October 2004 Archives

We spent all of last night scrambling to get last-minute things done for tonight's party. I was desperately trying to finish Bandit's costume (it's still not done, but it's passable), and Marc spent most of the evening decorating. I baked, and carved one of our big pumpkins. We have two, but it was midnight by the time I finished the first.

Hopefully we'll get home early enough today, because we still need to vacuum and mop. I'm going to try to carve the second pumpkin too.

I watched some of "The Apprentice" last night. Wow, Apex could not have come up with a worse advertising campaign. Bad, bad idea. I credit Elizabeth for at least recognizing that, but she was a horrible leader because she couldn't put her foot down and make a decision. Kevin did a really nice job trying to at least salvage the situation. I'm hoping he wins at this point.

This morning on the news they were talking about a seizure dog who called 911 when its owner fell out of her wheelchair. The dog knocked the phone off the hook, pressed the speed dial button for 911, and then barked into the mouthpiece. Then she even unlocked the front door when the cops arrived! MSNBC has an article here. You gotta love dogs.

Alright, off to start my busy day. Blech.

Yesterday was a crazy busy day. Marc and I carpooled from work, and stopped by in Fremont to look for Halloween costumes. I don't know why we put it off for so long, but we did. Talk about slim pickings. All the good stuff was gone, so we were kind of grasping for anything. We ended up getting his and her Viking costumes. Did Vikings have sheep? ;) Oh well, at least we didn't get one of these.

Then we went to Target to pick up some candy and other stuff for our party on Friday. I tried to find a Halloween collar for Bandit that they supposedly had, but to no avail.

We got back to Dublin and stopped by the fabric store so that I could pick up some elastic bands and velcro. Then I spent the rest of the night working on the sheep costume. I finished the horns and got them onto the costume. Pretty much took me all night to finish that.

Marc and I also watched "Lost." Good episode. Is it sad that I still can't figure out exactly what ethnicity the Asian couple is? We =think= they're Japanese - most of what they say sounds like it (my grandparents used to watch Japanese shows all the time), but then some of it doesn't. At least I know for sure that they're not Chinese, heh.

I keep running my theories about what's going on by Marc, but he doesn't want to hear them. He'd rather just wait and find out. Me, I have to know. I just wanna figure it out.

Anyways, I'm pretty pooped now. I still have papers to grade, and I've got to do the finishing touches on Bandit's costume. Then we have to clean up the house (well, really just vacuum and mop), finish decorating, go shopping for food, and bake. Oh, and carve pumpkins. Oy!

Oh, I forgot to put this picture up yesterday:

I'm totally going to have to take my camera to class on Sunday. A dog dressed as a cat, and a herding dog dressed as a sheep, how humiliating! :)

Melanie scanned the polaroid she took in class of Bandit and Lucas lovin' on each other and sent it to me last night. The two of them had been totally snuggling up in class, it was hilarious.

The rain was over by morning yesterday, so we were able to go to agility class in the evening. Bandit and I looked like total rookies. I'm hoping he settles down after a couple weeks, because right now he's still so distracted about being in a new place.

It turns out I also need to get a pair of cleats. We went to the Sports Chalet last night to look, and the guy who was helping us asked me what sport this was for. I sheepishly told him it was for dog agility. To his credit, he didn't laugh. We didn't find the kind we were looking for, so I may have to try somewhere else.

I worked on the sheep costume some more last night. I finally finished the hem. So now all I have left are the little things, like the horns. Marc and I still have to get our costumes!

Not a whole lot to write about today, as last night was pretty uneventful. I played on the computer a bit, then worked on Bandit's costume some more.

Stubby has been a pain of late. I don't know what's going on with him, but lately he's been harrassing Snuggles like mad. He's constantly mounting her, grabbing the scruff of her neck in his teeth and straddling her. They're both neutered, and he's not actually "doing" anything, so this may be just a dominance thing, or him getting out some urges. Either way, it's kind of annoying, though poor Snuggles doesn't seem to mind it.

What's funny is that we first noticed it when Bandit suddenly hopped up from where he was sleeping the other night and woofed like he was irritated. We saw that he was looking at the cats, who were on the counter. Bandit then ran over and put his paws on the counter and patted the cats, as if to say, "break it up, guys!"

