August 2004 Archives

Yay, our picture frames arrived yesterday. I'd managed to find the same frame in black, which we liked better. They're pretty nice frames, and doing the pawprints should be fun (and challenging with Bandit, who doesn't like his feet touched).

We didn't do much last night, I mostly played on the computer and Marc finished up making reservations for our anniversary trip down to Disneyland. We're staying for one night at the California Adventure hotel, and then the next two nights at a cheaper hotel across the street. :)

We also had one last It's-It ice cream sandwich (did you know they package them in 3's? I thought it used to be in 4's...). We flipped a coin for it, and I won. I tried to be nice and give it to Marc anyways, but he insisted I eat it. He INSISTED. So I did.

We really need 5 day weekends and 2 day work weeks. I think we'd all live a lot longer.

Friday night we did sheep herding, from about 6-8. Marc and I got into a little fight over this, because he was grumpy about having to be there for so long. I was mad because he was being grumpy (he honked the car horn at me when I went for our last fetch). So there was much grumpiness in the car on the way home, except for Bandit, who was just pooped (and poopy smelling).

We had dinner, then went to Blockbuster to rent a movie (still in sour moods, if I recall). We picked up a copy of Margaret Cho's comedy show, and 13 Going On 30. Kenny came over to hang out with us. By this time, I think we were in better moods. Anyways, I opened up the case for the Margaret Cho DVD, and instead found a copy of In July. Clearly not what we rented. Kenny and Marc wanted to check it out anyways, joking, "in case it's porn." It turned out to be some foreign film. So we watched 13 Going On 30, which was okay, but not that good. I don't think the guys enjoyed it much.

Saturday morning we gave the dog a bath, then went to the grocery store to pick up stuff for the dinner rolls I wanted to make (the recipe was supposed to make rolls like the ones at Texas Roadhouse). I took Bandit to classes in the afternoon, and started making the rolls when I got home.

Cynthia, my brothers, and my parents all came over for dinner. My dinner rolls, incidentally, turned out more like biscuits. I'm not really sure what happened. But they were totally not like the restaurant ones. They still seemed to enjoy them, although I suspect they were just being nice (Marc assured me that they were good). Good or not though, they weren't what I was trying to make! So I gotta figure out what I did wrong.

After that we went to Armadillo Willy's for dinner, which turned out to be pretty good. They can be pretty inconsistent sometimes. My parents went home after dinner, and Cynthia and my brothers came back to our place.

I'd wanted to go see Open Water, but Marc said, "I'm not going to pay $10 for a 78-minute movie." Marc likes to make unequivocal statements like that. "I'm not going to wait until 9 'o clock to eat dinner." "I'm not going to chew my drink" (in regards to boba tea). It drives me batty - especially since I'm more Type B and he's so Type A. Anyways, I told him I was going to start writing those statements down, because it might make for an amusing read later.

So we'd managed to exchange our copy of In July for what we'd actually rented, and ended up watching that on Saturday night. It was pretty funny, some parts had us rolling. Then Kenny and Leslie left, since Leslie had to drive all the way back to Menlo Park, and Cynthia, Marc and I played some Mario Kart and Mario Party on the Gamecube.

I woke up early Sunday morning, took Bandit to class for an hour (there's the cutest little bull terrier puppy in that class, who Bandit loves to play with), and then Marc and I went to Home Depot to order some sod. The last grass we laid down all pretty much died out on us, partly because our sprinklers didn't go far enough. Luckily, we found out that the builders had put extensions in for the sprinkler system, so all we had to do was buy new sprinkler heads to cover the rest of the yard.

We lazed around for most of the rest of the afternoon. I took Bandit to one more class (he let a couple kids actually pet him, but then barked at one kid who was standing there staring at him - his trigger right now seems to be people who seem very intent on him, either staring, or very deliberately wanting to pet him - he's fine when he's not the center of attention). Some people walking through the store had a 190-pound English Mastiff. This thing looked like a small pony. A small child could ride that dog, I'm sure of it. Beautiful dog though, was like a gentle giant. His name was Titan, which seemed appropriate to me!

After dinner, Marc suggested we go see a movie. When he suggested Open Water, I replied, "I thought you didn't want to pay $10 for a 78-minute movie!" The showing wasn't until 9 pm, and we debated going to see a movie so late on a Sunday night. So we flipped a coin, and went to see the movie.

It was pretty good. There were some parts where I think I was gripping the seat handles pretty tight. I don't think I'll ever go scuba diving again, unless it's right by the shore. We totally laughed during the parts where the wife started to blame the husband for them being in their predicament, because we both knew that I would totally do that if we were in the same situation ("You always have to go do our own thing, why couldn't we have just stayed with the group?!?").

