What...we have a blog!?

It's been a very long time since we posted. If anyone still reads this thing, we're alive, I promise. It's been more than easy to let life get in the way. Work is going well for me, I moved my cubicle on Friday...for the sixth time since I started working there. Pretty soon someone is going to be stealing my red stapler and moving me to the basement. But at least I'm back to where I can look out a window and watch the married squirrels.

Jason is kicking butt and getting straight A's in grad school. Of course he is...he's a smart guy. And we now have to be on a strict budget until grad school is over. How strict? No new shoes strict. In theory that shouldn't be a hard thing to do. I mean, it would be for a relatively short period of time until Jason graduates and gets a much better paying job. And that should be a sacrifice that I should be more than willing to make in order for my hubby to be happy. But then I see these...

And I want them. Or these...

And I can't live with out them. Or these...

Every girl needs a pair of red satin pumps with a bow! Or these...

My life will not be complete until these are on my feet. So do you undertsand how hard this is going to be for me!? Two years from now when Jason has graduated my shoe collection will be two years out of date and I'll have two years worth of shoe buying to make up for. The thought is making my head spin. Lordy mercy.

In less overly dramatic news. A new pug has entered our lives. Trevor aka "T-bone". He came from the Ohio Pug Rescue (always use a rescue please) and he is a super sweet little guy. His head is about twice the size of Gus' so they look really funny standing next to each other. He's easy going and laid back and we haven't had one fight since he's been here. Granted that's only been a day...but still, I think he's going to fit right in to our little pack.

Now if only we could figure out why he incessantly licks!

Many of you may already know that my mom is now living with us. She's doing surprinsingly well given the unfortunate circumstances. Your prayers for some sort of resolution to the continuing family drama would be much appreciated at this point.

Corporate Retreat

This picture pretty much sums up the whole week. 25 property managers, two huge cabins, and four days of beer drinking, ping pong wars, and food fights. I was going to write about all the excellent fun we had and all the cool things we did. But no, I think I'll just leave it at this.

Awesome.

Antigua and such

It seems fairly rediculous that it's fourth of July weekend, and we've been home from vacation for over two months now and I'm still blogging about it. Sometimes life gets in the way.

Jason completed his first summer semester of grad school, straight A's of course. He's also attempting to quit smoking. I dangled motorcycle classes if he can go six months and a motorcycle if he can get through grad school. That's been a very tempting carrot for him to chase. He's also trying his best to get me to regret that decision. You never realize what kind of mood alterer nicotine really is until it's removed from the body. We have to relearn how to live together with tempers, and short fuses, and lot's of stress.

But I did promise swim up bars, zip lines and bees.



One of the "fun" things we did in Antigua was go about thirty minutes inland into the rainforest and zip line over the rainforest canopy. I tend to shy away from all things adventerous/dangerous/adrenaline infused, but I try to make exceptions for my adrenaline junky hubby. I was terrified during the whole safety briefing and harnassing. Soaring three hundred feet above the ground and through the tree tops....sweaty palms, racing heart, get me the hell out of here. Jason was in Jason heaven, just itching to get out on those lines. I have to admit it ended up being a lot of fun. After the first line, I felt safe and secure in the harness and started pushing myself off to even get more speed. Jason and I were having a blast!

Then we got to the last line. And no one was moving. At the other end of the line there was a huge nest of bees. Angry, aggressive, stinging type bees. Umm we were stuck on a platform in a tree fifty feet off the ground with no way to get down. Which meant we had to go back up the line we had just zipped down. Back UP. The workers pushed us out on the line as far as they could and then we literally had to hand over hand climb back up the line. Husbands went first and the workers pushed the wives next so that husbands could wrap legs around wives (we're weak and girly...or something) and hand over hand back up the line we went.

