September 2004 Archives

Yesterday, my mom and I were driving home from work in my mom's car, and we were stopped at a light when this guy pulls up alongside us, gesturing. We roll down the window, and he yells, "your tire is very flat!"

So we pull into the nearest gas station, and sure enough, there's a big 'ol nail in the rear tire. The gas station guys can't help us though, since they're about to close, so they point us to the America's Tire Company across the street.

The guy who helped me was so incredibly rude. I won't even go into the whole conversation, but from his first word to me (a "YES?" that seemed as if I was bothering him immensely), I was put off. Had I only been in there to get new tires or something, and it wasn't an emergency, I probably would've told him I was going to do business elsewhere. And you know me, it takes a lot for me to be that reactive. This guy was pretty rude to everyone else too - someone really needs to pull that stick outta his ass.

Anyways, the Mercedes didn't have a full-sized spare, so my mom had to get a whole new tire. Thankfully, the guys who did the work were all very nice. I told my mom about the crummy guy, and my mom actually went inside to complain. I told her not to, but when I turned my back, she was gone, lol.

She came back out to where the car was, and complained to the guys who were working on the car. They apologized, but said there wasn't much they could do since the guy was a manager. They did offer to beat him up though. :P

Other than that though, it was cool, the whole thing only took like 10 minutes, and we were on our way home.

UPS delivered the Cal collar and leash that I bought for Bandit - the store had screwed up my order and never shipped it out, so I wrote customer service, and they sent it overnight for free. So he's gonna sport them on game days. :)

Marc and I watched "Lost" and "The Apprentice" last night. Anyone watching "Lost?" It's pretty good so far, I'm liking it. Hopefully it won't get cheesy later on. Apprentice was good too, it's amazing how poorly those girls work together. I was glad Jen C. got booted, she totally deserved it.

We took Bandit on a long walk afterwards, since we've really been slacking on his walks. Exercise is part of his "therapy" so I'm really trying to get diligent about it. I've been trying to wake up a half hour early in the morning to take him running for the past two days, but it hasn't happened yet. Marc keeps making fun of me for it. I think I might be more motivated if I had an MP3 player. ;)

Stupid me forgot to include these short videos in my last entry. :)

Rip Roarin' Rapids at California Adventure

California Screamin' (seems much faster when you're ON it)

California Screamin' loop in front of Mickey Mouse

Splash Mountain

Bird demonstrating green screen at the Animal Planet Live! show

Jaws at the Universal Studios Tram Tour

Betamax

I came across the Save Betamax campaign today. It's a pretty interesting read - basically, it's about how all our copy technology today - VCR's, DVD-Rs, MP3 players - is legal because of an old ruling on Betamax, and how studios are trying to pass legislation to overrule the Betamax decision.

Dreams

I had a weird dream last night (when do I not?). I dreamt that Marc and I had a baby, and I was a HORRIBLE mother. I don't think Marc was actually in my dream (his comment: "I don't think I'm ever in your dreams"). Anyways, so like the baby was a day old. And it needed to be fed every hour (I have no idea if this is true in real life). So I'm in my PJs - big Grumpy shirt and flannel pants - and I haven't showered and my hair is a mess.

I feed the baby, and then I go and drop it off at a day care (haha) and I keep telling myself I need to be back in an hour to feed it again. Then I go over to some house and meet up with my dad, my brothers, and my cousin Henry. I think we were bowling or something. But then there were all these bees on the ground, and this giant wasp that was going around and decapitating the bees and eating them. I didn't have any bug spray, so I had to hide in the house.

All this time I'm thinking, "man, it's been hours, I really need to go pick up the baby." But at the same time my hair is all messy and I feel like I need to go home and shower first. At one point I ended up in a big mall, I'm not sure how. Then I finally decided to go pick up the baby - but I decided I HAD to go home and shower first.

On my way home, I somehow ended up in Spiderman's (yes, Spiderman) costume-changing contraption. It was like this iron capsule I was standing in, with a slit to look out from (like those torture chambers). There wasn't any room to move my hands from my sides, and all I could think of was that I needed to get my scrunchie out of my hair, or else the Spiderman hood wouldn't fit right over my head. Or that I'd look stupid with this big ponytail bulge on the back of my head.

Anyways, that's when I woke up. Do babies really have to be fed every hour? 'Cause that's kinda annoying.

Disneyland

Yay, so I finally got the pictures uploaded for Disneyland! You can view all of them in the gallery in the Vacations album.

We had a really good time! We drove down to LA on Monday morning, and checked in to the Grand Californian Hotel where we were planning on staying for one night. It was a really nice room. We each had our own bathrobes and everything.

Our hotel was right next to Downtown Disney, so we spent the rest of our afternoon walking around and looking at the shops. Then we went back to the room and lounged a bit (had to enjoy the expensive room) and went out to dinner.

We wanted to eat at the ESPN Zone since the Monday night game was on, but when we got there and asked how long the wait for a table was, the girl said, "One to five hours." Yeah, she said FIVE hours. She said it was because a lot of people stuck around to watch the whole game. Anyways, we thought that was pretty funny.

So we ended up eating at the Rainforest Cafe, which was next door, and from which we could watch the game on the big Jumbotron outside the ESPN restaurant.

After dinner, we went down to the pool and spent some time soaking in the hot tub. Using our cozy bathrobes, of course.

Then we went to the AMC theater to watch Resident Evil 2. Not the best choice, but there really wasn't anything else, and Marc had a coupon for a free ticket. The movie was okay, Marc thought it was horrible. But wow, they had the plushest women's bathroom I'd ever seen! It had a round leather couch and these vanity mirrors with kleenex everywhere. In a movie theater!

