i am a zombie today. i can't remember the last time i was this tired. we had a good weekend....fairly uneventful. justin had a friend over and both dogs had muzzles on and they did GREAT. they warmed up to his friend almost immediately. that doesn't mean we're not looking into training anymore but i'm hugely relieved that they aren't going psycho (and i'm convinced it was just the circumstances that caused hector to act aggressively that one time). speaking of hector, i think he got stung by a bee or got bit by an insect because by noon on sunday his whole face was swollen. i noticed his nose was puffy but thought it was just irritated from the muzzle. but then his ears starting getting really hot and inflamed and by noon his eyes were puffy too. poor guy! even after some benadryl he wasn't really improving and so last night we brought him in to the emergency vet clinic so they could give him a stronger treatment. i had given him a second round of benadryl around 9 pm and then by 10 his eyes were even worse and we started to get nervous that it might start to cause his throat to swell up (and squash his trachea). better safe than sorry. we were in and out of there without a hitch and he's doing MUCH better today. even an hour after we'd gotten home his eyes were back to normal. we haven't found the stinger or any bite marks so we don't have a definitive answer as to what caused his face to puff out. but at least we know what to do for next time. we ended up going to bed close to 1 AM...blah.

i can't believe that 4th of july is the end of this week. the year is FLYING by. dare i say that christmas will be here before we know it? our summer is pretty laid back from here on out. in august we're going to rhode island for a week. i just finished making all the travel plans and now i'm chomping at the bit to actually get there. nothing like the beach and a doughboy and clam cakes....and coffee milk. one thing that is keeping my busy so far is a new project that i've started: project 365 on flickr. basically i have to take a photo a day. i'm 9 days in. already i can understand how people quit or skip days. sometimes it's just hard. but it's cool to look at the album so far and know that each picture is a tiny time capsule of what happened on a particular day. at the end i'm planning on printing out the photos in my own self-made coffee table book. so anyways....

well, at this point i'm counting down the minutes until quittin' time....i've got approximately an hour. once people near me leave i may have to lay my head down for a bit.

well if there is one thing i can say about mondays, it's that at least they tend to go by quickly. i was in gatlinburg this weekend with the gals from the office. it was a really nice place and the town was great (just crowded). it's just that even though we got back early, it still felt like i hardly had a weekend. the few remaining hours after i got back were pretty lazy, thanks to chris who had done all the chores while i was gone  he even drove me around so i could take some sunset pictures...i am so lucky
but anyways, at least monday is almost over and so we can go relax a bit. we're going to take the dogs on a long walk in a semi-shaded trail so that they can at least get some exercise despite the heat. i'm really looking forward to it since i love our walks.

um, well....i thought i had more to say but if i did i can't remember what it was. chalk it up to being 26. ahh age.

this is probably the only time i'll ever utter these words: i'm so glad the weekend is over.

saturday was interesting. we took our dogs in to get their rabies vaccines updated. thank GOD we took them on a long walk beforehand to get them a bit worn out because when we walked in, there was a group of about 25 adults and little children swarming into the waiting area. our dogs have never snapped at children (thank god) but we could tell that even though they were tired, their level of anxiety was rising from all the commotion. we asked the vet tech checking us in what was going on and apparently it was a birthday party that was touring petsmart and the vet office.
"excuse me????" a birthday party?
LAME. who tours petsmart for their birthday? and why on god's green earth would parents think it a good idea to bring excitable children into a vet's office where animals are already naturally inclined to be more stressed???!?!?!aside from how annoying it was to have to wade through a sea of toddlers carrying stuffed giraffes and tigers, i couldn't get over how irresponsible a decision it was to bring children to a vet's office for a party. chris responded with: "hey, let's tour the ER on my next birthday." i mean, honestly. the whole idea was that their stuffed animals got a 'check-up" from the vet and they got to see an x-ray of a toy in a dog's stomach. very nice. great. how career-day....but what if my dog had snapped at one of the kids or--worse--bitten one of them? my internal reaction to all these people: GET THE F*** OUT OF THE VET'S OFFICE AND GO TO A PARK OR SOMETHING. god bless it.
but after that near-debacle, we relaxed a bit and i got a haircut. so it wasn't a complete waste of a day.

