estacey
I have never laughed so hard as when I took these pictures.
Gretchen especially, because she was Mrs. Claus and she was spazzing out over the treats I was holding and her little hat/wig was falling off and.. Well, I am guessing you had to be there. :)
I've been meaning to do this for weeks, and decided today that it couldn't be put off for any longer. Plus, Chris was home to help.
Buddy = elf
Gretch = Mrs. Claus
Sebastian = Santa
Maggie = reindeer
They are really, really ridiculously cute, if I do say so myself. I can't wait to put some cards together!!
That doesn't make me so happy.
But I did get to cross off the top three lines tonight and it felt REALLY GOOD.
Crazy, right?
Kamille sent me this picture. I tinkered with it a little bit and added the cheesy note in the corner. But I want to get a print of it and send it to Amanda and I think kids like that sort of stuff.
My blur tool doesn't work, which sucks.
OMG, why aren't I sleeping?
i'm researching stuff for kamille on how to help your puppy mill pup adapt in a home and came across this.
i think everyone who wants to buy a dog should watch this video. if they still are willing to buy a dog, to support this... well, i can't even start.
such a lonely, sad life.
please pass on the word!!!
nataliedee.com ¶ 10:12 PM 0 comments
see? it's 3 a.m. and i'm looking at my first flickr pics ever. this is one. i remember how much i loved this picture. now when i look at it, i think "omg, why didn't i move the grass blocking it?!" but also i think how much i loved it. photography = good feelings.
i really, really am over school. this paper sucks.
Craigslist, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! news, gmail, Petfinder, BrianRegan.com, slipcovers, CROSSWORD PUZZLES, Slate, Flickr, NY Times, Bloglines... refresh, refresh...
It's really quite sad how good I am at procrastinating. I even spent a half-hour organizing my Flickr pictures tonight. You know, because THAT is something I need done by Tuesday. Uh huh.
:( ¶ 10:17 PM 0 comments
My niece has been whining for a pug puppy. My sister is thankfully educated about pet stores and all that, so she opted for finding a rescue. She got to go meet the dogs today and decided on a little three-year-old pug that has yet to be named.
She is a puppy mill rescue. Her pups had just been taken away when the rescue got her, so she still has big boobs. She's skinny. They suggested a harness as she is a pug, and also told my sis that she came with a collar that had more or less become embedded in her skin. Even though she's three, she has no concept of potty training and they have to teach her like a puppy. Kamille called tonight, laughing, and said, "Well, she already took a crap on the floor! A really bad one!" I'm so glad this pug found such a good, understanding adoptive mama. :)
I was worried my niece wouldn't be as happy with this older, apparently rough-worn dog, but she is really excited, which makes me proud.
So.. Lesson for today is that puppy mills are REAL as are all the things people say go on inside of them. Please remember this when thinking about getting a dog OR EVEN when you hear someone say they want a dog. Pass this on. Don't think of it as being a pain in the ass - honestly, lots of people just don't know about this. So educate them.
Also, today I drove to Ft Pierce to meet a bunch of rabbits at this shelter, but when I got there they were all gone. There were just a bunch of girl bunnies and pair of boys who were bonded and a cute rabbit that tried to mount George when I put them in together. :p
But I found out that two of the boys were at a foster home, so went there and met a nice rabbit that I'll be adopting next week. His name is Thumper. He's brown and very docile. I am not in love with the way he looks, like I was Moo, but this is for George so oh well. :) George was very traumatized from today, from the car ride and the chasing the other buns did and all that... But she and this rabbit sat very close and very calm together. The rabbit lady said that's a good sign. Plus I guess this little guy had a girlfriend but she turned mean, and he's lonely now. It works out for everyone. :)
I'm still wheezing from being in the rabbit room for a half-hour 5 hours ago. Yaaay allergies.
i mean, we had talked about it for ages. we even went to the wildife care center to meet some buns once. and he didn't seem to mind the idea much anymore... so i started checking into bunnies. the day i went to get moo, i knew i still hadn't talked to chris about it... so i texted him and said, "hey, going to meet some potential friends for george." and received no response, even though he always responds to my texts. SO. yeah, i know... silence is not permission or agreement or anything like that. but i rationalized. i really wanted george to have a friend.