The next morning we decided to order room service for breakfast. It was exhorbitantly expensive. I got two croissants, a glass of milk, and a glass of juice for $11. Marc got a Mickey Mouse waffle.

Then we checked out, and headed off to the park! California Adventure was our first stop. We got in a half hour before the park officially opened, and waited in line with a small crowd to go on the new Tower of Terror ride.

That ride was cool - I was so scared though, since I hate free-falling. We ended up going on it a couple more times (the park was totally not crowded, the longest we had to wait in line was 20 minutes). One time, there was this lady with her daughter, who was like 4, and they were with this other couple. There's a Twilight Zone intro before you actually get on the ride, which is kind of creepy, and the girl was totally sobbing afterwards.

She really didn't want to go on the ride, and while we were waiting in line to get on the "elevator," the other woman was like, "would your auntie and mommy let you go on something that's scary?" Apparently, yes. They kept telling her stuff like, "the scary part's over!" She just kept crying. They made her go on the ride anyways. The minute it got dark, she started screaming. It got even worse once the ride started going up and dropping.

Poor thing. I think she may have trust issues from now on, heh.

We split our time between California Adventure and Disneyland - Disneyland had a BUNCH of rides closed, since they're doing remodeling for their 50th anniversary next year. So that kind of sucked. But the great thing was how uncrowded the parks were, so we had no problem going on every ride we wanted to. I got a hat, too.

We even posed for a picture with Goofy.

After the parks closed, we went and checked into our new hotel, the cheaper Best Western, which was not nearly as nice as our last digs. But they had a topiary garden, which was kind of cool, if not odd.

The next day was more of the same, California Adventure (we made lots of funny poses and faces for the California Screamin' photos) and then Disneyland. I got a Nemo and a Stich pin, and Marc got a halloween M&M candy dispenser at one of the Downtown Disney stores.

Our legs were killing us by the end of the day, and we debated going to Universal Studios at all. But the next morning we decided we might as well go, since we were down there, and we were on vacation.

On the drive there, we passed by this car which had to be the most beat up, dirty car I've ever seen. It had all this garbage in it too. It was pretty funny. I know it's kinda mean, but I took some pictures, which don't really do it justice.

Universal Studios was pretty cool, and it's changed a lot since we'd last gone in '97. Like Disneyland, it wasn't too crowded, so the lines were all very short. The new Mummy ride was pretty cool, and we got soaked on the Jurassic Park ride.

We went to see a few shows, like the Shrek 4D show, which was really cool, and the Animal Planet Live! show. We even went on the Tram Tour, but our guide wasn't the most animated or funny person. Still, it was fun to go on.

Did I mention it was HOT the days we were down there? I think it was in the mid-90's. I was dying.

We left the park around 5 o' clock, and headed home.

All in all, we had a pretty awesome time - it was a great way to celebrate our anniversary. :)

Don't forget to check out the rest of the pics in the gallery!

What is up with the weather? It was freezing yesterday when I got home. It looked like it was about to rain, too.

Anyways, so last night after dinner Marc and I finished watching Hidalgo. I really liked it. I can't believe that they spent 68 days crossing the desert in that race. Crazy.

This is kind of old news, but I was reading this article on pet cloning. I don't think I'd want to clone my pets. Not cause I think it's creepy or anything like that, but as much as I love all my pets, they're unique individuals to me. I don't think I'd want another Betsy, or another Bandit, even though I love them to death.

I don't think cloning Betsy would've taken away the pain of losing her the first time. I'd still miss who SHE was.

Alright, time for me to get back to work. Did anyone else feel that earthquake this morning? My whole office looked like it was swaying.

So, I'm back at work. Sucks!

Marc and I had a great vacation (he's still on vacation, by the way). I'm gonna write about it, but probably not until tomorrow, since I was too lazy to upload all the photos and junk over the weekend. ;)

We got back home late Thursday night. My dad house-sat for us while we were gone, to take care of the kiddies. Bandit was pretty happy to see us when we got home, which was a bit surprising. But he ran back and forth between Marc and I like a dozen times, his body wiggling everywhere and whining from being so excited. He gave my face a tongue bath too.

The cats pretty much acted like we'd never left.

We were off on Friday too, and pretty much relaxed and lounged around the house all day. I think we may have done other stuff, but I honestly can't remember right now. Marc might remember.

We did our usual sheep herding in the evening, and then Kenny came over and we rented Man on Fire, which was a pretty good movie.

Saturday I think we may have gone to the mall. Or maybe that was Friday. I also took Bandit to classes on Saturday, and in the evening Deepali came over and we rented Mean Girls. Marc was totally complaining about this choice, but in the end I think he ended up liking it. Pretty funny movie - I was, unfortunately, part of the "Nerdy Asians" clique and not the "Cool Asians" clique in high school.

Sunday was more of the same - watched some football, and I took Bandit to more classes. Bandit and Lucas got into a little scuffle in the morning class, when they were both playing with Rocko, the bull terrier puppy. Three is apparently a crowd with those two. In the afternoon class, Bandit was pretty wary of Pepe, the dog that bit him on the butt last weekend. That would've been pretty funny to get on tape, in like slow motion - Pepe striking out of nowhere and biting Bandit on the butt, and then Bandit whirling around with this look of horror on his face.