Another cute Bandit story - the other day in class he and Lucas were playing when one of them suddenly yelped. Bandit froze in mid-play for a second and then went over to Lucas and started gingerly sniffing him on the face. It turned out that Lucas had gotten his leash caught around his leg, which had been sore, and he was the one that had yelped. The two of them are just too cute with each other.

I think the remnants of my old New Jersey accent are causing me problems when it comes to saying "Bandit." I've had a few people think his name was "Bennett." I need to work on my enunciation.

Hear about the story with the woman who came home from vacation to find another woman living in her house? The woman had broken in, moved in her dog and washer/dryer, pulled up the carpets, and painted some of the rooms, all in 2 and a half weeks. This is what the squatter looked like:

Can you imagine coming home to that? You can read the article here.

Where'd the rain go? It's sunny as heck here in Palo Alto right now.

There isn't enough coffee in the world to keep me awake this morning.

This weekend we watched The Grudge with Deepali and Will. Well, "watched" might be too strong of a word, since I barely watched the movie at all. I think I saw maybe all of 10 minutes of it, the rest of the time my face was in my big tub of popcorn. Talk about scary - I think I'm done with horror movies for a while. Vicki chickened out on us at the last minute, but it was probably a good thing she did. ;)

We were pretty lazy this weekend, which is good, since we were so busy last weekend. It's nice to be lazy anyways when the weather is so rainy.

I worked some more on Bandit's costume, which is coming along slowly. It has two ears now, and I'm just working on hemming the edges. Next up will be the horns, which will be challenging. He doesn't seem to mind wearing it so far. My stitches are improving, but it's still taking forever to do.

We went to the pumpkin patch on Sunday and picked up two large pumpkins.

I also took Bandit to Petsmart on Sunday, and found out that Lucas and Bandit won't be able to take agility class together (the instructor never showed up for Melanie's lesson, and they weren't able to reach her afterwards), which was a real bummer.

And I'm sure this is all over the place by now, but in case you haven't seen it, Ashlee Simpson (Jessica Simpson's sister) was performing on SNL this weekend, and there was a snafu where she was supposed to be performing live, but they started playing the wrong song on a recording - so you can hear her singing, but she's clearly not singing live. She even tries to dance a jig to cover it up, but then just walks off stage. What a hack, lol. Anyways, here's the clip.

Okay, I just realized I left my lunch in the car, so it's time to wrap this up!

Last night we went to a make-up agility class. It was freezing! I really felt like a bumbling idiot out there, as the jump courses we did were really complicated, and Bandit and I just don't have all the handling skills we needed to do it right. At least we're definitely learning new skills in this class.

We had pizza for dinner, and then I got to working on the costume. I finished the hood, and then got to work on making the ears. Let me tell you, one ear took forever to do. I wasn't even sure how I was going to do it, I just kind of winged it, and it actually turned out okay. It looks like an ear, at least. Unfortunately, some of my stitches on the hood came loose - I redid it, but now I'm worried about it coming loose again. I think I need to learn how to do a proper end knot. (I just read now that I probably should be using a different kind of stitch for the furry material I'm using - oops!)

Anyways, poor Bandit had me running around after him all night and plopping the costume on him. He probably thinks I've gone batty.

It took most of my time just to do the one ear, so right now the costume just has one ear. I'm trying to decide if I should do horns or not - do I make him a girl sheep, or a boy sheep?

Oh yeah, so "The Apprentice!" Don't read any further if you don't want to be spoiled.

Yay yay yay yay yay, Stacy is GONE. I'm so glad I don't have to listen to her bitch and moan anymore. I've never seen someone so delusional. That was also pretty pathetic how Mosaic donated all of $19 to that cat rescue.

I'm so glad it's Friday. I don't think I could stay awake for another work day.

Well, I was a bad mom last night and I didn't work on Bandit's costume like I'd planned to. I hadn't played on the computer for a while, so I logged in last night and ended up getting sucked in for the whole evening.

I ordered some boots for Bandit. He keeps messing up his stop pads since he uses them to brake all the time (apparently a border collie thing), so I've finally decided we need to wrap them somehow to keep him from hurting them. Unfortunately most booties don't go high up enough to cover the stop pad, and Vetwrap works, but is expensive. I finally found these custom boots online yesterday, and I think they'll work.

