon, so we're all just anxiously sitting around until then. Rumor has it that some people are going to be laid off, so it's a pretty nervous time around here.

Hopefully I won't be updating this page from home tomorrow!

So Togo's ended up sending me this form letter reply in the mail, along with a $5 gift certificate. No word on whether or not they'd fix the stinky restaurant.

Tonight is the last night of Friends! Deepali, Cynthia, and Vicki are going to come over to watch it with us. I think the finale of Frasier is next Thursday, which I should remember to catch, even though I haven't watched the show in the last couple of years.

I found out about a way that we might be able to kill off those nasty bugs in our aquarium, which involves treating the water with a dog heartworm medication. Apparently it's been tested by a few people, and seems to work, but they haven't been testing it for very long yet. So we might look into trying that.

Well, I'm sitting here at work right now, with a phone that doesn't work, and a computer that's disconnected from the network (our phones are connected to the network too, and I'm guessing my port has been deactivated, which is why it's not working either). It probably has something to do with that stupid worm that's going around.

So, I'm sitting here at my desk with nothing else to do except drink my coffee. And type this. I feel really helpless with no phone and no internet. It's like I don't know what to do with myself!

My coworker Peter told me about this site the other day, http://www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com. Yeah, that's really the URL. It's a pretty funny site, although the guy does have serious points to make.

Then there's this site that my coworker Christine e-mailed to me, which is about some guy who decided to make himself a costume from the movie Tron. I was eating my lunch while I was looking at it, which turned out to be a mistake. I really didn't need to see THAT guy in a tight leotard. What's up with his ass anyways? Some people really do have too much time. And really stupid ideas.

I'm in the process of working on converting this blog to Movable Type. When I started this site, I hadn't intended to write stuff every day, but it turns out I have a lot of BS to spew. So updating these pages has become a real pain, since I'm doing it all by hand. If you look at the stuff from previous months, you'll see that I've been lax in updating some of those links to the newer months. It's getting there, but I still have a few pieces to figure out, and I still have to convert over all my old stuff.

Update: turns out it was just a loose connection under my desk, which is fixed now. Yay for phone and e-mail!

Yesterday, I came home, and found the puffer had passed away. :( It was probably a combination of the isopods attacking him and the stress from being moved back to the quarantine tank. Talk about a real bummer.

So last night, armed with a spark of vengeance, I decided to try to catch some of the nasty bugs. I attached a long pipette to a hose and tried to siphon some of them out, but they were too fast. So then I cut a hunk of raw fish, and set it in a trap and put it on the bottom of the tank. Unfortunately, they didn't go for it.

However, the raw fish seemed like it might have drawn out the big bug, because a little while later, I spotted it sitting out front among the little guys.

Just seeing the big one made me mad, and I was determined to get my revenge. So I picked up my pipette and hose again, started a siphon, and reached in to try to suck it up. It didn't even move when I got close, probably being too satiated with food. At first I couldn't seem to suck it up, but then all of a sudden it went "whoompf!" into the tip of my pipette. It was a little too big for the opening, and got stuck, but after a second it went all the way up.

I took a photo of the nasty little beast.

I considered putting it in the microwave and nuking it, but by that point I was just too grossed out by it that I ended up just putting it down the garbage disposal. Good riddance, ya little fucker.

Agility

Before all that exciting bug hunting, we had Bandit's last agility class. We tried out the teeter for the first time, and Bandit nearly slipped off. This, of course, scared him, and it was hard to coax him over. He went over a couple times, reluctantly, but slipped again, at which point he refused to go on it anymore.

We also linked all the jumps and tunnels this time, to make one long run, and except for him stopping at one spot where someone had dropped a bunch of treats earlier, he made it through the whole thing. Everyone said it looked great, and boy, does he have a lot of speed. I was so out of breath by the time we were done (the handler has to run alongside the dog to tell him where to go).

We ended up signing him up for the next class, which starts next Monday. All in all, it's turning out to be a pretty fun thing to do with the dog. It's pretty neat feeling like you're working as a team (even if one half is just working for treats).

So, I now know why 40% of people who start saltwater aquariums quit in the first two years. This thing is the biggest headache I've had to deal with in a long time. And I'm good at making headaches for myself.

So this past week we've been trying to reintroduce the fish back to the main tank from quarantine. I put the puffer in first, and then on Saturday I reintroduced Nemo 2, who looks like he grew a bit while in quarantine.

Marc and I noticed that the puffer was acting a bit lethargic. Which is not altogether unusual for him, as the puffer was always prone to "mood swings." But Sunday morning I noticed something attached to Nemo 2's tail. Yeah, it was one of these buggers. I pulled him out and got it off, but later that night, when the lights were off, I went to go look at the tank. And there were dozens of these tiny guys flitting around the bottom of the tank. I noticed one on the puffer. So I pulled him out, and found three of them on him, one of which had a big red spot in its body, from the blood. I ended up staying up until 2:30 am last night, reacclimating the puffer to the quarantine tank.

The only way to get rid of these guys is to leave the tank fishless for 4-6 months so the bugs starve to death. Not sure what we're going to do, but I'm about ready to pull my hair out.

Rest 'o the Weekend

We had a pretty lazy weekend. Bandit had his sheep herding on Friday night, and Jan showed us the new lambs they had on the farm. Marc and I each got to hold one, which was pretty cool...they had cute little hooves and really cute little faces. I'd forgotten to bring the camera, which was a real bummer. I'll see if we can get pictures this Friday.

Saturday night we had dinner with my Dad and my brothers. On Sunday I bought a pair of shoes, which may have been the highlight of my weekend. Sunday night we had dinner with my uncle who was visiting, and my grandmother.

Yup, exciting stuff.