We had yet another girl walk right into the middle of a class too. She was like 13, 14 years old? Walks right in, goes up to Lucas, and is like, "Hey doggy!" Melanie tells her, "We're in the middle of a class right now, could you please not touch the dogs?" The girl goes, "Hey doggy!" again. Melanie repeats herself. The girl says, "I take classes too!" Finally the girl moves, but doesn't leave the ring, and instead stands there looking at pictures. Her mom comes over and looks with her. Class goes on, with the girl ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the photos.

Really odd.

Marc and I rented Hidalgo in the evening (it was a movie rental extravaganza weekend!). It was pretty late (delayed by the fact that Marc returned Mean Girls to the wrong Blockbuster and had to go back to pick it up), so we didn't get to finish it, but I like it so far. Then again, it's hard for me to not like something that has horses in it. ;)

And now I'm back at work. And it totally blows.

Marc and I should be on our 2nd day at Disneyland! Woohoo!

So, Sunday. I couldn't believe the rain when I woke up in the morning! Totally out of nowhere, and it was [b]pouring[/b]. Marc took my car to get an oil change, and I took Bandit to the early morning Petsmart class. After I got back, Marc and I went and dropped the car off to get new tires, and then it was back to Petsmart again to buy cat litter and treats.

Then we went to the mall to buy each other anniversary presents. The goal was something made of cotton that was no more than $30. I had an idea of what to get Marc (an M&M's sleep shirt), but I couldn't find it. Which sucked. So I went to Plan B, which was basically a really, REALLY comfy sleep shirt, which is something that he's needed for a while. I found it, bought it, and came in at $26.10. Unfortunately, as I left the store, I realized that it wasn't made of cotton. 90% polyester and 10% spandex or something. Argh!

Oh well, I'm still gonna give it to him I guess.

Marc didn't manage to find me a present. So we grabbed lunch, and I went back to Petsmart for the afternoon classes. Marc went back to the mall in the meantime (he still didn't find me anything).

During one of the classes, this girl, who was probably in her 20's, came up to the training ring (it's marked off by this blue fencing), and then proceeded to walk RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE of the ring, while Melanie was talking, and while people were working. She walked up to this couple who had a pair of Border Collies and stood there looking at them like she wanted to pet them. Melanie finally told her that there was a class in session, and could she please not bother the dogs. So she left. It was bizarre. We all thought she knew someone in class, but no, she just totally randomly walked in. I'm not sure how it wasn't obvious that there was a class in session.

Then there was another class where Bandit got bit on the butt by a little dog named Pepe. He wasn't too happy about that.

My dad came over in the evening so we could show him all the stuff for the pets - he's housesitting for us while we're gone. We set up the futon for him in the guest bedroom, and of course, not too long after it was set up this is where we found the cats:

After my dad left, Bill and Sandy dropped off a gift bag for us, to thank us for helping them with the TV. Which was totally unnecessary, since we totally owed Bill still for helping us look for Bandit that time when he ran away. It was so nice too - they got us juice classes that had dogs and cats on them, as well as a big dog cookie for Bandit, and a thank you card with a Border Collie on it.

It was really thoughtful of them!

No entry tomorrow - I ran out of days of the weekend! ;)

We're in Disneyland today!

So Saturday was a pretty busy day. After lunch we drove down to Bill and Brenda's house to meet up with Brenda, and the three of us (plus Hayden) drove to the San Jose State football game. They were playing Morgan State, who supposedly had a really good band.

The game was pretty good, although both teams kind of sucked (SJSU won). Morgan State's band was really good. They put on a pretty entertaining halftime show.

After the game, Marc and I went to House of Sichuan in Cupertino, where my dad was hosting some of his coworkers and their families for dinner. The food was pretty good, but most of it was too spicy for me to eat. After dinner, we went over to his coworker's house, stayed for a bit to take the tour, and then Marc, Kenny, Leslie and I left to go to Leslie's place to watch a movie.

When we got to Blockbuster, Leslie asked Marc and I if we could rent on our card, because he had a late fee on his. When we got to the counter to pay, Marc asked Leslie, "Hey Leslie, don't YOU have a Blockbuster card we could use? Why don't you use it?" Leslie made up something about forgetting his card at home, and then turned and looked and me and deadpanned, "Now I understand."

We got to Leslie's apartment and we were sitting around getting ready to watch the movie when Leslie walked to his bedroom. Kenny leaned over and said, "Now that he's gone, I should tell you that I hate watching movies here because he always has the volume so low that you can't hear anything."

Marc said, "Shh, he might hear you, these walls aren't that thick."

A second later we hear Leslie's voice from the other side, "These walls are made of paper, I can hear everything you're saying."

We were just cracking up - Marc was on the floor he was laughing so hard.

Anyways, the movie we rented was Godsend, which was a so-so movie. Not that creepy really, and the ending kind of sucked. We didn't get home until 2 am - poor Bandit was more than ready to come inside when we got back.

Well, as you're reading this, Marc and I are driving down to Disneyland! We had a pretty busy weekend, so I'm going to spread it out over the next couple days.

Friday I left work early and took Bandit up to sheep herding, as usual. It was cold! I couldn't believe how much the temperature dropped this weekend. After the lesson, Jan asked me to help feed the sheep, and this time I got to split the bales of hay and toss them into the feed bins. I know it's dorky, but it was kind of fun.

I also got this from World Wildlife Fund, as a gift for my donation:

It's cute, but I'd probably look pretty FOB-y wearing it. I might use it to carry Bandit's stuff around. :)

When I got home from herding, Marc came out and told me that our neighbor, Bill, had asked if we could help him put up his new flat-screen TV. So I walked over with Marc, wearing stinky sheep clothes and all. The TV was GIGANTIC. It was a 61" flat-screen. Marc and I were probably visibly drooling.

