Is that an original group of 7?

So, I took paintbrush to paper and painted my second landscape a few weeks ago by copying a Group of Seven copy that mom and dad have at their place. Overall, I'm quite happy with the results. The rock looks a little meh and the hills in the background look a little dark... but if you look at it from afar the tree looks like a group of seven tree. It's certainly better than my previous work, The Purple Penis.

Backyard update

Now that the cold weather is here, we officially finished our backyard. A little backwards I know... but nonetheless we managed to enjoy it over the entire summer season. The hammock George bought me for my b-day was simply perfect.

We initially had planned to fill the space between the stones with soil and plant things like moss but unfortunately we came across two mortal foes: wind erosion and money. Moss, and the amount we needed, was incredibly expensive. We spent about $100 and that covered about 10% of the yard. So, with no moss growing, the wind had a grand old time blowing away the soil.

Long story short, we decided to fill in the other 90% with pea gravel. And you know what? it looks awesome. We'll undoubtedly plant more moss and stuff over time but for now we're quite happy with how it looks. Now if i could only get George to rake those damn leaves :)

curling

After a slow start to our curling season, we finally won our second game of the season! And it was a resounding win, too! The whole team came together... all cylinders were firing baby. Unfortunately, we won't be moving up a division but that's ok. Next quarter.

Free Coffee

Yesterday, George and I went to a Tassimo event at the Liberty Grand to pick up our free Tassimo coffee maker. How'd we get that you ask? Well, i entered a "Contest" whereby they determined who would be the right kind of people to become brand ambassadors for the product. There were a bunch of questions i had to answer, and knowing a thing or two about the industry, i answered them correctly. "yes, i'll tweet about your product all the time!!" That kind of shite.

Anywho, before we could get our Tassimo we had to sit through 2 hours of a couple of HGTV celebrities talk about:
a) how their tassimo changed their life and
b) how to decorate your home.

The crowd was about 80% women. 5% husbands. and 15% gay men. And it was actually quite fun.

however, the whole experience was ruined when it came time to pick up our free coffee maker. When i asked for a red one, i was told we can't choose and we must take what is given... which was an orange one. It was obvious no one ahead of us wanted orange because that's all that was left.

Sigh. beggars can't be choosers i guess.

And yes, the Tassimo makes good coffee. Although the refills are a expensive and very, very wasteful. So we're already looking at ways to reduce our Tassimo consumption.

it was actually

Lost Time

So it's been awhile since hubby has posted something. So here I go with the updates.
ps. I'm not a writer so love me for my errors!!

As noted before Cierra had been sick. She was sadly diagnosed with a heart sickness and we ahd to make the unbelievable desicion of putting her down. I have never felt so sad. Heart pained me so much I to this day feel that I failed her and in her final moments with us I apologized to her.
I loved her dearly. And miss her more.

Its been a full year since our wedding. Hard to believe. So in celebration of our 1 year I decided to "surprise" Rob with a trip to Paris. What a wonderful trip. I had never been to France. Paris was amazing. Old looking buildings. THe Effile Tower was stunning. The Food amazing.
The best part of the trip was when we rented 2 bikes and rode around town. Tehy have a fantastic rental system there for bikes. You can buy a day card. Pick a bike ride around.... park the bike back at many of the automated bike rental racks and do your thing. Then pick up another bike ride around etc etc etc. FANTASTIC.

During this past summer we decided to redo the basement ceiling in hopes to cancel out sound transfer from our floor to the rental downstairs. It took longer than we had planned. And man was it a lot of work. But we both did it. Together at times but most times seperately. WOrk perfectly.
Recently we rented it out for October 1st. Nice lesbian girl. We think she will fit in nicely with us. She too has a dog. YAY babysitter!

So yeah thats my recount of whats ben happening since the last update.
Hugz to all.

oh btw. I love you ROB! :)

What's up? A huge CC bill is what's up!

Yes, it's been awhile since I've blogged. Mea culpa.
So here's what's been going on:
- we traveled to Thailand and Hong Kong and had a most wonderful time
- we ripped out the ceiling of our basement and are in the process of doing a better job of sound proofing it so we can find new tenants who won't complain about the pitter patter of dog's nails.
- we pretty much finished the backyard (although, next year we're definitely going to have to do some updates and more planting.)

And about our dog Cierra...
Well, she isn't doing all that well. We noticed a few months ago her belly was slowly getting bigger (think pictures of Ethiopian children back in the 80's.) We took her to the vet, who charged us close to $1000 bucks to tell us that... they didn't know what was wrong and they he was very perplexed. So perplexed, in fact, he called in university professor to take a look.

While this was going on, Cierra's temperment didn't change, which confused the vet even more. She was still eating, peeing, crapping, playing and all those other fun things dogs do.

Our vet gave us 2 suggestions: give her an ultra sound (which would cost another $1000) or fix her, and while they were fixing her they would check out her insides.

Despite the fact that we wanted to breed her, we decided to go the fixing route. So last Thursday we dropped her off and waited patiently by the phone for an update.

The vet called in the afternoon to say the operation went well and Cierra was recuperating very nicely. Unfortunately, he still didn't know what was wrong. What we did learn was that he sucked out A GALON OF FLUID FROM HER ABDOMEN. A Galon! Vet said her liver looks fine as did other major organs. Needless to say, he sent biopsies of her liver, intestine and a sample of the fluid for tests.

This all cost us another $1600.

Our credit card bill is quickly adding up.

End result: our vet can't make a call as to what the problem may be but our own research leaves us feeling rather pessimistic.

Thinking positive though!

Tulips. Or are they something more freudian?

My art class has officially come to an end but I've been enjoying it so much, I purchased some art supplies and have been practicing at home. This past week I attempted to draw some Tulips. I was somewhat happy my painting until I realized that they look like a bunch of purple penis heads. You decide. Freud would probably have a blast with me.