We stayed local for New Years Eve, made some trays of food, bought a Chick-fil-a chicken strips platter, and watched House and Friends. We turned the DVDs off when the ball was about 5 minutes away from dropping and shared a nice kiss across the years. Fitz was watching but received little more than a pat.
Spent some time at Piedmont Park this morning and bought some cheap stuff from Target, including $0.25 packs of batteries (mostly for the Wii) and some $0.69 bags of M&M's.
This afternoon we watched The Dark Knight again. The sun had long since passed by this side of the building and it was getting cold, so we wrapped up in a blanket and dozed off towards the end.
I'm now, somehow, watching the movie again, on the computer (trying this Digital Copy feature). I also have it on the iPod Touch, so watching it at work may be an option.
The gym was packed tonight, for obvious reasons. We're happy to have been at it since last year though, and hopefully this will continue through 09.
I bought a Moleskine plain pocket notebook today with my Barnes and Noble gift card. I've had some pocket cahiers for a couple years and am glad to have recorded some ideas in them. It's interesting to look back.
Michelle picked up another Moleskine planner a few days ago. After January they're nearly impossible to find (last year Fitz ate her red one and it took forever to find another, this time in black).
She bought a debossing kit from Michaels and tapped out her name into the leather cover. It looks really good. She stamped mine with the current year and my name, and for this I'm grateful.
One day of work tomorrow and then a couple more days off. And then it's business as usual, for months.
As part of this long break we were able to take Fitz to Georgia Tech during the day. We usually go at night. At night Fitz likes to follow the cockroaches he finds on the ground. He never bites at them but he zigs and zags with them until they disappear into some crevice.
We arrived to an empty campus due to winter break. We let Fitz off his leash and he immediately started running through the grass, sniffing things and darting to the next area of interest. Then he saw a squirrel. He bolted after it but it disappeared into a tree. We wondered if he might be able to actually catch one. We didn't want to be accessories to murder.
As we mused on these things he caught a glimpse of another squirrel near the chemistry building. He chased after it and it ran for a tree. Only it didn't go up the tree; it continued running, and he was getting closer. Michelle seemed a little nervous as it passed a second tree. She started chanting for the squirrel to "get up a tree!". Fitz closed the gap a little more, just as the squirrel reached a third tree and actually climbed it.
I failed you father.
We are glad about this Fitz. We didn't want to see you catch it.
You are never clear with me about these things. I'm not a mind reader
In the end, we decided that nocturnal walks work best with him, as he spent many more moments after this chasing after what amounted to leaves fluttering in the breeze.
A couple weeks ago Michelle made a purchase that disturbed me deeply: she bought a dog stroller. I came around to the idea. The primary use case is for taking Fitz to the gym with us late at night. He tends to bark and we've had issues in the condo with that. We've done this a few times now and he behaves well. Most people think we have a baby, which is a little weird. One guy leaned down to say hello to our cargo and was a little shocked when he saw our dark little beast in the shadows behind the netting.
Tonight, partly as a social experiment, we took Fitz to Ikea. Michelle put her pashmina over the front and we made our way to the entrance. We were a little unsure of how to go up the escalators, but there were people behind us so I just pushed the stroller up onto a stair and held the back wheels off the ground. Michelle took Fitz up the next escalator. She didn't get it up on the ledge as smoothly, and the stroller rocked a little, to the consternation of those behind us. We are unfit parents.
He seemed relaxed as we pushed him through the aisles. He only tried to push his head out once. Most people were really nice to us, getting out of the way much faster than usual. One woman had some children that were playing in front of us and she pulled them out of the way and gave us kindred smile. I was really hoping Fitz wouldn't produce some canine expression and blow our cover.
Ultimately an interesting experience, sullied only by Fitz having peed in the stroller at some point. Perhaps he wasn't relaxed, but rather paralyzed with fear.
Michelle and I were gathering up the rugs (one from under her desk, the other a nice find in the trash lobby) so we could take them down to Jonesboro and wash them. It's not perfect weather for that, but my truck, Ole Broadsides, is perfect for hanging them to dry. Michelle called as we were leaving and her mom answered the phone, clearly distraught. Apparently Lady was lost, gone from the front yard.
We picked up some Zaxby's on Tara on the way down. I had to double back and do a u-turn because I missed it on the first pass. Michelle quietly sighs when I do this.
We ate at a relatively languid pace considering the dire circumstances. After I finished I went walking through the neighborhood to look for Lady. Michelle's dad was patrolling in the truck. I walked past a guy and he asked if we were looking for a dog. He warned me about "strange happenings" such as other dogs going missing and of idiots that gather dogs for use in dog fighting. He said he'd keep an eye out.
I followed Michelle's mom down another street where she said she could hear Lady. Michelle had been calling out from the garage, and her voice has some reach, so I think this is what caused Lady to bark (actually all the dogs in the neighborhood were barking). I walked up to a house and looked through the fence and caught a glimpse of Lady in the back yard. I went around to knock on the front door but the people across the street behind me yelled out "nobody's home", which was weird. The guy seemed really suspicious of me and told me the best thing to do was let the owners call me when they returned. I don't remember what I said, but I ended up walking back to the house. Michelle pulled up in our car about this time and joined me in figuring out how to get Lady out of the yard. I found another gate that wasn't locked and picked her up. There was another leash tied to the fence near the gate, but no dog on it.
We're definitely glad we found her. Hopefully whoever lives in that house was helping, thinking they had found a lost dog.
-
We took Fitz to the gym with us again tonight in his dog stroller. It gets laughs on the elevator. It's a little embarrassing to be that couple but it's actually convenient to not have to worry about him barking at 9/10/11pm while we work out. He's also really well behaved in it. The dog stroller has a lot of screened areas he can shift around to look out of too, so he follows us as we move about to the different machines.
Michelle's going to donate blood tomorrow at work. It's her first time and she's a little nervous I think. She asked reddit for advice and is drinking some fluids.
Yesterday I got some very simple sparkline graphs working in objective c on the iphone using the Quartz 2D interface. It's pretty nice, hopefully coming to an iphone or ipod touch near you soon.
Our friends Reina and Jeff from our days back at Eglin came up for the SEC game on Friday. We all went to La Fonda for dinner and then played Mario Kart on the Wii. Our air bed was too small to accomodate the both of them so Reina took the couch, where she fared much better than Jeff as his airbed leaked, placing him on the hard floors a few hours after laying down. He endured this for two nights, though I believe alcohol and general glee from the Florida victory made the second night more bearable.
Michelle and I decided to take a look at some of the open units at Viewpoint on Saturday. We took Fitz with us and let him explore the condos as we did. I'm not sure if doing this is normal, but if it isn't the agent didn't say anything. The Viewpoint has a really nice 2 bed, 2.5 bath split level plan that we liked.
Today we looked at The Reynolds, across from Crawford Long Hospital. It's a little more traditional in construction. The living areas in each of the units we saw (1 and 2 bedrooms) were much larger than those we've seen in places like Spire, Metropolis, and Viewpoint.
But what I really need to discuss is how Michelle falls. While we were walking down Peachtree towards The Reynolds, she tripped on something just behind me. I felt her hand slap my back (she says she was trying to "grab on") and when I turned to the right I saw something rather amazing. Like a young sapling cut at the base she fell past me in slow motion, palms facing the ground but pulled tightly in towards her chest and shoulders. She pretty much fell flat on her face. If she would have wiggled her feet after landing, one might have thought -- especially with her long, dark coat -- that she was a penguin. You might even expect her to push off down the slope.
I treated her knee and we watched Live Free or Die Hard again. Fitz curled up by my chest and things were pretty awesome.