We got home, and I had a little trouble falling asleep because my stomach ached from all the popcorn.

Last night was The Lion King! Marc picked me up from work and we drove up to SF. We went to Roy's, where we had dinner reservations. We got the Shanghai spare rib appetizer, and I had the Peppercorn Sea Scallops, while Marc had the Filet Mignon. It was soooo good. For dessert, of course, we each had their Melting Hot Chocolate Souffle. Best. Dessert. Ever.

Then it was off to the Orpheum theater. The show was amazing. Marc bought me a program, which cost $10 (!), but was really nice. When the first scene began, for some reason I got really choked up. I mean, I was excited, and I've always loved the movie version, and it was a pretty spectacular scene, but I was literally on the edge of tears. It's like when I started crying uncontrollably when Marc surprised me with a Snoopy snow globe. I can be very bizarre.

Anyways, the set pieces and costumes were awesome. I was really impressed with how they managed to transform the actors into the animals without just stuffing them into a lion suit. The stampede scene and the Mufasa in the stars scene were very nicely and creatively done. I thought the kids playing Simba and Nala did nice jobs, and the guy who did Scar totally sounded like Jeremy Irons (who voiced Scar in the movie). The hyenas were very well done. I thought it was interesting that they changed Rafiki to a female, but she did a great job.

During intermission Marc bought me a Simba stuffed toy, which you can see above. :)

It was a great Christmas present, hehe!

This is pretty funny - Bush on Sovereignty. I wanna laugh and bang my head against a wall at the same time.

A couple weeks ago, I submitted one of Bandit's pictures to doctordog.com for their Pet of the Month contest. He didn't win (the winner was admittedly pretty darn cute), but he did get included in the runner ups. You can see him here.

For the past week or so, there's been this modded pickup truck (it has a spoiler and a windshield banner in Spanish along with other stuff) that's been sitting in the parking lot of the apartment complex by our house. Every night, the alarm beeps and the lights flash like every 5 seconds. We can't even keep our windows open at night because it's so annoying.

Problem is, we can't do anything about it, since it's parked at the apartment complex, and the parking lot is gated off. But the other night the guy was in his truck, running the engine with the lights on for some reason, and our next-door neighbor went out to talk to him (guess we weren't the only ones disturbed). Unfortunately, I don't think the guy spoke very good English, and I guess our neighbor had a hard time explaining the problem ("Beep beep beep. All day.")

So the truck is still out there. I don't think we heard it last night, so maybe the guy did fix it. But I'm gonna go crazy if it's not fixed. If not, I may have to write a note in Spanish and I dunno, make a paper airplane and try to get it on the car that way or something, heh!

Yesterday after work I had an interview at a vet hospital by our house for a part-part-time job. I think it went okay, I managed to land a second interview with another vet tech (there's a working interview after that - all for an assistant position!). I got the impression that the lady thought I was a wee bit overqualified, lol.

I hope I get it though. The hours are good (only 6-8 hours a week, which I should easily be able to handle. It's one or two weeknights, and 4 hours on a weekend). I'd get paid too, which is a nice bonus. And while most of the job is pretty unglamourous (cleaning kennels and stuff), she said they'll teach me as much as I want to learn. Which means I'll be learning how to do injections, blood draws, x-rays, and sample analyses. Pretty exciting! So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Marc and I are going to see The Lion King tonight! He bought me the tickets as a Christmas present, so I've been looking forward to this for a while. We're having dinner at Roy's, which should be very yummy. Can't wait for the chocolate souffle. Mmmm.

The downside is that we have to go right after work, so I'm basically all dressed up here at work. Which is weird, since my daily work wear is usually jeans and a t-shirt. Even worse, my lab coat is longer than my skirt, so all you can see are my knee-high boots and some leg. I feel like some kind of nerd hooker, haha.

Last night was our last agility class. We did a full course to finish, and it was pretty fun! Jan (herding instructor) stopped by to watch the class. Bandit spotted her sitting there and proceeded to climb into her lap for some cuddling. He did fairly well on the course, except that when he came out of the chute, he went right for Jan since she was sitting at the end of it. So the second time we went, she moved to the corner to try to hide, but he ended up just looking for her until he found her.

It was a lot of fun though. They took a bunch of pictures and we got a diploma. Unfortunately, I found out that they no longer teach the more advanced classes. But Dorothy, one of the instructors, pulled me aside and told me to e-mail her for more information on where to continue training. She said she thinks Bandit could be "phenomenal," which I'm not sure about, hehe.

