..so I think it's time to share some pictures, courtesy of my new best friend and phone, Blackjack II!

I love telecommuting (well..when the remote connection works)! This is my office, or at least my part of the communal office, when I'm at home (and no, I can't work with all of that clutter around me, which is why I'm posting pictures to LJ instead of working, which I really need to do):



Two of my favorite things about working from home: Working with the windows open (and being able to prop my feet up on the windowsill when I sit in my chair), and being able to hang with The Poostinkler. Chester loves open windows, too. Mostly because it is easier for him to hear/see/smell his arch nemesis, the UPS truck, coming from down the street. Ben and I have decided that Chester takes extreme offense to anyone or anything else being big and brown, because it's hard to tell if he hates the driver of the truck (he's such a little racist), the truck itself, or both. It should be noted here that he doesn't react whatsoever to the FedEx truck or any of the 5 school buses that pass by each day, all of which sound, to my ears at least, exactly like the UPS truck. But I digress...


Aww...somebody's so sweet and smart! And big and brown!


Yeah...it's hard to complain about a job that sucks when, about 95% of the time, I don't have to deal with ridiculous Atlanta traffic, obnoxious work-people, a business-casual dress code, socks, fluorescent lights, cubicles, restricted internet access, overpriced cafeteria food, bad coffee, public restrooms, or a fixed 8-5 schedule. Heck, I didn't even bother blow drying my hair today and only put on a dab of makeup in anticipation of my grocery store outing later. So, as much as I dislike what I do and want to completely change careers, on days like today it's kind of hard to remember why (okay, well...it's not, but you get the point).

so, last year around this time, Chester and i made our yearly trip to the vet. i always used to fear the vet, because she always yelled at me:

"he's too fat, you're really endangering his health."
"i would recommend, if you can afford it, some kind of leash training; he knows he's in charge of you, and it shows."
"you really need to trim his nails back...which you wouldn't have to do nearly as much if you got out there and ran him. when his nails hit the pavement, they'll get filed down. and then he won't be so fat. two birds, one stone."

she's a nice lady, but i always felt like a terrible pet owner when i left the place, almost like i paid someone nearly $200 to verbally abuse me.

but, in the last year, changes have been made. i switched chester to a diet food, tried out the "can of green beans in place of 1/2 of the dog food" trick, got a choke collar (best.invention.ever. in the history of inventions...for dogs), started walking him more. enter ben, who, as he puts it, "rides Chester's ass way harder than i do" (which is totally true, by the way). an extra body and set of hands to control the dog means that he is bathed more regularly and has his claws clipped more frequently. the riding of the ass (figuratively...mostly), has generally made chester a lot more well-behaved than he used to be. i think that calling the squirt bottle "the flyswatter" (and then actually using it as a form of punishment and/or control) was an ingenious idea. thank you, ben. anyhoo. i digress.

last time we saw the vet, Chester weighed something like 117 pounds. his heart sounded good, but he was faaaaat. we're talking Fatty BoBatty. and he was so out of control with the harness. Dr. Black (which is a nickname for 'Blackstone') really got onto me, and i deserved it, thus my making the above changes (minus the addition of ben--that was purely coincidental).

so, today, Chester and i made the drive to the vet, which he loved. we waited in the front of the office, which he hated. his teeth started chattering like they do when he's terrified, and he started whining like a baby. eventually, we got back to the room, i got him onto the scale with minimal effort (which amazed me, it usually takes at least me and the 'nurse', and sometimes a third person, to hold him down on the scale), and he weighed 99 pounds! my dog has lost--and kept off--18 pounds in one year.

( Dr. Black's reaction )


so, it's good to know that, if next year's Atlanta Pride Festival includes a gay/bisexual/trans-gendered/gender-neutral/reproductively-challenged pet parade, Chester will be ready to prance and strut in said parade wearing his fabulous new "A+" bandanna. :D

so, my garage flooded for the umpteenth time since hurricane season started. granted, it's nothing like erin's flood, but seriously...standing water covering a good majority of the floor of your garage is never a good thing. ben and i are going to try to do something to fix it after work today. i have no idea what. i think it's got something to do with the lousy drainage "system" i have going on right next to the driveway. i'm sure it doesn't help that i have one of the steepest driveways in the history of mankind, so all of the water from the road is rushing down to the driveway, and the tiny hole that is supposed to keep my garage from flooding is overloaded. poor little guy. it's kind of like drinking oneself to death, i guess...i mean, it would be if one were a drainage system. but i digress. the 2 things i do know are:
1. i am so ready to be out of this stinking house, it's not even funny anymore. SRIUSLY. GET OUT. OUTAHYR. DUMHAUS.
and
( 2. )

so, anyhoo. despite the impending doom of flash floods and whatnot, i'm enjoying the rain immensely, like some other people i know. sleeping with the windows open rules...and it's frickin' the middle of july! where else can you do that this time of year? not in oklahoma, that's for sure. your skin would melt.

speaking of oklahoma...it's still there. and so will we all be--ben, his parents, and myself, i mean--at Christmas. during dinner with them last week, they said something about wanting to go to the Motherland the next time we went, and we mentioned that we'd be there for Christmas. but they said they wouldn't go unless they were invited, so my mom called his mom yesterday and officially extended the official invite...and they were officially on the phone for over an hour. not the 4 hours that ben predicted, but quite a long talk, nonetheless. so, it looks like, not only will the parents be meeting, but the parents will be staying in the other parents' house during what i'm sure will be a holiday full of fun, family-type festivities (read: fainting goats and jupiter jumps. oh, and lots and lots of food).

so, things are excellent, save for the job and the impending doom, but i'm working on that (and my resume, accordingly). impending doom i can't do much about...unless i sell my house before the garage floods again. here's to hoping...

( ...and here's one for the road. )

so...tomorrow, i will have had my LiveJ/LJournal for 4 years, which hardly seems possible. that means that andrew is rapidly approaching 27 (hahahhaaa! no more making fun of me for being older...for a while at least), that vonda and roper will be celebrating their 4th wedding anniversary in July, and that I will have been living here for 4 years in september (after deciding on the drive home from a detour to see andrew after the V/R wedding extravaganza that i was moving to atlanta two months later). wow.

...and things just keep getting more 'wow.'

the most recent 'wow'-worthy thing happened last night. ben's parents came over with the truck and trailer, and we (though 99.9% of it was done by the menfolk) packed up all of the bigger yard sale items to take over to ben's. i was making one last walk through the house to make sure nothing big had been left behind, and it hit me: i am actually doing this. we are actually doing this. this sudden realization was prompted by the sight of my dining room, bare except for the stack of empty boxes waiting to be filled with things i'm keeping, and my china cabinet:

( pictures behind the cut )

I preface the following entry with this:



( warning: not for the squeamish...this probably means you won't make it through the whole thing, stacy )