chris wasn't happy. george is patty's after all. she's going back to live with patty next year. and we had agreed that we would get no more pets. i felt a friend for george was different, and if patty didn't want them both, i would have no problem taking care of them indefinitely.
it was actually a really big deal. chris was quite mad that i just went out and did this. i admit that i shouldn't have, but my pity for george was so strong that i just wanted to fix it.
after moo died, chris said that he knew that he was mad when i got moo, but that he had to admit that george did seem to like having a friend. he was sad about moo too.
then i started asking if george could get another friend. the night moo died, i couldn't even go in and LOOK at george i felt so guilty about her being alone again. chris said that i would have to talk to patty about it this time.
so i did. i called her. calling is difficult when the subject matter is difficult. i don't know if she was pissed about me getting moo or not.. all i heard was that patty was ok with both of them going to live there.
patty certainly didn't seem to object. we talked for a little while, and i felt pretty positive when we hung up. but i also realized that she never came out and said "yes" and i know how she is very nice so that may have been her way of saying no.
so i asked chris to find out for sure for me. she told him she didn't want another bun right now, maybe later. considering i'm taking care of them now, i didn't figure that would happen. when chris told me, i got very upset.
after all - after the fight we got into about moo and all the headache, i figured that AT least george had a buddy for life. and then that buddy died. it was just so so sad.
i was walking around a store at the time.. i told chris i wanted to go as i didn't feel like talking. he said ok. he kinda sounded mad, i thought.
then he called back. he said he asked patty again but she still said no. i thought it was nice of him for asking at least. then he kept saying that she said to stop crying and quit being a wimp and all this other goofy stuff that i thought chris was just saying to cheer me up. actually, i think he was trying to goad me into a reaction, but i was so sad i didn't have the heart for it.
then he said, "actually, she said yes."
and i just have to say.. wow, i have a good guy. he didn't want this bunny to start out.. and was actually really upset about it... but he said whatever he did in order to get patty to say yes. :) i am so thankful. and for patty too. what a good coupla kids.
don't worry; i'm not passing the buck off on patty when i hand them over. i'm up there a couple of days a week so i'll stop in to drop off veggies and help keep their cage clean. they also have a chicken hutch outside they can occupy during the milder months during the day, so they should be happy.
SO, i'm going to meet more potential friends for george today. :) ¶ 11:34 AM 0 comments
You can see Maggie sniffing him down there in the corner.
She was SO good that day. I am proud of her!
I took Moo in today for the extraction of his teeth. In the three weeks or a month since the vet trimmed them down so far you could hardly see them, they grew back to just as bad as they had been. Crazy.
The assistant told me that the doc would probably take Moo home with her for the night to make sure he was OK, and I could get him soemtime tomorrow.
Then I took the dogs that had come to ride with me, Sebastian and Maggie, to the dog park down the street. It's a beautiful place, and they even have a lake there for the dogs to swim in. We stayed for about three hours.
I got in the car and saw I had a message from the vet's, so called them. They told me Moo died during the surgery. He had a reaction to the medication they had to give him. They apparently did work on Moo's father and he had issues with the meds too, and he had teeth problems.
So this is shitty. George & Moo were getting along these days... I felt bad taking Moo away just for the day, and now he's gone forever. And he was only about a year old, and so sweet.
Blah.
someone on flickr commented that this was a - Sharbabei!
cute, right? it wouldn't be a keeper if it weren't for all those wrinkles, but they made me love the picture. even tho the baby's butt is cut off.
taking pictures.. it's a lot harder than you'd think!
I mean, my computer? I've already vented about that. I'm ordering a backup drive this weekend so I can replace the hard drive in this very bad boy. I'm having problems with it all the time, and even when it works it keeps acting crazy.
Oh yeah, and I gotta take that other drive back that went kaput after only a week of having it. Grr.
My phone is so slow. I keep getting server errors. Whatever.
