denise

Daily Dose of Diet – Dogs

Pet Peeves, Pets /

Did you know dogs love Capri Sun? Well it’s not just Capri Sun, these dogs are well known coffee, coke and hot chocolate fans, too. Everyone knows not to leave their drink sitting anywhere near the dogs because it will be gone as soon as you turn your back or even turn your head. Many a Starbucks drink has been lost to these dogs.

Monday morning there was a Capri Sun package on the living room floor. I figured a little kid had not thrown away the package and the dogs enjoyed gnawing on it to get the residuals out. Tuesday morning, another Capri Sun grimey and wet and full of dog gnawing marks. Again, I assumed a little kid leftover. Wednesday morning, same thing and I assumed it was Michelle’s Capri Sun package because she had been drinking a Capri Sun during Gilmore Girls. But, as I bent to pick that one up I noticed the straw was intact, still in its packaging a few steps away from the dog mangled pouch. Hmmm… This morning, another dog gone mangled Capri Sun. And again, an intact straw. What the….

I was pondering this question as I headed into the kitchen to toss the evidence in the trash when my leg knocked the Capri Sun box off of the shelf by the kitchen door. Ah ha! They are taking the Capri Suns out of the box in the kitchen and carrying them into the living room without pulling the box all of the way off of the shelf!

These dogs are geniuses when it comes to getting their Capri Sun fix.

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Daily Dose of Health – Podcast

Health and Wellness /

Episode 5 of Crohn’s Talk podcast is out and Kerry is right – Prednisone stinks and when they tell you that all of those side effects will go away and the weight will go away … THEY LIE! 😉

Kerry talks about the shortage of Methotrexate, (there seems to be a shortage of Pentasa as well, based on some of the posts I’ve seen the Crohn’s & Colitis board), and she talks a bit about the other drugs for Crohn’s. Many of those are UC drugs as well. TW appreciated hearing her talk about Remicade. Her doctor is once again mentioning Remicade. Not good, sort of a last resort thing…

Jackie and his floating noodle story were a TRIP, lol. He pays a lot more attention than I do – I’d have never noticed it. 😉

Thanks Kerry and Jackie!

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In Search of Geometry….

Bookstores, Favorites, Homeschool, Reading Lists /


We went to Barnes & Nobles this evening in search of some geometry books to help Michelle. She’s struggling a bit and really hates calling her teachers to say “I’m struggling a bit”. Considering she’s a teenage girl, she really doesn’t like talking on the phone very much. Weird kid. Anyway, we walked out of BN with a few geometry books and a bunch of other stuff. But what I like most about our once in awhile visits to BN is grabbing their New Discoveries flyer! My library reserve list is about to grow by leaps and bounds!

Another fun find at BN was their flyer about the Quill Book Awards. We’ve actually read a lot of these! I’m excited about voting for one of my favorite writers in the Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror category. I love, love, LOVE Christopher Moore! The Stupidest Angel is not my favorite but I’m happy to give it a vote in this category – especially since I am probably the only person on earth who really did not enjoy Jonathon Strange & Mr Norell.

I’m troubled by the best fiction category though. The only one I haven’t read is A Long Way Down and it’s probably the one I’d vote for if I had. I was so disappointed in The Mermaid Chair and only barely liked Gilead (TW didn’t even finish it). I hated The Plot Against America (TW really liked it) and I struggled to get through Allende’s Zorro, though once I get past the first 150 pages I didn’t struggle as much. Sigh, who to vote for …

Go over to the Quill Book Awards page and cast your votes… and tell me who you voted for!

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Daily Dose of TV – Gilmore Girls

Kid Talk, Sights & Sounds /

Gg

We love the Gilmore Girls, what’s not to love? Lorelai and Rory are the perfect mom and the perfect daughter living in the perfect little town (Except for the snow, but even that doesn’t seem to be really cold and wet like real snow. If I could have Stars Hollow snow, I’d love snow like Lorelai does.). And then there’s Luke, the perfect man. Of course the perfect man doesn’t really exist and someday Lorelai and Rory, (who keeps finding less than perfect men), will find that out and turn to their best friends, Sukie and Lane, (after they ditch their less than perfect guys), and live happily ever after… With their pink roombas and be just like us… For now, this whole Luke and Lorelai getting married thing is nice. They toasted with Zima, hehehe. I hope the town troubadour sings at the wedding.

