Lemming!

I am a lemming. I turned on the television this morning so I could occupy my eyes and ears while I did some ironing. It was early and all of my "regular" channels were still broadcasting infomercials, so I had to resort to the "left hand of the dial," so to speak.

The first show I happened upon was on National Geographic, and it was called The Dog Whisperer. Now, I've seen this guy before and been pretty impressed with what I saw, so I put the clicker down and watched two episodes of the show. Good stuff. Mostly stuff that I knew from reading countless training guides and dog psychology books and going to training classes and what have you, but it was enough of a refresher to inspire me to spend about 2 hours this afternoon working and playing with Bucket and Delilah. Heaven knows they need it!

The next couple of shows I watched were on the LOGO network, which is apparently a new Gay and Lesbian channel, courtesy of MTV. Great. Can't wait to see stupid game shows and reality shows pitting this population--already under fire from "the outside"--against each other. Anyway, the shows were about cycling--Lifecycle, to be specific. It profiled some of the riders, showed the ride, and talked about the origins of the 7 day ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money to fight and cure Aids. Now I'm all fired up to ride more, and do some kind of epic ride, complete with overnight camping, huge backpacks and support crews along the way. I would have even gone for a ride today if I hadn't been spending all that time with the dogs. :)

The third show I watched (hey, I had a lot of ironing!) was some sort of gardening rescue show. How to make your ugly duckling yard into a thing of beauty kind of thing. I pulled a few weeds in the yard after I walked the dogs, and I planned on which bushes I need to trim. See how tv affects me? I am playdough in the hands of network execs.

Insert witty closing comment here. I gotta go get ready for work and don't have time to come up with one of my own....

Fatty on my mind

I discovered the Fat Cyclist through my ofttimes misguided loyalty to MSN.com. Well there is now a voting competition for Best Blog of the Week, or somesuch, and Fatty is giving away phat loot to anyone who will vote for him. One of his competitors was so entertained by his blog that she is throwing her two incontinent cats into the prize pot. Don't you owe it to yourself to vote?

Fat Cyclists and phat loot aside, I had a pretty cool day today. I was able to resist the Krispy Kreme donuts (including the chocolate covered, creme filled minions of satan) that the Bossman brought to work...AND I saw some of the Corteo folks in the store.

I was up front and espied a rather familiar looking young guy at one of the registers. I stared him down for awhile, not sure if my brain was making up stories so that my body and mouth would make a fool of me. As he turned to walk out the door, however, I noticed a badge/lanyard hanging down his back. It very definately had the Cirque du Soleil sun imprinted on it so, caution to the wind...I walked casually (ran) over to the door and greeted him eloquently (mumbled "something something CORTEO!"). He nodded and smiled (looked terrified and visibly shuddered), I complemented the show and thanked him for a wonderful performance (stuttered and drooled a little), and he walked away (tried very gallantly to disguise his dire urge to FLEE). Ahhh...a brush with fame. Yeah. It was a good day.

Breaking All the Rules

In a recent post, one of my favourite co-denizens of the web, Fat Cyclist (yes, I've mentioned him before on numerous occasions, but I think he's entertaining enough to warrant multiple plugs) wrote up his three main rules of Blogging:

Don’t blog about blogging. Writing about the consternation you are experiencing because you have nothing to say is an excellent exercise, which you should then immediately delete without showing to anyone, ever.
Be about something. If your blog is about your entire life, it will probably be interesting to your family and closest friends (I’m being generous by including your closest friends in this list), and nobody else.
Write often. Don’t make people come back and read the same thing over and over. I mean, really.

I'm pretty sure I've never followed any of them with any real dedication.

I got a little intimidated about all the professed changes I'd be making--and embarrased that I hadn't figured any of them out (the first clue to my failure might have been NoviDavid's comment in the last post...pointing out my true incomprehension of all things HTML or otherwise web-coding related!). So I put off posting. Now I'm not even sure where my book is. I think it's buried under the mounds of papers, game manuals, and recyclable water bottles currently cluttering the top of the desk.

So. No new changes for this post. But here are a few exciting things we've done in the past week.

Shopping! I went last Monday for the first time in ages. I shouldn't really be allowed out of the house when the shopping mood strikes. I don't go often, but when I do, I end up spending money on silly things like new underwear, the DVD box set of Keen Eddie (hey, Suncoast was going out of business, so it was 40% off!), and a headlamp that I'm keen to attach to my bike helmet for summer night rides. I also picked up a gourmet carob brownie and some sweet little heart shaped cookies...for the dogs! I found a nice little shirt on clearance at Dillards, and oogled some shoes that I just couldn't justify.

Corteo! We went to see the show on Wednesday night. I think I purchased our tickets last November or something, so I got 2nd row seats. It was amazing, as all Cirque shows are. I smiled and laughed so much that my face hurt, and we both left feeling a little more inspired to get into shape (not that we'll be swinging from chandeliers anytime soon, but still...). If you've never seen a Cirque Du Soleil show.... do it.

