A Dog and Stuff

My, my...has it really been 9 months (wow, almost exactly)? What have I been doing with my life? Well for starters, we moved (within Seattle...I will not be attempting another out-of-state move for, oh, the rest of my life). We're living the beach life now. And by that I mean, we avoid the beach on nice days because it is ridiculously mobbed with those crazy people who enjoy sand and sun or something, and we like to be in the hideout of our deck where we can enjoy the beach from afar. Whatever works.

What else is new? We got a dog! Meet Ashley:

MEEE?

Also known as Ash, Puppy Hot Mess, Wheez, Wheezy, Piggy, Stinky, and Snorey.

MEEE!

She's 2 (years, not months). We got her from a shelter so don't even begin to ask me what breed she is, because I don't know. She's got wrinkles on her face that suggest some Shar Pei, she looks kind of like a mini black lab but also kind of like an enlarged dachshund, she's got black spots on her tongue, she's got webbed feet, she's kind of corgi-proportioned but with slightly longer legs. So, think what you'd like. The groomers at Petco are hell-bent on believing that she is Shar Pei and Beagle (and only Shar Pei and Beagle, mind you), so you can go with that if you're undecided. It's recorded in their system, which I hear makes it official.

ME ME ME

In my mind she talks in all caps. She also has very few thoughts, and the ones she does have are mostly comprised of being tired, playing, being warm, and getting belly rubs. She's a simple creature.

TIRED

She is tired about 90% of the day. She's probably a medium-energy dog, which works for me, because I am certainly a medium-energy person on a good day. At exactly 10:30 every night, regardless of what she did during the day, she is out. Nothing can wake her up. Including me enticing her with all her toys.

TOO TIRED

When she's tired, she snores like a freight train. When she's not tired, she wheezes. Don't be fooled by that long muzzle. I swear it's got the inner workings of a French bulldog and/or pug and/or Boston terrier. My God does she snore and wheeze her way through life.

The one thing that keeps her going without fail is playing fetch at the dog park.

YAEEEY

She will fetch the ball until she literally collapses - which quite honestly, when I look at the retrievers and shepherds at the park, really doesn't take very long. Partially I think this is because she gets warm very quickly when it's sunny, since she's completely black. But don't think this deters her from sunshine - she's originally from Guatemala (little world traveler we've got here), and it's obvious that she hates rain (good thing we live in Seattle) and loves sunshine. She will lie in the sun until she pants like crazy, and even then, unless we make her lie down in the shade, she will continue lying in the sun. Great survival instincts on this one.

WARM SO HAPPY

Her absolute favorite thing in the world (I'm talking over food, over fetch, over anything) is getting belly rubs.

BELLY RUBS?

One time I gave her a few belly rubs before showering, and 20 minutes later when I came out she was still lying like that. She got the message when I walked past her without noticing her.

OHHHH. OKAY.

So how is Bailey reacting to all of this?

That thing smells bad.

I'd say her general attitude towards life hasn't changed much.

I'm still the queen of everything.

She can't come on the couch like me, right?

I have to say, thank goodness these two were around to help us with the move. I really don't know what we would have done without them.

Ash helped unpack boxes.

WARM TIRED

Not to mention all the help she gave me putting together the new deck furniture we got.

PUPPY TIRED

Don't think Bailey didn't contribute. She was on hand while I put together a new bed frame.

Yes. Build me a bed.

Things are quiet now that we're finally settled in (save the three boxes we still have left that I've accepted as ones we will probably end up never unpacking). Both animals are quite comfortable with the new place and are each making it their own.

PLAY???

No.

In Which I Lose Everything on my Phone

So.

This is the story of how I don't back up anything on my iPhone (WHY YAYAN, WHY!!!?), and this morning as I attempted to upgrade to that Godforsaken, swear words new stupid dumb useless iOS6, my phone crashed and was sent into the black hole of "recovery mode" and I lost everything on my phone.

That would be almost 500 pictures, all my text messages ever, most of my new contacts (who knew iCloud had backed up my contacts a few months ago but NOT my photos?), all my settings, everything.

It made for a fantastic morning, during which I wept and swore and yelled at three different Apple Support people. Not that it was their fault. BUT my phone had completely stopped functioning and the situation got bad enough that the last guy said if he couldn't get my phone working, they'd send me a new one - for free. If that doesn't say dire situation, I don't know what does. Not that I really want a new phone, I just want MY OLD PHOTOS BACK. But at least my phone is functioning now, if you look at the silver lining.

Sob. Sigh.

In other news, the past few months have been great. The summer in Seattle is way more mild than Chicago...so much so that I complained about it being in the high 80s at one point. I can't say anything about the winter, since I haven't experienced it, but check back after it's been gray and rainy for 2 months and see how I'm doing.

I've been outdoor climbing, for the first time.

The harness does favors for NO ONE.

 It was interesting. Quite different from indoors, which is what I'm used to.

I've also been cultivating a new obsession with Legos. Nick got me the Hogwarts Lego set for my birthday, which I built in one night...

YES.

It's fine. I'm totally cool. Also what you see up there is about 1/8 of the size of the whole thing.

