this weekend...

sat our team had a get together at the velodrome in boulder. it was really awesome to do this as a team because the majority of us had never rode on the track before and were giggling with nervousness. the track in boulder is small but fun! once you get going fast it's like a self induced roller coaster! i was only freaked out about stopping, which after a little bit, was ok. i was just happy to chalk up a riding experience without any crashes or injuries.

if you've never seen a velodrome before, click here for video

then ksu lost to ku. everyone, i realize that we lost but, we did put up a good fight! and even went into OT (i can't retract my "shaking in your panties" statement because i know that we did make some of you ku-ites nervous....admit it!). thanks uncle dan for dinner! dan and cindy (hard core ku-ers) were brave and joined me at the ksu alumn bar to watch the game. regardless of the win or not-win.... i think i'd still be scared of:

...no matter what.
yeow!


today i spent 6 hrs on my organic chemistry lab alone. talk about time suck. soooo much more hw to do. can't wait till this semester is gone and over with!

happy birthday kansas!

....and doug
and oprah.....
must be a popular day!
(yes, our school mascot was a buffalo)
today is kansas day. for those of you that didn't grow up in small town america kansas, when you are in grade school, on this day you will:

dress up like a pioneer or indian
recite kansas poetry
churn butter
or make kansas things
or go to the museum and learn more about ks
OR
sing songs with refrains such as:
"you are my sunflower, my only sunflower, you make me haaaaappppiiiiyyyyy with skies are grey......
or "home, home on the range, where the deer and the buffalo roam"
OR
"i was bred in kansas and was born in kansas and when i get married i'll be, wed, in ks. i'm a true blue gal who promised she would wait i'm a sunflower from the sunflower state."

i know what you're thinking....all this lady does is blog about her pathetic animals! and i really wasn't going to today, but i need to prove something to you...

i'm not the only ezra spoiler in the house!

when i got home today (got back at noon) i had missed dallas, who also came back at lunch, and walked into the door to this:

i don't think i've ever gone as far as tucking the dog in for his post-noon nap. blame dallas for this one!

while we were eating dinner tonight we started laughing and ez felt left out. the following is how he expresses himself when this happens:
(yes, ez, we realize that you do exist. he is sitting on dallas' leg with tail hanging off the back end!)

i have this feeling that this semester is going to be better than i thought. we had to work out a new system in our house since on tues/thurs nights i'm not going to be home till late. this new system involves dallas being responsible for dinner on those nights.
hello, this is going to be awesome!

here are the dinner rules:
i don't care what kind of food we are having, don't care one intsy weensie bit, just as long as i don't have to be the one cooking on those nights.

tonight when i walked in the door it was just as i had pictured: the wonderful aroma of someone else (aka dallas) cooking food. when i got to the kitchen i couldn't help but laugh, it was SOOO cute. tonight's menu? red beans & rice with a side of peas.

because we both hate doing dishes, in the interest of cleaning up we opted to just have a community bowl of peas at dinner.

the beginning to our prayer:
heavenly father, please bless our simple meal......

thank you for cooking dallas!

william has big goals for 2010:
a guest appearance on hollywood squares

in the meanwhile,
while waiting for his audition,
he's just practicing

i would consider it a bad omen when your semester's stack of books is taller than your coffee cup.
well, it could be a bad omen or it just means i need a bigger coffee cup.

where have we been lately?

the couch.
nope, not outside, or doing anything fun, or hiking, or biking, or playing ball....
the couch.

i'm afraid that my life will get in the way of my "wanna be" life this semester.
= no fun.

a lot of school, and work, and school and work, etc. this semester i have a couple of 15-16 hr days which, after experiencing them for the first time this week, are going to take a lot to get used to. scheduling everything(definitely not my forte) is really going to suck. (mom, i know you hate it when we use "that word" but there's no better one word to describe it). tonight dallas looked at my o-chem stuff tonight and said, "oooh you're brave. i'd never do that." thanks for the support, dallas!

here's our thursday night (thurs is one of those long days and look, gwen! your plant, so far, is still alive!):
and after being gone all week, ezra decided that it was his turn for attention tonight. he started on dallas' lap,and slowly, but surely (not gracefully by any means),made it overto mine.talk about super spoiled pit bull.

how do you know you've married a nerd?

his clothes go thru both the washer and dryer and when you put them on the hanger the mechanical pencil is still in the shirt pocket.