Here's a video clip of Jon Stewart's recent appearance on "Crossfire." Really funny, he lays into these guys and their show, and puts the smackdown on Tucker Carlson.

Man, I'm sleepy today.

Bandit's agility class got cancelled last night because of the rain, so instead we went to JoAnn Fabrics to look for something to make a sheep costume with. I found the perfect fleece-type fabric to make it with, and bought a yard. We then walked around the store, totally clueless on what kinds of thread and needles and other stuff I would need.

I started working on it right after dinner. Bandit wasn't the most cooperative model - every time I try to get him to stand still for something, he thinks I'm going to do something bad to him, so he'll roll over on his back as his little avoidance maneuver.

The body part was pretty easy to cut out, but getting the head/hood part was a nightmare. The first pieces I cut out were far too small. The second ones were much better, and I was able to put together some semblance of a hood. I had to google "how to hand sew," by the way, because I had no idea how to do a stitch. Apparently I still don't, because my stitches were the most god-awful ugly things. They did the job though (whether or not they'll hold up is another story).

Marc was laughing at me the whole time! :( I think he's very skeptical that this is going to turn out.

Anyways, it took me all night just to get those few things done - hopefully I can get most of the rest done tonight. I'm actually pretty excited about it. I'm gonna take pictures as I go along.

Can you believe this rain? Crazy! I'm hoping it's not raining this afternoon, or else my agility class is gonna be cancelled.

I've been trying to think of a costume for Halloween. For the dog, I think I want to dress him up as a sheep. Unfortunately, finding a sheep costume has proved to be difficult at best. I found this one on eBay yesterday:

Unfortunately, they don't have one big enough for him. :(

I'm thinking of trying to make one myself. Yeah, make one. I'm sure it will be a disaster, given that I don't have a sewing machine, and oh yeah, I wouldn't know how to use one if I did. But how hard can it be to do it by hand? Heh, heh.

I don't know what I'll be - Marc and I had found this awesome Cruella de Ville costume at Disneyland, which would have been funny to wear (and then dress up Bandit as a Dalmation), but the costume was way too expensive.

Yesterday was a pretty boring evening. I was in super-relax mode, since all weekend I was stressing about work. So I was relieved to not have to be doing anything all evening.

On the one hand, I like weekends where we're busy and we get lots of stuff done. On the other hand, it kind of sucks when you don't get to relax much. Maybe we need to do more stuff that's relaxing.

I spent most of Friday night working on a presentation I had to give today for work. Then I spent some time grading papers. So, not very relaxing.

Saturday morning I tutored, and the boy in my class is driving me nuts. I think he has ADD. Anyone have suggestions on how to deal with an unruly child? He kept getting up out of his seat, peeling the table, and not doing his work. I told him he was going to sit facing the wall in a time out if he didn't sit down and work. When he kept misbehaving, I told him he was going to have to sit against the wall, and he said, "no, I don't want to." It wasn't until I finally said I was going to have a talk with his parents if he didn't behave did he settle down.

I'm pulling my hair out over this. I might try some motivational techniques next week.

After teaching, I rushed home to change clothes and pick up Bandit to go sheep herding. We ended up being like 20 minutes late, which sucked, since we had to leave in 40 minutes. I wrapped Bandit's legs this time so he wouldn't screw up his pads, but I did a poor job of it and the vet wrap slipped and he scuffed his pad anyways.

Then after herding I rushed home again, changed again, and Marc and I drove up to Berkeley for the Cal football game. Parking was such a nightmare. We ended up finding a pretty decent place to park. Cost us $20, ugh.

The game was good, we whomped on UCLA 45-28. The game was nearly sold out, so will call was a mess. We stood in this huge mass of people for like 45 minutes waiting to get our tickets. It was crazy. Then when we were at the game, we sat in front of these people who had like 4 kids with them, and it was so annoying. The parents were loud and obnoxious, and the kids were everywhere. I got kicked in the butt and the back so many times I lost count. One girl put her sticky hand on my sweatshirt.