After that point I was sore and tired and beyond sweaty and just ready to go back to my poolside bar. But wait there's more. A rope adventure course! Down a thousand stairs we climbed so we could balance ourselves on various rope courses and work up even more of a sweat trying not to fall. Which meant of course that I fell. We had safety lines, so I didn't fall thirty feet to my peril. But my legs were all scraped up and sticking through the slates of the wooden bridge I was trying to traverse. I knocked Jason off the course completely in my attempt to steady myself, and the two workers are shouting different instructions to me "Grab your safety lines! Grab your safety lines!" I just sat there hanging almost upside down wondering how the heck do I drag myself vertical at this point. Needless to say I was not a happy camper and not so politely informed Jason that I earned a whole lot of brownie points for this little excursion. I actually did manage to pull myself up and finished the course with no more incidents, and then climbed back up those thousand stairs. And as soon as we got back to the resort nursed my wounds here,



The end.

Happy Fourth of July all, enjoy the beautiful weather.

Antigua Vacation Part 2

Jason and I had the privilage of doing many fun things while on vacation. I saw this thing sitting on the side of the beach and knew instantly that we just had to try it.




I mean it looks cool, right. Who wouldn't want to give it a try. We pedaled our little butts off, for sure thinking that we had gotten so far out in the ocean that our resort would be a tiny speck in the distant...we had traveled five feet. We were going against the current and the darn thing just wasn't efficient at traveling. It was pretty much at that point we said, "well at least we can say we tried it", and headed back to shore. And by heading back to shore I mean, letting the current bring us back in as we steered. But other activities proved to be much more fun and fulfulling.



Snorkeling by far was the most fun. We had been snorkeling once before on our honeymoon, and that time we were surrounded by a huge group of people and three other boats that also had huge groups of people. Not to mention the fact that there was only one fish that wasn't icky brown colored. But this time...this time was awesome. We went out to an actual reef with maybe ten other people. The reef was absolutely teaming with fish...literally we saw teams of fish!



Before Jason went to Iraq we invested in this heavy duty, crazy cool camera that could withstand extreme cold and hot and sand and impacts...and water. I must admit that I was very nervous jumping into an ocean with a camera that had no other protection other than a little note on the side saying it was safe at up to 10 meters depth.



But the camera didn't fail and Jason snapped away. We ended up pulling away from the rest of the crowd and it was just Jason, me, and our guide nicknamed Sharkbait. I don't know how safe I felt about that...But we spied the biggest puffer fish I had ever seen.



The thing had to be over a foot long. The coral all around us was gorgeous, and we made sure to be very respectful and didn't touch anything.



There was a lot to look at. We could have stayed out there all day exploring the ocean, but Sharkbait and our Captain "Squeaky" signaled us in after only thirty minutes.



Getting back into the boat was fun because they had thrown out food in an effort to attract some fishies.



This is me reaching out trying to touch one. The fish weren't too happy with that idea, for some reason they kept swimming away.



Part 3 will include swim up bars, ziplining, and bees!

Antigua Part 1

For one week we were in paradise. I miss paradise. Paradise didn't have sick dogs, or work, or school. Paradise didn't make us cook our own food, or pay for our own booze. I really miss paradise.



Needless to say, Jason and I enjoyed our vacation to Antigua. Our all inclusive resort was beyond beautiful, the staff was friendly, the food and drinks delicious...and we got a free upgrade to our room when we arrived...which meant...



Free stocked bar in the room!!! So we did the only natural thing after 14 hours of travel to get to this wonderful paradise...



We celebrated...



...and lounged. But after that long tedious day of airports and planes, we rested peacefully and awoke to this view.



So we weren't super close to the ocean, but that was ok. We were nestled in this wonderful little area with our own pool and surrounded by gorgeous tropical plants. It was quiet, and peaceful, and it was easy to forget that there were hundreds of other people spread throughout the resort.



And it was just a short walk to all the fun activity. There were seven different restaurants and two different swim up bars. When we weren't lounging on floaties in the pool soaking up the sun, we were stuffing our faces at all the restaurants. But it didn't matter where we were, the view was always spectacular.



This was my first time in the Carribbean, I had never seen water so blue, or crystal clear

We debated for quite some time about taking a vacation like this, and spending a significant chunk of money.