Then this morning.. At like 5 a.m. Chris wakes up and says, "Did you register for your classes?" Registration opened at 12:01 a.m. And I hadn't! I meant to do it right at 12:01... I even set an alarm to remind me, but then it turns out I had the day wrong. Classes can fill up SO fast. I was screwed last semester when I was signing up, which is why I have classes 4 days a week now... So I didn't want a repeat of that.
So I got up to register right then. The computer wouldn't connect to the Internet. I tried the other computer. Then I tried Chris's. I tried resetting the modem. Nothing worked.
Chris got up with me, probably unable to sleep from all the swearing, and called Comcast. There was an outage in the area. !!!!!!!
Honestly, what are the chances that the ONE TIME I REALLY need to connect to the Internet, it's down?
I really, really didn't want to screw myself, so at 5 a.m. I went out driving in my pajamas to find a place with WiFi that worked. Thankfully the Dunkin Donuts across the street -- which was not yet opened -- worked for me. I registered for my four classes, then came home and went back to sleep.
Really, really annoying. But I did get it done. And.. and! Next semester is going to be GRAVY. I have classes from like 9-5 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's IT! 4-day weekend, y'all! ¶ 12:52 AM 1 comments
GOD he's good. i always like kanye songs... this one i heard and didn't realize it was him 'til they said it after the song. i'm just, like, in awe of how fucking cool his stuff is.
i gotta crank this song when it comes on, so maybe the 'puter isn't the best medium for watching it. but it'll have to do...
now, yay, i'll have this in my head for the next day or two.
If nothing I like is on, and I really don't have the energy or desire to do anything else, I'll stoop a little. CSI: Miami is usually top on the "ugh, I guess it's OK" list. The cheesy Horatio character and ridiculous sets and outfits worn by serious "crime scene investigators" in the field (yeah, stilettos and a low-cut top, that happens!).
Anyway, I have seen an ad for this one show a few times, and I do not know WHAT KIND OF MOOD I WOULD HAVE TO BE IN to stoop to that level. I mean, I've watched Charmed before, I'll admit it. (TNT, can we get real with the "drama" thing? I mean, "the drama of Charmed"? P'shah.)
My point: They have a show now that is called Parking Wars.
About the Parking Authority of Philadelphia.
Show description: This series takes an inside look at the men and women who work for the Philadelphia Parking Authority. They attempt to break down stereotypes of those who hand out parking tickets and tow away vehicles.
People getting towed. Giving parking tickets.
THIS is what constitutes entertainment on television these days? My lord...
And, I mean, if any of you have seen this show and like it.. I believe it. I would imagine it has to be entertaining (?!) to some degree to get on television at all.
But if I am ever tempted to choose a show about PARKING ATTENDANTS over real life, just shoot me.
Same goes for that Wii ad that is coming on all the time now. I've seen two.. one shows chicks on a rainy day playing this game, but the other is in, like, Costa Rica or something. The lady is choosing to stay in and "shop" on Wii instead of going outside & experiencing real life. Yeah, okay.
Oh, did I mention - I'm going to Costa Rica for spring break. :) I think I'm going to rent a super telephoto lens this time. And we're skipping the diving, so it'll be a week of just Monteverde & Manuel Antonio. :) :) I keep saying how I want to go back... It's kinda weird how I can miss someplace I've only visited once, but I miss the way it feels there. (Driving the Interstate home from the airport after our trip was like sensory overload, in a bad bad way.) I'm surprised Chris is willing to go back a THIRD TIME (he went one time before we went together) but he assures me he'll bring plenty of reading material so I can breathe in the air and take pictures all I want. ¶ 12:56 AM 0 comments
SCHOOL, that's who!
and tuesday is my super-long day at school too. leave at 7 a.m. and don't get home until at least 7 p.m. so for a holiday to fall on a tuesday is a special gift.
today i had to wake up early to drive the turtle to its new home in hollywood... he gets to live in a pond there. he was super feisty on the drive and as i was doing the hand-off, so i think he's been eating and he'll have a good life in a pond full of fish and other turtles. :)
i took sebastian with me. went through a drive-thru to get breakfast. drive-thrus make sebastian super excited... i have a stash of treats in the truck to give him when i run through to get a coffee or something because otherwise he basically tries to launch himself through the window and into the restaurant. apparently it's something to do with his puppyhood and getting treats at the entrance drive-through gate thing at a local park.
