New Features I've added a list of people who link to me (very short at the moment) and a guest book for comments. Please comment? (And please be nice!)
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:13 PM -
Monday I'm not sure we've ever taken the drive from NYC back to Rochester at such a leisurely pace - it took us almost 7 1/2 hours to get home. Not that I'm complaining - it was nice to stop frequently and stretch and look at the scenery - yesterday was beautiful. Molly is very happy that we're home - but I'm wondering if she's also a little sad - she spent the week hanging out with my parents and their two dogs, and I think she liked being part of a "pack". On the up side, she wasn't crated all last week and didn't do too much damage to my parents' house, so we didn't crate her last night - and she was still sleeping behind her favorite chair when we got up this morning. Nothing out of place, chewed, slobbered on or eaten. Could this be that point where all dogs start to mature? Or could it just be a false sense of security? :)
Sunday I guess I never realized how...interesting...Long Island weddings are. While I've been to weddings located in the area generally known as "Long Island", apparently I've never been to a true Long Island wedding. Who ever heard of having the dancing during dinner? They played all the best slow songs while we were eating. :( And we missed the coffee and cake because we were dancing. Oh, well. But it was fun - that side of Denis' family is very Italian. Even though my whole family is Italian, I've not seen the Tarantella danced half so well at any family gathering. Plus we got to try out a couple of the dances we've learned the last few weeks. All in all, it was a blast!
Last Week Well, even though we had to go for a funeral, it was nice to be in NYC and visit with the family. I got to play with my neice Lizzy, who at 21 months is at a very cool age! I also got to see the twins. They're 2 months old now, but they were 2 months early, so they're about the size of newborns right now. They were a lot of (less interactive) fun, too. Valerie, who is going to be Denis' goddaughter, has a little blond streak in her hair, and Katherine has an unerring sense of direction - if she's going to blurf she always does it on her mom! We went to a bunch of family gatherings, attended a funeral, a barbeque, a wedding, popped into Manhattan for lunch one day, and sat around cuddling the twins another. Plus, I had to do some stuff for work, and I also spent some time pondering why my master's project is being such a pain. All in all, a very full week.
Actually, I think I'm in the middle of a monsoon... Denis' uncle passed away this weekend, so we have to go down to NYC for the funeral. We also have a wedding to attend in that neck of the woods next Sunday. So, rather than going down and coming back and going there again, we're going to spend an entire week there. This is only a problem because we have very little vacation left, and because we have a somewhat handicapped puppy who will have to stay with my parents for a week. Aside from that, my Grandpa was in the hospital this weekend, and they aren't really sure what was wrong with him... Lots of scary stuff happening lately.
And, although it's such a silly thing, we no longer have cruise control on our Jetta! We brought it in to have the turn signals fixed (they wouldn't work in the half-pressed position - like for merging). When I started to drive home, I look down at the turn signal arm, and lo and behold - there are no longer any buttons for cruise control! So I drove it back to the repair shop. The tech was pretty confused - he wanted to know what was wrong, so I told him the turn signals worked perfectly, but we no longer had cruise control. He said, "what's the matter, it doesn't work?". I said, "well, it would probably work fine, if we still had the buttons to use it with!" They didn't have the right part in stock. No big deal, we weren't going down to NYC until next weekend. Oops. Murphy's law I guess. So, they're either going to find the part at another VW dealer or put the old one back on - today. After all, when you're driving 300 miles, cruise control's much more important than merging turn signals. And, in NYC, no one uses their turn signals anyway.
I won't have much internet access while I'm away, so I may not post for a while...
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:10 AM -
Friday, July 20, 2001
Take me out to the ballgame
Last night was our kodak.com summer picnic. We went out to a ballgame. The local AAA baseball team - the Rochester Red Wings (who are affilated with the Baltimore Orioles) - has this wonderful picnic facilty that can be reserved for large groups. We actually had 170 or so people there! It ended a little late for a work night - most people left before the end of the game. But, a good time was had by all - except, of course, the Red Wings, who lost...