Even worse, these people had general admission tickets (meaning they had no seat assignments, it was first-come first-serve at designated sections). They were convinced that the section we were sitting in was general admission, even though Marc and I had reserved tickets with seat assignments. Some people showed up in the 2nd quarter with tickets assigning them to the seats that the obnoxious people were in, and they refused to move.

They did finally manage to get it all resolved, but to my chagrin, the annoying people stayed seated behind us. People really need to learn to control their kids. We had other kids around us the same age that behaved perfectly fine. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Other than that though, I had fun at the game. :)

The rest of my Saturday was spent working some more on my presentation.

Sunday I didn't have classes with Bandit, because Melanie wasn't holding any that day. Marc and I went to the Pleasanton Fair Grounds for the dog show. We missed seeing our old agility instructor compete with her dog, but we did get to see a lot of other agility. I think I'm gonna be a nervous wreck when Bandit and I start competing.

They also had conformation at the dog show, but we could find the obedience trials, which was something I wanted to check out. There was a lot of shopping though - all sorts of dog and dog-related stuff for sale. They even had dog books, and I found a copy of "The Cautious Canine" which I'd been looking for for awhile.

I also got a t-shirt that says "AGILITY" on it with a cartoon of a border collie running through weave poles and knocking sheep everywhere. It's pretty funny. Marc says I'm not allowed to wear it in public.

I was in doggy heaven at the show. Marc thought it was kind of nutty. I think I could've shopped there all day.

So we had a pretty fun weekend (aside from having to do work), but it was pretty tiring at the same time. Next week should be more relaxing, I hope!

Well, the debates are over, at last. I listened to some of it on the radio on the way home, and watched some of it on TV. The questions weren't bad, but I was really disappointed in what was omitted. No questions on the environment? That really burns me. This administration has a horrendous record on the environment, and no one wants to talk about it. Instead, we ask the candidates how they feel about their wives. What do you think they're gonna say? I wonder if there was a woman candidate up there if they'd ask her about her husband in that same somewhat condescending way.

CNN has a blog that covers the debate by Jessi Klein, who's on VH1. It's all written in fun, so it's pretty amusing. It's fun to check up on their facts too.

Marc's parents drove down to our place last night. They're going on a cruise and had a really early morning flight, so they spent the night at our place and Marc drove them to the airport this morning.

While they're gone, we're dog-sitting Snoopy again. He and Bandit seem to get along fine, although I think Bandit's going to wear him out with playing.

Marc woke me up when he left this morning at 4:30 am, and for some reason, I couldn't get back to sleep. I think it had something to do with the fact that both my arms were totally sore, and there was no good position to sleep in that wasn't painful. So as a result, here I am at work at 7 in the morning. And our coffee room is out of Peet's. Boo.

I got swamped yesterday at work, so I didn't have time to write an update. I'm gonna be pretty swamped today too, but I figured I'd write up something quick.

So yesterday Bandit and I started our new agility class. This one's in Livermore, and man, does it suck to have to drive in that traffic after work. It was a pretty good class - it's still a beginner class (I know, it feels like we really should be further by now), but we're actually learning some different things from the previous classes, which is good. Melanie and Lucas are going to be taking the class too, so that should be a lot of fun (at least I hope we all end up in the same class, since I think that's part of the reason she's driving all the way from San Jose).

The class is basically held in this lady's backyard, but she's got a pretty nice setup, and Bandit is so much faster doing this outdoors. I think the indoor arena we worked in before really made him nervous and slow - he was motoring last night!

The only funny thing about this class is that all the people in it are people who are intending to compete, and not just doing it for fun like our last classes, which means that some of these people are wierd "dog people." I mean, I love my dog, but I don't stand there chatting away with Bandit and giving him pep talks. Actually though, Marc does that all the time, haha. He likes to bend down and hold Bandit's face so that they're looking eye-to-eye and say stuff like, "okay Bandit, you're going to make your mommy and daddy proud right? Now watch how that dog does it. You can do this man, you can do it!"

Hey, Marc may be wierder than me.

There's a big dog show going on this weekend at the Pleasanton fairgrounds. They're having competitions in agility, conformation, and obedience. I think we may go on Sunday, so if anyone wants to come with, I do have two extra passes. Did you know that dogs can't compete in conformation if they're not intact? I guess they have to make sure "the boys" look just as good as the rest of the body. It might have been fun to show Bandit just for kicks, but there's no way we wouldn't have neutered him.

