Life with the Two Crazy Dogs

Happy New Year, folks. I do not have new year resolutions. I had them before, but never got them done. So, this year I thought I should stick to one - I want to complete at least 3 courses from my degree plan - no matter how much it will suck up from my personal time, I’m going to git-r-done. By the way, Larry the Cable Guy is coming to Duluth next year - January 28. I really want to see one of his standups. He is so freaking hilarious. So, it’s another one thing I want to GIT-R-DONE!

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The rain quit and it quickly changed to snow. It’s been snowing since 12:30 noon and looking at the radar, it’s going to snow the whole day and night till tomorrow. Will be definitely shovelling the drive tomorrow. Yes, that means I can go to the trails and run on trails with snow….YES!!!

Above picture taken at 2:15pm

The above 3 pictures were taken at 4:15 pm

The flakes are now smaller but it’s coming down pretty good. So, will see how it goes tomorrow, road conditions and will go grocery shopping and to Macy’s.

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Ranger is now without his Prednisone for a week plus. His itching came back. The vet said it’s because of the warm weather we are experiencing. Plus he has dandruff, too. So, we are upping his biotin and fish oil. Hopefully that will stop his itching. With his itching, I need to bathe him more often with an anti-bacterial shampoo. That poor boy has so much problems. At least the acidophilus I mixed with his food helps with his bloatiness. Since his stomach surgery 3 years, he bloats each time he eats. I gather with him eating all these junk while we are out on our walks and runs on the trails and sidewalks, it does not help either. He is a real chow-hound. With the prong collar on him, it does not matter. No matter how much I snapped the collar, he ignores it. A real Lab - stubborn and loves to eat. Cooper on the hand has no problem, health wise. We still give fish oil and glucosamine twice a day. He is still the fetching freak. Loves to fetch since he was a little pup. I don’t think he will quit fetching till the day he goes to doggie heaven.

It’s so soggy, wet, and foggy out. Whatever snow we had in the Twin Cities melted few days ago and it had made the ground saturated, now the rain. I think the ground is frozen, so the rain can’t soak in. Every where I ran with the boys this morning were soaking wet. The boys seems to not mind it, but I hated it. My tennis got wet and whatever the boys found while out on our walks were soaking, then they eat it. One of their favorite is geese crap. For some reason they love that greenie looking crap. When they done eating that crap, they come lick DB and I later in the day. Plus, when it’s wet, their paws (since Labs has web-paws) they catch all kinds of mud and sand. I rather have super cold weather then all the wetness. This is December? All my 9 plus years in Minnesota I have not expericenced a mild, rainy December.

I took Friday as a vacation day so I can burn more vacation hours. Thought I would be goofing around and just chill. Low and behold, I need to work at home. Boss called and wanted me to work on the spreadsheets like ASAP. Crap, didn’t expect Boss to call me at home to check my email and work on the spreadsheets. After my breakfast of oatmeal with cranberries, raisins and walnuts off I went to my home office and cracked my brains with the spreadsheets. I had to create a pivot table on the earnings data and did a VLookup on the Roster spreadsheet. There were 1060 rows, so the VLookup worked really slick with the copy and paste of the formulas. When I was done with that, did a totals for the rows….all the f-ing-hymers were flying everywhere. I forgot to add the ‘$’ for Absolute Referencing on my fomulas. Son of a bitch…gotta work on the fomulas for all the 84 columns. At last after 3 hours dinking with the 5MB file, I was done. Took up half my day. Emailed the files to Boss and the rest of the team and told them don’t bug me for 2 hours coz I need to go to the trails for my run. Erg…wasted half my day which I had plans to go for lunch with Mrs R at Great Moon. Boss said she owes me vacation time….you bet you do.

My homeoffice which was used to be a nursery.

Ranger, the fart monster under my desk.

The living room where my piano is. Ranger wanted to be the center of attraction.

Here is our fiber optic Christmas tree which is coming down tomorrow.


The fireplace in the living room.

So, came back from my run, hit the piano for about an hour pounding away on the Chopin’s piece - Prelude No. 15 (Raindrop), Schubert’s Ave Maria and brought out the Sonatinas and pounded on them. Then I thought, crap my nephew wanted me to put more pictures on the blog. Took the camera out, the freebie POS (piece of shit) camera and took some pictures of the house since my sister has not seen the house before. So, sis, you gotta excuse the mess in the house. I’m a real clutterer. I hate picking up and cleaning.

My messy office - didn’t bother to clear up the printed material I’d used for my class.

Another shot of the former nursery. The vacuum cleaner is sitting there reminding me that the house needs a good vacuuming.

And, finally the messy kitchen. The packet sitting on the stove are dry “hor fun” and the 2 small yellow packets are seasoning (from you, sis) for tonight’s dinner.

Here I am blogging and DB is waiting for his dinner. He can start munching on chips and nuts at the time being.

