Rancid-Tea

The house immediately south of ours has been on the market since we started looking at our house, which was back in September of last year. As the price dropped and dropped, finally an offer was made by a couple; $30,000 was the going rate. Ethan and I had toyed with the idea of letting the house get to around $10K and just buying, tearing it down and having a double lot. I'm still hoping it will burn down in the middle of the night... - [more]

Last Saturday I actually got around to making an appointment to have Ludo neutered. I'm hoping he'll calm down a little once he's lost his balls. The big day is tomorrow, so this is his last night as a boy. Back when he was little I was thinking that maybe we could breed him once when he was an adult, but now that he's mostly grown, I'm not convinced he's a 'good' sheepdog. His front legs are a little narrowly set, and his teeth are a slightly crooked. In terms of responsible breeding, it probably would be a bad idea. Plus we get a $6 discount (woo hoo!) on microchipping if we get it done while he's neutered. - [more]

Well, I just realized I haven't posted in two months. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is the project I've been on at work. Suffice it to say that if you ever want to torture yourself, build a web-based store in Magento (I'm not even going to link to it, because I'd hate for their Google Rank to go up a twentieth of a percent). - [more]

Ludo has gotten quite large, and being a highly excitable puppy with a strong herding instinct, he was a 'puller' on the leash from the very first walk we ever took. When he weighed 30 lbs and poor motor control, this wasn't a big deal, except the human at the other end of the leash had to listen to the strangled sounds of a puppy choking himself. As he's gotten older, he's also started lunging at cars, bikers, other people walking, etc. The combination of pulling, lunging and being a big strong dog was making it nearly impossible to take walks with him, so we finally decided to train it out of him. - [more]

I believe that no lifestyle change should happen overnight. If you want to lose weight, you can't start a drastic diet and expect to stick with it for the rest of your life. You need to make gradual changes to a healthier lifestyle. On that same vein I think that you can't just wake up one day and declare that all of your future behaviors will be eco-friendly. - [more]

Yesterday at my workplace, two people brought their dogs in to work for the first time. They both had small dogs who both seemed friendly and calm. Since there was an explosion of dog at work, and Ethan got off early yesterday, he brought Ludo down for the weekly fiesta. - [more]

Last weekend, I decided my hair was in rather bad need of color. I had at least half an inch of blond showing, and my color was getting a little dull. It was time to open a new packet from mehandi.com, but when I went to grab it, I found another open bag of henna. I was pretty sure it was from a box of Light Mountain Henna, which wasn't as easy to work with, but gave good color results. - [more]

Last week at work, we released a huge website that had a ridiculously tight deadline, was changed dramatically from day to day and was designed by a giant advertising firm that the company I work for is hoping to partner with, so we had to deliver on time. That meant that I put in almost 12 hours on Wednesday and 14 on Thursday. I got Friday off, but did have to field two calls to bug fix, one at 1 am and one at 8:30 am, and then another around noon. - [more]

Being that parked cars are the deer of the inner city, sometimes leaping into your path when you least expect it, I shouldn't have been surprised when I walked up to my car this morning to see that one of the doors had been smashed in, with big stripes of black paint where once it had all been white. "Silly car," I said, "you shouldn't be jumping into the street in front of oncoming vehicles!" Alas, my car said nothing, but only looked sad and slightly ashamed. - [more]

Last weekend I took part in the F1 Web Challenge as a developer. I arrived at 7:30am on Saturday morning, we started working at 9:00am and didn't stop until noon the next day! - [more]

Last night I had Ethan bring Ludo to my work for the 4:50 fiesta, so we could see what he's like in a new building, and how he got along with other dogs. Only one of the other office dogs was there, but after some hesitation, they started playing and got along great! The funny part is that Honey, the other office dog, is about as big as Ludo is now, so they made pretty good playmates. I can only imagine when Ludo is twice his size and they still play. He might have a slight advantage.

Well, Ethan and I were able to get everything moved from our apartment to our house between Friday the 28th and Sunday the 30th. Between some time on that weekend, and this Monday, we didn't have Internet at home. We also didn't have a bathroom for three days. Our bathroom still doesn't really have a door, but having a toilet is a big improvement over not. - [more]

The plumbers are almost finished with the rough in stage (which means all the pipes will be in place but the fixtures won't really be hooked up), and when they are, an inspector will come out an hopefully approve their work. - [more]

We went to closing last Thursday. For some reason the money didn't all change hands until around 11 am on Friday, so we couldn't enter the house or make changes until then (the woman at the title company is currently on my list of least favorite people, she would do well to never wander into my path). This meant that while we could do stuff to the house Friday evening, the plumbers had to reschedule their day and couldn't come out to mark areas we needed to demolish, and Ethan had half a day of frantic calling to the stupid title company. - [more]