Alright, time to go slave away in the lab.

Janet Leigh, Rodney Dangerfield, and now, Christopher Reeves has passed away. That was totally unexpected, and really sad.

Weekend

We rented Walking Tall on Friday night. It was so-so. I don't think you expect much from a movie that stars the Rock. Was some nice eye-candy though.

Saturday we got up super early to take the car to the dealer. Turns out that the check engine light was due to a computer malfunction, so that was covered under warranty and the fix was free!

After we dropped the car off I went to Fremont to go teach. Oy. 4th grade boys are a handful. At least the one in my class is. This kid wouldn't sit still, wouldn't stop making noise, and wouldn't do the work. It wasn't until I told him that he was going to have to stay and finish his work regardless of what time it was did he calm down. I just need to keep reminding myself how much I'm getting paid for this.

I went home afterwards to watch some of the Cal/USC game. Or at least I thought I was. I called up Jan to find out when we were herding, and she wanted to do it in 30 minutes. So I got to watch like 5 minutes of the game.

We lost, by the way, and I am sooo bummed about it. I never got to see much of the game, but from what I understand, aside from those few very costly mistakes on special teams, we outplayed them. We had double the offensive yards they did, and our defense played great. Man, a win would have been the sweetest thing ever.

Anyways, herding was fun, except that Bandit managed to injure his stop pad again when he went skidding in the dirt while running around the sheep. He didn't even seem to notice, although it looked pretty horrible when I put my hand on it and came away with blood all over my hand. We may need to think of some way to wrap them or something so he doesn't keep beating them up.

Jan paid me a compliment too - she was telling someone else that aside from maybe one other person, I was the fastest person she'd ever seen learn how to read sheep and know where to be. She said some people never learn it, and usually people who do it best are people who'd been around a lot of horses or livestock before. Anyways, I know it's not really humble of me to share that, but it made me really giddy in a dorky kind of way. :)

We got home from herding and Marc and I (and all the pets) napped until about dinnertime. I was so pooped. I called Kenny up, and the three of us went to eat some pizza and then went to watch Friday Night Lights, which was pretty good, but yikes, the people in Texas really need to chill out about high school football. It's kinda sad.

Sunday morning I got up and took Bandit to Petsmart. We were going to an Advanced class, but the person who was in it didn't show up, so Melanie and I just did tricks with the dogs for an hour. We worked some more on getting the dogs to put their toys away, and it was funny, at one point Melanie was explaining something to me, and I wasn't paying attention to Bandit. He actually started going around by himself and picking up toys and putting them in the box. It was so cute.

We also started teaching them how to find things, and a little bit of tracking (using scent to follow a track laid down by a person). So we didn't get in a whole lot of socialization, but it was fun.

Then Marc and I had lunch and we went to the mall and I bought a new pair of shoes. Yay for new shoes!

We went back for a couple classes in the afternoon, and Bandit did really well with this one girl in class, who was a little bit all over the place. Bandit kept wanting to go over to her for treats. At one point I turned around and saw the girl staring at Bandit with her eyes wide open, which freaked me out a bit, but he seemed to be fine with it. I got his attention anyways, but it was good to see him not freak out about it.

He's doing really awesome with men now, at least those he meets in the store. He ran right over to one guy, and totally let him pet him all over. The workers there have all remarked on how much he's improved.

And that was it for the weekend! I am so bummed it's Monday again.

Okay, first things first, there must be something going around with Rav4's this week. My friend Corrie blogged about a host of problems with her's, and this morning on my way to work, the check engine light came on in mine. Suck. I checked the gas cap, but that was closed properly. I came across some mentions of a faulty ECM in the '02 Rav4's, so hopefully that's the problem, and not something more serious.

Did you know that RAV4 stands for Recreational Activity Vehicle 4-wheel drive? I don't even have 4-wheel drive on mine, so I guess it's just a RAV. Or maybe a RAV2.

I took this cute little quiz today - one of those, "which one are you?" quizzes.

This is me:

It actually describes me really well, and the part about the car is so dead-on it's scary.