But after over 12 months of Jason and I being apart from each other I think this vacation to this paradise was more than justified.

Many more pictures and stories to come!

Princess Mimi

It's been well over a month since the last post, and this past month has been hectic to say the least. Jason and I have been readjusting to living together as a married couple, we've had a wonderful vacation, I had an insane corporate retreat, Jason started grad school, I went to the Jimmy Buffett concert, we had our sewer line replaced, and unfortunately we had to say goodbye to our little puggy Mimi yesterday.



Right before we left for our one week vacation in Antigua, we noticed that Mimi was becoming more and more picky about eating her food. As any good pug owner knows, a pug that won't eat is a sick pug.




But we didn't think too much of it. Then we returned to realize that now she would barely eat anything. Maybe she's just being really picky?


I traipsed off to my corporate retreat not worrying too terrible much. Sometimes her belly got upset and we just needed to find the right food to settle her stomach.



But when I returned from my retreat I noticed instantly that she was acting differently...like she didn't feel well. Over the past several months Mimi had become almost spunky. She had energy, she would run up the stairs, jump up on the couch all on her own, her little tail would twitch with joy when she heard her name called, she would follow me all over the house in the hopes that I would reach down and give her a little ear scratch. She had no fear and never let her complete blindness slow her down. I said many times that I could take life lessons from the blind, old pug.



But now she just stood there, she wouldn't come to her name, and she wouldn't accept any food.

We took her to the vet and they told us she had some liver disease. They were realistic but gave us some options. We could try antibiotics and steroids and it might help.

We were hopeful, and I tried not to think about the alternative. But after two weeks of treatment we didn't see any improvement. She was refusing food, and refusing her medicine. She started having trouble breathing and her little body was just giving up.

We put her to sleep yesterday evening. The vet reassured us it was the right thing to do. We didn't want her to suffer. She was such a blessing to me, even for the short time that I had her. I knew that she was very old and that she had had a very rough life before she came to me. I'm glad I got to spoil and love her for the time I was given. It was very hard for Jason and I to say goodbye to such a special member of our family. Goodbye Princess Mimi, I love you.

AHHH - My Own Bed!!!

Well all, there was plenty of drama yesterday to say the least. We were all finished on Thursday evening and they needed the night to type up our discharge orders as the last step. Then at about 10am Friday morning we were told that for some reason they had made all of our flights for SATURDAY!!! They said that they were "working to fix it and to try and get SOME of us out on Friday". But WTF!!!???!!! I have my own suspicions as to how it happened but we'll keep the story short. Basically, at about 1pm they came in with all of our flights fixed and I finally landed in Cincinnati (or, technically, Kentucky) at about a quarter till midnight last night.

I was so happy to see my wifey, and so happy to see my dogs, and so so so happy to finally spend a night in my own bed knowing that I could wake up whenever I wanted (or whenever the dogs wanted as it turns out) and that I didn't have to shave in the morning.

I do want to send a quick "shot out". When I was waiting for about 5 hours at the airport for my flight I swung over to the airport hotel bar for a quality burger and a couple drinks to pass the time. There a nice lady there stuck waiting for her family to fly in and we talked about everything under the sun, but mainly sports, for about 3 plus hours helping us both pass the time. So a shot out to Beverly for keeping me company and helping the time pass. And the next shot out is to the two anonymous bar patrons that paid for my burger and fries, as well as my three drinks. The only money I put down was a generous tip for the bartender in the end. Certainly a lot less than a burger meal and three drinks at a airport hotel would have cost. So thanks a million to those folks who showed your appreciation for my service by keeping me fed and "un-thirsty".

So all, I AM BACK!! Now I have a little over a month of built up leave to burn so I can still get paid so-to-speak for all the "honey-do" list items around here now. First order of business, putting up some lattice type sides on the back porch stairs. Mimi is learning how to climb the stairs but in her visually impaired state has already managed to fall off the edge once. So time to fix that up. Then on to the weeds :)

Take care all. And we'll keep you all posted on possible Memorial Day Weekend festivities.

God Bless America!