I'm baaaaaack

I'm sorry, what was that? Two years went by? How did that happen?

Let's focus on notable events of the past year, in no particular order.

This happened: my little brother got engaged! I have a sister-in-law-to-be! I will be extremely, extremely happy once they've both said "I do" and I can breathe a huge sigh of relief that Cassy never figured out that she is way out of Cameron's league :) Stay tuned. They got engaged on October 27 (the day after Cameron's birthday), and will be married in July 2014.

This happened/happens: Mia is still very much alive and kicking, and loves to hunt & kill the crayfish in the stream in our backyard! Mia turned 2 this year and is so far showing very few signs of slowing down.

And finally, this happened: Brad, my parents, and I went to ALASKA (or, as Brad likes to say, ARASKA) in July 2012 and had a fantastic time. We climbed on glaciers, saw whales, went kayaking, caught jellyfish, and overall enjoyed our vacation from reality.

Hope you guys had as great of a 2012 as we did!

time wasters!

Well, friends, I am officially--as of last night--finished with my semester of class and work at Grand Valley. That puts me at one (1) full time job! woohoo! plus a small contract, but that's not as big of a deal.

So what am I going to do with all my new-found free time? well, I'm rediscovering my love for cooking and baking [just in time for Christmas, I might add]; I'm planning on starting P90X on Monday; and, of course, I'm going to return to wasting the perquisite amount of time on the internet. I have to know what's going on in the world, ya know.

Here's a list of my favorite sites in no particular order:
1. salon.com--highbrow news, of a sort. the kind you can tell your friends you read about. for example, under tech, the winning tweet of the week: "In honor of oil-soaked birds, 'tweets' are now 'gurgles.'"
2. wired.com--techie stuff, good for knowing what's going on at work. the blogs are especially fun--that's the best way to learn about new gadgets & sites like this [http://www.teachparentstech.org/] that are super useful for sending to grandparents.
3. thenest.com--shhh, guilty pleasure. lots of good pets information on the boards, though.
4. facebook.com--no description necessary.
5. dearblankpleaseblank.com--check it out, it's hilarious. e.g.

Dear Windshield Wipers,

Can't touch this.

Sincerely, That Little Triangle.

6. cuteoverload.com--the name says it all.

have fun wasting time!

blog work

Well, you're in luck, readers--working on the blog at work has reminded me that I have a rather sadly neglected one sitting right here!

Because Mia is just so darn cute [and so much cuter than me--it's the fur], let's look at the last few months through Mia's eyes:

[this took forever because my Mac's hard drive crashed over Thanksgiving nothing is set up like I want it anymore, so appreciate it!]


Mia, that's not ladylike!
Playing with Aunt Kelly
Being a biker babe
after Mommy feels about 10000x this tired--Mia goes for a brief nap.
Me? Chew on the carpet? Never.
'Cause all the fun stuff happens outside.
Women's Fall Retreat 2010! We left Mia at home. And now she's an it, so she never gets to go.
family fall photo
PLEASE play with me.

What? Food?


So now that I've completely AW'd my beautiful puppy, here's a quick update to our lives: I'm putting my MBA on hold & will probably finish it up at UM in a couple years; I've moved full time to Mavin Global and am super excited about it! and Mia [as you can see] continues to grow both in poundage and in stamina. the little monster can run forever.

Happy holidays, all, if I don't 'see' you before then!

like mother, like daughter-ish

To update you on Mia, our monster is now 4 mo. old and fully formed terror-inspiring 26-lb puppy.

Her favorite activities include digging up mommy, "grandmommy," and the neighbor's plants--her preferred method is to excavate all dirt in the area and then pull plant out by the leaves and run with it, strewing dirt as far as possible--tearing, esp. shoes, socks, and fluffy things, running around like a crazy/possessed thing, and any other possible mischief. possibilities, of course, are limitless.

it's not that she doesn't know what she should be doing--if anybody happens to have food and orders her to do something, it's amazing the number of commands that she knows. but if you don't have food and there's something more interesting around, forget it.

one of the things we do to try to eliminate excess energy (because a sleeping puppy is the cutest puppy) is play fetch, which usually turns into throwing the ball/frisbee/rock/tree limb and then running around trying to get it back from mia. she's very good at bringing it almost back to where you are.

one sunny afternoon this week, we were outside playing with the frisbee. as we're running back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the houses, i finally got the frisbee back, looked at mia--jumping frantically up and down, literally, of course--and said, "Mia, go get it!"

