Good Eats

Lenny was having a bad day the other day so I made some fresh pumpkin pie. This pic doesn't look to appetizing though because the pie was so hot!

Courtesy of my mom, I picked up some doggie treats for Sally because we were running low. How cute is this dog!?

It also came with oodles of coupons inside -- awesome!

55

Today would have been Lenny's dad's 55th birthday. This is the third year I've marked the occasion with Len and it always seems to be a downer of a day for us. Today was no exception with Lenny having troubles with his experiments at school and me having the joy of dealing with Government agencies and being on hold for half the day listening to Pachabel's Canon and Take Five. Sally marked the occasion by peeing Three times in the house after not having accidents for over a week now. Ugh. On the plus side, the dishes are all done (Love waking up to a clean kitchen), I've got zero appointments for tomorrow so I can spend time working through today's to-do list, and for the first time in over three weeks I HAD A SHOWER this morning -- our bathroom renos are near complete! Inevitably, tomorrow will be a better day spent:

- put mail in the mailbox! (I'm sooooooo bad for remembering to do this)
- take Sally to the dog park
- finalizing some paperwork for the university
- return a bassoon I attempted to repair
- soak some cane for a reed making lesson for Saturday
- applying for 4 jobs I found today and following up with 1 other
- make a lasagna for dinner
- maybe put up some Christmas decor with Lenny ?!?!? It still seems early, but the date on the calendar suggests otherwise

Recent Knits

I know it's been a week since I posted last, but there's really not much new to report. Every morning Sally and I have been getting up around 7, taking Lenny to work at 9, hitting up the dog park for an hour and a half, and then she sleeps for the rest of the day while I clean the house and apply to jobs. I started volunteering at a local high school after I found out they had 5 (?!) bassoonists that could use some coaching. That combined with a chance dog park encounter and long chat with the Chair of Music Education is leading me towards applying to Teacher's College. The deadline is Dec. 1 and I have enough courses to do either business or social studies as a teachable in addition to music so that's covered too. I don't have the proper conducting courses, but hopefully I'll luck out??

I haven't posted many knitting pictures recently other than Sally's dog jacket because I've been working on some Christmas projects. This first one I decided to keep for myself, so you get to see it!

Cables  on the side and a checkered pattern in the middle.

This is a picture of a knitting fail... I bought this pink breast cancer awareness yarn but unfortunately nearly every pattern looks Hideous in this colour. I'm not really sure what to do with it. Ideas? The above picture was some sort of dainty lace thing that really just doesn't work with this pink... It looks so old-lady I can't thing of anyone that would wear it. I'll keep looking through Ravelry.com, but if any of you have suggestions for patterns, please let me know! :)

Well that's it for now. Tuesday I'm going to Hamilton for a trip so if you have any fun suggestions for that as well, fire away!

Sally Overload

There's not a whole lot going on in my life right now that doesn't revolve around Sally. Here are a "few" of the most recent pictures of our adventures.

Whenever I come back from leaving anywhere (usually an orchestra rehearsal), she's Super Duper cuddly. I love this pic even though it's a bit out of focus :)

Oh no! Sally kisses! 

Because we've had contractors in the house this week working on our bathroom, Sally has gone on a lot more car adventures this week. I bring along her favourite dog bed and a few toys and she's totally set. Providing I wear her out at the dog park beforehand, she'll fall asleep with in 5 min of getting into the car. She won't sleep while I'm gone and instead anxiously awaits my return, but as long as she's not chewing things she's not supposed to, I guess it's ok. Just contributes to the momma's guilt! Anyhoo, the above picture is from a recent trip to Wal-Mart.

Sally's new favourite thing to do is to chew these compressed raw hide bone things I bought from the dollar store -- 5/$1. They last her between 2-3 days each so they're definitely the best form of cheap entertainment.

 What a champ of a model pose, eh? Here's Sally posing in her first dog jacket that I finished knitting yesterday morning.

Gotta love the 1/2 ear up, 1/2 ear down thing :)

 Top view

Side view

After her wearing the jacket for the afternoon and evening yesterday, I decided it needed some embellishment so this morning I put her name on it. I'm considering adding some faux white fur or something temporarily for the Christmas season, but I'm not sure yet. For now the name will do.

This morning we took Sally to play with her foster mate friends again at the dog park. Her and Wren found the best place to hide when big dogs came a callin'. Ha!

They spent so much time under here. Love this pic to showcase Wren's colouring though.

Lenny playing fetch with Sally at the Dog park. She's very good at the catching and not so great at the retrieving.

Well there you go for a bit of a Sally update. If you have any other ideas for projects to complete during my extended time off, please let me know :)

Ha!