sunday though....we slept in a bit. it was already so humid that by 7 AM it was almost impossible to breathe outside. i took some pictures and fussed around on iphoto...chris did some work. then we went and saw "up" in 3-D.
first of all, don't see it in 3-D. the glasses are fun and silly-looking but chris and i both left with massive headaches. as for the movie itself....it wasn't anything like what i expected. we were surprised, and not pleasantly. the graphics and colors were stunning. pixar gets better every time, i think. but the story was definitely more grown-up. and it's weird because we went home and read through some reviews to see if we were maybe missing the point or something and EVERY SINGLE REVIEW was raving about the movie and how it didn;t "sugar-coat" the bad things. chris and i were like "did we see the same movie?" the credits started rolling and i was like "that was the most non-kid-friendly pixar ever." we don't have little kids, but if we did, i wouldn't take them to see it. it was that grown-up. i won't put spoilers in here becuase i don't want to skew other people's impressions of the movie but suffice it to say, we didn't leave with the same feeling that other pixar movies left us in. it wasn't as whimsical, and that's fine. but don't advertise it like it's a fun adventure movie with lots of comical twists and turns. most of the twists and turns weren't fun. mostly they were a bit scary. and while most reviewers were grateful that they didn't "talk down" to children and "sugar-coat" things, i can't help but rebut with no, children aren't as naive as we think, but that doesn't mean that we should just expose them to all sorts of scary things. children see things different than adults. i'm 26 and there were part of the movie that i, myself, had to look away from. i couldn't imagine having to explain to a 4-yr-old why the dogs were mean to each other or why the "villian" didn't like people (or animals) trying to help each other out. kids don't see it as "ooh well sometimes bad things just happen and sometimes there are just bad people in the world." they see this: "if i try to help someone, will someone hurt my dog or set my house on fire?" i guess i just thought i was going to see a feel-good movie. and it definitely didn't come through like that.

anyways. there were other reasons sunday was a bust but i'm not going to list those here....i'm trying to forget about them even as i type. this morning i was hoping to get a better start and avoid a case of the mondays when, as i was leaving the neighborhood, i spilled coffee on me again in the same effing spot on the same effing pair of pants that i just had cleaned from the last time i spilled coffee.   
i guess i can't be too terribly mad. i was already a bit early and i wasn't even too far from the house so i had time to turn around and change. but the fact of the matter is that it happened in the first place and that made me so raging mad that at 7:30 in the morning i screamed an expletive, forgetting my windows were down.
and now i've just spent 2 and a half hours at my desk doing NOTHING except playing on flickr and typing this entry. i've just now gotten some work and in about 30 minutes i'll be back to twiddling my thumbs.
vacation in rhode island can't come soon enough...... i hate mondays.

happy june, it's been well over a month since my last update...may was a fairly busy month for us, especially concerning traveling. we were in st. louis one weekend and three days later we flew up to maryland (both trips for graduations). neither of us had been to st. louis and unfortunately, neither of us will most likely be back. we had fun at the graduation and seeing the arch but other than that, honestly, we were not huge fans of the city proper. it seemed like it was planned for local traffic only, making it less than easy to navigate if you're from out of town. which is fine....it just sucked for us as we kept getting lost. 
following those trips obviously was memorial day, not that we did anything in particular (that i can remember), and then the last weekend was a full house when sean and nora came home for their friend's wedding. chris was sick the whole time.
and then the next weekend was june...and we had dog training. which was almost unsuccesful until the very end. this is still the barkbusters training. and we're still a bit skeptical about it even though now we've seen better results. we're trying to incorporate training that i've done with the dogs (and been successful with) into the training that she teaches. personally i feel this compromise is better for the dogs so that they are less confused and less anxious about the whole thing. plus, the practice is relatively easier than what i've had to do in the past (juggle between them both). so. slooowly we're getting there. i really want to get our money's worth out of this training company so i'm giving it a chance.