This inspired even more frantic hopping like a rabbit.

I then turned around and chucked the frisbee in the opposite direction.

Unluckily for Mia, however, she was positioned a couple feet behind a lamp post, and when she took off to get the frisbee, she forgot to avoid the obstacle directly in front of her.

THWACK.

Don't worry, she's fine, she has a skull like a rock.

I just think it's funny that we're so definitely not possibly related and yet she seems to have inherited my grace and poise :)

long time no see, friends!

Most of the reason that I don't write (other than my horrific schedule) is because I feel guilty posting if I don't upload any pictures, and I'm absolutely awful at remembering to upload pictures from my camera to my computer.

I don't feel guilty any more!

If you really want to see pictures, most of you can see what I'm tagged in ('cause I'm sure not uploading them) on facebook. Lots of pictures there.

As for an update, lots has gone in my life in the last few months. Mia grew big enough to jump on furniture and get into even more trouble than when she was small, which has pretty much put Brad's and my problem-solving abilities to the test. She's either very smart or just dumb enough to get into all the bizarre stuff (think: used Kleenexes) that we don't want to particularly have her eat and digest. It's totally TMI, but she has the WEIRDEST looking poop. Like seriously, Mia? Where did you find little bright blue balls to eat? What even is that?!

On a less digestive note, I have gone to depressingly bored to overwhelmingly busy--because what's the fun of living somewhere in the middle? School started up at the end of August, and although Grand Valley certainly doesn't expect as much as UM, three classes keeps me pretty busy. I'm taking Econ, Accounting, and Business Ethics, which is so far removed from any of the classes I've taken in the last three years that it isn't even funny. Like, I'm using numbers. Real numbers. Sometimes I add them. Sometimes we even multiply.

I'm also a research assistant in the Marketing department, which means that I am the personal slave of roughly 15 professors who obviously can't grade their own papers, record their own grades, or upload their own quizzes because that would be menial work, and far below them. Of course, they can't do their own research or draw their own conclusions, either, some of them, because that would be my job.

I'm slightly bitter about this position. I do like being there, though. Sometimes I get to do my homework if there's nothing to do and it's nice to be surrounded by students and learning again. I love the academic environment.

I also still have contract work to do for Gale (yay, a job that pays well!!), so that takes up spare moments. But....da da da da!! I also got a real live job, too, which doesn't pay but is very interesting. I'm working as a technical writer (intern) for a start-up IT company, which means that I get to do all sorts of things that I'm absolutely not trained or prepared to do. I get to learn every day and make actual contributions to work. I never planned to work for such a small company, but I really love it.

So to recap: I'm going to school full-time, and I have three jobs: one covers my tuition, one pays well, and one is interesting. Now if only I could find one job that covers all three categories!

da puppy!

There are now THREE dots in da house, counting the particularly furry one that came home with us about a week and a half ago at a ridiculous 5 weeks old--too young to be separated from her mother, but due to some sad circumstances, she came home to spend a little extra time with her new family.

it's hard to believe it has only been a week and a half--she's already growing [we had to let out her collar], and she has already mastered sit, come, and down [when she feels we're offering her an appropriate amount of food], housebreaking [to a limited degree], and gnawing on her favorite chew toy, fingers! not to say that she discriminates--basically anything that moves slower than Mia, as we call our new addition, is at risk for chewing and possible total destruction. it's a work in progress.

having an extremely adorable and ridiculously needy puppy around the house all day has certainly altered brad & my way of life. instead of having no one require my attention from 4:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., i have a furball capable of untold messes asking for every second of my time!

less work is getting done, let me tell you.

one of the hardest things, for me, was crate-training; in my heart i know she's just an animal and she doesn't REALLY need anything, but the crying cuts right to my heart!

on a much lighter note, here are some of our many joyful and hilarious moments with mia in the last 10 days:

Here's one for size comparison; you can see that the day we brought her home, she wasn't much bigger than her food dish! Good news is, she no longer needs to step in her food dish to get all the food out.


Last week we took her swimming in Mom and Dad Dotson's pool--good news is, she swims great! bad news is, she doesn't seem to like swimming that much [at least not yet]. destination is ALWAYS dry land!