Anyways, if you know our house, our living room came with a built-in hutch for the TV above the fireplace. Our neighbor's is the same, except that he had it filled in so that it was now just a flat wall that he could mount the TV on.

So the three of us tried to lift the TV to get it into the mounting bracket on the wall. We tried a few times (all with great difficulty), but the damn thing just wouldn't slide on. Finally, one of our other neighbors, John, came over to help. Which made me happy, because that pretty much meant I didn't have to do any more heavy lifting, hehe.

We spent like two hours fiddling with it, trying to figure out why it wouldn't fit on the bracket. We finally figured out what the problem was (the wall was concave, which was causing the bracket to bow), and luckily John had the tools to fix it.

That TV was awesome. It cost Bill $12,000. He and his girlfriend/wife had custom-built lazy-boy chairs in their living room, and Bill had every game console hooked up to the TV. Then he told us that he had a DVD collection, and that he bought every DVD that came out every week. He wasn't kidding either - he had a Winny the Pooh movie and he doesn't even have kids.

He also showed us around the rest of his house - it was like a techno-geek's dream. He even said we could use his wireless internet if we wanted to, and offered to give me a wireless card for my laptop, and an extra wireless router he had (I was tempted to take the wireless card, but we just said thanks, but no thanks, which took some willpower).

After that, we drove down to Milpitas to meet with my parents and brothers (at this point we were pretty late), who were taking us out to dinner for our anniversary. We had Thai food for dinner, and yummy fried bananas and ice cream for dessert.

Then we came home and were too tired to do anything but sleep.

I love playing hide 'n seek with the dog. It's supposed to be a good confidence building exercise. I know it annoys Marc sometimes, because the dog is running all over the place, but it's a heck of a lot of fun. Usually what I do is I'll throw a ball or toy for Bandit, then go run and hide while he fetches it. There's not a whole lot of places to hide, but it's fun to watch him frantically zoom from each of the usual spots until he finds me. He almost always drops his toy to go look for me, so it's funny when he finds me, then has to go and remember where he left his toy.

The funny thing about owning a Border Collie is that they're control freaks. Bandit has to know where each and every one of us is in the house. With Marc and I, I think it's more of an attachment issue, but with the cats, it seems to be more of a herding issue - he likes to know just where they are at all times.

If we're downstairs and Stubby wants to go upstairs, Bandit will stand in front of the staircase. I always have to call him off so that the poor cat can go where he needs to go. The other night, I was sitting at the computer, and Marc was downstairs, and Bandit came into the office, clearly looking for something. He looked determined, glanced at me but didn't come over to be petted, and left the room. A minute later, he was back, still looking, and this time actually took a peek under my desk. It was pretty obvious where Marc and I were, so I think he must have been looking for one of the cats. It was pretty funny.

Anyways, enough rambling about the dog, it's FRIDAY!

It's FRIDAY, it's FRIDAY, it's FRI-I-DAY!!!

Marc asked me to do my happy dance this morning, but I was too sleepy to. It's really gotta be a spontaneous thing, I explained to him.

Last night was my turn to make dinner. We've been doing stir fry a lot, which is great, since we finally can do something with that big pork loin we bought from Costco, hehe. It's also a quick, cheap dinner, which is always a bonus. Plus it's gotta be healthier than a steak Burrito Ultimo from Baja Fresh.

We watched Joey and The Apprentice. Could Brad be a bigger idiot? You knew he was gonna get kicked off - Trump really didn't like his stupid move. I was hoping that Stacie would get kicked off, just because she's annoying. It still annoys me that they had to go and pick yet another crazy African-American chick. Hard enough to be a minority woman in the working world without people thinking you're all nuts. I guess they figured Omarosa 2 would make for good ratings.

And this "12 minutes of never before seen board room footage!" on Saturdays is getting annoying too. They're milking this show HARD. But it works, cause I'm gonna wanna watch that too.

Anyways, I'm still gonna try to post while we're gone on vacation. MovableType allows for post scheduling, so I'll type them all up before we leave and schedule one for each day. You know, fake posts, haha. Deepali and I thought of the same exact thing to post - "Today, Marc and I got pushed around by Goofy!" Great minds think alike, I guess. ;)

Apparently, England just voted to ban fox hunting. Now if only Spain would ban bull fighting.

Here's a story about a woman who was fired from her job for sporting a Kerry-Edwards sticker on her bumper - and a story about how she was later given a job by John Kerry himself.

Speaking of Kerry, I was reading an article about the people who have been working on his campaign on environmental issues, and one of the names listed, Carol Browner, is the sister of the woman who's the head of my department here at work. She was the head of the EPA under Clinton's administration. Kinda cool.

And I think we know who to avoid when we go to Disneyland.

Two more days! I will be very giddy come 3 pm tomorrow.

Two and a half more days before I'm officially on VACATION! I can't believe that in one week Marc and I will have been married for TWO years. I don't know where the time goes. Ironically, it's only Wednesday and this week feels like it's going by sooo slowly.

Marc and I went to Pet Food Express last night to buy some dog food (Petsmart doesn't carry the Wellness brand). While we were there, we found this cute little doormat that we just had to have:

They had a picture of this one with a shepard's crook, which I really liked, but they didn't have it at the store:

The checker at the store asked us, "you're not going to get the Border Collie calender?" To which we sheepishly responded that we already had one.

