Blossom is 2!

Can I still call her baby? She is 12, I suppose.

The First Portrait

Well we've had Shiloh a little over 48 hours now and he is just a joy. He loves to wrestle with Blossom, say hi to the cats, lay on your lap, get affection, sleep next to you, go for car rides, go to the dog park, eat treats and run around the house like a fool. There were some concerns that Blossom wouldn't take too kindly to another dog but they are getting along just fine.

They were nice enough to pose for some pictures on Friday night, here is one of them.

What's New?

Anticipating the arrival of Shiloh...

Still traveling to Pittsburgh for work most weeks...

Still pretty burned out.

Skip is still getting treatment for his car accident last September and still isn't allowed to exercise.

My photography is coming along albeit at a slower pace than I'd like. My next class starts in early September.

I see the Doctor again tomorrow about my knee. Neither is still really fixed so I'm going to try to get him to go back in there and fix it.

We're looking forward to my sister's wedding in Colorado in October. Skip is looking forward to making the wedding cake!

Keep your fingers crossed

We put in an application on this adorable Beagle yesterday.

The Catch Up

I realize it's been forever since I've done any type of substantial post, so at 3 am let me see if I can catch you up...

Our cruise to the Bahamas was simply amazing. We got sun, did yoga, pilates and stretch classes, walked forever, swam in a lagoon, kept over 300 pictures that I took (once I trimmed down the 600+ I actually took, had wonderful food, a pretty small room, got room service at midnight, perfect weather all four days we were in Bermuda and came home to a very excited Blossom. The picture was taking with my iPhone as we were leaving the islands. All the real pictures are on my other laptop which is already packed for my imminent drive to Pittsburgh. I'll post some better ones in the coming days, promise.

I've been in Pittsburgh every week with no end in site. The draining of my soul and energy continues.

Skip's travel business is finally taking off. We are even going on a free cruise next year because he sold so many rooms for Carnival's first cruise out of Baltimore in years. He still has rooms left if you're interested.

His cake business is doing well although he's scaling back a bit due to the travel. The wedding cake he did last Friday was the heaviest he has ever done. I do a minimum of 5 hours of hard cardio a week along with yoga, stretching and lifting and I had to really concentrate to not drop that thing. Skip of course can't pick it up yet. His car accident was in December and he is still not even allowed to work out. Guess who gets to mow the lawn!

Blossom is doing well and as cute as ever.

I finally found a few hours this week to get more studying done for my Digital Photography hobby. I want to get some more knowledge in before my second course this fall so I watched another DVD on using my camera and am working through a 7 or 8 DVD series from Strobist.

My sister is getting married in October so we will be driving to Colorado in late October with Blossom for the festivities. Skip will be making the cake (brown!) and our friend/previous next-door neighbor was kind enough to let us host and stay there. I want snow. I want snow. I want snow.

The last weekend in July we'll be cashing in a few Hilton points (I'm at about half a million right now) to see a few shows in NYC. A Catered Affair has been on my list and since it closes at the end of the month and prompted the trip. I've seen Xanadu but wanted to see it one more time and wanted Skip to see it. Since it didn't win any Tonys I didn't want to waste any time.

My knee is slowly getting better. I can do three days in a row of an hour on the elliptical cross trainer without much of a problem any more. A few months ago I could only do my normal elevations for the first day and had to dial it down the second two days.

We FINALLY found a good Vietnamese restaurant in Baltimore. Security Square Mall of all places!

People keep asking if I'll be getting the new iPhone. Honestly I don't think so. If it could do turn by turn directions and replace the Garmin then I probably would, but supposedly it can't, so no. I already have the upgraded software and some cool new apps (Remote, Mobile Banking, PhoneSaber, Bejeweled 2, etc.)

How's that? If I could figure out why Blogger won't publish my pics when I send to the email address I would be doing a lot more blogging. Just one more thing in my life to troubleshoot...

The life of Blossom

When I'm home I sleep like a mummy. Blossom is under the covers, pressed up against me from the right side and Lucy is pressed up against me on the right side. Rolling on to my side takes a bit of planning to not squish anyone. When I'm gone, evidently they both sleep near my pillow and actually sleep close to each other. I have never seen this phenomenon myself but Skip got a picture. Blossom actually takes her fluffy (the blue thing) and pulls it up to my pillow and sleeps there. This picture is the only time I've seen the two of them actually touching.

I'm not sure how she does it, but yesterday when Skip picked up Blossom from day care, she was on top of a dog house. The workers told him that Blossom likes to get up there but then only lets her friends up with her. I am not sure what is happening, as I did not raise her to be an elitist snob. As long as she votes for Hillary and doesn't hurt anyone or anything she can do what she wants.

The Coat

Here is Blossom's winter coat.  She doesn't like being cold.

Sleep? What sleep?

I realize that this post will be laughable to those with children, you may use the time you would have used to read this post by getting a moment of zen...

Skip drove to the hypnotherapist in Pittsburgh yesterday to get a session geared towards weight loss.  My mom and I had both been previously and have found that is has been very worthwhile.  After the session Skip met my Mom at a local mall to drop off her Christmas goodies and then it was off to West Virginia to see his family.  This means of course that I was alone in the house last night.  No so big a deal for Skip as I'm away a lot, but I don't think I've been alone in our house in over three years, so it was very weird.  Skip lets the dogs out in the middle of the night and all that jazz but now it was my turn.  

