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Author Archives: Morgan
I forgot to mention!
In all the pneumonia and otherwise sickness hubbub, I totally forgot our new toy!
Voila: Goodbye tent trailer, hello Komfort!
Ameneties Include:
Air Conditioner!
Furnace!!
Napkin Dispenser!!!
Refrigerator!
Accessible Storage!
No Collapsing!
Microwave Oven!
Bunkbeds!
A BATHROOM OMGZZZ!!!
Stay tuned, there’s more camping to be done, including lots of OFF SEASON CAMPING! /cough with Mark and Sandee /cough
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Congrats!
Congrats to Jessie for passing Puppy Kindergarten!
This is what she thought of that:
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It’s been one helluva week (or so)
I’ve been sick all week. No really! I admit that I took off sick a week ago Friday to go to the beach, but my instant karma has dealt me my comeuppance. Be that as it may, the past week hasn’t been all that bad:
- I got to take my puppy to the beach for the first time with her new best friend Bella, a golden retriever puppy who’s a couple weeks younger.
- I went for a great first ride of the season with some nice folk, including my most favorite little Italian chick. Bikers rock!
- I have actually stepped into the office for half a day since a week ago Thursday, and I don’t plan on it for a few days yet because…
- I got pneumonia!
So let’s start with the puppy fun. We took our puppy Jessie to the beach with our friends Jen and Alix, their daughter Rylie and their new puppy Bella. I had a pretty good time, mostly because it was great to see Jessie’s first encounter with beach smells, beach sand, nasty beach …stuff… (which she and Bella tried to injest in great quantities, ugh), and all the wonderful beach puppy games, which look quite a bit like the at home puppy games, but are better because they’re at the beach. The only downside was I busted my new kite which I’ve only been able to fly the day I bought it last year, and now is …well, busted. Note to self – help is required when assembling kites that large; so if you get ditched while preparing to assemble, you’re just gonna have to wait or risk nasty string burns and an extremely foul temper.
The bike ride. I knew I’d been feeling really crappy all of last week, just a lot of chest pressure and stuff, coughing and the like. But at least my eye swelling had gone down, whatever that was all about. I knew this ride was coming up, and it was to be the first of the season so I was pretty excited, so I rested up and rested up and by the time Sunday rolled around I felt like I was on the downhill side on the road to recovery. So I hopped on the bike, gassed it up a bit (3 bucks doesn’t fill up my tank anymore? Wha??) and headed to my friend Hope’s house, the Starting Destination. Once everyone who was gonna be there got there, we started out towards Multnomah Falls. Except that was waaaay crowded. So we decided to continue on to Cascade Locks for burgers and a great view at CharBurger. By that time, I was having a little trouble breathing, so I ordered up a big tall styrofoam cup of tea to warm my chest up. We decided to head home the fast way, but about 5 miles away from Troutdale my gas light lit up. Did you know some bikes have a gas light? I didn’t! Anyway, I debated for a mile or two whether or not I should try to make it, since I knew we were about 20 miles out at this point, but I decided not to take a chance and told the group I needed a pit stop. Fortunately there was one right nearby, so we all pulled in and I gassed up. Nearly 8 bucks!!!! later, with a full tank, we all headed out. Two miles later, Hope pulls us over; her bike died and wouldn’t start. The cause? She ran outta gas! So she hops on our friend Tom’s bike and the three of us (the others had left along the way) headed back to the gas station to buy a container and some gas. By this time I’m feeling a little worse. We get back to hopes house and I make up some more tea and hang out for a bit, but I really needed to get home.
Later that night I ended up in the emergency center and I came out with pneumonia. I’m just that hardkore!
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Puppy 101
Welcome to new puppy life!
Jessie has been pretty much the all-consuming event in our daily life since we got her. Between hourly potty walks when we’re home, playing fetch and tug-of-war until she’s tired out (no easy feat there), puppy play dates at friends houses, puppy kindergarten, and 3am potty walks, it’s been a bit tiring to say the least. But she is the stinkin cutest puppy you’ve ever seen! Yes yes, I know I’m biased…but I don’t care!
There are so many things that she just naturally does, or has learned to do with virtually no instruction. Things like taking food gently, fetching (at least the go get it and bring it within 10 feet of you part), sleeping (gasp!!) when the car is moving, and sit on command where all easy as pie. Liver and cheese pie! But the real treasure is that finally we have a dog that doesn’t bite people, who understands the basics of doggy communication, and who we can let maul an 18 month old for at least a few moments and have them come away just very slobbery. Not that Jasper wasn’t a good dog, he was. But only if we managed his environment very carefully.