Okay, so The Apprentice last night (don't read this if you don't want to be spoiled). So they moved Pamela back to the girls' team, and made her project manager. I thought she did a fine job, because someone really needed to come into that team and be a bitch and kick all those girls in the ass. Which is basically what she did. They did really well on their task too, even though they ended up losing by $10.

Trump fired her anyways, saying it was because she was a poor judge of people and didn't address the failings of people at their task. WTF? She'd never worked with these girls before. She asked everyone to list their skill sets. Maria said she was great at public speaking, so she got the job of being on camera (they were selling items for QVC). She totally sucked in front of the camera, so Pamela replaced her with Jen M., who did a much better job.

Stacey (who HAS to go), was in charge of legal stuff and setting the price for the item, but got so caught up in stupid labels that Pamela ended up taking away the task of pricing and did it herself. So I'm not really sure how she didn't rectify the problems with those people.

I was with Trump on all the firings up until this one - this was wrong, wrong, wrong. Stacey absolutely should have gone, and Pamela was dead-on about why she brought her into the board room - she's constantly disruptive, and adds no value to the team.

Carolyn is starting to get a bit on my nerves too. Does she ever NOT agree with Trump's firing choice? It's time to detach your face from The Donald's ass, Carolyn. At least George got it right.

Well, this is probably going to sound downright silly to everyone, but the other day I contacted a behavioral therapist for the dog. Yeah, the dog. Melanie had suggested it as an option, so I thought I'd inquire at the very least, since I'm taking Bandit's fear-aggression issues pretty seriously.

Basically, a behavioral therapist is someone who has a PhD in animal behavior, and is certified. Which translates to lots of money. The lady I contacted was very helpful, but wow, her services are expensive. I don't know how much therapy costs for humans, but I can't imagine it costs much more.

So that's going on the back burner for now. I'm gonna keep trying my best with what we've been doing for now. Ah, the stress!

Deepali just reminded me that I missed the American Idol auditions again this year. They'd upped the age limit from 24, so I would have qualified this year. We're not sure what they bumped it up to - 26 or 28. If it's 28, I could do it next year! Yeah right, lol. I can hold a tune, but I don't have that kind of range, and frankly, I don't think my voice sounds all that great. ;P

We watched "Lost" last night. I still can't figure out what's up with Terry O'Quinn's character. He usually plays shady guys, so I'm not sure if he's good or bad. Marc said, "anyone who makes a dog whistle can't be a bad guy." Which is pretty good logic, if you ask me.

Well, this is what I get for procrastinating.

I've been trying to get tickets for the Cal/Stanford Big Game for a few days now, but the online store kept saying they were temporarily unavailable. I was checking all day yesterday, and when I got home from work I found out they'd gone on sale in the afternoon. Checked, and it was too late. They were sold out. Arg!

I'm checking Craigslist to see if anyone's selling, but there's pretty crazy demand it seems. Everyone wants like $100 a ticket, and these are $50 tickets. I'm hoping maybe someone will sell for like $65 or something. If not, we're having a Big Game party at our house. ;)

Sooo bummed!

Driving home from work yesterday, I was in traffic on the ramp from 237 to 880, and my lane was moving faster than the lane next to me. So this lady in the next lane puts on her blinker, and tries to squeeze in front of the car in front of me. The guy doesn't let her, and speeds up and swerves around her. She was practically trying to cut him off.

So she does it again, puts on her blinker and tries to cut me off. Now, it's not like she's trying to exit anywhere or anything, she's just being impatient and trying to get in the faster lane. And she's trying to bully her way in. So I'm like, F that, but she pushes her car almost into mine, and when I brake, she manages to get in. And then she GIVES ME THE FINGER. So I flipped her off back, and she flips me off again.

We ended up at different lanes at the end of the ramp, and we're side by side at the metering light. Her's goes green first, and she takes off. Mine goes green a couple seconds later, and I'm driving the RX-8, so I gun it, pass the crap bucket she's driving easily, cut her off (although I was going a bit too fast to really cut her off), and show her my big, fat middle finger in my rear window.

