What I've been up to

• • Alberta flooded last week... More specifically, southern Alberta flooded... As in, a natural disaster that has displaced thousands of people.  It's still dry here, Wherthefurflies, thank goodness. Calgary was not nearly as lucky.
  • Data centers lost power, hospitals closed.  Work has gone insane to deal with it all, but it is hard to complain when you think of those impacted more directly.
  • My friend Jen and I have been jogging three times a week for about a month.  She makes me go twice as fast as I usually do, which I think is mean, but I suppose is good for me.  
  • A few weeks ago, I spent a stressful week in Calgary (before the flood) taking a class in preparation for an exam that generally has a high failure rate.   I hate school - always have - but I am happy to say I got my results and I passed.  90% thankyouverymuch.
  • The boy and I went to the market on Saturday, because I'd heard that a local farm had fresh strawberries ready for sale.  We bought a basket, which caused me to ooh and aah they were so good.  Today, I went out to my yard and picked the first few strawberries from the garden.  They were even better.
  • And, I have been occupied with my puppy.  He's trouble, but I already love him to bits.  So do Tallulah and Winter.
  • Exhibit A  (the warm up)

• • Exhibit B (the main event, which is very closely supervised)

• • Then, every once in a while with no warning, this happens, and I think it’ll all work out.

Calm Before the Storm

Lewis seems to get a burst of energy in the evenings.    Tonight he came with us on Tallulah's nightly walk and walked 2-3 blocks (not altogether) and then came home to rumble.    This has been going on for about two hours.

I suspect he'll sleep well tonight.

Welcome Home

After a long day yesterday, I picked up Lewis and we drove home.  He cried for less than a minute before curling up and going to sleep.  He slept through a couple of big rain storms, and in me getting lost on an unintended detour.  After a couple of hours, he woke up and cried a little so I pulled over and took him out for a pee.  The gravel road where we stopped had too many sights and smells, though, and he was too distracted.  So, we loaded back into the car and came home without any complaints.

The Boy met me here, so that I could have a second set of hands while I introduced Lewis and Winter for the first time.  I figured things would go fine, and they did.  After the initial few sniffs, Winter thundered up and down the room with Lewis in hot pursuit.  Winter could easily have jumped onto a couch or other furniture to get away, but mostly chose not to.

This morning, having a constant shadow and tail nipper might be getting a little bit old, because he's told Lewis off a few times.  Both are back at it within moments again anyway, though.

Surprisingly, Lewis slept through the entire night.  Again, he cried for a minute or so when I put him in the crate, but settled down quickly.  I thought he'd have me awake at least a few times, but I actually woke up before he did in the morning.

Tallulah comes home to meet him in a few hours.  I am not at all worried about her being aggressive towards him, but considering his size, I am a little worried she'll overwhelm him with bounce.  We'll see.  She's used to having a small dog around (just not quite this small).


I am no cinematographer, but here's a sample of the cute:

School

School and I don't generally get along.  We never have.  There's a reason why I studied English in university and then Accounting at college, only to end up in a process management role in IT.  Book learning isn't for me - I'm much better at learning 'on the job'.  Unfortunately, some formal education is necessary to prove that I know what I know.  For example, I need a certificate proving that I know all there is to know about change management because I am a change manger.  Otherwise, people would think I make stuff up when I make then follow a particular process or prove that they've met specific requirements before approving their changes.  They'd be sure I do it for no other reason than to contribute to the government bureaucracy that we all marinate in every day.   I suspect they do anyway. Funny the way these things work...

I used to have a certificate in ITIL change management, but then ITIL came out with a newer version and I had to start all over again.  (ITIL is a set of best practices for running an IT shop - it's pretty much based on common sense, but they use old words assigned to knew definitions.)

Reading this stuff is dryer than dirt.  I can (and frequently do) happily pound back 100 pages in a book in one sitting.  Those are fiction, though, and written with entertainment in mind rather than delivery of information.  For the ITIL books, entertainment isn't even on the radar.  It takes me about an hour to read 10 pages, and even then I think I only retain about 25%.

This week has been dedicated to working my way through a 260 page book.  Next week is the class, for which reading the book is a prerequisite, and then the exam.   The exams are designed with the intension of most people failing.  (Really, they've made the questions so complicated that I don't think that the ability to pass the exam has anything to do with one's knowledge of the class content, but that's a whole other rant.)  Please, God, let me pass the exam.

It'll all be over on next Friday afternoon, assuming that I pass.  Friday evening, I drive south of Calgary and pick up my new baby.  Lewis will be coming home.

If you ask me, I think he looks kind of annoyed in this picture.

I asked for an updated picture of him yesterday, and apparently he was disrupted from something important to provide it.

Coming Soon...

Tentative name is Lewis.  He's a 5 week old Maltese, and will be coming to live with me in mid-June.

6 months

So, I says to the Boy earlier this week:  Do you know what Monday is?  He thinks about it for a moment and says: It's the 13th.

Do you know what the 13th is, I ask?  He asks me if I'm being a girl and I say yes.  He says the 13th will be some number of months  that we've been together, for which he gets a poke in the gut.  Then he admitted that it's been six months since we met.  He's a guy, so I don't think it means much to him, except that I seem to care so he humours me.  For me, it feels like a milestone.

Things are still new, but we're figuring them out.   We're happy.   We probably have more that we're opposites about than we have in common, but we have a lot of fun.  He's good for me; not just that he treats me better than any guy has before, but also that he keeps me in check (as I do for him).

He's a wee bit of a redneck, I am a wee bit of a priss.   He likes hard rock noise, I like just about everything but.  He loves horrors movies, I like (according to him) sap.  He's a meat and potatoes guy who likes to eat out.  I like vegetables, and prefer to stay in and cook,   I have a huge sweet tooth, he's diabetic.  So, we compromise, try new things and figure it out.

Next month some time, construction on my basement is supposed to start.  There'll be an office for me to work in during the day, but more, this is a means to make room for him.  Having lived alone as long as I have, I've said that a separate room to congregate in is a requirement before I could share my very open-concept home with anybody.  So, we're getting that in place so that I can start to adjust and get used to the idea of sharing my space permanently   Plans are for him to move in when his lease is up next winter.

Randomosity

Target opened in town today.  I joined the hoards who went for a tour.  I'm not sure if I'll like it.  Their stuff seems a little too expensive to be a good deal, but a little too cheap to be high quality.  We'll see.

I also stopped to try to find some new food for Tallulah.  She has stopped eating much, since Cotton died.  She's down about 6 pounds, to the point that her ribs are visible through her curls.  A vet appointment didn't find anything wrong, so now I'm trying a different food.

As I paid for the new food, Tallulah sat politely at my side.  Unbeknownst to me, she was eye level to a buffalo bully stick and decided to make it her own.  It'd be their own dang fault if I took a half chewed bully stick and put it back, but she seemed so happy to have it (upset when I took it away) that I ended up buying it for her.  I know - they do that on purpose as a marketing ploy.

Tallulah is going for surgery next week.  She's got a cyst that has gone crazy and got infected on the back of her head.  It's been weeping for too long, but the final straw was when all the hair around it (2" diameter) fell out.  So, I finally bit the bullet and made an appointment to have it removed.  While she's under, I'll get them to clean her teeth too.