I just realized that I have never had a nickname. Well, if you don't count the mean nicknames (i.e. four-eyes) that little kids give each other in grade school... That's the problem with having a name like Sarah. There's no way to create a nickname from it. This, according to my parent's, was intentional. Why they proceeded to name my brothers Daniel and Michael is beyond me if they were trying to avoid nicknames. Besides, in the grand tradition of my family, I should never go by my real name - I always thought my great-grandmother's name was Virginia. When she died, I found out her real name was Vincenza. I didn't know my great-aunt's name was Angelina until I went to write out my wedding invitations - even though we've always called her Aunt Amy, people sometimes called her Betty, so I assumed her real name was Elizabeth. Nope. And the list goes on.
So, I think I need a nickname - anyone have any ideas?
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:52 AM -
Wednesday, July 18, 2001
It's a dog's life
I aspire to be like my Golden Retriever, Molly. Why? Because:
she's skinny (although, I guess I would be too if someone else controlled my food intake)
she never has a bad hair day
she's extremely flexible
she's loved by everybody (except those who are not dog people, and I've never really understood how anyone could not be a dog-person...)
she never complains about anything
I feel pretty bad for her, though. We just took her to the vet Monday for x-rays on her hips, and they've gotten much worse since her 6-month x-rays... We're looking at surgery options for her, which could involve completely replacing both hips (shudder). But she's only 15 months old, and I couldn't stand the thought of her having a very short life because we didn't do something like this. According to the vet, she has arthritis as badly as a much older dog would have. She obviously hurts - she has a hard time getting up when she's been sleeping, and she limps when she runs or swims too long - but she's always a sweet little (ok, maybe not so little) dog. I wish life were a little more fair. :P
posted by Sarah Reilly 10:36 AM -
Wednesday, July 11, 2001
Oops - it's been a few days since my last blog! The weekend was super-busy - we had our 20-month-old niece (and her parents, of course) up visiting this weekend from NYC. So we spent most of the weekend chasing Lizzy and controlling Molly...Molly really wanted to play with Lizzy, but weighs at least twice as much, and is a bit on the rambunctious side still. Unfortunately, even though my house is somewhat puppy-proof, it's definitely not toddler-proof! There's something about opposable thumbs, I think. :) Lizzy's a lot of fun, though - we taught her the word "bagel" this weekend, and for breakfast Sunday I was sitting on the couch with Lizzy next to me and Molly in front of me, feeding Lizzy the soft inside parts of a bagel and feeding Molly the tough crust. I, of course, didn't get to eat any of my bagel. Oh, well...
Monday we had obedience training for Molly. She's actually starting to really behave - as long as you have food to offer her! Unfortunately, the trainer noticed that she's been limping somewhat. We already know she has hip displaysia, where the hip joint is all out-of-whack, but the trainer (who only sees her once a week, and therefore notices differences more) seems to think she's gotten worse. So, it's off to the vet next Monday to have her hips x-rayed again. Poor puppy. :( They have to knock them out to do x-rays...last time, Molly was so disoriented she slept for two days straight - which of course was a blessing when she was a six-month-old terror!
Last night was so much fun! I started bellydancing class, which Jenny, Tina and Jo are also taking. (Except they're in the intermediate class - I'm just a beginner.) I can definitely see how this could be a workout - muscles I didn't even know I had are kind of achy today. But I think it will be neat. We're going to do a veil dance, and the music she's chosen actually has the same rhythm as the rhumba...it's all coming together now. :)
Tonight, I'm looking forward to a night with nothing to do except read book 4 of Harry Potter and do laundry. :) Oh, and work on my master's project. Which is actually ahead of schedule, so maybe I'll just read instead....
posted by Sarah Reilly 8:42 AM -
Friday, July 06, 2001
Dance the night away...
We had our first dance lesson at Arthur Murray last night. That was so much fun! We learned the steps for the waltz, rhumba, and tried out a little swing. It's so much easier than I expected - I think it helps that I've done music enough to be able to count the beats without thinking. The problem is, I have a good enough sense of rhythm that when we get off the beat because the music slows down or speeds up a little I want to take over and get us back on, but since Denis is the guy, I have to let him lead... I'm sure I'll get better with practice, though. Now I really can't wait to start bellydancing on Tuesday!
