I don't suffer from insanity,

So, I am very fortunate in that I am able to bring my pack-dependent hound to work. Often I drop him off at our friends' house (a Golden Retriever and his person) during work hours so they can play together, then I head over and give them a lunch walk, etc. However, these pictures are from a hard day's work at the office....

( The work is killing us! )

Cross-posted to greyhounds. ^_^

( The weekend fun (long-ish)... )

In other news, with more information later, we're going to Thailand this year! Whee! So! If any of my sewing friends can give me specific information on what types (weaves?) of silk fabric that are period correct for for either Victorian or Regency, I would be very, very grateful! :D

Wow. So things have gotten a bit lively at our residence.

First, of course, there's the Case of the Car-Killing Deer on Thanksgiving. I never heard from the insurance adjustor, although in all fairness, if he called the shop and I wasn't there, no one except me answers the phone so a message may have been misdirected. So anyway, I emailed our insurance agent (who rocks, by the way), to let him know and in half an hour he had me set up to contact Service King, who are taking care of everything else. All I had to do was drop off my poor injured Saturn and pick up a rental. All this morning. Hooray! Well, except for the deductible, which will be a big ouch. So Merry Christmas, Jay & Matt!

The next excitement started just before our little batch of snow last week. Our heater is wonky. It blows luke-warm air. So we've had this little space heater in our room and we stayed in our bedroom to stay warm. I've heard Matt refer to it as the fort.

Then, my awesome brother-in-law came over to try to fix things up before last week's freeze and discovered that our breaker box is... um... shall we say dangerous? All the switches were turned off and he still managed to spark himself. Owie. That was when he called his efforts done and brought in some of his friends to work on things for us. We got it all settled and now have a new breaker box. Well, the heater is still wonky, but we now have parts and at least the breaker box is safe now so we can turn things on and off with no fear of earning a punk hairdo without the hair spray but with all the gravity defiance you could possibly want.

Saturday was super-filled. We woke up early to take the hound over to our friend's house and then headed to Austin for our friends' Scott and Hope's wedding and reception. It was held in a very pretty, intimate Methodist chapel filled with poinsettas. Hope was beautiful, of course, and Scott very handsome in his tux. For a gift, Matt and I gave them two things. One thing that was serious, and one thing for fun: a video about building a strong marriage, and a set of paints for miniature painting, since we knew for a fact that that was a particular hobby of theirs. Best of all, Matt wrapped the gifts in an issue of the City of Heroes comic, since both of them work for NC Soft. Hehe. After the reception, we headed back up to Denton, picked up the hound and went home and directly to bed.

I've also called the vet and am to take the hound in for a check-up. He hurt his back by jumping into my Saturn before the back door was all the way up and slammed into it as he leapt. Poor hound. I felt like such a terrible person for not paying closer attention - I had been concentrating on getting the door up and his leash had slacked. Anyway, I gave him his left-over painkiller/anti-inflammatories and he seems to feel ok, but now there's this swelling lump at the place of impact. The swelling is all fluids, I can tell. My boss says it's white blood cells gathering there to protect the injury. Taltos lets me fiddle with it without complaint, so I don't think it causes him a ton of pain, although it worries me. I'm calling it Junior, and have been calling the hound Quasimodo. Luckily, neither the injury nor the swelling seem to have slowed him down any - he still runs his laps and such, but I'm concerned. So off to the vet we go tomorrow.

Voila! That is my last two weeks.

Monday evening after work was pretty interesting. The hound caught his first cat.

Yep.

( Don't read if you're squeamish or judgmental about predator/prey situations. )

Lessee.... What have I been up to?

Last Thursday Taltos gave me a big scare. I was over at a friend's house when I got a call from Matt, who said that Taltos was missing - he had escaped through our open backyard gate. Which reminds me. I need to buy some combination locks for our gates, since I think it was our neighbors' children who got into our back yard. Matt and I never use the gate. Anyway, I ran home to search the neighborhood. I drove through the neighborhood carefully and slowly but no luck. So while Matt stayed at home and called Animal Control (in case they picked him up before we found him), I wandered around on foot, worried sick. I slowly walked back home only to be met halfway by Matt who told me the hound had returned home, none the worse for wear. Whew!