We didn't do much else last night. We watched "The Investigators" on Court TV, where they were doing the story about those three women in Yosemite who were murdered by Cary Stayner. The interesting thing that we learned was that the guy was the brother of that guy Steven, who had been kidnapped by the pedophile Kenneth Parnell. Remember him? They did a TV movie on it, called, "I Know My Name is Steven." I remember being freaked out by that movie.

Anyone watch the Rangers-A's game yesterday? If you watched any sports news, it was hard to miss this. Apparently some fans and the Rangers bullpen were exchanging some words, and one of the Rangers' relief pitchers, Frank Francisco, threw a chair at the fans, hitting one guy on the head, and another lady in the face, breaking her nose. I saw it on TV, it was crazy.

The guy was arrested shortly after. I hope he gets suspended for the rest of the year too.

Amazingly, his manager sounds like he's trying to justify the guy's actions.

Other Random Bits

Marc and I went to Fry's after work, and I got some RAM for my computer, since my game has been a memory hog ever since the new expansion came out. 1 gig baby! It's working great now, I love it.

I won my first game in Fantasy Football - for once I have both a great running back (Tomlinson) and a top quarterback (Hasselbeck). The rest of my team is pretty well rounded too - normally I'm picking up bits off the waiver wire. I think I scored more points on the bench, but that's fine with me, as long as I win.

The Cal-Southern Miss game that was supposed to be this Thursday got postponed because of Ivan. Bummer. I found this in the Cal store, which I thought was pretty cute. This also rules. I want it, haha.

I really, really hate ants.

So I get to work this morning, and there is a 10-inch wide trail of ants marching in front of my office door. Inside, there are ants all over the floor, as well as another wide trail of ants marching from the window, across my desk, and down to the floor.

Stupid me had left a muffin (in a baggie) on my desk. My coworker also had a box of cereal that the ants were swarming over. So we called up maintenance, waited for a bit, and no one came. I called them again, and asked if I could just come and pick up ant spray. They said they couldn't give us any.

Well, the situation was pretty intolerable. So we grabbed what we had in the lab, which turned out to be Windex. Windex actually does a decent job of killing them. Problem is, you have to spray it directly on the ant to kill them. So we managed to clean off the desks, but the ants just kept coming.

3 hours went by, and no none from maintenance had shown up. I called them again, they said they'd page the guy. Nada. So I finally got fed up and drove to Safeway and bought a can of raid. Now I have a headache from the Windex and Raid.

Anyways, it's 2:45 pm now, and STILL no one has shown up. We have dead ants all over the floor, and I think all of us are dying from poisoning.

Weekend

We took Bandit to sheep herding on Friday, and then drove down to Milpitas to meet Kenny and Leslie to go see Hero. I really liked it. I had a harder time following the Chinese than I did in Crouching Tiger (I think because in that film, those guys spoke Mandarin just about as well as I do, hehe), so I had to read a lot of the subtitles. It was still cool though. Beautiful cinematography, and I thought the storytelling was really good.

I woke up really early on Saturday morning and drove down to Campbell for my hair appointment. I know, I really should find a place that's closer, but I really like my stylist, and I'd hate to ditch her now. I went with a couple of red highlights, just to try something different.

Marc's brother and his kids and his grandmother came over to the house shortly after I got back. We went to Amici's for lunch. Jacob and Allison were both being cute as usual, and Allison was babbling a lot.

In the afternoon, I took Bandit to classes. The person in the 3 'o clock class never showed, so we just did some work with Bandit and Melanie's dog, Lucas. We were working on having them stay while the two of us left the area. Bandit did horribly. Seems like when all the people leave, he gets up. He'd do it fine if one of us stayed, but not at all if we both left.

Some people came by to admire the dogs, one of them thought Bandit was a girl. I was like, "everyone thinks he's a girl." And one lady said, "it's because he's so gorgeous." In other words, he looks girly. Melanie said he looks like a boy to her, and I think so too, but that's probably because we know he's a boy.

Marc suprised me by stopping by in the middle of the 4 o' clock class!

Then we went home, and I watched the end of the Cal game, where they beat up on New Mexico State pretty good.

In the evening, Vicki, Deepali, and Cynthia came over. We went to eat dinner at Fuddruckers, and then went back to our house to watch "Joey" and "The Apprentice" on TiVo. "The Apprentice" was pretty good, except it looks like they went and tried to get another Omarosa for the show. I think if I were an African-American woman, I'd be annoyed by the fact that they keep picking crazy African-American women for the show.

Marc left to go up to his parents' house around noon, and I went and grabbed lunch for myself before taking the dog to class again. This class had this huge Italian family in it, with their neurotic little dog. But it was like this guy, his wife, their grandmother, some other lady, and like 4 kids. Bandit was a little overwhelmed by some of the kids, but he actually let them pet him a little, which was good.

I stayed after class and chatted for a bit while Bandit and Lucas played, and then went home to work on our broken sprinkler system. It was pretty gross, having to dig around in all the mud, and the PVC glue was noxious smelling. But I managed to get it together, and now it works! Now we just have to build a fence or box around it so Bandit doesn't destroy it again.

Anyways, that was about it for the weekend. And it's 3 pm now, and they still haven't come to take care of the ants.

We watched the new show, "Joey" last night, and it wasn't too bad. I've always liked the character, so I wanna give the new show a chance. We TiVo'd "The Apprentice," but haven't watched it yet.

I felt like going shopping after dinner, but it was kind of late and the mall was already closed. So we did what every young, fun-loving couple does: we went to Wal-Mart.