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Never Let Me Go

2005, Books in Bed, Fiction, Reading Lists /


I haven’t read the other books on the short list for the Booker Prize but if Never Let Me Go wins, I won’t be surprised.

This is an interesting take on the cloning idea that avoids the science fiction feel that too many cloning novels take on, (I’m not a huge Sci-Fi fan). What’s really interesting is that I didn’t know it was about cloning, lol. It took me pages and pages to realize that was how these children were “created”. I understood why they were created but it never hit me that they were clones. Once it hit me I said “duhhhhh”. 😉

There was one section in part three that felt wrong to me. Kathy H is talking about sex and the voice no longer sounds like hers, at least not to me. It’s a brief section, maybe a page at best, but it bugged me.

If you’re interested in another cloning novel that doesn’t stretch into science fiction a whole lot, Cast of Shadows was pretty good. There’s a computer gaming aspect to it that was really interesting as well.

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Reveal Yourself

Books in Bed, Meme, Reading Lists /

Mental Multivitamin is revealing herself with ten books – not her ten favorites, which any good bookie will tell you is impossible to come up with – just ten books that reveal something about who she is, define her or have shaped her. She has a great list and I’ve been thinking about my ten. I’m not quite ready to share them because it’s HARD and I want it to be the RIGHT ten.

Start thinking about your ten and post them, I’d love to see what you reveal!

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Daily Dose of Life – Vacation and Back Again

Day to Day, Pet Peeves /

I was on vacation. I’m not on vacation any longer. I miss vacation already but I’m not really sure why I miss it.

I didn’t go on vacation in the way “normal” people go on vacation. I didn’t take a trip to the beach or visit family or anything remotely close to that. I took vacation from work in order to regroup and prepare for September. I hate September. And I was really getting scared of September after the August I had. So. I. Took. Vacation.

I had big plans for my vacation. I had a very long list of things I was going to do. I had a long list of things I was not going to do. I had a long list of things I was going to blog about.

I make lists but I rarely achieve the things on my lists because the lists are too long. This time, I took those long lists and I created mini-lists and I actually got some things done. Not a lot of things done and that’s sort of disappointing. But as usual, my life got in the way and things that were not on my list appeared at the top and so it goes.

Join me as I review my lists and consider whether I should attempt another little vacation of this sort in the near future. (I hope my boss is not reading this and my coworkers don’t kill me for considering it after they so nicely covered for my short notice, surprise vacation request)

Things to Blog:
Michelle’s Reading List
Michelle’s World Religions
Why I Want a Hybrid
Michelle and the Pecans
Virtues
Being a Bad Unitarian
Vegetarians Who Don’t Eat Vegetables
Boys
Us/Them

Things I am NOT Doing:
Reading my boards
Reading anyone else’s boards
Reading my work email
Taking work conference calls
Laundry

Things to Get DONE:
Call Gateway
Get the cats spayed
Clean the kids bathroom closet
Clean the cat closet
Deal with J’s Game Cube issues
Paint E’s dresser
Deal with the little kid clothing chaos
Organize the videos and DVDs
Stow the recent purchases piled up in the bedroom
Put away the TW laundry mountain
Us/Them – TG stuff for Koan
Clean the closet
Clean my office
Prepare Michelle’s curriculum
Install software on Michelle’s computer
Clean the kitchen cabinets
Write 2 reports
Read, a lot
Write in the “Brilliant Women Journal”
Take TW to the doctor for her “procedure”

Unlisted Things That Got Done:
Supervised Hazel a lot
3 trips to Publix
3 trips to CVS
1 trip to Walgreens
2 trips to the car dealer
1 trip to the smelly bookstore
1 trip to the women’s bookstore
A Meme blog post
Some Katrina Red Cross posts
Baked Banana Bread
Set up TW’s new telephones
Shopped a LOT on eBay in the Red Cross auction areas

I miss my vacation. I want another one. Soon.