That was about it for the evening. I basically got home, we ate dinner, watched a little TV, and then went to sleep. Not much time to do anything else! I still have a bunch of photos and videos to upload too...sigh.

Marc and I went shopping last night, and at the Gap they're giving out these coupons whenever you try on a pair of pants. The coupons have a chance of winning a free pair of jeans, but we didn't win any. We did, however, get a coupon for $10 off any shirt when you buy a pair of jeans or pants, as well as a coupon for a free pair of pants when you buy 2 pairs. Marc and I each got a pair of pants, so I got a free pair of jeans!

We watched some more of the Olympics last night. Marc went a little nuts with the TiVo at the end of the women's beach volleyball match. You know, when the girls were hugging each other and everything. Rewind. "Hubba hubba." Rewind.

Not that I didn't have my own personal olging fests this Olympics:

Not surprisingly, this was Yahoo!'s most popular news photo today:

Anyways, I think we may have finally thought of a gift for Melanie, our dog trainer. I blogged before about how we wanted to get her something since she's spent so much darn time with us and Bandit (all for free) to help us with his socialization. So one of the ideas I thought of today was this picture frame keepsake kit where you make a clay impression of your dog's paw print and frame it with their photo.

It's kinda dorky, but I think it's neat. I found two of them, one you hang on the wall, and another that stands on its own. Any opinions on which one is better? I like the desktop one a little better, but I think being able to hang it on the wall is nicer. Marc and I are going to get two ourselves, one for Bandit, and one for the cats. :)

Oh, this morning I had a cinammon toaster strudel. It was pretty yummy!

Friday night I took Bandit to our sheep herding lesson by myself, while Marc stayed home to get some work stuff done. For the first time, we actually had Bandit do some driving of the sheep, like moving them between fences, and moving them in and out of another pen.

After we were done, Jan and I let the dogs run loose around the barn, and she had me help her "toss some hay." Well, she tossed the hay over, and I separated the bales into the feed bins. It was kind of fun. Bandit was having a blast running around and through the barn. At one point I called him and he didn't come, and I found him standing by the fence staring at the sheep.

After we were done with the hay, Jan asked me to gather up the sheep from the different pens with Bandit. It was really cool, I would open the gates to the pens, give him his command, and he'd go out behind the sheep and drive them through the gate. It was a really satisfying experience, actually being able to use what we've been training for some real work. I was downright giddy afterwards, and real proud of the dog.

Kenny came over later and we rented Taking Lives, which wasn't a very good movie.

Saturday morning I had to go back to the sheep farm to pick up my sunglasses, since in my giddy state on Friday I'd forgotten them and left them sitting on a chair outside.

Marc went to work in the afternoon, and I went to Petsmart for a few hours.
At the end of classes, Melanie was telling me about a 9:30 am class she had starting on Sunday. She told me that the store wouldn't be open at that time, so I should just open the door and close it behind me when I got there. My thought was, "Great, now I'm even letting myself into the store."

Saturday night Kenny came over again (we never see Leslie anymore, since he always seems to be at work) and we had dinner and went to see Collateral. I thought it was pretty good, and really beautifully shot.

On Sunday morning, I got up really early and decided to go to Costco with my mom and Leslie, since I still had a lot of time before class. We went to the one in Livermore. I'd decided to wear my yellow Joe Boxer smiley face t-shirt, which I'd thought was pretty clever. But by the time we were done at Costco, I was wondering what I'd been thinking, and that I couldn't possibly show up at class wearing that. Luckily I had another shirt on underneath.

Anyways, so Leslie decided he was going to take the bus home, since my Mom was going to drop me off at Petsmart. So my mom and I got into the car, and I realized I'd forgotten to put my bra on. I decided to do it in the car, and my mom said, "Bon Bon, people are going to see your boobies." But I did it anyways. So we drove to Petsmart, and as we got to the door I realized that we were at the Livermore Petsmart, not the Dublin one, and that it was already 9:29.

Also, I realized I'd forgotten to bring the dog.

At this point I was in full panic mode, knowing that I was going to be so late, and that Leslie might as well have come with us, since we'd have to go back to the house anyways.

And then I woke up, and realized that it was all just a dream.

So I made it to class just fine that morning. :)

Last night we watched the Olympics, although I unfortunately knew all the results ahead of time because stupid MSNBC.com puts the results right on the front page. I could get it if CNN did that, but why the heck would MSNBC blatantly spoil something that their own network is going to be showing on tape delay? At least imbed it in the Olympics page, so I can read the front page news without stumbling all over the spoilers.

