The Weekends Are Nuts!

I'd like to know when the weekends "slow down". I don't remember a weekend this year where we just relaxed and did "nothing". It's been either working on the deck/fence going away somewhere, or running around doing something else. Crazy! The kind of weekend where you sleep in and laze-around (the Dog took care of that option), then maybe watch TV for a while and eat breakfast at noon. I miss them! And I don't think they'll be back for a while, if at all. :(

Last weekend I had a baseball tournament on Saturday - we lost in the semi's, and then we worked in the yard on Sunday.

This Saturday I am hopefully going to be able to finish the fence on the one side -- yes it's STILL not done (I might take a day next week to finish up some stuff), but it's also calling for rain all weekend, so who knows if I'll even get stuff out of the garage? We decided to purchase cedar lattice for the top so that it semi-matched our neighbours side and started to put that together last weekend but then ran out of day light. Damn winter months! While getting that at Rona, Marn noticed that they had all their trees and shrubs 50% off of their already on-sale prices, so we stocked up on some plants for the backyard side garden. Marn split our daisies and black-eyed susan's and dug up a few other things that were getting crowded in front, and moved them to the back. It's going to look nice next year if it all survives!

On Saturday night we are baby-sitting for Dave and Candace for a few hours and then either that night, or 6am the next morning heading to Burlington to meet up with friends because we're going to Buffalo to watch an NFL game. Buffalo Bill's vs. N.Y. Jet's. We did this last year and it was a lot of fun - especially the tailgating party. You should see the gadgets and food and beer people bring to this thing! It's almost better than the game itself. Anyway, our friend Chris is a huge Jet's fan, so this is the one time a year that he gets to see them. It's also fun watching the Bill's fans bad-mouth him because of allegiance to the other team. :)

Next weekend, we're taking a Toronto Harbour Cruise on Friday night because Marn could get cheap tickets through the hospital, and then I leave for Savannah for a week. We've had these tickets for a while, and meant to go in the summer, but kind of forgot about them. Next weekend is the last weekend that they run the cruise and the last weekend that we can go, so we better dress warm!

On the Echo front, he is getting big and strong - about 70 lbs now and taller than most (all?) labs we come across. He's skinny, though. Labs are short and fat. Echo's tall and long and skinny. He's also showing more and more "puppy tendencies". Things that he just didn't do a month ago. Let me give you a few examples:
- eating rolls of toilet paper off the holders.
- eating used tissue paper out of the washroom waste baskets.
- still eating lots of mulch from all gardens.
- for no apparent reason, gets a huge burst of energy and starts tearing around the house like a crazy dog barking and growling around furniture and his crate (this is REALLY funny to watch, but he sometimes gets too out of control and we have to hold him to settle down). Marn calls this his Witching Hour.
- he's getting "hand-hungry" again -- mouths our hands when you pet or reach for him. He never bites hard, but it's annoying.
- humps only Marnie, and on occasion his stuffed animals (just last night he did that). He hasn't humped me yet.
- pulling a LOT more on walks now and is wanting to sniff and check everything out, especially if there are people or other pets within sight (even 300 yards away).

We start level 2 training with him near the end of October which gives us a little less than 1 month to continue with the level 1 stuff. We need to work on "come", "stay" and walking on a loose leash a lot more.
And finally, we have to either take or find a really good picture of him to send in to our trainer. She's putting together a 2007 calendar of her 'clients' and asked us all to send in pictures. She really likes Echo, so that may help him make it! Pics are due mid-October. I'm not sure if we're going to go for a "themed" picture, or what, but we're only allowed to send in one. I think with the fall season here, it'd be easy to take a nice photo with trees and their leaves changing colour in the background.

Loose Change - 2nd Edition

I highly recommend that you view this video. You'll need an hour and 20 minutes to see it, but it's worth every minute. I came across it last night before bed, but didn't see it all, then just watched the last 30 minutes or so.

You've probably seen the short clips of the conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the pentagon, but this goes way beyond that. It's really well done, although a little fuzzy to read the text at times and the narrator is not great. I am now a believer that the US government and other "high profile" people had prior knowledge about 9/11 and that they know WAY more than they are letting the public see. Especially about the theory of the two towers being Controlled Demolitions. I know, hard to believe, but the official stories out there just don't add up.