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Acorna – Anne McCaffrey

2005, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

Long, long ago or maybe just a year ago, I’m not really clear on time when it comes to books, some friends were going on and on about some woman named Anne McCaffrey and her dragon books. I informed these folks that either I’d never read them (possible, because I am not a huge “fantasy” buff) or if I had, they hadn’t impressed me enough to remember them. They were shocked and insisted I must read Anne McCaffrey.

So, I headed to my library website (which I love) and searched for Anne McCaffrey. She’s written a lot of books but the thing I hate about my library website is that it is not good about explaining which books belong to which series or which order these books were published. You can’t right click to open the search findings in a new window to check publish date either. I was short of time and wasn’t all that keen on some dumb fantasy books anyway so I reserved all of the books that seemed to be in a series called “Acorna: The Unicorn Girl“.

TW has read McCaffrey’s dragon books, probably not all of them but a lot, but she had not read Acorna so that was a nice bonus. Needless to say, we got hooked on the series and either read or listened to them on audio just as quickly as they came in or as quickly as they were published.

The most recent edition to the series is about Acorna’s daughter Khorri and since I don’t want to give away what happens to Acorna (it’s bad enough I just told you she has a daughter since in the first book she’s just an infant Linyaari!) I’ll just say that you ought to go grab the Acornas and if you have kids who like to listen to audio books, get them on audio and listen to them together. 🙂

By the way, I still haven’t actually read any McCaffrey dragon books! I started one, some collection of stories or something and got bored and took it back to the library. I think I will stick with the Linyaari instead.

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Seven and Seven Meme – good grief

Meme /

I did not expect to find myself tagged for a meme, I really did not. Adrienne obviously does not know that I am the one who asks the questions, not the one who answers them! Hmph! But she asked so I will give it a try.

7 Things I Plan to do Before I Die
Ha, this is funny and someday Adrienne will understand why… 😉

– Get the garage clean and keep it clean!
– Live in a home without animals of any kind, except for a hedgehog, I want a hedgehog.
– Live in a town or a city that does not have a major college or university in it.
– Read Atlas Shrugged all of the way to the end!
– Visit the doggone police museum in NYC
– See skeeter in person
– Have a house with a library

7 Things I Can Do

– Push just about anyone’s buttons
– Tend a message board
– Remember dialogue from really great movies
– Talk to kids
– Make moms like me
– Meow at cats and make them meow back (TW hates this)
– Make a mean grilled cheese sandwich (according to 5 of 6 kids)

7 Things I Can’t Do

– Roll my tongue
– Read as quickly as TW
– Ignore loud children outside of my bedroom door
– Leave dishes on the table or sink for more than 15 minutes
– Drive really fast, makes me nervous
– Fish, it’s against my religion
– Allow corn to grow in the garden

7 Things That Attract Me to the Opposite Sex
It has been a long time since I’ve been attracted to anyone of the opposite sex so ummm I am not sure I can do this but I will try…

– Sense of humor
– Nice rear-end
– Thick hair
– ummm
– ummm
– ummm
– ummm sorry, three seems like a lot for a gay girl, doesn’t it? lol

7 Things I Say Most Often

– Shit
– LOL (I spend about 18 hours a day online, this has to count as something I “say”)
– Honestly
– Get out from underneath my feet you dumb dog!
– Jake, would you SHUT UP! (which I should say right now ’cause he is barking)
– Ummmm, ok
– Are you getting any schoolwork done?

7 Celebrity Crushes

– Angelina Jolie
– Johnny Depp
– Kathernie Hepburn
– Lauren Bacall
– Melissa Ferrick
– Brian, gosh I miss Brian, Winton
– Mel Gibson

7 People Who I Want to Do This Meme

– Sassy Monkey
– Em
– FB (when he has time after the Katrina stuff)
– Gam
– Katie
Michelle (whose blog I won’t share here) and J (who does not yet have one, as far as I know)

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