FEAR THE BEARD...

octagon of doom...

what up texas? thats right. you lost to
K-S-U
WILDCATS

tonight dallas & i went down to the ksu alumni bar to watch #9 ksu beat #1 texas. if you live in the denver area and want to participate, it's at Wyman's #5, Denver CO. (if you've ever been to aggieville, it's like the purple pig). it was a good, purple filled to the brim time

i hope all you jayhawks are shaking in your panties

Doggie ACL rehab day 5

it's been a really long weekend here. exhaustingly long. besides doubting everything i am doing in my life, dallas coming home again and reintroducing ourselves to one another and ez's surgery, whew. chalk one up for the mulligan (please!) category.

for the 1st 2 weeks after surgery (at least) we have to take ez out to the bathroom on leash, monitor pain pills, massage and do PT. this is def like in-patient rehab. he still isn't eating like he should or drinking and could really use a bath. anyway! i think last night we had a break-thru as we finally learned how to space his meds out so that he slept thru the night (minus one 3:00 am bathroom break!) totally a proud nursing moment on my part. (if anyone is ever bored and wants to hang out, please stop by our house around 2-3 am and we can walk the dog together in the front lawn.)

has anyone ever seen a dog sit like this!?!?
legs straight out.
weirdest thing ever

today we went to the ksu/cu bb game with ad and chelsie. it was pretty embarrassing to say that we were #12 playing like we did. nevertheless we won!

the following picture just goes to prove that no matter where you go, there will always be some person from ku there to look stupid.
(this is the cu student section)

Doggie ACL rehab day 2

i think that ez and i are tired of each other already. i'm trying to do massage and passive ROM and he's just excited i'm on his level and sitting up and licking me. it's not working out so well. ez has decided that he doesn't want to eat (which is fine, for now) but won't drink either. so aside from making cookies this morning (my nervous habit) we spent all afternoon figuring out how to get him in the car and at the vets getting sq fluids. it was a long day!

william, even though he was kicked off of ez's baby bed, wasted no time finding his own happy place.

he also got locked downstairs while i was out buying chicken broth (in hopes of ez drinking). everyone is slowly adjusting but its going well! (bedtime coming soon! this is exhausting)

Problem #1

ez can't do stairs,
so we are borrowing a kiddie gate.

william's litterbox,
and food,
and a favorite chair
are all downstairs

william is too fat to jump over the kiddie gate.
ooooh boy....

doggie ACL rehab: night 1

well ez was sure excited to get home tonight. he is already putting weight on his leg, which is stellar according to the vet because most big dogs don't do this right away. ez has 3 different meds and we start post op rehab care tomorrow (complete with massage, passive ROM, slow walks and icing with bag of peas).

ez had a tibial plateau leveling osteotomy in which they actually cut the bone, re-angle it and then put a bunch of hardware in and screw it all together again. i was in a hurry this morning and forgot my camera to take pics of the actual xrays, but here is an example of what ez's leg looks like under his staples:

once ez got home william took a sniff of his pillow and realized that he was no longer king.
here he is, finding out that maybe ez wants his delicious moist doggie food to himself (notice how ez's back leg is lighter, poor guy is shaved):

look in the back, william has decided to take on the role of male nurse instead:

king william

ez had his acl surgery today.
we found out that he is allergic to keflex but other than that everything went really well. he's staying at the vet's tonight but will be back tomorrow. (it is SOO quiet (and boring) around here).

while ez is gone, william has promoted himself to king. it's pretty hilarious. besides following me around everywhere and jumping in my lap for immediate attention, here are some other activities he has taken up as of 9am

king william, eating out of gigantor dog food bowl
(this prevents him from having to go all the way downstairs to get food.... ooooh poor william...)

king william on baby bed
(he has several poses, but this is the most pathetic of them)

thanks for cooperating, fed ex!

since i don't live anywhere close to frontrange cc, i, for $10 more, asked for my books to be mailed to me. sounds lazy but it saved me a lot of time. since i was not able to stay home today and wait hand on foot (to sign...how dumb) for the fed ex person, i left a very nice note instead. it worked awesomely. (this also works for the very nice ups people as well).
here is an example of such a note:
reads: dear Mr/Ms Fed Ex person,
it will be pretty impossible to catch an adult here during the day to sign for the package. it is only organic chemistry textbooks and i doubt anyone would really want that kind of thing. you have my permission to leave my package in the bushes or wherever it is easiest for you. thank you, andi

like clockwork, guess what showed up on my doorstep while i was gone:
*music (REM)* its the end of the world as we know it.... *music end*O-chem--YEOW!
yes, instead of watching biggest loser next week in my pajamas i'll be stuck in a classroom learning about the carbons and other organic molecules that create what we call life.
yeah.....
i'm less than thrilled.

for christmas dallas got me one of those hp mini's as my "blogging computer." i really didn't need this but it's sure a lot of fun! for work, dallas has to to work on these huge screens all the time and so when his last field computer bit the dust he talked them into buying him a 17" (talk about spoiled!)

for a size comparison, here is how the largest and smallest laptops available for purchase line up against one another. it cracks me up when we are both working on the table also for comparison, his computer screen is as big as our tv is (this probably doesn't say a whole lot, except for p-a-t-h-e-t-i-c)

big day here!