I'm gonna be sad when swimming's over, since that's my favorite event. I don't much care for track and field. In track and field they don't have the scandalous men's swim pants. So really, what's the point?

I always watch women's gymnastics, but I've never been a big fan of the sport. It's neat to watch, but I don't care much for the athletes behind it. Carly Patterson winning gold was cool, but I was surprised by my apathy (and hearing her give an interview afterwards - I know you're like, only 16, but like, could you like, stop talking you know, like a dolt?). I found myself rooting for Svetlana Khorkina, who seems like such a bitch, and I think that's why I like her. She's got spice. Also, she's old like me, which makes me feel better.

By far the funniest event we've seen so far in the Olympics has to be the race-walk. I'm sorry, but that is just downright retarded. Marc and I were just busting up over it. Have you ever seen someone speed walk? Their whole body wiggles like a fish out of water. Now just imagine a few dozen men all doing the same thing. And I mean, do they have people watching to make sure no one breaks into a trot or a skip? It really ranks up there with synchronized swimming as a stupid-ass sport. IT'S NOT A SPORT!!!

Wow, lots to catch up on. Sorry, but with jury duty, every day I basically just felt like coming home and vegging in front of the TV, which I did.

I've been watching a lot of the Olympics. I love watching the swimming events. And man, I love looking at the male swimmers, haha. I was sitting there the other night, admiring Michael Phelp's physique, and those oh-so-low-on-the-hips swim pants, when it struck me that he's only 19. And I'm 25. Holy, that made me feel old. And a little bit perverted. Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson!

I tried to catch some of the equestrian stuff on Bravo, but it was always only on in the morning. I suppose I could've TiVo'd it, but I was too lazy. I got to watch a little bit though, so it's all good. I joked to Marc that since they have horse sports, they should have dog sports. He rolled his eyes and informed me that I was a dork. We'll see who's laughing when I get a gold medal.

I watched Paul Hamm win the gold medal last night, that was pretty freakin' awesome.

Anyways, this past weekend I went with Deepali, Vicki, Ramona, and Marian to Lake Tahoe. We went horseback riding, some swimming in the lake, and sunbathing on the beach. I also lost $20 gambling. We had a good time! I drove up and back, I think it's the longest I've ever driven. I still haven't uploaded my pictures yet, I'll try to get cracking on it.

I'm sure there's lots I forgot to write about - but my brain is still getting back into normal mode. :)

Well, I'm back, and I'm done. And I have to say that that was one of the most difficult and horrible experiences of my life.

Not because I was forced to serve on a jury. Doing that was actually not bad. It was interesting to see how our court system works. And it was a good break from work.

But when we started deliberating, I went home every day with a headache. By the last day, I was going home with a stomachache too. Right now I think I have a little heartache too.

I won't go into all the details unless everyone is interested. The defendant was a man in his early 30's, and was a pastor. He was accused of molesting and raping a 16 year old girl back in 2000. We heard from the girl, who is now 20. It was clear (to me at least) that she was not of normal emotional intelligence. This was a slow, naive girl, who didn't understand a lot of normal every day things.

There wasn't a lot of physical evidence. Some boxer shorts with a little sperm, but not enough to do DNA typing. A poem she wrote to the defendant to express her pain, but in which she didn't mention his name, in case anyone else found it. It wasn't reported to the police until 6 days after the rape, so there was no physical bodily injury left (that area can heal in 3 days).

There were two incidents, and she told people after the first one, but the people she told were all people who were related to or connected to the defendant. She told the defendant's mom, who simply told her that she would "pray for her, and then decide" what to do. She did nothing. (We only found this out afterwards.)

The guy was accused of rape by another woman in 2002, but this was a woman who was having a consensual sexual relationship with him. He admitted to using her for sex; she admitted to sleeping with him again in 2004 (while he was engaged to his current wife). We were told that he was convicted of a felony in 1991 for "moral turpitude," defined as, "a readiness to do evil." But we weren't told for what.

It was SUCH a difficult case. Most of the jurors had reasonable doubt because they didn't understand why she didn't cry out (they were in a house full of people - she said she didn't because she didn't want the defendant's daughter to see what her dad was doing). They didn't understand why she went back to the house an hour after the rape, and then took the defendant's daughter to McDonalds.

My feelings were that you just never know how different people are going to act or react. Especially someone who basically has the mind of a child. But it was difficult for everyone to understand that. I think I probably empathized with her the most. I was pretty much the last holdout. People also didn't believe that this guy could possibly rape this girl while his children were in the room next door, and the door was open. I think my cynicism of how people are capable of doing anything gave me the least doubt about this.