Saturday was a lot of fun. That morning (early!) Matt and I drove out to Pilot Point to some slaughter house to pick up some suet. Matt needs it to make puddings or some such. Oh yeah. When I say "some" suet, it's like 10 lbs!!

After that, we headed to the Dallas Museum of Art to go to the Mayan exhibit with my family. Missed Chris, Mary, and Aaron since they didn't come. Sioux and Dave didn't come to the museum but showed up for the later stuff. The exhibit was very interesting. Not as much eye candy as the Chinese exhibit last year, but very interesting none the less. I didn't know, but the Mayans used cacao beans as currency. Smart people. Mmm. Chocolate. One of their feast beverages was warmed water with chocolate, chile, honey, and some sap that was a frothing agent. Mmm. My favorite piece of art on exhibit was a ceramic pot that had a god, depicted as an old man, riding a peccary. Heh. Oh and the frog in the bowl sculpture. That one made me laugh.

I renewed my membership, too, since some of the exhibits later this year will certainly be worth visiting as well. Upcoming are the art of Louis Comfort Tiffany starting in June with more than 120 of his pieces, and then a Van Gogh exhibit with about fifty of his works in late October. Both really sounded interesting! And I only have to go three times to make up the membership expense, plus it's tax deductible. ^_~

After the museum, we headed over to Ian & Nikki's new place. Wow, what a beautiful home they're making! And I finally got to see Taltos play with a dog that understood Taltos's play-speak. Ian & Nikki have a boxer named Bart and the two dogs had a blast chasing each other around the back yard, heh. It was fun watching them. I wished there was a bigger play area just to see how fast and far they could go.

While there, I also played with Kyrie (of course). I gave her Matt's jedi robe muslin test-run that was way too small for Matt. I trimmed down the sleeves and bottom hem, which she'll re-hem using her new sewing machine. Then we pretended to be rulers of a small country. I can't recall if we named the country, though. Anyway, we carefully planned an assault of the DMA to capture our enemy country's leader, who was of course hiding in the DMA's restaurant. The DMA, as you must know, was merely a front for our enemy's nefarious activities. We had a detailed blue-print of the building, which facilitated our attack (ie the program guide had the building layout ^_~). Princess Kyrieann led the assault, while I, being queen and more recognizable, stayed back and monitored the assault from our headquarters on the stairs.

Matt did some sewing recently and figured out how to make flat caps. He did that and a sash for his italian outfit. I wonder if we'll need another sewing machine soon....

Usually during my lunch break I head over to finari and narkeys's house to eat and to take our dogs out for a walk. Yesterday was no exception, but I also got to meet another greyhound on our walk. This hound was a good inch and a half taller than my own, and I thought Taltos was tall! Taltos has more muscle definition thanks to his foster-dad and his race training. Taltos's foster-dad used to walk him a good seven miles a day. Their boy had never raced before, as they rescued him when he was six months old. He was such a sweety, of course. Fawn brindle with a lot more fawn than black, and soft, soft fur. He gave me nose kisses, too. What a cutie!

Last night I dreamt of a greyhound, too. There was mass civil chaos (a disaster? I don't know) and for some reason I was taking an El into Dallas, when I found a greyhound puppy on the floor by my feet in a plastic bag. Yes. But this is a dream, so of course it makes no sense. :P I scooped it up and unwrapped it and took it home with me. It turned out that I wasn't sure whether not it was an actual greyhound or a lurcher, but I wanted to keep it none the less. So maybe I need to get Taltos a brother. ^_~

Oh, yeah. I was quite disappointed by the costumes from War and Peace. The cover gave me such hope, too. The story was ok, since I haven't read the book, but the costumes were all wrong. ;_; The waists were just under the ribcage, instead of the imperial style under the breasts as it should have been. I think I need to start a search for decent (they don't have to be spectacular) films that have good, fairly accurate costumes set in the Napoleonic era... Oh, yeah. With women in the film, too, since I already have all the Horatio Hornblower (with Ioan Gruffudd) and Sharpe's (with Sean Bean). :P

Oh! I just found out via IMDB that there's going to be another Sharpe's movie! Whee!