/whine

The problem is that if it is past 3 or so and I wake up I don't get back to sleep.  Blossom wanted to go out about 1 am so they both went out and we went back to sleep.  At 4 am Blossom woke me up again and she was UP.  Now this is very weird because anything earlier than 9:30 am is early for her.  She stayed up and wired for a good hour before she decided it was nap time.  By this time, of course there was no way I was going back to sleep.  Unlike the people in the world with kids, I seem to need at least 6 hours of sleep a night.

/endwhine

Thanksgiving Dinner Aftermath

Here is a picture of our leftovers from the big event. Only two of
the three turkeys are pictured and the seven pies, Sarah's pumpkin
pudding and the ice cream are no where in sight.

Crazy

Skip and I were at the new Wal-Mart today at 5 am doing most of our Thanksgiving shopping. Navigating the boxes and food in the aisles was preferrable to navigating the hoardes of people. The checkout lady told us that the store gets crazy by 7 am! Stores in Colorado got crowded but nothing like this!

Stuff

Sorry posting has been light lately.

I'm getting as big as a house. My knee pain doesn't let me get much sleep or work out. Even when I don't do legs or cardio my knees still hurt at the gym, go figure. The insurance company is taking it's sweet time getting my referral number so I can get this fixed. Oy.

In other news, Skippy has an order for a great cake due Thursday night. If everything goes as planned, it will be the cake featured on his new business cards. Of course I'll post a picture here so you all can have a sugar-coma just looking at it! We ran to Michael's last night and got him a cake sprayer which Skippy claims will make the cake 50% more awesome. His new web site is coming soon, also, as soon as I finish it.

I see that The Bionic Woman had a 30% drop in the ratings in it's second week. Coincidentally, it's the same week that Isaiah Washington joined the cast. If there is any justice, ratings will spike back up after his guest stint (5 episodes) is over.

Hassle or Harassment. You decide!

Ah, we are getting it from both ends. The management company for our Colorado house is claiming that they were never told we were leaving (we have the note and they scheduled a showing while we were still there), they never got the keys and the house was a mess (we hired a professional cleaner who left the keys right where we told her and will testify to the fact), want to charge us a $850 late fee for missing September's rent (documentation states we'll be out by September 1 per our lease) and want to charge us a $400 return check fee for a check he won't describe (we know of no returned check). The upshot is that instead of returning our security deposit they say we owe more than $2500 OVER our security deposit. They will be getting a not-so-nice letter from our lawyer today.

Meanwhile the management company at our new house has us call the maintenance guy to schedule a repair, we schedule it for four days in the future and the guy shows up on the same day the appointment was made. We get calls from the management company complaining about our grass length (well within Baltimore County guidelines), questions about why do we have three cars in the driveway??? and other sundry petty issues. We've talked to the owners of the house, they are very nice people. They also claim they don't know why we are being asked these silly things, they could care less how many cars we have in the driveway.

Welcome to Baltimore!

Failed Audition

This may look like a blurry picture of an adorable dog, but it in fact her audition photo for the Resident Evil movies. If you've seen the movies you know them's some uuuuuugly dogs.

Needless to say even in this photo she is too pretty.

Don't make me choose between my babies!

Do you get the reference? Please tell me you get the reference. I'm 0 for 3 on the people I've asked so far.

Update:
Oh fine. She's playing Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice!

Positive role models, or the lack thereof

Blossom has no doggie role models at home. Gaston is 15, walks very slow and can barely see or hear. The cats on the other hand are full of life and always getting into and on everything. So who do you think Blossom is emulating? Take a wild guess.

Even my iPhone is repulsed

In moving an armoir one of the doors fell off right onto my big toe. Here is the damage. Evidently my iPhone is so repulsed by it that it wouldn't take a clear picture.

Skippy tells me I'm going to lose the toenail. Ewwww. On the positive note, I can tell you that the motorized wheelchairs at Wal-Mart, Costco and Target are all good but I rank them in that order :-) I'm the crippled guy that spreads sunshine and happiness everwhere he goes.

We're here

No more cross country driving. No more cross country driving. No more cross country driving. No more cross country driving.

I ended up driving the dogs in the Ford the whole way. We had planned on driving over 4 days but ended up doing it in 3 and boy were the dogs bored.

But we're here and the house is great.

As my brother pointed out...

Microsoft has actually listened! Due to an amazing hardware failure rate (a recent survey of console-selling companies lists the XBOX 360 failure rate at about 37%, the PS3 rate at 1% and the Wii rate at 0%), Microsoft has agreed to extend the warranty for all XBOX 360s to 3 years. Here's betting their next console goes through a more rigorous testing process.

Fireworks

Who else was cold while they were watching fireworks last night? Anyone? I'm talking go inside and get a coat cold.

Blossom

I haven't posted a picture of Blossom in a while. She is doing great. She's calm around people and does her tricks very well (sit, down, stay, roll over, spin around, etc.). She will even stay while I go another room. But of course as soon as I "free" her she runs for me at full speed! Every night is cuddle time on the couch and last night Skip and I were both on the couch, so she just made herself as comfortable as possible draped over us.