Spider Dog

Spider Dog, Spider Dog,
Does whatever a Spider Dog does
Can she swing from a web
No, she can't, she's a dog
Look out
Here comes Spider Dog

2 down, way too many more to go...

I've now officially been back at work for 2 days.

They were a...let's just say they were "rough." Alright, so this was this crappiest beginning of the year that I've had since I started working.

Sometimes I don't want to play nicely and I'm waiting for my infamous temper to flare up enough so that I explode.

It can only get better from here, right? Good grief, how many more days until fall break?

Year 4

I got a very unpleasant call from work today. I wasn't supposed to officially go back to work until Thursday, but now I have a meeting early tomorrow morning. Boo. I was also told that I have an other early meeting the following day, but at least that day is an official work day. Sure, my meeting tomorrow won't last more than an hour, but I'm still bummed.

Lance and I went back to school shopping today. He bought a snazzy new pair of shoes and I got myself a new backpack. I've always had a thing for bags and backpacks and I used to get new backpacks quite frequently. When I first started working, I carried my backpack from grad school but I eventually felt self-conscious about it. Everyone around me had over-the-shoulder bags that looked professional looking (or they had those plastic rolling crates but that's not a look that I want to be sporting anytime soon). The only people who had backpacks were under five feet tall. I eventually swapped my beloved backpack for an over-the-shoulder bag in order to fit in a little better with my colleagues. I was already the youngest member of the faculty and I didn't want my choice of bag to make me look even younger than I was.

When I was younger, there was a period of my life where I had over-the-shoulder bag as my school bag. I had two denim bags and one black bag and none of them lasted very long. They also weren't as easy to carry as they took a little more effort to hold on my shoulder than a backpack. The straps would occasionally fall and it was a lot harder to carry additional stuff. So I switched to Jansport backpacks. They were a lot easier to carry and to hold on to and the Jansport bags were incredibly sturdy.

Quite frequently last year, I arrived on campus with arms laden down with stuff, my over-the-shoulder bag, my lunch bag, my coffee, and my computer bag. My over-the-shoulder bag made getting to my room quite difficult, as the straps would constantly fall off my shoulder. The struggle to get to my room each morning made me cranky. In addition to this, M*Bark had discovered how much fun it was to poke her head in my bag and find something to pull out and lay in the middle of the floor. That didn't make me cranky, I actually thought it was funny but I did worry that she was pulling stuff out that I would need for the day.

And so, as I approached Year 4, I decided that I needed a new bag. I hadn't really thought about what kind of bag I wanted, but I started looking at the backpacks today while we were at Sports Authority and suddenly decided that I wanted a backpack again. So, just like the good ole days, I dragged Lance around to lovingly fondle the various backpacks. I finally decided upon this Nike backpack. It was on sale and had some good pockets and had a fun mesh pocket in the front. I thought I could maybe put my umbrella and hat in there for easy access when it rained (which, is like every other day up there), but Lance pointed out that it would make a good knitting pocket. Well, the idea of a handy pocket for taking my knitting to work pretty much sold the bag for me and now it's sitting next to me, waiting for me to fill it up.

The one thing that made me second guess this backpack was the fact that it was a backpack. If it was unprofessional of me to have it three years ago, then why did I think it was okay for me to have it now? Well, the answer to that is: I just don't care. As I enter Year 4, I realize that I don't give a damn what my colleagues may or may not think about me. I think that I have more than proven myself to be professional and to actually know what I'm doing, despite my age. And for those of my colleagues who still question me because of my age...well, I really just don't care.

At long last...

I had been looking forward to Friday's events all summer. Friday morning I woke up early and hightailed it to Borders. I was a little dismayed when I got there that I wasn't early enough to be one of the first ten in line, but I was pleased that I was within the first 50. I ran into Starbucks, grabbed some coffee and some breakfast, and joined the line of excited people. To pass the time, I knit on Lance's clog. Borders was nice enough to let us check in before the store's official opening time and I was back at home with my bracelet by 10:00.
That night, my bracelet and I went to back to Borders and joined the crowd. There were witches, wizards, and even a walking Whomping Willow. At midnight, the crowd started counting down and let out a huge cheer as the boxes were opened and the first person got his copy of this:
I finished the book yesterday and I am speechless. It was more awesome than I think anyone could have imagined it would be and I think J. K. Rowling is a genius. I'm sad because this was the last Potter book, but wow, what a way to end the series.

I have to go back to the book now. I re-read some of my favorite bits of the book this morning and now I'm just re-reading the whole thing.

Renovation Update #2

We finally finished laying down our laminate. It looks fantastic and M*Bark's enjoying having space to run around again. She's still getting used to how slippery it is and she'll occasionally slip, which is a wee bit entertaining for me. We just gotta put the trim in and we'll be done.
Unfortunately, the beautifulness of our new laminate makes the tile remaining in our entryway, kitchen, laundry room, and bathrooms makes the ugliness of it really stand out. In fact, it makes me want to change it though I thought we'd take a break from flooring for the rest of the break. Y'know, like actually relax a bit before school starts up again. The only thing is...we can't put in the trim for the laminate without changing the adjacent tile. I mean, I guess we could, but then we'd just have to redo it when we eventually changed our tile. My uncle pointed this out on Sunday and I actually felt a little teary at the prospect of ripping out more tile. Oh well, it has to be done and we'll have a nice house once we get it done.