In the end, there were a few niggling doubts for me. I believed her, but I didn't know that I could rely on her, because she was so easily confused. It was very hard to say "not guilty" because I knew he'd done something to her. Many of us didn't even want to go down to the courtroom, to see the guy hug his lawyer when he heard the verdict. We even asked to be allowed to make a statement, because we felt like we had to justify our verdict, that the guy couldn't be allowed to think that we believed him.

We got to talk to the attorneys afterwards. A lot of us wanted to tell the DA that we thought she'd done a great job with what she had, and that it wasn't any shortcoming of hers that resulted in the verdict. I could barely talk, my voice kept cracking. The defense attorney said that her client was willing to talk to us - none of us wanted to talk to him.

We heard about the things this girl has gone through - mom is a crack addict, dad molested her when she was 8, then split, uncle raped her when she was 18. She talked to the DA about Winnie the Pooh, and told the DA that she reminded her of Tigger because she was so bouncy. She graduated from high school at 19, thanks to the Oakland school system that basically just pushed her through, even though she had no business graduating. She didn't know what a "cross street" was. She didn't know what "ejaculation" was (the attorney had to ask her if it was "wet or dry"). And the girl's crack-addicted mother disappeared last friday, so now she's staying at her grandmother's nursing home. Her 12-year-old brother was put in a foster home, but he and two other kids broke out, stole a car, and tried to steal guns, and now he's in police custody.

We found out that the felony the defendant was convicted for was for statutory rape (the DA said it was actually forcible as well). They couldn't tell us that during the trial because it would be too prejudicial. The DA said that the day of jury selection he was in the courthouse with his wife pressed up face against the wall, while he was kissing all over her. I don't understand how this guy is still a pastor. He said in court that the church forgives his crime(s) and his adultery and his using a woman for sex. I just don't get that. I'm not even going to get into how I feel about that.

One juror said to me afterwards that this trial taught him a lot about humanity, because he just didn't understand before how people could act so differently from how we'd imagine ourselves acting. I think it was like that for a lot of people, myself included. I also don't think I'll ever be picked to serve on this kind of case again, because of how I feel about this whole thing.

It's just not fair.

The past couple of days has been pretty hot. Wednesday I didn't have to be at the courthouse until just after lunch, which meant that BART parking would be full by the time I needed to get there. So I walked. Talk about miserable. Even worse, the train I was on had broken AC or something. I ended up walking from one end of the train to the other before I found a car with working AC.

Walking home was even worse. I thought I was going to die before I got home.

Marc had a work dinner on Wednesday night, so I had dinner by myself at home, and watched Kill Bill Vol. 2. Marc came home with a gift from the dinner, which was a brand new Palm Pilot! Lucky bum.

The court gave us free passes today for the Oakland Museum, and gave us a longer lunch to go during. I spent most of my time in the Natural Sciences exhibit, since I'm not that into history or art. I took a few pictures, although I haven't loaded them up yet to see how they turned out. It was a pretty neat exhibit though.

I got home early today, so I took Bandit to the dog park in the afternoon. The dog park by us has this gravelly, dirt surface. I brought his frisbee with me, and threw it for him a few times. Bandit would totally charge at it when it hit the ground, and at one point I noticed a big smear of blood on the frisbee where his foot had been. I lifted his feet and saw that the stop pads (the little toe pads up higher on the ankle) were torn up and bleeding. Yikes. He didn't really seem to notice, just wanted to keep playing frisbee. I cleaned it up when we got home - just gonna have to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't get infected.

It LOOKS painful... :(

Alrighty, time for bed - have work tomorrow. ::grumble::

Before I get to my normal update, I wanted to talk about puppy mills for a bit. I'd always figured that by now most people know about them, but I'm continually surprised by how many people don't. I was reading about them in Patricia McConnell's book, which is how I got to thinking about them today.

A puppy mill is basically a place that breeds hundreds or thousands of puppies for the sole purpose of selling them to pet stores or people for profit. Life magazine did a cover story on them back in, I think, the 90's. The authors accompanied animal control officers on a number of raids of puppy mills in the midwest.

In the puppy mills, they found cages stacked high on each other, which puppies and their mothers crammed in there. The feces and urine of the dogs above were left to fall on those below. Some dogs had feet or legs that were mangled from falling through the wire pens and being chewed on by the dogs below. They found large plastic bags filled with dead rottweiler puppies. Puppies and their mothers were filthy and slept in their own waste.

Puppy mill owners will breed a bitch every time she comes into season, basically using her up until she dies (responsible breeders won't breed a bitch in consecutive seasons, and often will only breed her once a year or even less frequently). They're kept penned up in cages their entire lives.

