Archive for August, 2007
Day 4 of my week off
Sarah had a long day at camp yesterday, so she slept in today and I with her.
Around 10:30 she got a bug to go outside and weed. We went and did the front garden in the lawn, right below the kitchen window, and then we went over to the west side yard and started to work there. She was feeling really ambitious in the things she wanted me to do, and she asked if we could finally dig out the trees that were in the flower bed.
We had chopped them down two years ago? But I knew this would be a chore, and the previous owners never did anything, you could see multiple stumps on one where the tree had grown again many times.
It took me until about 12:45 to dig out two separate stumps. The roots went right next to the foundation and curved every which way, it was a pain. Digging out anything is a pain in our clay based ground, I had to have Sarah go out and get a spade shovel finally to do the job.
When I got back inside it was back to work on the blog. I started changing the post dates on my some 550 plus posts. This ended up taking me all day! I did finish it really late, but that is pretty much all I did all day. I worked on the theme a little bit more but it was a boring day of work and not very fulfilling.
I took a break for lunch to watch “Just Like Heaven”, a girlie movie Sarah had borrowed which I got sucked into. I am ashamed to say it was pretty good.
Then when Sarah got home just after 4 we went out and saw Shrek 3 at 4:30. That was, ok. I didn’t laugh all that much, and the movie really dragged on in parts. But I thought it was a fairly interesting story with the usual nice work ins of other fairy tale creatures from other stories. I’d be curious to see where they go with Shrek 4 in 2009.
On the way back we stopped and got my phone from Sprint. It wasn’t holding a charge, so I had it looked at. The battery was “defective” they said, and it had a year manufacturer warranty, so I got it replaced for free.
When we got back I worked more on the dates, and Sarah made dinner. I worked and worked the rest of the night. We took a short break together to play some Ms. Pac-man, but that was it.
I hope tomorrow to do some more productive stuff, shorter things I can finish and get a better sense of accomplishment.
Day 3 – Transferring static blog into WordPress
Yesterday I finished up all of the daily life posts! I was happily surprised and felt a lot better. I feel like that is one of the largest chunks of work to do on the site.
Or at least I thought. When I have started to go through some of the other sections, I realize that the larger chunk of time may come in when working with images inside of the pages.
Plus the intricacies of each page and the design of it being a little different inside a solution that is a little constraining without further plugins and such.
I also got through all of the posts for the two dogs, which was a good amount of stuff too.
I am loosing some steam. I know the work from here on out isn’t as repetitive, which can make things easy. I want to go through and change all of the post dates, but so far I have 583 entries, and probably only 200 entries with the right dates. So it will be quite the process.
I just know, I like writing new posts, filing them, and knowing that I may never have to touch them again:)
Nokes is twitchy
When Sarah came home last night, we noticed when you run your hand over the back of his right shoulder, his muscle clenches up and then releases. Pretty cute, it happens every time you do it, and it didn’t happen just one day. He still has it this morning.
August 1st, 2007
I figured a time would come when I wouldn’t write about our little puppy everyday. I don’t want to take him for granted, but there are also days now where I don’t have anything new to say about him.
But this is a week where some new things have happened.
Nokes has been more calm, at least in my opinion, than I can remember in the past. After we got back from vacation, both Sarah and I felt like he looked older. Christine said that she swore he got bigger in the time he stayed with her, but we didn’t see that as much. Well, maybe a tad:)
He was very good for Rachel as well, everyone seems to love him. I guess the first time Joel met him he really fell in love with him too. You can’t resist, he is such a beautiful, smart, loving loyal dog.
He made it through our first vacation. When we came back, that first night he was a little turned around. He seemed happy to see us, but tentative at the same time. He was pottying in the house, and just some of the small things seemed wrong. But by day two he was basically back to normal at home.
This week, I have left him at home, alone, with a roam of the house out of his crate for 1-2 hour periods. If we go for longer times we usually crate him, but I am trying to move him into a house dog and not having to be in there all the time. Not that he doesn’t love his crate. We haven’t walled it off since we have been back, and whenever I leave the room, I frequently catch him sleeping in there, his little home. He is so cute.
Right before we left we had Nokes nuetered. He was not settling down when playing with Lady, and that concerned us for Christine’s sanity when we were gone. They say sometimes that calms a dog down. Well, I don’t think it has made that much of a difference with him.
But I will tell you, the day we took him in, I couldn’t think all morning. They have to put the dog under when they perform the operation, and I am always nervous about that. I have had personal experience with a loved one, and I just know the risks. I worried all morning, and I teared up when we left him. But the surgery went through without issue, he woke right up and was moving around like nothing had happened.
We kept an eye on things, but he seemed to heal up just fine and quickly. By the time we returned from vacation he was back 100%, besides what he is missing:)
Let’s see, what else. Well, Sarah gave him a new chew toy. It was presented as a gift for both of us. It was a chewy Spiderman 3 rope. There is a poofy part in the middle, with two tied ends. By the end of the night, he had trashed it. The middle was chewed into pieces. So, it was fun while it lasted for the very short while.
We are walking him on his choke chain now. We are very happy with how he walks, he does really well with keeping up and heeling, and if he gets out of line we just give a short tug and command “Leave It!” or “Let’s Go!” and that is usually enough to keep things moving. I haven’t noticed improvement enough to think that he can go back on the flat collar, but I do hope that comes. I dream of a day when we can walk him no leash, but because of our paranoia, we may never do that either way.
What is on the horizon for him? Well, in a month or so we will be taking him back to round two of the doggie obedience training. That is the largest thing, and of course, with me being off work this week, I get to enjoy him all day.
We love our Nokes very much. He has helped heal our heartbreak.
Day 2 – Transferring static blog into WordPress
Wow. When you get into it, sometimes it is hard to stop.
I went through some 12 pages yesterday in a couple of hours of old journal posts. Probably an average of 15-20 posts per page, remaking, filing, redoing the images etc. I now have a good amount of posts in the database and I am working more today.
But it is time consuming. I haven’t committed yet, but I am concerned if I do I still won’t be able to get it done before Monday and I won’t be able to do anything else this week.
I am going to continue this path, work on it as much as I can, but still do other enjoyable things during the day and see where I am by tonight.