So to date, we’ve learned or are learning the following (excuse me being the proud mom):
Sit
Down
Get your [insert toy name here]
Drop it
Wait
Having legs, ears, mouth, etc handled with no stress
Take treats gently; don’t lunge at treats when offered
Come
Pays attention (or even comes) when you say her name just once
Come NOW (emergency recall, we just started on this one – requires lots of lunch meat)
Recognize other dogs’ “calming signals” (i.e. chill out you’re getting too rowdy on me!)
No biting (that’s a bit of a rough one, she mouths EVERYTHING, but that’s what puppies do)
No stress over her food dish being messed with, taken away, hands in it when she’s eating
At just barely 14 weeks old, that’s just…amazing!!
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V is for Vendetta
If I had to pick my most favorite books of all time, The Count of Monte Cristo would be up near the top. Granted, Alexandre Dumas was equivelent to a rennaisance-era Grisham. Good writing, great story but not a lot of depth, compared to the authors that would share the top of my list – Hermann Hesse, Ayn Rand, James Joyce. But the emotional impact of the book when I first read it in my teens was just as powerful.
So I was pleasantly surprised to see that a proper retelling of the story was done in the new movie V for Vendetta. The parallels are fairly obvious to someone who has read the book, but for those that haven’t, the black and white version of the movie gets a plug. However, it is a new retelling of the story; the same emotions, the same rage and agony are perfectly presented, and yet in an entirely new context. The fact that I found the movie disturbingly relevant to events happening today made this all the more compelling. I give this movie a big thumbs up.
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New Puppy!!!!!!
Category: Family_
You know your house was meant to have a dog in it at all times when you and your partner are standing in the kitchen chatting while eating chips, and a piece of chip falls on the floor, and you’re suddenly all sad because there’s no one there to barkcuum it up!~
So we got a new puppy! We got her from a family who decided to breed their Blue Heeler female to an Australian Shepherd male (apparently a quite popular “Aussie Mix”) so her family could witness the miracle of birth in their very own backyard. It was a big backyard with a horse in it – lots of room for young puppies to get into all sorts of mischief!
We had read up on how to pick a dog, which included some info on picking a good puppy out of a litter. According to our little book, the best puppies are usually the ones in the middle of the pack…not the most dominant, or the most shy; confident, curious and unafraid when picked up, and continues to be so as you walk away from the litter. It also mentioned that if you were looking for a good fetcher, look for the one that always has some toy in its mouth. So we spent an hour watching the litter play. It was a tough choice, there were lots of great little dogs-in-training to be had there, but we finally settled on a little girl with a naturally short tail (good for not wiping things off tables), who was only outdone in her toy aptitude by her mom. She endured play attacks by her littermates with grace, and was happy to deal it out as well, however stopped short when the attackee made it clear it wasn’t fun anymore, and went in pursuit of a dastardly stick instead. So say hello to our newest addition, Jessie!
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Goodbye Jasper
Category: Family_
Well!
Nothing like a week in Mexico enjoying sun and surf to put things in perspective for you! We of course had a wonderful time, despite having to put Jasper down the night before we left.
That was really hard, even more so considering that day he was doing pretty well all things considered. But we’d been noticing that he was taking two steps back, one step forward for the past few months, and overall his condition had worsened quite a bit at that point. We could either keep him doped up on codeine as a cough suppressant, which completely wiped away his appetite; or keep him off the codeine, and instead of watching him lose weight quickly, we could have him cough up blood and have awful hacking fits that lasted longer and longer. And towards the end, the codeine was becoming less and less effective. So we fed him lots of mac and cheese, and cooked him up a couple steaks, gave him everything he even thought he wanted for two months. Here’s to you Jasper!
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Been kinda quiet…
Been kinda quiet lately, I know. Not much of anything going on…we tend to hunker down and hole up in the winter, and don’t get out much. Several friends have had babies, and that’s wonderful for them. Not so lucky here however.
Our dog is getting worse…his lung cancer is back with a vengeance, and its’ almost getting to be a death watch. We went to the vet on Sunday, and only after extensive blood tests would they give us any antibiotics for his very phlegmy cough. He was feeling quite a bit better once we started that medication (on top of the two he’s already taking), a bit more energy, which is great. Before the vet, I would’ve said a month tops…now it could be a couple weeks, or 4 months, I can’t say. As long as he’s eating well, all should be fine…he has lots of treats to work through.
All in all things are low energy for me. I’m loaded at work, more so than many of the poeple in my team it seems. Of course, the more competent you are, the more work you get; and the less competent, the less work you get. Nobody gets fired in the government, no matter how little they do.
I’m just counting the days to Mexico. To hell with this place and everything in it.
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Season Three!
I can watch the premiere at least. There’s a premiere event being hosted downtown this weekend. For the rest, I’ll have to wait until the season comes out on Netflix, since I don’t have showtime. Oh, the agony!!! of having to wait nearly a year!!
What am I talking about? Click me!