Road rage much? Yeah, probably. I wanted to punch her in the face. But you know, I go out of my way to be a really courteous driver, and I don't pick fights unless I really have to. Sometimes though, I just get sick of being pushed around and I feel like beating the snot out of some people like that bitch.

I think I need to start up my boxing class again. :p

There is like, not enough time in the day. Marc and I left work a tad late, went grocery shopping, cooked and ate dinner, and the next thing I know, there's like an hour left before I'm supposed to be in bed. Sheesh!

There was a crazy lady at Safeway. We were walking back to our car, and this lady has her shopping cart in the return cart thing, and her car is a couple spaces away. She's trucking the bags from the cart all the way to her car, and going back and forth like this. I don't know why she didn't just pull the cart up to the car? The whole time she's also muttering to herself. She yelled once too, and I thought there was someone with her, but no.

So she gets in her car, and proceeds to back up, but these cars are coming down the aisle. She looks really pissed off at the fact that she has to stop and wait. God forbid that these people use their right-of-way. When they pass, she squeals the tires while backing out. Marc yells, "What the hell is your problem?!" She rolls down her window, but Marc doesn't say anything else. And then the lady squeals out of the parking lot.

Methinks someone forgot to take their meds.

This morning Marc and I were listening to the radio on the way to work, and the DJs were doing some story about voting or something in New Jersey, and they cracked a joke about some stupid people, saying, "well, they ARE the product of the New Jersey school system." Which we thought was kind of ironic, since (in 1998) New Jersey ranked 5th in per capita spending on education (and 4th when I went to school there), while California is 31st.

My school in New Jersey was much better than the schools I went to out here. We had computer labs when I was in the third grade. Parkmont was just starting theirs when I left in the fifth grade. Hell, even the school lunches were better.

Anyways, this is a tiny picture of the elementary school I went to:

And this would have been my high school:

Anyways, that was a total tangent, heh.

Okay, back to work! Or maybe lunch...

The upside is, our weekend was pretty busy. The downside is that it made it seem really short. So sad!

So on Friday Marc and I both had to work a little later than usual. I somehow managed to get swamped with work right around 4 pm. We carpooled, and drove down to Fremont to meet my parents, brothers, grandmother, and my Aunt Julia who was visiting, for dinner at Champion Teppenyaki. Marc and I both got the Kobe steak, in which they apparently feed the cows beer and massage their flanks to get the meat tender. It was REALLY tender and yummy.

We went home, and Kenny came up to go over some stuff with me for the tutoring/teaching job that we're doing. There was a lady I used to tutor for when she ran a day-care/tutoring service out of her home. Since then, she's gotten a lot more clients, and she's moved to this fairly large facility. It pays $80 for an hour and a half of teaching on Saturday mornings, so I figured that's not too bad for some good money.

Then we watched Laws of Attraction, which we'd rented. I honestly don't know if I liked the movie or not, because I was so tired that I slept through most of it. Maybe Marc can give his opinion.

Saturday morning I got up early, and we took Bandit for a walk. Then I showered up, got dressed and went down to teach. I'm teaching 4th and 5th graders Reading Comprehension, Writing, and Grammar. I didn't get many of the materials ahead of time, so I didn't have much time to prepare. I only had 4 students though, so it wasn't so bad. Of course, when I was teaching nouns, I realized I'd completely forgotten all the different types of nouns there are. Oops!

After I got home, we grabbed some lunch, and then I took Bandit to class at Petsmart. There's a cute little Border Collie in that class that is tiny compared to Bandit. Their personalities couldn't be more different, too, cause this dog was all over the place, and really friendly.

Then it was off to sheep herding class (Cynthia, we're doing this on Saturdays now, so let me know if you want to come sometime!). We went up to this HUGE field I'd never been in before. It was awesome, it had a big hill that went up, and the terrain was pretty uneven. The sheep were, of course, all at the top of the hill.

Bandit was pretty unsure the first time I sent him out on an outrun to get the sheep. He kept looking back at us like, "I have to go all the way up THERE?" But after a couple times, he got the hang of it. It was pretty relaxing up there, quiet and breezy - I hope we do more work up there in the future. Bandit was pretty pooped afterwards!