Tonight, sewing with finari!

I had a good time at Anne's game on Friday. I think we're finally getting close to solving the mystery. I suck at mysteries, heh, but finari was sure on a roll! I'm logging my notes on my husband's site, as well as our LJ community. My goal is to get all my notes up before the next game, although my notes will be only from my character's point of view, so a lot of things will be missing.

Saturday I was at the Faire again, this time just with Kev and Sarah and we went in our normal clothes. I got some small trinkets for Mir, and a little necklace for Mom. Kev and Sarah got lots of garb, Sarah winning the garb-envy award again by picking up Pendragon's french court dress in burgundy and gold.

Yesterday being Mothers' Day, of course I went to my parents' house. Mom called and asked me to stop by Kid's place to see if he needed a ride, so I did. Unfortunately, Aaron was feeling sick and was passed out sleeping, so I just let him sleep. I'm very conscious about not wanting to expose Dad to any kind of illness (not that he won't get exposed as a public school teacher. Hm. Oh, well). Anyway, at Mom and Dad's, it was awesome seeing annawick and Dave and Lex, and my brother Ian showed up, too, though his wife was in Oklahoma with her own mom. My sibs are cool. I like their spouses, too! I know I've said that before, but I stand by it. ^_~

I dropped the pooch off at the vet this morning so he could get his teeth thoroughly cleaned. They're gonna knock him out. They warned me that when I pick him up this afternoon, he may be kind of groggy and want to sleep, and I couldn't help but think when is my dog not sleepy, aside from his walk time?

I had such guilt yesterday, since the vet told me to take away all his food and water after 8pm. Poor dog kept going back to his water bowl and licking the bowl even though it was dry. I also had to close the bathroom door, because he remembered water was in there, too.

He hates getting weighed, heh. Dunno why, but he is scared to death to step on that black pad. Ah, well. He clocked in at 98.7 lbs. Wonder if I should worry about his food intake? Is there such a thing as a fat greyhound? He doesn't look fat, that's for sure...

I saw a redtailed hawk this morning as I was walking Taltos. I had seen left-overs from some predator the past week or so - the fur and hind legs & tail of a rat that had been the predator's lunch. Well, this morning, as we stepped into the small field, I noticed all the birds in the back corner trees were fussing quite loudly, then I saw the swoop of the hawk as it flew from the trees to the electrical pole. It was gorgeous.

We walked over to the back trees to investigate - well, Taltos dearly wanted to investigate, heh, and I saw why about one foot from Taltos's nose. A half-eaten, unidentifiable critter. Whoops! I yanked pooch away from it just before his stretched jaws reached it. He was so sad, hehe. The hawk stayed perched on the pole, ignoring the dive-bombing grackles as it cleaned its wing feathers and waited for us to leave.

Pooch is sleeping next to my desk as I type. I'm glad I can bring him in to work with me. My daily schedule with Taltos is...

7:30am Wake up
8:00am Go on our walk
8:30am Go to work
9:00am to 2pm or 3pm Work through lunch
I take my lunch break when Taltos gets restless and take him home, where I kennel him usually with my computer playing some very mellow classical music.
3pm or 4pm go back to work
6:00pm go home
6:30pm walk the pooch again

He's definitely my dog now. When Matt went to China, he became my shadow and hasn't let up yet. He likes Matt, too, especially now that they have settled the alpha thing again, but if Matt's in one room doing something and I'm in the other room napping, he's in the room with me napping, too. On one hand, it's neat that he's my dog, but on the other, I'm not so happy about it. Our last dog was "my" dog, too, which meant I was responsible for walking him, setting up vet visits, cleaning up after him, etc., and that's what's happening here, too. Matt will walk him, but I have to request it. Ah, well...

I had a good weekend. Lots of gaming going on up at the shop Friday evening, heh. Our group was in the conference room, and the other group was in the break room. Mmm. I think I have some ice cream left in the break room fridge.... I think I'll have that for lunch today!