These puppies most often end up in pet stores, or are sold through newspaper ads or other dealers. I remember back in the 90's when this started coming out because people who were buying puppies from pet stores were finding that their dogs were becoming ill. No surprise given the conditions they and their parents were raised in.

I remember a friend of mine back when I was a kid whose parents had gotten them an "AKC-papered" dog from a pet store. It was supposed to be a cocker spaniel. This dog grew up to be big enough to put its paws on the fence gate, and looked nothing like a cocker spaniel. Puppy mills and pet stores forging papers for animals was common.

Luckily today, the number of pet stores that sell puppies seems to be diminishing (at least out here in California). There are still a lot of puppy mills out there, mostly in the midwest and the south. Unfortunately, even here in Pleasanton, there's a nasty little pet store that we know sells puppies (and this place is a dump too boot). The big chain stores like Petsmart and Petco don't sell puppies or kittens - they host adoption fairs for rescues and shelters instead.

What this all comes down to is this - please, please, please don't buy puppies or dogs from pet stores. No good, responsible breeder that cares about their puppies would ever, EVER, sell them to a pet store. Most of the breeders I contacted when we were looking for Bandit required that you sign a puppy contract, and they all included a clause that said that the breeder would take the dog back should we ever have to give it up. Those breeders care about what happens to their pups. Don't buy from a newspaper ad. Research for good, reputable breeders, or go to a shelter, SPCA, or rescue.

Okay, that's enough of me on the soapbox for now. :)

Jury duty was actually kinda interesting today, and the day seemed to go by pretty quickly. Although one of the jurors fell asleep for a few minutes today, which was a bit amusing. And a bit surprising that I wasn't that juror. ;) Also, I think our DA is wearing braces.

I relaxed a bit after getting home, and then I loaded up Bandit and all his agility "gear" into the car and it was off to class. Today was a workout! We played a game of "snooker," where we each had 45 seconds to score as many points as possible on a course. We (well, the dog) had to take a jump once, then an obstacle, then back to the jump, then another obstacle, and so on. Each obstacle was worth different points. So it was a LOT of running around. But we did pretty well! On one run though, I accidentally tripped over Bandit, and thereafter he thought we were playing some kind of game.

We also did more work on the teeter, and after dragging him over it a couple of times, he finally got up enough confidence and went on without much goading from me. It was great! I was pretty proud of the little butthead.

By the end of the class, I think we (and everyone else) were pretty pooped.

I got home a little after 9, Marc and I had dinner and watched Nip/Tuck, and now I'm writing this.

Oh, I also picked up the Kill Bill Vol. 2 DVD! I'm stoked. I've already watched the deleted scene, hehe.

Jury duty starts a little late tomorrow, so I get to sleep in, lucky me. :)

Hmm, that could probably describe the way my life feels some days, hehe. But really it's just a double entendre about the fact that these days I don't have access to AIM - AOL Instant Messenger. Which sucks! I can't chat with friends during the day now, and I feel totally disconnected. (You guys gotta call me to tell me what's going on for Tahoe this weekend. ;))

We found out today that they've extended the estimated finish date for our trial by two days. And that jury deliberations may take an extra, third week. Welcome to my world of suck.

On the bright side, I get home a bit earlier than usual. Marc and I went to Borders after dinner to browse for some books. We ended up picking up David Sedaris' book, "How to Dress Your Family in Courduroy and Jeans" (or something like that) which is supposed to be pretty funny. Marc's reading it first. I also picked up "The Other End of the Leash" by Patricia McConnell. I know, I'm a dog geek, I can't help it. But it's supposed to be a really good book on understanding dog behavior and communication. I snagged a really cute bookmark while waiting for the cashier too. Darn those crafty retailers, they sure know where to put those last-minute goodies to ding you an extra $2.

Last week at Petsmart I picked up a bone for Bandit, called the "Meaty Mammoth Bone." I finally got around to take some pictures of the huge monstrosity, which he's been gnawing away at (his teeth are now quite clean).

"My Bone!"

Mmmm...

Pondering how long it will take to finish this thing.

I'm writing this tonight, since I won't have computer access nor time tomorrow.

Pretty uneventful weekend - I took Bandit sheep herding by myself, and then we went and saw The Village with Kenny on Friday night, and I have to admit I was disappointed. I don't know if it's because I was so excited about seeing it or what, but it just didn't really deliver. For one, it really wasn't that scary. There was maybe a moment or two where I was really scared, but other than that, it was just a bit slow. There were some good parts, but there were also some silly parts.

