* * *
Browsing through my blogroll yesterday, I found that someone mentioned a meme called AlphaBytes, in which participants write a series of 26 posts during the month of June, one for each letter of the alphabet. Now, I’m a meme-slut as much as I am a domain-slut, so of course I HAD to do it. Anyone who wants to participate is welcome to. The only other request from the folks who created it is that each AlphaByte post contains a link to their site.
Not only is the reduced-fat orange loaf from Starbucks really fluffy and moist, and tasty, it apparently has real orange chunks in it, as well.
(I wonder if it technically counts as fruit…)
I say… And you think…
Like this meme? Play along here.
I set the skin aside for the rest of the weekend, came back to it today, and followed one of Sarah’s tips, and stuck the position stuff in the css rather than the hmtl, and, after some cursing, first at the graphics, and later at myself when I realized the problem was my typo of parentheses instead of curly braces, we have liftoff. Yes, this is my new summer cafe skin.
(And the change in art should not at ALL imply that I don’t love the various blogware that Sarah’s created for me, I just…get bored all too often.)
I managed to create my very own blog skin for MT, and you can go look at it by clicking here, but when I copy and paste it into THIS blog, it utterly fails to work, which I don’t understand at ALL because it’s the SAME installation of MT.
Oy.
So, yeah, an evening completely wasted.
Today, we took Zorro and Cleo to the park, and let them run around a bit. Cleo is woefully out of shape, and still has issues being away from me (if we’re all out together, Cleo has to be where I am), and Zorro gets tangled in leashes a lot, because he has absolutely no sense of his own space.
Still, nothing is cuter than a happy dog, racing across an expanse of grass in the afternoon sun, and then jumping up and down with excitement when they are told they’re GOOD.
Of course, we forgot to bring them water. Or rather, we brought water, but not anything to serve it in, so we didn’t stay long, because they got parched really quickly.
And now, lazy beasties that they are, they’re flopped, Cleo in my denim chair, Zorro on a towel underneath the chair, both snoring happily and dreaming little dog dreams.
Friday’s in my business are either calm or chaotic, never in-between. Today was both calm and chaotic, but in small bursts only, so even though I was in the office until 4:30, when I was scheduled to leave at 1:00, it wasn’t a bad day.
I nearly came to blows with an underwriter, but finally just ended the call to keep from reaching through the phone and throttling her. Strangely, she must have sensed her reprieve, because not five minutes later, she faxed over a clean approval.
I took a nap after dinner, because we had tickets to the 10:25 PM showing of The Day After Tomorrow, and I have a nasty habit of falling asleep in movies if I get bored. The nap was helpful, but I was never bored with this film – weather and natural disasters are always so compelling for me, and this had both.
The effects were awesome, the story, frighteningly plausible, and while I don’t wish to spoil anything, it must be said that I was relieved that there were no ID-4-ish plot-holes like interfacing a Mac with an alien spaceship.
I was disappointed, only, in that the rain from this morning was gone by late afternoon, because it would have made the evening perfect if I’d been able to step from the theater into cold rainy weather. (I’ve said before that I’m always slightly disoriented after weather movies, when I step outside and the weather doesn’t “match”)
Also, the popcorn didn’t have enough butter (well, okay, it’s not butter, but we call it butter so we don’t have to think about what it really is.)
I’m not a fan of animation, really, but I liked the first Shrek enough to actually consider seeing the second this weekend.
But right now, it’s almost two-thirty in the morning, and my eyes are becoming gluey.
Bed calls.
Astute readers may have noticed that my blogroll hasn’t been showing up for several days. This is because I was a day late renewing my blogrolling account, and now, even though I can create multiple NEW blogrolls, they still haven’t re-enabled the blogrolls that were disabled.
If I was previously linked to you, and no longer appear to be, please let me know.
Thanks!
Zorro is pouting.
Zorro has been pouting since last night, when we brought home pizza as part of our dinner, and then refused to give him any, until after he’d finished his dinner.
Please understand…Zorro and Cleo are not plebian dogs, forced to exist on bland kibble and water that comes from the tap. Oh no! Zorro and Cleo have hand-cut chunks of meat and bone delivered to their front door on alternate Wednesdays. A cooler full of it: chicken, pork, lamb, ostritch, turkey, and pureed vegetables and offal twice a week for roughage and essential vitamins.
So, you’d think, that given the choice between, say, pureed turkey mixed with lots of green leafy things, or dry, icky, pizza crust, he’d go for option a.
Well, you’d think that if you don’t own a dog.
But if you do, you’ll understand how frustrating it is when your eight-pound chihuahua refuses to eat his own food because he has seen the Magic Cardboard Box that the pizza lives in.
(Cleo doesn’t have as much of a taste for people-food. She never has these issues.)
You’d think that after 24 hours, Zorro would have stopped pouting about this. Especially since he ultimately received some pizza crust.
You’d be wrong.
You see, I had macaroni and cheese tonight, and my dog flips for cheese.
And I wouldn’t let him lick the dish when I was done, because that’s just…iewwww. (Also, it leads to messy ‘presents’ being left in the laundry room.)
So, he’s pouting.
He gives me that slitty-eyed look when I walk by.
And even though he’s in the room with me as I write this, he’s pointedly ignoring me, and finding endless fascination in the grooming of his toes.
And even though he’s insanely cute when he does this…
He’s not getting my chocolate chip cookie.
(No, he really isn’t. Chocolate is toxic to dogs, and one of the foods that sometimes triggers seizures in epileptic animals.)
Over the past few weeks I found myself absorbed in Bravo’s reality series, “Showbiz Moms…and Dads,” watching it even though I knew the parents would annoy me, and I’d have unquenchable urges to lecture the children. I’m almost embarrassed to admit I watched every episode, but the truth is, it was vastly entertaining.
There are message boards that do a far better job than I could, of showing the number of people who watch these things, and I was relieved to find that they, too, had the same issues I did.
I’m bringing this up because I forgot to mention it in response to this weeks Thursday Threesome, which was all about TV.
Also, I wanted to put it in writing: This show made me appreciate my own mother. Sure, she’s insane, but, in a GOOD way.