And we flew down to San Francisco for a wedding last weekend.

A lot of people live here.

Aside from being robbed blind taking the BART from the airport (a $7.00 surcharge for the airport on top of the price of the train ticket?! WHAT IS THAT?!), it was a lovely weekend of seeing friends, and the wedding was tons of fun.

And what has Bailey been up to? Oh, same old.

This is my toy.

GIVE ME THE TREAT.

She's just peachy. Sorry, I have no other cute pictures of her because - oh that's right - my phone lost them all. I'm not bitter.

So, the moral of this story is: back yo sh*t up. Or you'll regret it at some point. Also, I like Legos.

And I Moved to Seattle

Contrary to what may at this point be popular belief, I have not fallen off the face of the earth, nor am I dead. In the four-ish months between now and my last post, I have been busy moving my life from Chicago to Seattle, and now I'm living in Seattle (for a new job, in case you were wondering. I didn't just on a whim decide to move more than halfway across the country). After going through the ordeal of the move, I've decided that I'm never in my life moving again, so I guess I'm going to be in the Pacific Northwest for the rest of my life. Which is fine, if not solely for the fact that the temperature is high 60's here and consistently 90 in Chicago right now (except that I would really like to be tan now instead of pasty).

We had a moving company truck the majority of our stuff up here, but Nick and I drove some essentials ourselves the entire way with a pit stop in Fargo to see Nick's family (and PUPPIES!).

Katelyn and Mark's new(ish) puppy Dakota!

Crazy Badger - no really, he's crazy.

Huckleberry :)

And I don't really want to justify a picture for Benson because I didn't take any of him, because he was too busy cowering from Nick.

We stayed in Fargo for a few glorious days, and then began the trek to Seattle. Highlights along the way include:

North Dakota badlands.

Mountains - at this point I'm not sure in what state.

Somewhere in Washington - I think.

The entire road trip has blended together in my mind and I have no idea where anything is. The trip also included our poor four-door sedan hauling way too much stuff up and down mountains and really struggling, but I have no pictures of that because I was too busy sobbing with fear that the car was going to break down in the mountains of Montana where there was no cell phone service. But we're still alive, so it's cool.

We stayed in Montana for one night, which apparently Bailey was NOT okay with. We let her out of her crate when we got there because she had been in it for about 14 hours, but she made a beeline for under the bed, EVEN THOUGH it was boxed up underneath. She managed to find a slot between the slabs and nestled herself in a literally unreachable spot, and after ten terrifying minutes of thinking she'd escaped into the forest behind the hotel, Nick and I found where she was and ended up basically taking apart the bed to get her out. I have no pictures of that either, because I was too busy fuming. She spent the rest of the night in the bathroom. I'm not sorry.

We've basically been unpacking and walking places since we got here. We went hiking a couple weekends ago, which I feel was a very Seattle thing to do.

Hiking!

Nature.

And what has Bailey done since she's been here?

Please stop making noise.

It's naptime all the time.

Are these your legs? I'll sleep on them.

You woke me up.

She's also been actively trying to hunt the pigeons on our deck through the porch door. She just goes crazy at them even though they pay no attention to her, and unless she can pass through glass, she'll have to give up her dream of eating pigeons for meals.

Sneaky.

They are out there.

Off to not finish unpacking...

Happy President's Day

Oh wait...actually I had to go to work today. Totally lame. Things were pretty pleasant on my commute this morning and evening though, since the streets and trains were 50% less full than usual. I guess it would've been better if I didn't have to go to work at all, but...so it goes.

This has been going on outside my office building for about a month now:

There is no street.

The construction noise and all is annoying, but my biggest concern is the detour around the block I now have to take to get to Starbucks. So like, two extra blocks of walking really. I should really shut up now, since it's been quite good for my wallet, seeing as I no longer spend $4 every other day on coffee (why do I do that in the first place? Good question).

No one cares.

Bailey has been giving me attitude ever since I came home on Saturday smelling like dogs after volunteering at the Anti-Cruelty Society. She was literally furious, I'm talking puffed up tail and everything. But then I changed and she was fine. She's going to have to get used to it though...cause one day (SOON I HOPE) I'm getting a puppy. Yep, it's happening.

Yesterday I went to a Lululemon store for the first time, and it was just as magical as I imagined it would be. That being said, I wept for my bank account (I seriously need to work on the self-control), but now I've got a good stock of nice yoga clothes. You know, so I can NOT have good form while I do yoga, which is something I found out tonight about myself.

NOT STRAIGHT.

Headstands seriously scare the crap out of me, and it took me months to even be able to do it in the middle of the room and not next to the wall. However, I had no idea I was this far off from being straight. It's fine. Work in progress.

Not 90 degrees.

Okay, just blame this on my lack of ab strength. Again, work in progress. Don't worry about it.

What the crap is this?

Yogis everywhere, you can cringe at how terrible the form is here. It did take me, again, months to even be able to kick up into this, and I'm nowhere close to being able to not doing it against the wall, but seriously. This is slightly embarrassing.

Bailey does enjoy judging me, however.

Really I don't care much.

And with that, I'm off to sit on my couch for the rest of the night.