I've Learned...

Trillian and Thursday are getting along famously. Here are some things that we've learned about both our dogs over the past few days:

Thursday can climb over the baby gates we have set up in our doorways. She puts her front paws on top and uses her back paws to climp up the fencing part. Then it's up and over. I'll post a film this weekend.

Trillian likes bones now. Al bought a hickory bone for her probably over a month ago. She ignored it completely. Thursday went straight for it her first time in the house. Now they play keep away. One dog leaves it alone for a second, the other one picks it up. Trillian chews furiously on it while Thursday is distracted. It's like she wants to chew the whole thing up so there won't be any left for Thursday!

As it turns out, Trillian really is a relaxed dog. Once contrasted with Thursday's bouncy-trouncy antics, it's pretty obvious how mellow Trillian is.

Thursday has no fear. She'll jump off of anything, go anywhere, approach anyone.

Thursday is learning from Trillian. If she wants a treat, she sits down and puts her paw up. Trillian sits and puts a paw up, and if that doesn't work, she lays down. She pretty much just cycles through her tricks.

The cat's patience is extremely limited. Oh wait, we already knew that. However, I've never actually seen him spit before.

Meet Thursday!

Ok, so you know how I said we were thinking of getting another dog closer to the spring? Well, it is now closer to the spring than when I said that...

Meet Thursday! She's 9 weeks old and her mom is an Australian Shepherd, but we don't know what dad was. She's a cutie and I love that she has eyebrows just like Trillian's!

We named her after the main character in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series. If you were wondering, Trillian is named after a girl in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Rand and Moiraine (the bearded dragons) are named after characters in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series. Bear is named after our friend Val's dog's (Copper's) toys. It's a long story.

We picked her up at a Furburbia Pet Adoption Center in Park City. We brought her home and Trillian is in love. She tries to get Thursday to chase her, but it didn't work out so well for her at first. By last night, they were playing like old pros.

The cat, however, reacted something like this:

It doesn't help matters that Thursday is small enough to get into all of his hiding places.

Tag!

Jen tagged me, so here I go:
The rules of the game are posted at the beginning.
1. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
2. At the end of the post, the player then tags 3 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

10 years ago:
January of 1998...I was 20. I must have been working at Brick Oven in Provo at the time, but that was probably close to the end of my time there. Basically, I hadn't figured anything out yet. I had school on hold and was pretty much just making money and deciding things.

5 things on my to-do list today:
Yeah, it's Saturday. I make an effort to not have a to-do list on Saturday. Any other day of the week I have a big one. So today I had to feed the lizards, let the dog out every now and then, check for my FedEx package by looking out the front door, watch tv online, and do crafty things. And laundry. I've been washing the dog's blankets.

5 Snacks I enjoy:
Chocolate, tea, edamame, popcorn, and chocolate.

What I would do if I were suddenly made a billionaire:
I'd probably keep working, but I'd see if Al would want to quit or go part time in order to go back to school. He'd probably say no. I'd take some more college classes and get more degrees. I'd travel a lot, especially to visit family members in other places. I'd make sure Al had his dream car(s) and invest plenty. I'd also want to donate to education issues. What can I say...I'm biased!

3 of my bad habits:
Starbucks at least once a week, amazon.com, and chocolate

5 places I have lived:
I can do better than that. San Jose and San Diego, California, Sierra Vista, Arizona, Charllottesville, Virginia, Berlin and Heidelberg, Germany, Norfolk, Virginia, Charllottesville again, San Antonio, Texas, and numerous homes and apartments between Provo and Brigham City, Utah.

5 jobs that I have had:
I'm currently a teacher in high school, but before that I was a server/bartender for Chili's in two locations and a host/hostcaptain/cashier/busser/server at Brick Oven in Provo.

5 Things people don't know about me:
Everyone doesn't know everything about me, but between everyone, everything is known. Therefore, I'll just have to go for lesser-known facts. Al and I are attempting to breed crickets. I've logged over 1,000 hours on various Final Fantasy video games, but Al's probably beating me. I once had a dream that Patrick Dempsey was a manager-in-training at my Chili's (this was before Grey's Anatomy) and I have a copy of his J.Crew catalog in a box somewhere. I'm addicted to ABC.com. Finally, I always have chapstick.