i dunno how many dogs do this, but sebastian often shows his excitement in a really icky way:
ain't no fakin' that he's excited, right? he's looking camera left at the egg & cheese sandwich on my lap. lord.
i made an agreement with sebastian that i would share my sandwich if he would just PUT IT AWAY. it didn't work. :(
then i came home and...... NAPPED. and then proceeded to accomplish nearly nothing. but i feel nice! this was the best tuesday i've had this semester. and no class til 4 p.m. tomorrow. yaaaaaaaay! ¶ 6:54 PM 1 comments
This is one of the pictures I took last week of 2-week-old baby Carlo.
Soon after I took this, he pooped on my blanket.
:)
Seriously, just awesome.. News photos, posted one topic at a time, and the pics are all BIG.
Check out the best-of Obama pics from the last couple of years. It's an awesome group.
The night I discovered the site, I was looking forward to a mere 5 hours of sleep, yet I kept digging through the archives anyhow.. I got through June and then made myself go to sleep. ¶ 11:39 PM 1 comments
tonight, along with the rest of the country, i was watching the election coverage. the electoral votes were slowly climbing... emphasis on slowly. i chose to watch dan rather, and i gather his coverage of the election was probably a little quiter and sleepiness-inducing than some of the other channels would have been, but my dad liked dan rather so i stuck it out out of loyalty.
well, eventually i decided to watch something else and check back. it was something like 204 to 130. a while later, i checked in on BBC America and it said that obama was the president, and his votes were in the 300s! i decided to confirm this news with an american source, and dan agreed! obama is president! (elect.)
they started talking about the whole thing and someone brought up the fact that this was going to be one of those historic moments that we all remember for our whole lives. you know how they do that.. where were you when you heard jfk had been killed? where were you when you learned about princess di? (i was at my dad's house.) where were you when the nyc was attacked? (at the law office where i worked. byron called to tell me some crazy shit was going down; check the news.) so while this wasn't a traumatic event, it was something significant enough that we would remember it our whole lives.
"damn," i thought. "and here i was watching SEX CHANGE HOSPITAL."
anyway, despite the fact that this poor girl with the physique of a linebacker was gettin' ready to get real boobies, i abandoned 'sex change hospital' to watch the concession speech.
a couple of thoughts: it was real nice. really. he seemed sincere in trying to get his party to unite behind the new president. that was nice. but then, oh! he mentioned sarah! then they showed her. my thoughts were something like awe of how pretty she really is and an overwhelming desire for her to slink back to alaska and never be heard from again.
then the... uh... winning? speech. seeming to understand that this was a moment of great importance to blacks in our nation, the black members of our household gathered with me around the television to watch barack. (no, really - it was me and maggie and elliot. they came to me! we were only missing georgie, but she just got a refill of hay in the guest bathroom that she and moo are inhabiting so i wasn't expecting to hear from her tonight.)
and now a few thoughts about obama...
first, am i ever damn happy that i will be listening to obama speak for the next four years rather than mccain.
second, wow! we have a really beautiful first family now, don't we?
third, he made me cry. even just the energy and hope in the air lately... it all culminated tonight. and another wow to that.
in an interview i watched with him just the other day, he was posed with the question of what he will be feeling if he wins. he said that he basically will feel a incredible deal of responsibility to the american people. and his speech reinforced that he really means that... and it also made me hope really hard that he can come through and be the good president he wants to be.
i'm going to try to be happy right now and not just grumble on the fact that florida voters supported the amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and woman. that to me is an unnecessary act of, well, meanness. grr. but you can't win 'em all i guess.
going to bed now. but, well, yay. :)
Oh, and here is the baby, in a rare moment of peace. :)
¶ 11:41 PM 0 comments
After a couple of reschedulings, I finally went to meet the lady with the newborn baby today to take pictures.
And let me sum it up: WAY HARDER THAN I IMAGINED.
First of all, I was kinda hoping / counting on the house to have at least one good window or room. Nope! It was so so so dark in there. I never use my flash, but thankfully I did bring it so was able to get some bounced-off-the-ceiling pictures.