When we were done, I rushed home, showered quickly, got dressed, and then Marc and I left to go up to SF to meet Deepali, Will, Vicki, and Henry for dinner at Tony Roma's. Then we went to Punchline. The two comedians were pretty good. I can't remember their names, but the main guy had us rolling.

Sunday I got up early again and took Bandit to class. The first class was graduating, and only one puppy showed up, so that only took like ten minutes. So Melanie and I spent the rest of the hour teaching Bandit and Lucas some tricks. We worked on getting them to put their toys back into the toy box. It was really cute - Bandit picked it up really fast too. So now we have to get him a toy box at home. :)

My dad came over in the morning to help us build a fence around our sprinkler box and air conditioner, since Bandit kept chewing on them. Marc and I spent most of the time standing and watching, and in general not being very useful. It took him all morning and part of the afternoon to finish it - now we have a big enclosure around that part of the yard, and it even has two gates we can open. It's not beautiful, but if it keeps the dog out, we're happy! My dad said that I should paint pictures of our three pets on the side. Maybe I will. I'm sure it will look terrible, lol.

Bandit's afternoon class was pretty crazy. There were little kids EVERYWHERE. But he did great! He was more relaxed than I've ever seen him, and he had no problems even when they were up close. He even tried to make friends with Pepe, which was pretty funny. Bandit very slowly inched his nose towards Pepe, and he even put his head all the way to the ground so that he was lower than Pepe. I think it's the first time I've ever seen Bandit really head-on tackle something that he's afraid of. They sniffed noses a bit, then Pepe barked, and Bandit decided that that was enough making friends for him.

Marc and I went down to Fremont afterwards to meet my dad, my brothers, and Henry for dinner at Olive Garden (my mom is in New York this week). Marc was bummed though, because they discontinued his favorite dish, the crusted parmesean chicken, again.

After dinner we went over to my parents' house for a little bit to help my dad move their big china cabinet, since he's redoing the floors in the dining room and living room. He's pulling up all the carpet and replacing it with Pergo. He did the family room earlier, and it looks pretty nice. Marc wants to do it in our house, he hates the carpet.

I went to bed at like 9:30 last night, and fell asleep by 10:30. I probably would've woken up early this morning, had I not set the alarm to 5:30 PM. I still took Bandit for a quick walk/run this morning though, which was nice.

So glad it's Friday.

Last night I had a three-part dream. Or maybe it was three dreams. Anyways, I first had a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" dream. Picard and Riker were there briefly, but the main part of the dream was about how Data had somehow turned evil, and I was part of the team sent to track him down and capture him. We looked for him in this dark auditorium with all these curtains and dark places, and I was too scared to look in all the dark places.

Then I dreamt that the East Coast was slowly eroding away, and that New England was going to end up somewhere near Canada (I think the little seedling for this dream must be from that TV special I just watched on earthquakes and how a slice of California's coast was going to break off and move north). I was in charge of saving the structures that were going to be destroyed, and someone was panicking about these buildings, even though nothing was going to happen for like, another 20 years or something.

In my last dream I dreamt that I was dating Marc still, and that I had gotten upset for some reason, and went to seek comfort in the arms of his best friend, who also happened to be...Marc. I told him about this in the morning, and he said that it must mean I love him. I told him I think it means that this way I could cheat on him and not feel guilty. ;)

Last night was pretty dull, I got home a little later than normal, took Bandit for a walk, and then cooked dinner when Marc got home. Then we watched "Joey" and the presidential debates on TiVo. It truly, physically pains me to watch Bush speak, but I did it anyways. It's NU-CLE-AR, goddammit. I think it's silly that the candidates can't direct questions at one another. That's not a debate. I'd really love to see an open dialogue between the two. It was still somewhat interesting though.

A friend of mine posted about an Op-Ed column in the NY Times entitled, "How to Debate George Bush." Written by Al Gore. So funny. (You have to sign up to read it, but it's free.)

And a final, humorous, political bit - the Lone Star Iconoclast, newspaper for Bush's hometown of Crawford, Texas, which endorsed Bush in 2000, endorses Kerry this election.

I went to bed extra early last night, like at around 10, and I think I fell asleep at around 11, which is pretty early for me. This morning though, I was more tired than usual, and I could NOT get up at 5:30. So, still no running in the mornings. We'll see how next week goes. :P