While we were out and about last night, we went to the pet store and spent a fortune on new toys for Molly. I'm hoping that if she has enough new stuff to play with she won't try and eat any more woodwork... Of course, this morning I could barely walk through the family room with all the bones, balls, tug toys, fleece toys, stuffing ripped out of fleece toys, and pieces of ripped up fleece blanket all over the floor. Next we need to teach Molly how to pick up her toys. Once we teach her to stop trying to eat her toybox. Sometimes I feel like we don't have a puppy, but a two-year-old who will never grow up. :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:14 AM -
Thursday, July 05, 2001
It finally happened. Lately, I've taken to boasting that my 15-month-old Golden Retriever (Molly) hasn't yet destroyed anything valuable - no couches, no carpets, no woodwork, nothing, nada, zip, zilch. Yesterday we had out-of-town company who weren't exactly comfortable around hyper-puppy, so when we decided to play games, we went down to the rec room in the basement to play and left Molly wandering around the first floor, where she's had free, unsupervised reign for months now. Denis and I kept taking turns checking on her every half hour or so - making sure she had enough water and didn't need to go out. She was amazingly good and quiet - sometimes I'd go up and check and she was sleeping in her crate with the door wide open. Until we went up for dinner and figured out why she'd been so quiet... The windowsill in our family room is now missing a corner. And I mean a whole corner. That's going to be difficult to fix. Maybe we'll just sand down the other corner and pretend that's the way it was meant to be. :)
The fourth was fun, though. We didn't watch any fireworks - we were in the middle of a rather long game, and we've all seen fireworks before - but we had a great time at the bbq that Jenny organized! I love trying out new recipes on my friends, so I found a great recipe for pasta salad that involved beans, corn and salsa. People liked it - yay! My strawberry pie came out a little runny, though - I might not have thickened the glaze enough, or something, but it came out more like strawberry soup. Still tasty though. And, of course, it's almost impossible to mess up brownies, especially out of a box. :) The rain held off for the afternoon, except for a short shower that was just long enough to force us to put away the cameras and radio and put the food under the picnic tables. All in all, a very fun way to spend a Wednesday. Now if we could just do that every week...
posted by Sarah Reilly 9:21 AM -
Tuesday, July 03, 2001
Toys for work
Joy of joys - last night the UPS truck pulled up to our house. I went to the door expecting to get some package with computer parts Denis ordered. Nope. It's my backordered "Frigits" from ThinkGeek. What are Frigits? Think marbles, magnets, spinny-things, chutes (no ladders - marbles can't climb them). I can tell I'm not going to get much work done now - it's so fascinating trying to set these up in different paths...
That's definitely the most interactive toy I have at work - it's too big to fit on my desk (plus my desk isn't vertical or magnetic) so it's on the back of a cabinet near my office. I also have magnetic words, a mini zen garden, and a bunch of knick-knacks. I think better when I have something to do with my hands (or even the part of my brain that isn't working on whatever problem I'm trying to solve at the moment). If I could only bring stuff to occupy my hands during boring meetings - like knitting or something - I'm sure I'd pay more attention. As it is, all I can do it bring my Palm and play games on it - not something conducive to paying attention! But it looks like I'm taking notes or something, when in reality I'm trying to beat my best score in one of a myriad of solitaire games. Now hopefully my boss isn't reading this. :)
What a busy weekend - you'd think that since I had no plans for anything at all (other than church which I have to play piano for at 8 am every sunday) it would have been a calm weekend. Denis' plane came in very late on Friday...4 hours late, in fact. So that shot Friday night. My mom and I went shopping on Saturday. Because you can never have too many swimsuits when you have a pool in your backyard - especially when they're 50% off! And I spent sunday cleaning. Yuck. We've got company coming for the 4th, and our guest room is a disaster. But on the bright side, I bought and put up a new wallpaper border in my kitchen. (No, I haven't learned from the last project). Now all I need are new curtains, since they now kind of clash with the border...these projects never end, do they? It was weird, though. I thought I was covering up an old wallpaper border, got up on my stepladder to try and take it off - it was painted on! It was a rather intricate little design (which I hated) that somebody probably spent days painting on. Oh, well. But I'm not feeling too guilty about it - I like my new border much better!
Oh, and Denis did in fact notice the new walls (they are, after all, a different color) and likes them! (Insert big sigh of relief here). :)
posted by Sarah Reilly 7:54 AM -