Saturday morning was spent mostly bumming around the house. I took Bandit to Petsmart at 2 for a class, and it turned out the 3 o' clock class had already graduated, so I hung out for an hour and stayed for the 4 pm class. Marc thought I was a big dork for hanging out for an hour and just chatting and watching the dogs play. I had fun though, hehe.

After I got home, Marc and I drove down to Steve and Erin's house to hang out. We went out for dinner at Texas Roadhouse (I had ribs and LOTS of yummy bread). Jacob and Allison were both adorable, as usual. We rented Intolerable Cruelty, which turned out to be pretty odd, and not that great. We just haven't had luck with movies lately!

I woke up at like 9:30 am this morning all on my own for some strange reason (I woke up on my own Saturday morning too). Normally I'm never up that early, nor do I ever wake up without Marc dragging me out of bed. Today was a couple more Petsmart classes (Marc and I are trying to think of something to get Melanie, since she's been so nice to let us spend time in her classes).

We're trying to think of what we want to do for our anniversary vacation coming up next month. So far we've been thinking Disneyland or Yosemite, but we haven't decided yet.

Alright, time for bed! Jury duty tomorrow. :(

I'm back at work today, although I don't know what's worse, work or jury duty. Well, at least at work I can sit in front of the computer. Unfortunately, the heater is broken in our office, and since they keep our buildings so freaking cold, I'm sitting here right now wearing two lab coats desperately trying to stay warm.

Yesterday was our first day of testimony. Man, that is some boring stuff. At least my scientific background was helpful when it came to the forensic evidence. Sometimes it seemed like the defense attorney was trying to cloud the issue a bit, get people confused about the science. I dunno, it'll be interesting to see what the other jurors have to say when we go to deliberate.

I'm riding BART to jury duty, since traffic and parking up in Oakland is hell. It's actually pretty nice for me, because BART is like a 15 minute walk from our house, and the courtyard is only 3 blocks from the BART station up there. So I'm getting some exercise in the meantime.

I wish I had an MP3 player for the trips - I've since lost the Walkman I used back when I commuted in college. Right now I've just been reading my copy of Strangers by Dean Koontz (had this book for years, just never got around to reading it), and magazines (from EW to Dog Fancy). I also picked up a book yesterday, called the curious incident of the dog in the night-time which sounded interesting. It's supposed to be good, so we'll see.

Yesterday I went to the store and bought a bunch of stuff for dinner. It turned out to be horribly expensive. I don't think I'm going to do that anymore. It's just not fiscally reasonable to shop from a recipe list, it's really isn't. I need to learn how to make a bunch of different dishes from more generic ingredients. I really need to learn how to cook Chinese food. Oh yeah, I also need to stop cooking from a Williams and Sonoma cookbook, because they call for really expensive ingredients ($6 for 1 oz of goat cheese???).

So anyways, dinner turned out okay, but I wasn't all that happy with it. I made Pasta with Goat Cheese, Arugula, and Tomatoes, except that I couldn't find Arugula at the store (it's a veggie right?), so I got spinach instead. Which I think worked okay. But I don't think I like goat cheese that much. Oh, I just realized I was supposed to season it with pepper and forgot. Oops.

I also made potatoes au gratin, which was okay, but I think I'd like to find another recipe, cause these didn't have as much flavor as I'd expect. Or maybe I forgot something there too.

I miss my mom's cooking!

I also bought some stuff to make mushroom risotto, and would you believe it, mushrooms are pretty pricey. At least the ones I had to buy were. Also, the rice was expensive. I seriously considered just buying the pre-packaged risotto, the kind you just add water to and heat. It certainly would be cheaper.

I read an article the other day that said that 70% of people, when asked if they had to choose between their spouse and the dog, said that they would choose the dog. I thought that was interesting because lately Marc seems to be jealous of the dog, since I'm always hugging and kissing the dog. Which I've always done, and which I've done to both my dogs, as well as the cats. They just all look huggable and kissable to me. Anyways, I think I'm going to have to make sure I dole out hugs and biscuits to the dog and hubby equally from now on.

So, the reason I've been lax on getting updates done is because I've been called in for jury duty. Which means no access to a computer during the day, and I'm usually too lazy to blog in the evening (although I'm doing it now). Anyways, more on the jury stuff later.

Tuesday night, I took Bandit to agility class. We did the teeter for the first time in this class, and he did okay the first few times, but then he got spooked and was reluctant to go on it after. It's always an uphill battle, lol. But he did REALLY well with the little boy in class. He had no problem with the kid petting him on top of the head while the boy was standing, and he even initiated contact with the kid, at one point letting him even hug his head. It was pretty amazing.