I’m off tomorrow - last vacation day I’m taking for the year. Carrying 32 hours over to next year. So, what are my plans for the weekend? I’m thinking of calling Mrs. R up and have lunch at Great Moon in South St. Paul. Then, I thought of going to the Mall of America (MOA) just to “jalan-jalan” (walk around). Need to get new pants so maybe Old Navy or the Gap.

On the hand, I might not feel like going either. I was so tired after I got home this afternoon. Took a nap - supposely a 30 minute, but it turned out to be a hour. I felt better though. Walked the dogs which they were already bugging me to walk them since I got home at 2:30.

On Saturday, DB is taking my car to get the blinkers fixed. I have been driving without proper blinkers for about 2 months now. Not sure what went wrong - DB said it’s the wiring which he does not want to touch coz the wirings are connected to the airbag and cruise control. Hey, don’t mess with my cruise control. That’s my life saver. Set it for 75mph and off I go on 35E.

I’m still working on my work stuff, Excel spreadsheets, tonight. Told the boss I will be able to do it this weekend. Since I took the day off tomorrow, I will continue to work on them. It is a pain in the butt…didn’t know the reports from the query were so complicated. So, it made my life tougher to work with VLookups for multiple rows. I’m sure I will figure it out.

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Boss took us out for our holiday luncheon at Chiang Mai Thai at Calhoun Square in uptown Minneapolis. I rode with E and P drove R. It was quite some time since I went to Calhoun Square. It just feels good to be in Minneapolis. Anyways, the restaurant has a great atmosphere with very “Thai” decorations. The food, it’s not too bad. I ordered Massaman curry with shrimp (they omitted the squid) and papaya salad, Thai style. I have not tried the curried before, thought I would check it out. P and E each ordered Pad Thai with chickie and a cup of Tom Yam soup. R ordered fried noodles with shrimp and squids. I should have ordered noodles. The curry was, first of all, not spicy enough for me. Secondly, it was too sweet. Thirdly, there was no kick to it - not much of a taste of curry in it. Lastly, there was so much coconut milk in it, it was too icky. I had probably a few spoonfuls of it and the rest went into a doggie bag. The papaya salad was good. Had enough chilies to burn my butt hole tomorrow morning (it could be tonight!). R and I prefer super hot and spicy food. He and I kept adding chilies to our meal - there is no kick to it without adding chilies to the food. Well, I will find out tomorrow if I will have ABS!!

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Woohoo, I passed my HRM class with an A. Three more credits added on to my total credits. 11 credits out of 60…whew, long ways to go to achieve the 60-credit goal, but 11 credits is 11 credits. My next class starts January 23 for spring semester is an evening class to be held at the college. I have yet to figure out a schedule how I should do this – go to work, come home, get my running in, shower, dinner and zoom over to school, which is about 15 miles (30 minutes) from my home. If not, I will have to bring my backpack to work, get my run in, and then head to school from work (10 minutes).

Keeping my fingers crossed that this class will be as smooth as the previous one and teams are more cooperative. During the last day of my HRM class, I had to complete a peer review of one of my team member. Good thing the instructor picked that person. I really “hantam” the lack of support from this team member. In addition, there were several questions I have answer how the team was. Again, I poured my disgusted feelings out. To me was so unfair I have to get the ball rolling and kept asking the team for their opinion. KNB, no response from them till the last two weeks all of them were panicking coz we had to finish our final paper plus the presentation and our team paper. Igiots!!! Anyway, guess I’m done ranting. Let bygones be bygones. Let’s look toward the future. What the heck 2007 is just round the corner.

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I was so surprised to receive a call from Samm. We chatted till my cellphone ran out of juice! It was a lovely conversation we had. Chatted about every thing kids, family, blogs, organic life, food, former classmates, and then “blank”….duh, I forgot to charge my phone. Learned a lot from Samm on how to blog since I’m a rookie on this blogging thing. I think we were on the phone for about an hour plus. Thanks Samm for the call.

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It’s Christmas day, I called my sister in Singapore. Actually I wanted to call my parents in Ipoh but the lines were busy. So, I talked to my sis for 3 hours plus. I really had a wonderful time chatting with her. There was so much to chat about. We wanted to chat more but gotta save my minutes to call my parents tonight. By the time I was done with my sister, it was 11:15 a.m. Kinda late to call my parents. Each time I call my sis, we can just go on and on. Must be the sister thing. So much to update about family and what’s going on kinda thingy, it’s like I have not talked to her for ages. The last we chatted was about 2 weeks ago.

I am so glad to hear that our parents are doing very well. Dad got out from a surgery a month ago and he recovered speedily. His daughter, who’s a doctor, said he is as strong as an ox, which my sis said is so true especially for his age (dad is 77 years old). I really missed my parents a lot. Now that they are getting old, I want to make plans of visiting them more often. My last visit was this CNY and the trip to Spore where my parents were spending their CNYs now, was so short, 12 days. When you are having fun, time goes by so quick. I spent a lot of quality time with them, but it’s just not enough.