This is Mia on the stairs. Usually she's a very smart girl, but with the stairs, we're not sure what's going through her head. She gets UP the stairs just fine, but on the way down, she has to stop and bark at the stairs, try to chew/attack them, and sometimes cry. Then she falls down the stairs. Apparently up is a lot easier than down!



I'll try to update a little more regularly so you can see this little one grow & learn [& drive her "parents" insane!].

Ick, Ow, and Fun!

Last week I had the stomach flu for the first time since I don't even remember when. Mainly, this meant that I couldn't eat anything without feeling ill and puking out my toenails (sorry for the graphic). If I didn't eat anything, I was fine. Starving to death started to look pretty attractive, let me tell you. Convincing Brad to let me starve to death, however, was more difficult. I, on one hand, was convinced that I could survive (or starve to death peacefully, take your pick) on fruit punch-flavored gatorade and water. He was going down the Ensure path, which means gross protein drink. Good grief, as if being sick with the flu isn't bad enough, you want to make it worse?!

The stomach flu also brought up all sorts of fun married things. Brad has seemingly decided that being sick for two days is just about all anybody needs to be sick for. Day 1 he was very attentive, worried, did all the laundry, and brought me water. Very helpful. Day 2 was about the same, with a small increase of rolling of eyes. Around Day 3 (and especially day 4), his efforts grew increasingly desperate. He bought large quantities of things he was sure would cure me--and I'm not entirely convinced that he was worried about my stomach more than he was worried about the fact that I hadn't gotten groceries or otherwise fed him in four.days. and he was reduced back to taking sausages for lunch and getting chinese take-out.

We all feel very sorry for Brad.

To his credit, he brought me water to the very end and expressed GREAT relief at my improvement on day 6.

The other interesting thing about have the stomach flu when you're married is that everybody and their aunt hear "married" and "puking" and think PREGNANT! BABIES! YAY! FUN! which, in general, freaks out the newlywed and certainly-not-wanting-a-baby me.

I.am.not.pregnant.

On a completely different topic: we went to Tennessee to see Mike and Katie last weekend! I have a good friend who swears that the more you hurt afterward, the more fun you had. With obvious notable exceptions (see: torture/stomach flu), I find this is generally true. It was certainly true on Monday, after Brad, Katie, Kelly, Mike, Adam, and I beat up our bodies in the water just about every way we could come up with.

We went tubing! Tubing is when you get out of a perfectly good and reliable boat and hang on for dear life to an inflatable device that would probably be better used to rescue someone from drowning somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Then we tie this device with a 70-foot rope to the perfectly good boat and take off at completely unreasonable speeds.

This is fun.

In the picture, you can see that my compatriots are grinning like idiots. I don't know how or why their faces would contort that particular way in their travails. My head and neck, when tubing, is completely locked into position to avoid biting my lip (which I did anyway), biting my tongue (which I managed to avoid doing), or allowing my head to hit my tube (which I also did). I also figure that it minimizes the amount my brain jiggles around in my head. Less movement is less movement. Plus I'm in pain, in which case I don't usually smile.

I have no idea why we do this for fun.

We also wakeboarded. I like wakeboarding. You're above the water instead of skidding on top of it, although we do run into the same problem of the rope and the abandoning of a perfectly good boat. I try not to do anything stupid like trying to jump to great heights (like my husband), resulting inevitably in much crashing and hurting, and so generally I manage to hurt no more than my muscles and my pride when I fall.

The next day, we abandoned the good boat altogether for the simple inflatable--the tube--down a river. Down-river tubing is awesome. It's exciting, all you have to do is float, and you can even talk between rapids!

Unfortunately, it has not rained for about a month and a half in Tennessee, and the water level was very low. Rocks had been sharpened. Stones were jutting out as much as they could possible reach. Everything was a little more dangerous than usual.

Especially dangerous were the inhabitants of the river: every single citizen of Tennessee and their extremely overweight aunt were on this particular river on the fourth of july--every.single.one. Every hillbilly and redneck for miles around was, I swear, floating down at the exact same time at us.

So not only did we have to avoid the rocks and scoot our butts over the ones we inevitably hit, we had to avoid the large and often very stuck rednecks! AH!

Bumper tubes galore!

Honestly, I've inherited the greatest family. It wouldn't be nearly as fun with anybody else. Well, maybe not so painful. These people are hard to keep up with, man. But they sure feed ya good!

Suffice to say that the four of us slept a lot and driving was not a popular election of activity all the way home.