Okay, so back to jury duty. I was there Tuesday and today, and I got picked, goddammit. They had us fill out questionnaires, and they asked some questions while we were sitting in the jury box, but they didn't even ask me a single question! Supposedly the trial is going to last 2 weeks, which isn't too bad, I guess. The bad part is that it's all the way up in Oakland. Sucks.

It was funny watching everyone try to get out of it. Some people came up with some good BS stuff. The real kicker was this older Caucasian woman. The DA asked her about one of her answers in her questionnaire, which was, "Whatever happened to a jury of your peers?" The lady explained that she always thought that juries were supposed to be made of your (the victim's) "peers." The DA asked, "So you're saying that if the victim is African-American, that the jury should be all African-American?" The lady said, "Yes, just like if it's Chinese it should all be Chinese." No lie, that's what she said. The judge dismissed her right away, and there were more than a couple snickers from the jury box. Even the attorneys looked a bit bemused. I don't know if she was for real or not, but if not, it was a creative way to get out of jury duty.

Marc and I went to Target tonight, to look at MP3 players. We didn't find any, but we did bump into this one couple. The wife looked at Marc and said, "Hi, how are you?" Marc replied, "Good, how are you?" At first I thought maybe he knew this lady. And then she said hi to me, and I just smiled in reply. THEN, she asks Marc (while nodding towards me), "Is that your daughter?" I about choked. All Marc said was, "Actually, this is my wife." I was thinking, Is she on drugs? I mean, hello, Marc and I look about the same age. And HELLO, I'm Chinese and he's Caucasian! I don't even look half Chinese! Anyways, we both had to leave the aisle, because neither of us could stop from laughing. It turned out that couple was trying to sell something to people, and were randomly accosting people in the store. In Target. So we got the hell outta Dodge.

Anyways, I'm gonna do my best to do updates at night while I'm stuck in jury duty (I will be at work on Fridays). No guarantees I won't get lazy though. ;)

Apologies for the lack of updates this week, I'll explain why in a bit. Since it's been a few days, I'm gonna cut this up into two entries.

Friday

We had sheep herding Friday after work - we worked a lot in the large field, and practiced our outruns and stuff. Bandit did well! We took breaks in between sessions and he went out and played in the sprinklers in the field. Both of us went home fairly wet and muddy and smelling of sheep.

After that, Kenny, Deepali, and Will came over and we went to the theater to go watch The Village. Unfortunately, all the tickets were sold out save for the 11:30 show, and none of us wanted to stay that late. So we ended up getting tickets for The Manchurian Candidate. We ate dinner at Fuddruckers before going to wait in line for the movie. The movie was okay - kinda wierd, nothing great. I was bummed about not being able to see The Village.

Saturday

We were productive on Saturday! We both got up early to go drop my car off at the shop to have the brakes done. I debated going back to bed after we got home, but decided I wanted to stay up. So we kind of bummed around a bit before lunch. Melanie called to let me know that she was sick and cancelling classes for the day, so we decided to call my dad to see if he could come up and help us fix our leaking shower.

In the meantime, Marc started working on the backyard, since we wanted to expand our sprinkler system (our previous setup didn't water part of the yard, and our grass died because of it). We found out that the builders had actually laid out pipe extensions as well as places to attach new sprinkler heads. So all we had to do was buy new sprinkler heads! Nice and easy.

My dad came over after lunch and helped us take apart the shower thingy. After some Googling on how to fix our particular shower, and a trip to Home Depot where there was much searching for o-rings, we now have a dry shower! Thanks Dad! Unfortunately for Snuggles, this means no more baths under the leaky shower head (she'd taken to sitting under the water drips).

After that, we picked up the car, and paid the $133 bill, which wasn't bad for new front pads and resurfaced front rotors. We then stopped by Home Depot again and picked up a new bookshelf for our guest bedroom.

In the evening, Vicki and Cynthia came over, and we went to see The Bourne Supremacy, which turned out to be pretty good. Afterwards, Marc and I stayed up late and put together the new bookcase and unpacked all our books. Yay! Less boxes in the guest bedroom.

Sunday

Since we were pretty productive on Saturday, we didn't plan to do anything on Sunday. I went in the morning to one class at Petsmart, came back home for lunch, and then went back in the afternoon for two more classes. There was a half hour between the two classes, so Melanie and I chit-chatted while we watched Bandit and Lucas play tug. Well, Lucas was playing, Bandit was just trying to get the toy for himself, and he was serious about it, lol.

Melanie also showed me a studio portrait photo that she and her boyfriend had taken with their two dogs. It was cute. I think I'm going to have to look into having something like that done, hehe.