Saturday I went to the Dallas Museum of Art's Splendors of China's Forbidden City Exhibit with finari and my mother-in-law. It was an awesome exhibit, and I'm planning to go back probably twice, heh. Once with Matt (so far unscheduled), and I've already scheduled March 26 to go with my ma. Saturday evening was more D&D, which was fun once I got there. This game is more like a social obligation - one of those that you are neutral about going but have fun once there. So anyway, it was fun.

I still want to play Star Wars, though!

Next weekend I'm going to Goliad and the Alamo with thewolfhound and finari. I'm really looking forward to it, although we'll be missing Irish Festival (Sorry yall!). I've set up boarding for Taltos at a kennel in Carrollton. I'm going to swing by there later this week to check it out, but I got a really good reference for the place from one of the other greyhound owners at training class, so I'm pretty confident I'll like it. I'll just be sad to leave the pooch.

I've been battling a cold for a few weeks now. For the most part I'm better, but I'm still hacking up flegm (ick!) and feeling that sore throat every morning. Mir, my boss and an RN, is pretty sure it's a viral infection, so anti-biotics probably wouldn't even fix me. So I'm thinking that I'll increase my water intake again, as well as my vitamin C. I've also added zinc and echinacea supplements, and I'm going to start aiming for nine to ten hours of sleep every night. I will beat this!

My pup woke me up this morning at around 7am like he always does these days. Usually, I just drag myself out of bed, toss some clothes on, grab his leash and take him for a walk. I enjoy our morning walks, and I know he does, too, because he does a little happy dance every time I grab his leash off the wall.

However, the main difference this morning is the fact that I'm getting sick. I rolled over and asked Matt to pretty please take the dog out, and my wonderful gem of a husband did. He didn't even give me a lecture for dragging my tired, sick butt back home at 1am. Now, he didn't offer me much sympathy, but he did leave out the "I-told-you-so." For that I'm grateful.

I'm exhausted. The gray skies, pounding rain on the tin roof here at work, the cold-turning-flu are all prominent items in my tired formula. Of course, working out in the 50 degree rain and drizzle on Saturday probably didn't help. So tonight after work, I'm going home, showering, then I'm going to snuggle deep down under my comforter and read a book until I fall asleep. I've already consumed 88 ounces of water (I have a plastic 44 oz cup that I drink from at work and have drained it twice), as well as six grams of vitamin C in conjunction with my normal multi-vitamins. I will prevail!

Matt says I have a fever, but I don't buy it. Ok. More realistically, I don't want to buy it, heh. Regardless, I don't feel achy or shaky or weird. Just completely drained of energy and kind of stuffy headed, like a big bubble of cotton separates me from the rest of the muffled world.

I can't miss work. I'd feel guilty since I'm taking four days off next week to relax and play WoW and visit with my friends and family. So anyway, I'm going to bed early. Hopefully I'll be asleep before 8pm and well on the road to recovery.

I shouldn't have stayed out so late.

/bad Jay!

By the way, we've decided that since NXS Father Ted doesn't know that his name is Ted, we're going to rename him. We picked Taltos. The first reason being that I think it sounds cool, and Matt didn't object. I also thought it fitting that because Matt has spend the last year and a half buried in the imaginary land of Taltos, that we name our newest family member after it. Ok, true, if we had had a child, it would not have been named Taltos, but it's pretty harmless for a pet. ^_~

Other significances of Taltos:

The novel Taltos by Anne Rice
The Jhereg series by Steven Brust about a character named Vlad Taltos

And most interestingly (to me, anyway):

In Hungarian, shamans are called "Taltos." The roots of the word are lost, but some suppose that "taltos" is a winged horse; and the shaman is often seen as a winged man, who journeys like a bird. That is the meaning of Taltos: one who journeys between heaven and earth to form a bond between the two. The shaman is born with magical powers to divine the future, manipulate the weather and change into a fire wheel or an animal (usually a horse). In pre-Christian Hungary, they were spiritual leaders and healers. Although little is known about the Taltos in the English-speaking world, there are still a few people in Hungary who carry on the healing tradition. Several books of fiction have been written about them, capitalizing on the mystery and magic of the Taltos. It is believed that a Taltos healer was born with these talents.

It's true.

I have the best husband in the world.

And I'm not biased in the least. ^_~

( My Anniversary Present: Our new family member! )