Not relevant for Lenny & I, because he likes knitted sweaters, but this is still a funny title for a book! Ha! :)

I've been missing Italy a lot lately. Family too for that matter. I stumbled across this picture of Tuscany and my heart sank a little:

I'm feeling a little worn out from the job searching. I do have two interviews lined up though now and that's always a plus. I'm surprised how few people are hiring/advertising that they're hiring this time of year. I would have anticipated that things would pick up more closer to the holidays. Meh. Later today I may or may not apply to some seasonal positions at Best Buy, Future Shop, Lululemon, Jacob, Home Depot, Pandora, and Nine West. Yay for mall shopping time! I'm guessing because Christmas falls on a Sunday this year that the malls will be nutso more than normal. Should be fun!

The bathroom renos continue today. I will post some before- and mid- pictures. Time to get ready for an interview though via a bath as the shower is still yet to come. Can't remember the last time I had multiple baths days in a row but sure am grateful for a) water in the house again and b) a deeper soaker tub. :)

A Super Sally Day

Today was a day thoroughly enjoyed by Sally. We started out with a 4km walk/run around the area, and then drove to the dog park for a play date. We met up with her old foster mom, and a dog she was previously fostered with, Wren, and her new owner. This was Sally's first trip and she did really well sniffing other dogs, staying nearby, and playing with Wren. Here's a pretty cute video of her and Wren playing. The foster mom's new dog shows up at the end in the background and throws himself into a hole to avoid all the excitement. Ha!

Here are some pictures from the adventure at the dog park too:

 Sally & Wren meet for the first time in a while.

Sally & Wren checking out some of the doggie action.

We met one of the people that shares a lab with Lenny, Lisa, and her two pugs at the park too. Sally wasn't quite as interested in them as Wren, but they still played quite well together!

Lenny chatting with Lisa, & Sally checking out on of Lisa's pugs.

Here comes Sally; "Let's Play!!"

About as close to group-play that Sally got. There was one point where I asked where her tail was but she was so nervous it was as far in between her legs as possible!

One last pic of the cutesy pies!

This afternoon while I went and played a concert, Lenny decided to give her a bath for the first time. She apparently did pretty well after scoffing at her paws getting wet. Now she smells SO much better. She's also super cuddly now that I'm home :)

Well that's it for excitement for now. Tomorrow our bathroom renovations begin so perhaps there's another trip to the dog park in the very near future!

I forgot to post our pumpkin pictures from October 31. See if you can guess which one is Lenny's:

Why yes, that is Dr. Who, his favourite TV show. I think I'm going through a simplistic phase these days. It certainly didn't seem to matter for this activity though: we only had one family worth of trick or treaters!

Sally is sleeping like a champ today. Yesterday I took her for a 1-hour walk and then Lenny, not knowing about the walk, took her for a 5km run a few hours later when he got home from work. She seems to be quite content here and has no problems just hanging out for a few hours on the couch while I run around the house doing housework. Yesterday I was even able to vacuum around her while she slept. What a trooper! I'm currently working on a red sweater for her in the following pattern; only 1 more foot worth of knitting to go:

The job search is going really well. It's always tricky to schedule interviews and things while I'm still working, but so far so good. Yesterday I had the first of a three-stage interview for a call centre position, got a call back for a membership representative at a gym near by, and a follow up about an administrative position. It's so strange how things seem to go in waves; I won't hear from anyone for two weeks and then I'll hear about three separate jobs in a few hours.

Well that's it for now. I'm going to go take Sally out for a walk before I head into work again. Tonight we're having another dance lesson so the plan is to tire her out now. Dance lessons are still going really well; we're all smiles and having a lot of fun :)

Dancing Lessons

Today was a rather productive day. I applied to three more jobs, got an interview at a temp agency for tomorrow, finished a knitting project (possibly a Christmas gift, so no further info on that available yet), arranged for obedience classes for Sally, wrote a friend about a recommendation for a vet in the area, made a delicious turkey casserole for dinner, and arranged for...

Dance lessons!

Not only did I arrange for the lessons, but I scheduled the first one for this evening. It went way better than both of us anticipated. It was fun, turns out we both have a bit of rhythm, and we also had fun playing the more traditional leading/following roles. We have a second lesson scheduled for tomorrow evening and I'm quite looking forward to gliding around the room again. Ha! Who'd a thought it be so enjoyable. :)

On an unrelated note (although perhaps not upon further consideration), Lenny and Sally are both snoring on their respective spots on the couches. Too cute! Sally had a really good day today -- she initiated more sniffing of people on the walks, didn't pee in the house from excitement of our arrivals back home, and even seemed to be getting a better handle at the retrieval aspect of the fetch game with her new favourite yellow tennis ball.

Well thanks to a bit of a sugar low due to left over Hallowe'en candy, I'm gonna zone out with some tv before waking Lenny up to head to bed!