other than that, june is less busy. the only "thing" that i have next is a girls' weekend with the women from the office. i am less than excited for this event and can already feel my chest tighten up a bit in anxiety. the last time they did this, i was still new in the office and didn't exactly feel comfortable driving off into the wilderness with people i didn't really know. now that i'm a year in, i still don't want to drive off into the wilderness...but mostly because i have come to know some of the people. i know, i know....why go if i really don't want to? well, (a) peer pressure, and (b) i figure i should go to prove that i'm not entirely socially closed off. like i said, it's been a year. and there are still a couple people who forget that i work here. i guess it's not entirely their fault since i don't exactly throw a parade every time i move around the office. but still. i'm already ready to be done with the trip and i haven't even LEFT for it yet.

in other news, i've been really getting into my photography. my flickr is updated almost daily and every day i'm getting inspired and learning new techniques. i've been dying for a new lens--macro or zoom--but i was recently taught how to do "reverse lens" shooting which means i just put my original lens on backwards (in my case, since i don't have an adaptor yet, i have to just hold it up to the camera body) and it gives great macro shots. the weather has been fantastic so i'm out pretty much everyday snapping pictures of something or another. it's been a great hobby and great way to "meditate" and relieve the stress of work.

ok well, hopefully this is enough information to get through ANOTHER month but i'm sure i'll update sooner.

i would LOVE to just start today over again. actually i'd like to just do over the entire weekend while we're at it. it's been raining here for the past 5 days it seems...like raining raining. and no end in sight until this coming weekend. that's, what, six more days of rain and gloom? in may. epitome of spring. shrouded in clouds.

i think i'm just in a funk. we did pretty much nothing all weekend except sit around. saturday we had to take the dogs in for some updated tests before they go to the kennel in two weeks. as it turns out, the vet tech (or whatever they are called) gave us the wrong information and so we actually were already updated...on the plus side (no pun intended, you'll see why), we did get confirmation that our dogs are overweight. we knew they were bigger than most weims but the vet said they don't pass the "rib test" (which is: if you can't feel their ribs without pushing a little, too fat). sooooooo now we've got them on weight management food and we ambitiously made plans to run with them and take them for long walks at least twice daily. we're planning to start probably next weekend on a new walking program. not that we're procrastinating, but hector's foot was a bit swollen while i was in maryland and so we've been doing shorter walks more frequently so that he can still get exercise but not overstrain the muscles/bones. i'm surprised that they actually didn't mind walking in the rain...normally they don't like it, even though we have raincoats for them. but this weekend they didn't seem to mind. and that is a HUGE relief for us.
other than that news, we were lazy bums for two days. i managed to organize pretty much all the pictures we have on iphoto (which is A LOT). i was able to burn them all to cds but with macs being completely alien to me, i didn't get the folders right and so now instead of opening the cds and seeing organized folders for specific photos (i.e. pink flowers, white flowers, etc. etc.) i open the cd and it's just all the pictures all together. read: annoying. it's times like this when i despise the mac....with a pc it was much easier. create a new folder, drag selected items into folder, and *voila* organization.
cut to this morning when i've just barely pulled away from the house when i spill effing coffee all over my effing pants. LIGHT-colored pants. no chance of hiding those stains. effing great. now i have to stare at them all freaking day. it was my fault really...i wasn't using a travel mug. normally i don't, though. but normally my mug is much bigger but my regular mug was in the dishwasher and so i was forced to use a smaller mug. and the closer i got to work, the more i was seething with complete contempt for my job. what an effing terrific way to start the week. wet, rainy, coffee-stained, and filled with anger. talk about a case of the mondays.