We didn't really have anything we needed to buy, but we picked up a few things anyways. Got a couple things for Hammy, and then Marc insisted we buy this for the cats:

Yeah, it's a big shoe house for the cats. Unfortunately, it looks like they might be a little too big for it. They've been curious about it, but haven't gone in it yet.

We also walked around the aquatics section at the store, and noticed that there was a cup with two male bettas (siamese fighting fish) in it. If you're not familiar with those fish, they're gorgeous, long-finned fish, but the males need to be kept alone, or they will fight, often to their death.

We found an empty cup nearby (they're housed individually in cups in stores), and it looked to us like some douchebag thought it might be amusing to put two of them together to watch them fight or have them kill each other. Which they were doing - their fins were all torn up, and they were nipping at each other.

Luckily, I was able to track down an employee who scooped one of the bettas back into his own cup. People like the asshole who did that are exactly why I'm so pessimistic about humanity. Vile, malicious people who think it's fun to make other living things suffer. It makes me physically ill, and very, very angry.

Anyways, to make me feel better, let's look at this again:

Morning Moments

I wanted to leave work early today, so I got up super early this morning. Marc has the day off, so he was sleeping while I got ready. At one point, I stopped to sit on the bed and give the dog - who had already taken over my spot on the bed - a chest rub and cuddle. Marc stirred a bit, scratched his ass, rolled over in bed, looked at me bleary-eyed, and said, "you're a freak."

It's moments like this that I cherish.

Ever see that B-movie called Them! with the radioactive gigantic ants? I think that's what the movie was called. I remember watching all those B-horror movies when I was a kid. With giant bugs and what not. Those were awesome, I wonder if anyone shows them anymore on TV.

Anyways, we came home last night to ants all over the pantry. So gross. We've had an ant problem this past week, and I hate ants. We spent most of last night eradicating ants and cleaning up the kitchen. Then we went to Home Depot and armed ourselves with a bunch of ant traps, ant bait, and ant spray. The worst thing is, where ants go, spiders follow. No way am I letting ants stick around long enough for that to happen!

I came across this article this morning. Some guy couldn't sell his litter of puppies, so he decided to shoot them in the head. Well, while he did that, one of the pups put his paw on the trigger and shot the guy instead. I guess what comes around, goes around, you asshat.

I find myself being pretty cynical these days (okay, longer than that, really), with a lot of disdain for a lot of people I encounter. Jerks on the road, ignorant people, people who throw their trash and cigarette butts out their car windows, and general idiots - I really want to just go up to those people and I dunno, flick them in the eye or something. I mean, I encountered all those people just yesterday. I hate people who seemingly have no regard for anything or anyone else except for them and their own. I'd like to turn them all into toads. And that's putting it mildly.

Alright, time to breathe in, breathe out. ;)

So, I mentioned how Marc and I had rigged up our sprinkler system so that the dog wouldn't destroy it for the umpteenth time. Lemme back up. Our sprinkler system basically has two pipes that come out of the ground - one for supply, which has the master controller, and another that's connected that goes to the rest of the system. The master controller is then connected by these two wires that run to the control box for the automatic timer, which is connected to the side of our house.

Anyways, Bandit has been very fond of chewing these wires, since they're just kind of suspended in air. We replaced them once, he chewed them again. I think we tried to use rubber tubing around them, he chewed that too. We finally got this flexible metal tubing and put one around each wire. He still managed to break the wires at the ends. So this time, we got a 5" diameter piece of aluminum ducting, which fit around the master controller and the wires, and Marc duct taped the whole thing, including to the wall of the house.

Yesterday was the first day we had to leave Bandit outside with the contraption. You can probably guess where this story is going.

That was what was left of the ducting when we got home. He had pulled it off, and then unraveled it into one big metal ribbon. Needless to say, the wires were also destroyed. And the unfortunate side effect of having secured it so tightly to the controller was that he had put so much force on the pipes that he broke one of the joints, and now we can't even run the sprinklers manually.

Marc was pissed off with a capital P.

Luckily, my dad has Tools for Every Occassion, so I called him up and picked up some repair stuff this morning on my way to work. Hopefully it'll be an easy fix, and not something that's going to take hours. He also said he can help us build a big wooden box to put around the control box and wires and pipes, which is pretty much our only recourse at this point.

You can see now why a lot of Border Collies end up in rescue before the age of 2. ;)

The CAT

Well, the cats aren't in trouble. Yet. But we've observed one interesting thing about Stubby (I may have mentioned this before, I can't remember). He actually seems to watch what Marc and I do and learn from it. I mean, cats aren't stupid, but Snuggles hasn't done this (of course, this might be chalked up to simple lack of desire on her part).

Basically, when Stubby wants a door open, he will stand up and bat the door knob with his paws. We didn't teach him this, it's presumably something he's learned from watching us - that somehow touching that knob gets the door open.

This weekend, when we were working in the backyard, he really wanted to come outside. Meowing wasn't working. So he actually stretched up, and hooked both of his paws around the sliding door handle and pulled on it.

Heck, even the dog hasn't done this!

The HAMSTER

Just cause I haven't put up a picture of Hammy in a while:

I also have a video from sheep herding a few weeks ago.

Hope everyone had a good holiday! We had a pretty busy weekend...

