A Bad Day For Sue Ellen
December 13, 2007
Yesterday, was not a good day for our dog Sue Ellen. And hence, it wasn;t the best of days for us either. Sue Ellen is a pretty good dog who pretty much stays out of trouble. I think mostly because she is pretty stupid. But, she is great with the kids and doesn’t cause many issues.
That can’t be said for yesterday. I have converted part of our 3 1/2 car garage into a workout area. Sometimes when I go out there to work out, I would take the dog with me. Usually she would just sit there and watch and smell the surroundings. Lately, she has gotten into taking off and checking out the neighborhood while I workout. So, as a consequence, I haven’t been taking her out there with me to work out.
When I went to work out yesterday, I stuck her in the backyard so she could at least enjoy the neighborhood smells. Unfortunately, she has now figure out how to climb/jump over our fence. When I finished the workout, she was gone. A quick scan of the neighborhood (being in rural America, that’s pretty easy) didn’t reveal her. I had no idea when she got out.
i wasn’t really in a mood to go find her, so I went ahead and took my shower figuring she would be back by the time I finished. It’s definitely not the first time she has gotten out of the yard. It’s usually because we have left one of the gates open. Her recent knowledge of how to jump/climb over the fence (this wasn’t the first time) is a relatively new addition.
When I finished my shower, she still wasn’t back. I walked around the house scanning the area for her, but didn’t see her. I figured I would give her another 30 minutes before I went scouting for her. I went outside 10 minutes later and saw her about a quarter mile away in one of the neighbors driveway. She came a running back on the first call. Her little trip earned her a couple of hours closed up in the bathroom.
Later that night, she decided to run to the doorwall in the family room and check out a bunny rabbit that was in the back yard. Unfortunately, it was the corner of the room where we have put up the Christmas tree. When see left the doorwall, she got tangled in the lights on the Christmas tree, panicked and ran. The whole Christmas tree, lights, ornaments and all, came crashing down to the ground. Of course, that untangled her and she ran away. Sean and I were left to upright the tree and clean up the big mess as when it fell over, it dumped a ton of water on the carpet.
So, maybe Sue Ellen had fun yesterday, but it was still a bad day for her.
Why Does Vacation Just Zip By?
December 12, 2007
Wow, the time just flies by when you are on vacation. It hardly seems like its been a week so far, but it has. Luckily, I will still be on vacation for almost another three weeks.
The worst part is that it seems like I have accomplished almost nothing of substance done while on vacation. Or at least nothing done except computer work and a bunch of work done on my websites. The kids are still in school, so we don’t get to play around as much as I like when on my yearly end of the year vacation. Unfortunately, they dont get much vacation before Christmas this year. They get the week of Christmas and the week of New Years off. I am slated to go back to work on the 2nd of January but am contemplating just taking that whole week off to enjoy the family.
Speaking of website work, its the holiday season, so it must be time to give Cruise Talk Central another facelift. I was pretty happy when I finished with the theme about a year ago, but every week, the happiness left a bit. The theme is just to wordy and too tubular. The information is good, but needs a different sort of presentation. So, I have been sitting down and sketching out how I wanted it too look. I plan to give it more of magazine look.
I had just started coding up the CSS for the new design when I came across a brand newly released theme that met like 80% of my requirements. So, I have shifted gears and am now customizing that theme for Cruise Talk Central. I hope to launch the new theme there before the first of the year.
I am also continuing my work on the Simple Forum plugin for WordPress. I am helping the main developer prepare the next major release of the software, version 3.0. We are hoping for a Beta release in January, but that may be overly aggressive considering with both have Christmas things to do.
The cold which hit me the first day of my vacation is slowly fading away. Luckily, it never really hit that hard, but it did let me know it was here. Suzanne appears that she may be coming down with a mild case of it too.
The two day snow storm that hit Southern Arizona yesterday has left. It actually was mostly rain for everyone except for folks in the higher elevations. The mountains around us are covered in a wonderful layer of snow. Some mountains received a couple feet of snow. At our elevation of 5000 feet, we had several brief snow showers, but no accumulation. In an average year here, we end up with some accumulation about twice a year. I wouldn’t actually mind a few more in a year. Having grown up in Michigan, though, I wouldn’t want to go back to those winters.
Okay, time to go do something useful with the vacation time, like maybe clean the house for Suzanne while she is off volunteering at the VA Hospital today.
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