Picture #1: My 2006 CNY trip family picture. My brother, BIL, sis, the blogger, mom and dad. (Please excuse our sweat and oil filled faces - it was frigging hot and humid.)

Picture #2: Another family picture taken the eve of my departure at my sis’s apartment.

Picture #3: Picture of my worn out nephews: Tallest to shortest:- Kane, Ian, Nigel, Rhys and Kelvin.

The 5 boys have grown so much. Makes me think how much older I got!! I told my sis I am planning on a trip to Spore/Ipoh/Spore next November during the Thanksgiving week. Hopefully my boss will allow me to take 3 weeks of vacation during that time of the year (it’s usually not busy during the months of November and December).

Also, I have not met my school mates since 2000, my last trip to Ipoh. The last I saw Samm, she was not married yet, now….married and two kids! It’s time to “balik kampung” (back to homeland) for a trip to visit them and eat Ipoh food!

DB’s daughter called this evening and told him she was on her way to her aunt’s house in Rochester. She him her mom bought her a digital camera with a printer and docking station. I thought the couch her mom bought her this week was her Christmas present. Well, guess not. You think she’s spoil or is the mom playing mind games with her? Well, she is only getting a winter jacket from us. Think that’s all she’s getting from us. Money is short, so that’s all for this year. I’m actually glad she can go to her mom to get all these big stuff. I would like to buy a couch, too, and DB and I are working on it. Mom, can you help?

I’m busy downloading music from emusic.com. DB has 50 free downloads from this site compliments from Directv. I wish there is a way I can attach MP3 files on my blog. I have no frigging clue how to attach files besides URLs. Anyone knows how to attach MP3 files to blogs?

I downloaded Ave Maria (Franz Schumann) and DB is just immitating the solo. Ave Maria is one my favorite ever since I first heard it when I was in my early teens. I’m now back to classical music. Have not been listening to them for almost 8 years. I’m even playing the piano again. Trying to master Chopin’s Prelude No 15 (Raindrop). I’m glad I can email my step-brother in Boston and we chat about music most of the time. When he was in Stanford, he studied music on Chopin and Beethoven, so he is an expert in Chopin. Chopin’s music is fairly difficult to master. I have been playing Mozart’s pieces since Grade 4. Light and very soothing. DB says classical music puts him to sleep. With my new speakers, damn, every piece of instrument can be heard clearly. Right now I’m listening to Clarinet Concerto in A Major Adagio by Mozart. It’s so peaceful and totally calm me down.

It’s Christmas eve and what happen to the little snow we had on Thursday? They were practically all gone. Took the boys to the dog park and what’s left of the snow were mostly melted and turned to ice overnight. Hopefully we’ll get some tonight, according to the local forecasters. We are suppose to get some flurries. Ranger is still itching (he has skin allergies) because the weather has been so crazy. Usually by November he is done itching. Today was his last day for his predisone (steroids). The pred quits his itching. He is definitely a different dog when he is on the pred…much greedier, has a mind of his own and a little aggressive. I have to see how he will do tomorrow.

Brought Cooper to the vet yesterday for his rabies shot. The vet is happy to see him as he gained 2 pounds compared to the last time he was under (83lbs). He is eating now and back to his normal self. Once I see him begging for his carrots and apples, I know he is himself. Last month, I took him to the hiking trails and he ate something that made him threw up after we got back. He threw up again and again several times that day and didn’t want to eat.

He refused to eat his dry food and we saw him losing weight, so much that the ribs were showing.

It went on for a week and eventually DB took him to the vet. Did blood work for parasite, and results came back negative. The vet put him on a special diet on Presciption Diet can food. Cooper ate only once a day for about 3 days and on the fourth day he ate about a can plus, but he still didn’t want his carrots, apples and rawhides. Another week went by and he was better, at least he ate some carrots and a biscuit. The following week, we gave him his regular dry food and he chowed them down. Well, atta boy. We knew he was better. It was funny when he had no appetite to eat, he still had the energy to fetch frisbees. Weird. Now he is just a greedy pig as usual. The vet asked me are the boys getting anything special for Christmas. I told the vet everyday is Christmas for them! They are spoilt rotten by DB and I.

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My favorite Christmas carol is O Holy Night. I have been listening to a lot of Christmas carols this afternoon while driving to the dog park. O Holy Night just stucked to my head the rest of the day.

O Holy Night

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.
O’er the world a star is sweetly gleaming,
Now come the wisemen from out of the Orient land.
The King of kings lay thus lowly manger;
In all our trials born to be our friends.
He knows our need, our weakness is no stranger,
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
With all our hearts we praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
His power and glory ever more proclaim!