Friday

I took Bandit to sheep herding after work, came home and showered, and then Kenny, Leslie, Henry and Vicki came over. We went to Amici's for dinner (it was pretty late by this time, around 9:30 or so). After that, we went to the bowling alley in Dublin, which was having some sort of disco night. We only played one game, but it was pretty fun, considering I haven't bowled in forever. I managed to get the highest score, and was the only person to break 100. Vicki and I played on one team, against 3 of the guys (Leslie didn't play). Our score total was only 4 points less than theirs, to tell you how poorly they did. ;)

Saturday

Marc got up early on Saturday morning and started working on the backyard, to get it ready for planting sod (our grass that we'd done last year had languished). He tried waking me up a number of times, and I finally got up and went outside to help. A little.

Since I'll do anything to avoid manual labor, I went out and got lunch for the two of us. Tri-tip sandwiches from Nob Hill. Mmm. If you have a Nob Hill or a Raley's by you, you have to try these sandwiches. Cheese, grilled onions, grilled peppers and mayo on sliced tri-tip. It's yumtastic.

We worked on the yard a bit more, and then I took Bandit to classes.

We went to Chili's for dinner, where we saw Tyrone Wheatley. We were seated at our table, and his family was waiting on the bench next to us. Marc said a couple people came up to him and shook his hand and called him "Tyrone." His kid had a Wheatley jersey on too. And the guy sure looked like a football player. So I looked at his face and checked when we got home just to make sure. The guy has a lot of kids, lol.

After dinner we went to Blockbuster and rented Under the Tuscan Sun, and stopped by 7-eleven to get a Slurpee. While we were there, there was a girl by the Slurpee machine, who looked like she was pouring Slurpees and drinking them at the same time. Like she'd dispense some, drink, dispense some more, and drink some more. She looked like she might have had a pretty face, but she was wearing a wife-beater shirt and her clothes and face and hair were all dirty. She was buying a ton of drinks. Reflecting on it now, she was probably homeless. At the time, it was just a weird encounter.

Anyways, the movie turned out to be pretty good, I really enjoyed it. Marc and I both decided we'd like to move to Tuscany.

Sunday

We both woke up at 6:30 am on Sunday. I started raking out the topsoil, and Marc went to go pick up the sod from Home Depot. Marc says I hardly helped this weekend, but I should say I did do all the topsoil, and I helped unload all the sod from the truck, which wasn't an easy task!

I took a break to take Bandit to the 9:30 class (there's a couple in that class that adores Bandit, but are absolutely convinced that he's a girl), and then came home and helped finish laying out and cutting the sod.

One more class in the afternoon, and then Marc and I napped, before heading over to my parents' house for a barbeque. Bandit ran in the house and then right over to the sliding door, where Harvey was waiting on the other side. It was funny, because Bandit was so excited, and he was sitting there by the door, wiggling his butt all over and looking at us with the human equivalent of, "Can I go outside and play with Harvey now? Pleeeeeeease?"

The dogs played the whole time while we were there, about 5 hours. It was funny to watch them, because in between play, they would walk around the backyard, and Harvey basically follows Bandit everywhere. At one point, Bandit was standing up on something and sniffing a tree branch. A second after Bandit got down, Harvey got up in the same spot and sniffed the same branch.

When we left, we left with a tired, wet, and dirty dog. Oh, and a watermelon.

My brothers came back to our house with us, and we rented Mario Party 5. The new ones don't seem to be as good as the original. For one thing, they put way too much extra crap in the game now. The board takes forever to go around, and it's so complicated now. It was still fun though.

Monday

Ahh, no work on Monday, hooray! We had a fairly lazy day. We gave the dog a bath in the morning, and then went to Home Depot to pick up a few things we needed for the yard.

We also took a bunch of photos of the dog and the cats for the pawprint frames. Bandit was pretty easy to do, but the cats were impossible, mostly because Snuggles refuses to go outside, and refuses to stay still. So none of the cats' pictures turned out really well, but I got a few nice shots of Bandit. Unfortunately, every photo had this faint line running down the side. I don't know if it's my camera (I hope not), or just the film (which is annoying, since that was expensive film). So we'll have to try again, but it's not so bad, and the pictures will do for now. I even had an extra for my desk at work. :)

Yesterday I managed to create my own little fiasco. I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to properly archive all these blog entries. So yesterday I went to MovableType's site and noticed that they had released a new version. I thought, what the heck, I'll upgrade, and maybe this will have the functionality I'm looking for (nevermind that I didn't bother to go look at the list of new features, since I was too lazy).

So I went and downloaded what I thought was the upgrade version. I started following the installation instructions, uploading and replacing the old files. At one point it said, "do not replace any old library files." I'm like, well, what's a library file? All I had were a bunch of .pm files. So, too impatient to really research it, I started replacing the .pm files, thinking that maybe the library files ended in .lib or something, and I'd keep an eye out. Five folders or so later, no .lib file, and I'm starting to get nervous.

So I Google for ".pm" and "library" file, and near as I could tell, .pm files WERE library files. Oopsie. Too late though, I didn't have backups. So, after banging my head on my desk a few times, I continued with copying the files (this time not writing over the .pm files).

I finish the files, and the instructions say to run one of the upgrade.cgi files. Hmm, that's interesting, I don't have those files. I realize that I had inadvertently downloaded the FULL version. In doing so, I had also overwritten my old configuration files. More head banging ensued.

Luckily, I did have a backup of my configuration file, and after a lo-o-ot of troubleshooting, I managed to get the upgrade up and going.

As far as I can tell, the new version doesn't have the functionality I'm looking for either.

But at least the blog is still here, and all is (seemingly) well. :)

Handicapped Parking

Marc and I went to return a movie at Blockbuster last night, and we noticed a big SUV parked in one of the handicapped spots with no tags. We started talking about how annoying it is that people park in those spots when they have no business to.