We ended up bringing the baby outside to take some pictures... The mom was worried, but it was like 80 degrees out.. I mean, it was warmer outside than it was inside! So we did that, but he spent most of the time crying. Also he peed on my blanket. And pooped. Heh.
So.. well, I got a few. I got a couple of REALLY cute ones, actually. Mostly I'm not happy with them though. But it was a LEARNING experience, and learn I did.
#1. I need to learn to use my flash - just in case.
#2. That whole 10-days-and-under rule is right-on; this baby is about two weeks old and spent the whole time crying and fussing rather than sleeping as brand-new newborns (apparently) do.
This little girl is the baby's cousin. After I said I thought the baby was done (I think the mom was too nice to tell me so) I took this little girl outside for some pictures. What a cutie, eh? Her name is Carina.
So anyway, it was fun for sure. That's the nice thing about this whole photography thing.. The ladies were really, the babies cute... And hopefully I will have a few pictures that will make them happy. :)
but i'm on page 3.
i just had to say... i find this fervor for obama downright touching.
of course, there's palin fervor too.
i guess you could say the obama stuff is touching because i UNDERTAND IT.
with so many politicians, i feel like they are just there for the power. and whether or not you agree with his positions, i really do feel like obama is in this whole circus because he wants to make a difference.
maybe i'm gullible, but maybe i'm right - and what a nice idea THAT is.
our instructions: compare one of the essays from our theory book with treasure island, which we just read.
the essays that we read are the most dense, abstract things... we come to class sometimes and don't know at all what we have just spent an hour reading. and now we have to apply one of them to treasure island.
i keep trying for different essays and i keep coming up empty-handed.
if you're real bored, check out the summary of one of the five or so essays i have to choose from:
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/deconstruction/Barthes_author_2.htm
now, i know enough to know that i'm not a dumbass... but i also know that i can hardly make heads or tails of some of this stuff. this is the second writing i've had to deal with in school of barthes.. last semester we had a whole project on one of his essays.. whee. and i have gathered this much: I DO NOT ENJOY ROLAND BARTHES. every time i see the name of the essay -- "DEATH OF THE AUTHOR" -- i think, "GOOD!" stupid author.
and i do not enjoy this assignment. i've been sitting here since 7 p.m. (asides for dinner and playing tug with dogs) and it's midnight and i have nothing to show for my time.
shitty, shitty assignment. ¶ 12:04 AM 0 comments
Ha ha ha!
Did I mention that the hard drive I bought to back up my laptop went kaput a week after I got it? So I lost everything on it... everything that hadn't been backed up to my OTHER hard drive anyhow. There was a gap of a couple of months... So no Wisconsin pics. No Kitten pics. No Keys pics. Grrr.
Anyway, a couple of blue screens later and I finally decided to call Dell. The guy asked me what was wrong, exactly, and I didn't stop talking for 15 minutes. I think he sensed my intense pissed-offedness and is now sending me a new hard drive. Of course, this means I have to re-do everything AGAIN, but it's not working now as it should anyhow. I can't sync my Blackberry with my Outlook. I can't view certain websites (including my own!). And I randomly get weird errors when starting up or in the middle of doing something. Oh, and it took me THREE TRIES to get the computer to shut off the other night, and twice last night. I would say shut down and it would restart. Or as in last night, I would put it into sleep mode and it would restart instead. ?!!?!?!
Now today I got to spend about an hour burning a simple disc for the woman whose pics I took. Grrrrrrr.
Check out the popup though.. It's so bad it's, like, funny.
He is insanely pretty. Gotta say that chocolate labs are some handsome little fellas.
Today a guy and his wife (and their dog) came in to meet a collie mix... Apparently he had seen my Craigslist ad and photo. I hope they took him home. The mix was about half the size of their collie, but just as adorable. Let's hope that's the way they see it!
I love volunteering. Even though I come home smelling so bad that I want to burn my clothes, I always feel like I am making a difference there. It's good stuff. :)
I went to the shelter today to take pictures.
I'm not uploading them all to Flickr these days.. Just sending them directly to the lady who updates Petfinder.
But there are a couple of so-cute-gotta-share ones. This is one. :)