Look Who Graduated!

M*Bark graduated today! We had a wedding last week so she had to miss class and we were a little concerned how she'd do with a week off, but she went through the obstacle course brilliantly! Her instructor was really pleased with her and offered some suggestions for furthering her education. We can either continue on to the intermediate course or repeat the beginner course and try to get her good citizen certified. I don't really understand it, but the certification's supposed to be a really big deal and our instructor thinks M*Bark would be able to do it since she's smart and well behaved. We don't know want we're going to do yet, since we went into this course with the intention of stopping after the beginner course. All we really wanted was for our dog to sit and stay, which she can now do. But I don't know, I'm kinda enticed by the idea of certification. It's hard to explain, but I realized that my desire to have my dog certified is rather typical of how I've led my life so far and probably how I'm going to raise my future children. Anyway, here's M*Bark with Lance and her diploma. I also made her a little graduation cap which, in case you were wondering, I only made her wear at home for my amusement.
Apparently M*Bark was not too thrilled with her cap. Look what she did when left alone with it for a few minutes:
Ha, well behaved, right? Just like a kid, M*Bark often behaves better at school than at home.

Renovation Update

Look what we did on the fourth of July:
Yes, goodbye, ugly tile. Demo was fun in the beginning, as there's something therapeutic about taking a sledgehammer to tile but I realized that my body is not cut out for hard labor and that perhaps there is a reason why I chose not to have a career in construction. I also discovered that I really hate scraping tile glue (yes, I know that's not it's real name) off a concrete floor. Not fun.
But my uncle helped us lay out the hallway and taught us how to install it ourselves. Looks pretty snazzy, huh?
We also got new room darkening blinds for the game room so that Lance can finally play his games during the day. It was too light to project and play them during the day. He's a happy camper. We also got a security system installed in our house, but for obvious reasons there's no picture of that.

Summertime

Summertime's here and it feels great! Alright, I've officially been on summer break for three weeks but I've had to work so I didn't count these weeks as break. But now I'm done providing ESY therapy services so now it's time for fun! My agenda for summertime fun:1) Knitting. I've been looking at sock yarn for the past several months online but I haven't bought anything because I knew we were supposed to be saving money. I finally purchased this lovely sock yarn and size 1 bamboo needles online two weeks ago as my "good job for getting through the school year without killing anyone" present. This was the first time that I've purchased anything from this store and I definitely would purchase from them again. They have great yarn, decent prices, and fantabulous customer service. My order arrived within a week and came with a few extras that didn't cost a lot but made me happy. The best thing about the order was that it also came with a handwritten note. Little things make a big difference.2) Ripsticking. I tried a waveboard during Christmas break at a craft fair. The guy selling it tried to teach me but I wasn't able to learn how to use it within five minutes in the parking lot so I didn't buy it. But I recently found out that a friend of mine has a ripstick (which is pretty much the same thing as a waveboard). My friend took me to the inline hockey rink and taught me on her's on the nice smooth surface of the rink. It's fun but I still pretty much suck at it. After 1/2 an hour of playing on it, Lance came to meet us and in true Lance form, learned how to ride it within a few minutes. And in true Kat form, I got obsessed about owning one and promptly tried to buy one after work that day. The first place I went to had them on sale but were sold out. Devastated, I tried a different store. They had the waveboard, but it was $30 more than the ripstick. So then I went to Wal-Mart, confident that they would have them in stock since I had passed by the display for several days. No luck at Wal-Mart, as they were sold out. Being obsessed, I spoke to one of the sales associates who told me that they were due to get a new shipment and they were maybe unloading them at that moment. She advised me to call at 11:00 that night to check. Lance thought I was nuts (but seriously, this is very typical of me so he shouldn't have been surprised), but I drank coffee to stay awake and then called them at 11:00. They had it, I ran out to get at and was home by 11:30 with my new ripstick. I had my first fall off it yesterday. My bum's still a little sore. 3) Book buying. Yup, it's that time of year again. The huge library book sale. We went yesterday and got some books, magazines, and CDs and we're planning to go again before the end of the sale. We managed to get two of the Pidgin to Da Max books and Lance thinks I should study this summer. Maybe then Joy will stop laughing at me when pidgin slips out of my mouth. It's not my fault it sounds unnatural. Look where I grew up.

4) Home renovating (whoops, picture's sideways, forgot to flip it). We've painted the living room, dining room, game room, and yarn room and the house is finally starting to really feel like home. We have a few more rooms to paint (all lots of other stuff to work on), but our main project right now is our floors. We got a pretty good price on some koa laminate and we're installing it in our living room, dining room, entry way, kitchen, and hallway. We just busted up our hallway floor today. We're still prepping it and good grief is it hard work. I did discover that busting up a floor is a good stress reliever though and I kinda wish we had started it before the school year ended. There's something therapeutic about busting the crap outta a floor. We still have a lot of work to as we still have to finish prepping the hallway, start prepping the rest of the rooms, and figure out how to actually install the laminate, but it's kinda fun because we're doing it together. Everything's more fun with Lance.