Another Year

Last week marked a second Veggieversary for me - two years meet-free now! I quit eating meat (though I do eat eggs and cheese) and have not once looked back. The funny thing is that I cook meat better now than I ever have before, since I cook for Chris. I think the quality of meat I buy for him has a lot to do with that.

Chris surprised me on my Veggieversary by taking me out to dinner and a movie, and even giving me a present. This isn't as weird as it sounds - we tend to not celebrate the usual holidays and birthdays, but like random celebrations instead and because we enjoy being contrary. We went out to Chili's for dinner, where you can sub a bean patty in any burger. We had the molten chocolate cake for dessert, which is so good. And then we went to the theater and saw "Inglorious Basterds." The best part was my gift: a really great card, and a Canon PowerShot SD780 IS, in red. I've been talking about getting a good small camera that I can have with me pretty much wherever I go (our G5 is nice, but large, and the iPhone camera is crappy). I love it so much! So, most of the shots on this blog from now on will likely be taken on Little Red.

Over the weekend we celebrated my work's 50th anniversary, and I racked up a ton of overtime working at the celebration. I am also very exhausted now since I worked 27 hours over Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday. Saturday night we had a banquet with an important speaker, and the highlight for me was this wine:


The Naughty Boy Chardonnay was really good. I decided on this wine over the others by my usual scientific process of choosing a wine: the label. The cork has the boxer pup on it too, so I asked for one to take home with me. I think I'll try to get up to the vineyard sometime and try their other wines... the Dolcetto is calling me.

I've starting knitting again, but I'm going to let the cardigan I was working on marinate for a while. I started Knitty's Seascape Stole instead, in Frog Tree alpaca, fingering weight, colorway #64. It is soooo soft. I'm only a few inches in, and can't wait to get past the fringe and into the rolling pattern.


Chris and I took the dogs to the dog park today, and I brought Little Red with me. A woman there lovingly called Mac the ugliest thing she'd seen in a long time.


Ayla played ball with us for a while, and then just walked around with the ball and looked pretty. She's always been crazy shiny.


Mac amused people with the way he drinks at the fountain, by flopping a lip over the spout and gulping the water down.


I'm looking forward to posting more often now that I have my camera always with me. It has some pretty cool functions too that I'll be playing around with. For now, I'm off to dinner...

How Easily We Adapt

Cherry tomato starting to ripen - look at the fuzz!

Who boy, almost a month between posts! I have a semi-decent excuse. But first, check out my grape vine:

April August

It has grown leaps and bounds since I brought it home from Picnic Day. You're supposed to let it be the first year and then trellis-train it, but it was trying to climb the wall on its own so I had to use the trellis. Maybe I'll have grapes in a year or two!

So, about a month ago we out-of-the blue decided to completely flip our living room arrangement, and we really like it. A lot of work went into moving the furniture, a whole day spent shopping for the perfect cabinet for our TV components (we ended up getting it at Target, at the very end of the day, which is just down the street - doh!), another weekend spent rerouting cables and covers all around the room for the surround sound, and more time spent selling and otherwise getting rid of now-extraneous furniture and things. In the end, we are pretty close to Chris' dream of a beautiful TV on the wall, with nothing else.


Chris will probably kill me for posting this picture, but here he's enjoying the new living room and playing the above-shown Gears of War 2. :)


By the way, this room is very hard to photograph! Mac liked to keep an eye on Chris as he went out to the patio closet for supplies.

Bully cheeks!

We also replaced our old bed. Our experience at Sleep Train was great - the salesman was very nice and not hard-selling, the delivery was next-day and free, and they put the new bed together and took away our old frame. The delivery guys seemed a little shocked when I gave them a tip too - aren't you supposed to tip? In any case, they deserved it.


The new bed is a little taller than the old one, without having to use bed lifts like we were before, which is great. It keeps make from going all ninja and climbing up when he's motivated enough. That always worries me that he's going to hurt himself, and he hasn't tried to climb it at all. I'm planning on getting a new comforter, and leaning toward this one, but also think I'd like another color rather than gray again. Moving everything around and getting rid of some stuff led us to go through the closets and get rid of even more. Its amazing what gets amassed over time!

The new furniture set up feels very right in our place, and like we've had it like this forever. The only question now is the dining room area behind the living room. We don't have, nor do we want, a dining table. Right now all that is back there is Gretel's cat tree, a standing fan, and Chris' bike. I thought of setting this up there, which would double as a bed for guests, but don't know that we'd really use it. Until we figure out what the space should be for it will remain empty I suppose, and we'll keep referring to it as Gretel's Room.

In the meantime, I've been working hard with Ayla on fetch and she's doing really well, provided you have treats with you. Otherwise, she's completely uninterested in giving up the ball. *** Crappy iPhone pic alert ***

Ayla and a souvenir she found on our latest walk - she's very content

In other news, I finally changed my name, to take Chris' last name. I like it a lot, though the first time someone called me Mrs. W. was quite a shock. I took the day off yesterday for a doctor's appointment, and then to spend about two hours at the DMV to change my license, then go to the banks. I got home in the early afternoon so I took the dogs to the dog park, since we don't go very often any more.

It seems one day was enough to make them expect a new routine. We did our usual today - Chris gets home, takes Ayla out, then takes Mac out for a while to play fetch. About an hour later I get home and take Ayla out to walk or play fetch, and when I did Mac was quite upset! He spent the entire time Ayla and I were out he pouted in the bedroom, in his bed, in the dark, all by himself, instead of hanging out with Chris in the living room. I got back and he still didn't want to come out until I told him I'd take him for a mosey around. Then he seemed happy. Mac must have thought I was taking Ayla to the park without him!

Being left behind makes Mac a sad panda

Look at those rolls!