today was the first time i have really "rode my bike" since september. i wouldn't really qualify today as real riding because my top speed was 15mph and was dying by the time we got back but.... i faked it well. our big trek today was on the bike path down to rei to get our winter trails snowshoeing map.

with all the negative energy (between ez and i) this fall i think that our plant finally gave up and threw in the towel. so on tuesday, trash day, it will be thrown in file13. poor plant.... just when things were going to start shaping up! (seriously, things are going up here)

(unfortunately, i'm sad to say..... this pathetic, 78% dead, covered in william hair, brown, droopy thing is ours. i don't think they have plants looking this bad on the internet to steal from.)

this is the 1st weekend (we think) since early september that dallas and i have been alone. we find ourselves sitting on opposite couches staring at each other like "now what?"

so today we, in 20 min, decided to get our stuff together and go snowshoeing. we had a pretty good time. this hamstring re-hab really blows though. it's going to take forever and for people who know me, i'm not patient with this type of thing.

are you......?

yesterday i had one of those awesome experiences that every woman would just really like to not have in her lifetime. checking out at target, the (i'm sure, very nice, well intentioned) lady asked,
"oh! are you having a baby?!"

let me assure you, this is not the case. now this could be due to the holiday weight (if it happens again i'll blame it on this), but i'm guessing it was due to the baby mattress that i was purchasing for "my baby," ezra. our neighbors have one of these for their dogs and ez loves it. we figured we'd get him one so he could be more comfy during acl rehab.

as you can tell, considering how he utilizes it,
i obviously paid too much for it.

still on vaca (sorta)
i have 1.5 more weeks before school starts.... i gotta live it up! here's what we've been going on here:

my parents were here until today, before they left, beezer, dusty and i took my dad skiing.
it was super fun. while we were on the slopes beezer hit a small bump on the mountain, face planted and then dusty proposed.
congrats schnitzel and dusty!
(this picture is obviously not while skiing)this is some serious bling. it's so big it looks like it could have came out of the bubble cases you buy awesome quality jewelry in at the grocery store for $0.25
when my family is in town wonderful things happen. examples include:
weatherstripping the doors in our house,
making dinner,
walking ezra,
giving william (unwanted attention),
doing laundry and
organizing my art studio (which dallas now says doesn't look like me at all because it's too clean. he's right. but it looks cute!)
how many people can you fit in my art room?
6 + dog + cat

thank you mom & dad!!

we're home!
out flight got delayed for 2 hours due to fog in las vegas so by the time we made it home it was 1:40 am. my rose from nbc made it home! i know i looked completely ridiculous carrying roses around on a string thru the airport, on the plane and thru baggage claim, but it is beautiful.
today we didn't do a whole lot but get ready to go skiing tomorrow and look at vaca pics on the big screen. my sister has 700 pictures on her camera card, dating back to when we moved in. it's a bit much. someday she'll be a scrapbooker, if she ever gets them off her card. did i mention that half of them are blurry?

that's it for today folks.....
hope you enjoyed the rose bowl parade this year!
here are a few extra pics from the week,
also hoping that i do'nt have to go into work early for skiing injuries from tomorrow!

Happy New Year! Cali: day 3, Rose Bowl Parade

the preparations for the rose bowl parade are pretty incredible. bleachers line the streets, there is an abundance of security and white suitors and there are lots and lots o' people....

since we didn't know if we'd ever come back, or waht exactly went on, we bought some seats in the stands and a parking pass. i'm glad we did. the hotel staff suggested we leave at 5:00 a in order to get thru traffic, navigate around closed streets and find our seats. here we are, ready to go!
(beezer is so happy to have donuts every day this week!)
the parade was pretty cool... but i wo'nt bore you with pictures since i've sure you've watched it on tv. it was just really amazing of how much work goes into these floats for a "drive by." afterwards the floats all are driven down to a park where they can be viewed by the public for 2 days. what happens to the floats when it's all said and done? the floats are torn apart. apparently there is an episode of this on dirty jobs, and i was going to get a link to it on youtube for you, but i cna't seem to find it. after the parade we all went over to the nbc stand and got a flower from their beautiful bouquets. i'm still wondering how we're going to get these in home in one piece. here is what downtown pasadena on colorado street looks like after the parade has passed. it's a giant mix of people being lost, going to the game, not knowing what to do next....
we thought while we were down in cali we better go see a little hollywood. we drove down, parked, walked the main drag amongst a bajillion foreigners who were willing to pay ridiculous prices for crap, saw the kodak theater, went to the worst wax museum in the world, got our hollywood hill picture and left. yes, it was that exciting.
(this picture is for all the people in the ortho dept at bmc....since it seems we talk a lot about ninja turtles)

we are so exhausted. came back from eating and laid around for 4 hours doing absolutely nothing. i think we're all excited to get back tomorrow! this was a really great experience though and i would definitely recommend it to anyone.