Gonzai Gallery

As much as I can, anyway. Managed to escape babysitting Friday, because I had a show Saturday no one wanted me loading the van while stepping over kids at 5am. But didn't sleep well, and got up early for the show. Seems Annapolis has changed quite a bit in the last 6 years or so - it looked nothing like it did the last time I was there. Tons of new developments and business complexes, etc, which have kind of ruined the whole historic thing the town had going on. Anyway, my helper for the day was Cecil, who is my nephews' second cousin. He was a ton of help, and there were a few times I really needed it. The kids at the school were very helpful as well, I was completely packed and loaded out 20 minutes after the show ended. Awesome. Oddly, I sold out of...The Buffalo Bills, Detroit Lions, Oklahoma Sooners and South Carolina. Huh? In two shows, I've sold 1 Eagles and not a single baseball ornament. Weird. Ordinarily I'd have been thrilled with the sales - second best total I've ever had - except that the best show I ever had was last year in the same place, in the snow and rain, and I was down 25% from that show. All in all, I made very little money at arts and crafts this year and it's just as well I decided not to run it as a 'business' this year. The numbers just don't warrant it.

Got home and huddled, because I'm getting a cold and I was definitely overheated after the show. Watched Auburn/SC until it got out of hand, then the Merlin finale and some Spooks. Down to one ep of Spooks left. Slept 12 hours straight in the hopes of losing the cold, but I don't think it helped, I'm stuffy today. I took Mom to PetSmart for dog food, and the place was packed with critters. Lots of dogs including an incontinent Lab, a talkative greyhound a teensy husky pup. The adoption crew for the day was there trying to home rabbits. And the whole lot of them were completely upstaged by...a goat. Yes, someone brought a goat to PetSmart. Esther is a 7 month old La Mancha dairy goat with incredible calm. Even with dogs sniffing her all over, she dozed off. Talked to her owners, Esther was bottle-raised in the house after being ill when she was a week old, and even now she lives in a shed attached to the house and spends half her time in the house. She's so people-acclimated she's already going to nursing homes. She was our highlight of the day :)  We picked up some seafood (crabs!) and went home to settle in and wait for the Ravens/Steelers game. Was going to watch the last Spooks, but it turned out instead of having eps 7 & 8, I have two copies of 8. Eesh. So I indulged Mom's sudden crush on Matthew Morrison (CBS Sunday Morning did a segment on him) and played the Glee pilot for her. Now waiting, semi-patiently, for THE BIG GAME. Nervous now...

I've spent the day as a narc. OK, full disclosure, I'm narc-ing on the office dogs, both of whom have fleas/allergies and both of whom I have caught biting/scratching themselves repeatedly today and called them out on it. The dogs really don't like me right now. But by golly, I seem to have a knack for catching them doing what they oughtn't. Hmm.

The training here is unbelievable. As is the choreography. What's the deal with the goat?

Today was Mom's hip replacement surgery, and I had to have her at the hospital by 5:30am. Which meant, amongst myself, the dogs and her, I had to get up before 4am to get everything done. Fortunately I did get it done, we walked into the hospital at exactly 5:30, and after a lot of slow test/paperwork/procedure finally sent her off to OR at 7:15. I settled in for a wait. The good news is the waiting room had free wi-fi. Bad news - a lot of websites were blocked from it, including LJ and all of my e-mail accounts. I was able to catch up on news but that was it. I tried gaming - that worked OK at first, then it started blocking gaming sites 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off. I gave up and switched over to reading Doctor Who: The Quality of Leadership, which includes stories by terri_osborne , neadods , tiggerallyn , puppetmaker40 and kradical , among others. I have had this book since February of 2009 and I finished it today. Yes, I am most embarrassed. And for better or worse, it's the only work of fiction I've read in the last 18 months. Yikes.

Mom came through the surgery fine (the anesthesiologist told me she only used half the allotted morphine; I asked if I could have the rest. Yeah, I went there :) ) She'll be in the hospital until at least Sunday. I wandered off and got lunch while I waited for her to be moved to a room, then went up there to wait for her to wake up. She was reasonably awake when I left. I tried to get home before the rain started but failed miserably - anyone want some wet, muddy dogs? 

And oh yeah, just if anyone was wondering - Mom is not in THAT hospital. She's at GBMC, where just about everyone was quite glued to the television over the Hopkins situation, which needless to say was a bad case of a seriously messed up person being allowed to have a gun. I imagine there'll be metal detectors at hospitals next week. Terrific. Off to my PT now.

OK, I'll fess up. I didn't get all of them right. But that's probably because to CJ, everything is a dog toy!

( Dog Toy or Sex Toy?  )

After working out, I took Mom shopping all afternoon, getting her fully refreshed and reloaded on everything. Oh yeah, and a LOT of groceries, although we somehow managed to miss both the drink & pharmacy aisles. Confusing layout. Also refilled on dog food, where we met a litter of beagle mixes. Seems some arse dumped a pregnant beagle on a rescue, whereupon she promptly produced 9 pups. They're still trying to home some of them, although the pups are the size of their mum now. We kinda conked out when we got home. Haven's still having possibilities, and now we're into series 8 of Spooks.

A co-worker returned from a weekend wedding where another member of the wedding has a new litter of puppies at home. Great Pyrenees/collie mix. Big and hairy. Me want :)

( Iranian mullah declares a fatwa against 'unclean' dogs and their owners )


OK, I'll admit CJ is unclean - no idea what she got into yesterday but she seriously needs a bath - but by golly, being a blasphemer is fun! 

Didn't bring the netbook with me yesterday or today, so the posting had to wait til now. Stopped in the video room for a bit and saw the back half of 'Up', loved the dog bits. The art show ended with me not receiving a single bid on any piece in the show. Usually I sell 4-6 pieces. Not good. Then I was returning the art from the auction and managed to fall down the escalator. No damage done to the art, but I'm all bruises and pulled muscles today. Didn't get out of the show until nearly 6:30, but it turned out my timing was good. I hoped to find someone to have dinner with, and found 11 of them. More specifically, found most of the Alphabet Soup gang just coming into dinner. The hotel's dinner buffet was great, awesome red potatoes, I ate quite well and surprisingly healthy. And it will be hard to top that crew for a fun dinner crowd. Only got into 1 game before Social Class started, but played TTR with the world's most precocious kid, AJ. Nonstop entertainment there. Finally caught up, however briefly, with terri_osborne , suricattus  and tiggerallyn . Went back today strictly for gaming, wound up playing only two games, but helping to pack up the room. I can't NOT volunteer, can I? Anyhoo, home now. Probably going to be VERY early.

T-shirt of the weekend: "BP: Bringing Oil To America's Shores."

Quote of the weekend: "I was 16 once." Response: "It lasted a year."

Time for the annual 'Bark in the Park' at the Bowie Baysox game. Got a fair amount of sun, an enormous amount of dog-related swag, and plenty of sniffs and kisses. Mostly labs & poodle mixes out there today, although there was an Australian Kelpie/? mix that looked remarkably like CJ, minus the tan markings. So now I'm wondering if that's what's mixed into CJ. Hmm. The dogs were more interesting than the game - the visitors had a no-hitter through five innings, and the Baysox didn't allow much offense either. Photos aren't cropped yet, the netbook doesn't have a good photo program on it yet.

Anyhoo,