Right after Blockbuster, we drove to BofA to get some cash from the ATM. And whaddya know, there's another car parked in a handicap spot with no tags. It's some lady that's at the ATM. So I go to get the cash while Marc waits next to me. The lady leaves the ATM, and I kind of scowl at her (from the back of course, because I'm passive-aggressive that way). Marc, on the other hand, says loudly and sternly:

"Probably shouldn't park in the handicapped spot if you're not handicapped."

I cringe, and the lady says, "Yeah, you're right, I probably shouldn't."

I told Marc in the car afterwards that he lacks certain filters in his brain, because he often just says whatever he feels whenever he feels like it. Which probably isn't altogether a bad thing, but it's nerve-wracking for someone like me, who has a lot of filters (like I rarely honk at someone, because I'm always thinking, "wait, maybe I screwed up? I don't want to honk then and look like a stupid jerk" and by the time I'm done thinking and decide it was the other person's fault, the time to honk has passed, and all I'm left with is feeling bitter - not so with Marc, he'll just honk).

So Marc, feeling pleased with his success, decided that he's going to say that to every illegal handicap parker from now on.

I told him that at the very least I would've couched it in less harsh terms if I was going to say anything (you really had to hear it to get the gist of it - I'm still laughing). I'm kinda curious what everyone else would do. Are you more like me, or more like Marc? ;)

This morning on my way to work I was listening to Don Blue's blooper call on the radio. Every morning he'll call up someone who's being set up by a friend or family member, and try to freak them out with something. So this morning, this girl that was being set up had apparently gone to Vegas, gotten piss-drunk and passed out, and had to be seen by the paramedics. Don Blue calls up pretending to be the hotel manager:

DB: "So yeah, you had to have the paramedics move you from the bathroom to your room after you passed out."
Girl: "Right."
DB: "Well, the paramedics cost $1100, and we found out that you won $850 at our casino while you were here."
Girl: "Uh huh."
DB: "So, we think it's only right that you return the $850, to pay for the cost of the paramedics. Do you agree?"
Girl: "No, but I'll do it anyways."
DB: "Well, why don't you agree?"
Girl: "Because...you know...it was your bar...that gave me the drinks..."

Hahaha. You gotta love people who take personal responsibility for crap that happens.

Didn't do a whole lot last night, except for taking the dog to the playground and stuffing him full of hot dog and string cheese while the little kiddies ran by.

Last night in bed was funny - I ended up sleeping with my head on Marc's shoulder, Snuggles purring on my chest, and Bandit lying in the crook of my right arm. I was like the filling in a cuddle sandwich.

Anyways, the site might look funky for a bit...I'm still playing around with trying to get this archiving right, and it's been a pain so far. So if anything looks yucky, it's because I did something that wasn't right. ;)

So, I was going to start off today's entry with something funny that Marc said, but he said he'd be mad if I did, 'cause it's embarrassing, so I'm going to have to refrain. (Not that him being mad at me has stopped me before, but I'm trying to be nice here and not embarrass him.) So you can blame him for depriving you of the opportunity.

One thing you might have noticed (or might not have, since I doubt anyone cares that much) is that my language here has been a bit cleaner of late. See, I never swear in front of my parents. My mom rarely swears (she says "shit" on rare occassions), and my dad never, ever swears (I think I heard him say "goddammit" once, and I remember going, "whoa, he's pissed!").

Anyways, so one day I was hanging out at my parents' place, and my dad says to me, "hey, what's with all the "s" and the "f" words?" At which point I realized that my dad actually visits this site regularly and actually reads my stuff. Oops, hehe. I mean, I don't think I swear that much, and usually when I do it it's to be funny or when I'm mad about something. But, I'm touched that my dad reads this, so I'm keeping it (somewhat) clean for you, Dad! ;)

So yeah, pawprints. Last night we decided to try out the pawprint kits. We did Bandit first, which we knew was going to be a pain. The first time I tried it he was extremely unhappy, and even snapped at me a couple times. So we decided we were going to have to muzzle him somehow. We didn't have a real muzzle, so I took his Gentle Leader and tightened up the nose loop so that it would keep his mouth closed. Marc then held him, and I held his paw to make the impression.

You would've thought we were trying to kill him with the sounds he was making. Marc said, "I'm glad we're imprinting this memory forever!" It took us THREE tries to make the print. After each time, we took the Gentle Leader off and gave him biscuits and ham, and he seemed okay. We finally got one that was deep enough, and I think we're pretty happy with the end result.

The cats were much easier, although it took a few tries to get impressions that we liked. Stubby protested a little bit, but overall was a good sport about it.

I cooked some pork stir fry and fried rice for dinner last night. It was my first attempt ever at fried rice, and I tried to make it by ear. We were short on time, so I had to fry up freshly steamed rice, which kinda sucked, since it ended up being all sticky and mushy. I also used a little too much egg. It turned out okay, but it needs a LOT of improvement, lol.

Marc and I watched "Things I Hate About You" on Bravo. If you're married or have been in a long relationship, this show is just hilarious. They basically take couples that have been living together for a while, and they compete to prove that the other is more annoying than they are. The couple is videotaped for "evidence."

I think the funniest was this one husband, whose gripe about the wife was that she loved the dog too much. He was allergic to dogs, and had to take medicine for it, so to prove his point he told his wife one day that he ran out of pills and that the dog would have to sleep on the couch. She actually said, "why can't you sleep on the couch?" In the end, she ended up sleeping downstairs on the couch with the dog.