Well, since I don't know many people on Blogspot just yet, I guess I'll tag Jill and Ashley! Have a great time, guys!

Adventures in the Snow and Kitchen

For our final day off together, Al and I had more errands to run. It's still snowy here and my car (Mugsy) had its annual registration inspection. My tires barely passed, so we thought it would be a good idea to get new ones right away. It snowed pretty heavily all day, but we made it and now Mugsy has new shoes, too!

Then we shoveled snow for the second time that day. (I even helped this time!)

We went to Walmart and PetCo and Al got his hair cut (see the pictures below--doesn't he look great?) and then we set off on our culinary adventure. We both love Gnocchi, which are potato dumplings that are similar to pasta but softer. We've never made them ourselves before so we thought we'd give it a try. We had to peel and boil potatoes, rice them, make them into a dough with flour and egg, then roll, cut, and boil them. We made an alfredo sauce with cream, cream cheese, and romano cheese, and some italian spices. They turned out so yummy! It's a pretty simple, but time consuming and messy recipe. It definitely was an adventure!

Adventures at Grandma's

After our shoe-shopping funtime, Al and I went to his mom and stepdad's house to spend some time and watch some football. Trillian gets to go with us. Before, she'd chosen Gary as her favorite, in spite of his indifference towards her. This made little sense, because Connie spoils her rotten. I think Connie won yesterday.

Trillian got popcorn (a favorite):

and carrots (another favorite):

Very quickly, Trillian was following Connie around everywhere...especially when she went into the kitchen!

Aside from all of the attention, Trillian also loves playing with Connie's neighbors' Jack Russell Terriers, Tucker and Jaydee. This is what they did for about an hour and a half...it would have gone on longer if we hadn't brought her inside to get dried off.

The open gate in the fence that you see is between Connie's back yard and her neighbors' back yard. On the other side of her house that you can't see, another gate was open. We were unaware of this. Tell-tale tracks in the snow proved that the dogs had used that open gate and ran in the front yard, but they came right back into the backyard! What good little dogs!

Adventures in Footwear

Al and I had a fun day today, which for me means NEW SHOES! Al went with me to Famous Footwear. We had a pretty awesome 20% off coupon and most of their shoes were 20-50% off anyhow, so we found a few terrific deals. We'll cover Al first. He shops with an eye for hideousness and here is what he found:

The brown and white ones aren't so bad. But the orange and beige and black and cream ones are a mystery to me. I guess the shoemakers just knew that there are consumers like Al out there.

I entered the store intending to find some professional brown heeled shoes to wear with some long brown pants that I love. I found other shoes. I'm very good at finding extremely cute, but impractical shoes. The best part is that they're wingtips! I figure that's professional. And I can still wear them with the long brown pants.

But the most amazing thing happened at the clearance rack. You always have to check the clearance rack at Famous Footwear. Today it was a gold mine because I found these:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's the real thing. Kangaroos with the zipper pocket in an adult size 9. I wore them proudly all day with my bright orange Gap hoodie.

And tomorrow I will blog about the rest of our first of two momentous days off together.

Miracles

Al has been on a string of closes this past week, which means we quite literally pass one another like strangers in the night. He comes home after I've gone to sleep. I get up and leave while he's still sleeping. He's gone to work before I get home. He had last Sunday and Monday off, but since then, the most we'd spoken to one another was when I'd say goodbye int he morning.

Valerie valiantly saved me by responding to my I'm Bored! text message last night. We met for a late dinner at TGIFridays after her shift at Chili's.

And the next miracle...Al is off tomorrow and Monday. I am off tomorrow and Monday. That NEVER happens!

We plan to watch Pirates of the Caribbean at some point. We never made it to the theater, so we bought the DVD right after it was released, but then there was never a time when we both had a spare 3 hours.

Big plans, I know. But it's gonna be great!