Oblivion. It finally, finally came out. We picked it up for the PC, as Microsoft is being stingy with the XBox 360's, and who needs another console anyway for the one game that looks to be any good. Oh, and it is! Elder Scrolls was probably the first game that I got hooked on as an adult, and this just carries on in that vein, but in much better, and more beautiful ways. If anything can break my addiction to WoW, it will be this game. That said, the only thing that would currently make it better would be if it was online so I could chat with my friends. :D

Finally, yesterday we went to the Arizona Renaissance Faire. It's certainly not the same as going to our "home" faire in Kansas City, but it was still lovely to walk around holding hands and shop at all the goofy little craft shops. We caught bits and pieces of a few shows, and then watched the final joust, which was an abomination. I think the blood packs they used were the most impressive bit in the entire show. It wasn't painful for us to watch, however, as we were laughing our heads off through the entire thing. I mean, when you completely miss a pass, and have to swing your lance around behind your head to unhorse a guy (AND IT WORKS)...well it's pretty much a farce at that point.

Pooped as we were from walking around in the hot sun all day, we came home and watched a couple of episodes of Lost (only two remain of the first season DVD set. Oh noes!) and retired to the loft to lose ourselves in video games.

It's been a good week.

My Brain isn't Big Enough

I try to wrap it around stuff like this, but it just won't go. I think perhaps it may have to do with the fact that I'm currently wasting valuable brainspace thinking about things like:
1) The fact that Delilah is in a yapping match with the dog behind us and may someday soon manage to climb the sheer block wall, with all the carnage that entails.
2) The fact that Bucket is very likely to vomit in the next 30 minutes or so due to the huge quantity of grass he's been grazing.
and,
3) What exactly is the deal with John Locke? (yes, we've been sucked into this extravaganza of suspense and mystery--we got the first season on DVD and are now panicking as to how we will cope when we are finished with this set, since we can't watch the show on telly and the second season won't be out for months.)

Friday is another day off for me, so perhaps I can clear out some time and meditate some brainspace free for some self-inflicted code torture.

Small Victories

So I've changed the template completely so that I can follow along with some of the stuff the book shows as examples. I'm pretty sure my site will be ugly as hell for some time, while I figure all this out. I have figured out how to change the colour of the main header, the font style and colour, and how to add my favourite links to the sidebar (FINALLY!). I will fiddle with it more and more in the days to come, but right now I feel like my eyeballs are the size of grapefruits--and they are covered in sandpaper. Now I know why coders are nuts.

In other news, I nearly drove off the side of the road (not really mom, calm down!) yesterday on my way to work. There was SNOW in the mountains. The tips of the McDowell Mountains to the east were dusted with the white stuff, but to the north they were completely blanketed. It was such a beautiful sight! Snow! Within my field of range, and without using special 500x zoom optics! Fantastic.

And now, since it is my day off, I must go attend to that Stuff To Do list I created. I'll have to add "Fiddle with my Blog" to it now, since I've just spent about an hour doing just that. :D

10 Days and a New Impetus

It rained yesterday. My first Saturday off with Russell in...oh....a lifetime. We were going to go out to the Arizona Renaissance Faire, but decided against paying $40 to go shopping in the mud and muck. "The Show Must Go On" they say, and it does, but having as much experience as we both do with faires, we knew that we'd have to sort of have an "in" to see the best stuff. Without that inside edge, we would have just been wandering from dry booth to dry booth looking at hand woven jumpers and odd leather accoutrements. Another time perhaps.

We used our day off instead to shop in more comfortable conditions. My very best friend gave us a B&N gift card for Christmas, and we had yet to spend any of it, so away we went to the nearby shopper's paradise. We were quickly seduced by the thought of California Pizza Kitchen (which just happens to be across the way from B&N), so didn't spend the requisite 3 hours in the bookstore. I did, however, pick up a book that I'd seen a few months ago. This book is going to help me overcome my blogging blahs. It's going to make my blog bigger and better and more fun to write and much more fun to visit. But not today. Today I have to work.

But thanks, Kimbra!

TechnoHate and Stoopid Pet Tricks

More and more recently I see people with those wierd little ear things hooked on their heads. They yammer away on their cell phones, but you don't really know it until you see the wierd little ear thing. Usually I just think they are nuts and talking really loudly to themselves (what is wrong with technology that we can create an mp3 player the size of a stick of gum that will hold 40 hours of music, but we can't make a microphone substantial enough to rid the world of cell phone shouters?).
From time to time I think maybe I should get myself an ear thing. I mean, the lady that works janitorial maintenance for our business complex was chatting away happily (and not, as I originally thought, to herself) as I left work today. Everyone seems to have them; why not me?
Here's why, and I'm glad you asked: I hate cell phones. I've ranted about them enough before in regards to other people's use of them, but here's this. I also hate MY cell phone. Despite all claims to its being so handy and portable, it never seems to be in the same room with me. If it IS in the same room with me and it happens to ring, it's a wrong number or work. OR the room I happen to be in is a room with very poor reception, so I find myself pacing around the house looking for that perfect spot. It's just a poorly functioning pita. While it serves its purpose and tends to make me feel a little more secure when I'm on a long road trip or mt. bike ride, it definitely doesn't warrant its own accessories.

And on another entirely different note, I taught the dogs to jump in a carboard box today. They'll do anything for a treat. After our "training" session, I worked in the yard for a bit and would periodically look up to see Bucket staring me down from inside the box, clearly waiting to be rewarded. He's clever in his own ridiculous way.