Loose Change - 2nd Edition

Champion Puppy

Echo just completed Level 1 "puppy class" this past Thursday and you'll never guess how he did. Well, assuming that you didn't read the title of this post... he finished 1st! Ok, so that doesn't really mean that much because only 4 of 8 dogs came out to the last class, and it doesn't mean he was the best. The instructor had a little obstacle course set up where we had to perform certain things with the dog. Walk a figure 8, sit, down, stand, stay, "come", and other things. Well, he finished that course the fastest of all the other dogs which is pretty unbelievable because he's so slow and dopey compared to most of the other dogs. Anyway, we were proud "parents"! :)


I also wanted to post some updated pictures because he's getting so big now. He's 4 months old and now is 63 lbs. Weighed him tonight, so that's pretty accurate. He's eating 6.5 cups of food per day which should hold pretty steady for a bit because we're still moving him to a new food which is a little more nutritious (and expensive).

Here is Echo posing on the deck and showing off the completed side of the fence as well as showing us his new game of running out in the backyard, taking a mouthful of mulch and then avoiding us when we try and grab it from him.... fun game - not! He inevitably eats too much and barfs because of it... If we ignore him, this is what happens. So like "bad" parents, we semi-bribe him with a cookie to "come" so that we can take the crap out of his mouth.
Anyway, he's really starting to look like a Dane now, and people are finally saying, "hey is that a dane puppy?!" when we're out on walks.

Summer Sports Wrap-up

I mentioned a while ago in one of my first posts about some sports I was / we are playing this summer, but never posted about them throughout the summer.

We both played Ultimate Frisbee on Sunday nights which we both really enjoy. Again this year the finals were held on our wedding weekend/anniversary so we weren't able to play in the final game. A bit disappointing because we've been the best team for 2 summers now and haven't been able to play in the finals either year. This year we won! Last year we lost in the final game (but had the best record in the league as well).

I played 2-on-2 Beach Volleyball at Chicopee on Monday nights with a friend I met through indoor volleyball. We didn't do so well, although we somehow managed to finish 4th in the league. Throughout the playoffs we won 1 lost 3. Two of those losses were with Marnie who had to sub for my partner because he was on vacation. We usually play pretty good together, but had a bad night. Plus, Marn had only played twice all summer - a hard thing to just step into and adjust for. Anyway, Beach is a lot of fun, but in order to do well, you need to be in better shape than I am right now. Plus I'm getting these injuries that just don't go away anymore (I refuse to say because of age!!)

And the last summer sport that I played this year has yet to wrap up; slow-pitch softball. This is the first time that I've ever played this sport (slow-pitch or softball) and it's pretty fun. My team is not great, but it's fun. I wouldn't mind playing this a little more competitively, though. It's a 35+ league, but the team needed players and I used to work with a guy on the team so he asked me this year. Most teams just want to get out and play, so they don't mind if there a few younger players out. It's harder than I thought it would be to hit that lob ball! last night I almost hit our team's first home run as I hit the fence about a foot or two below the top. That was kind of exciting, but I only got to 1st base because the guy who was on first stayed there until he was sure it wasn't caught. I was standing beside him when it hit the fence. Frustrating!
Anyway, playoff's start next week with the season wrapping up on September 16th. Our team is about 5 wins, 7 losses. Probably about 4th place in a league that has only 6 teams! Anyway, it's fun and I probably will play next year again.

Just a few weeks away, Indoor volleyball starts which I'll be playing on Monday and Friday nights. I think Marnie is going to play as well, but she's not sure yet. I'd like to have a few months off and rehab my injuries, but let's be real here... I won't rehab my injuries, I'll sit on the couch. So it's probably a good thing that the sports start up fairly soon.

Echo Update

We just went to the Vet's yesterday evening before Puppy class (last one before "graduation") to get Echo's 1st rabies, some other booster, and also decided to get a kennel cough dose as well, just in case we put him in doggy day-care once a week (some require it and it's cheap). We started the visit with a weigh-in, as usual. Marnie and I both guessed that he'd come in at around 45 lbs... we were wrong. He jumped up in the last couple weeks to 55 lbs! We knew he was getting big, but that's crazy! I guess the increase to 6 cups of food per day also contributed.
We are just about to start him on his new dog food for the next 8 months, Medi-cal - the expensive stuff that you can only get at the Vet. So, starting this weekend, we'll be slowly integrating the new food into the old. Hopefully he won't get the runs like he did when he got into Marnier's food!

ps: I often wondered why you could only get Medi-Cal at the animal hospital. Well I paid a visit to their website and found out that the brand was founded by a group of Vet's! It's also a Canadian company (Guelph I believe), so at least it's made in Canada, but does it have to $60/15kg bag?

Fence nearing completion

We spent all evening yesterday working on the rest of the fence along the right side of the backyard, and amazingly we completed it! (Sans the lattice or whatever we're doing on the top). Pictures to come.
The only thing that I don't like about it is the alignment of the posts. I dug them manually and they don't exactly line up 100%. But oh well -- you can't really tell from our side, and the other side runs along the length of the neighbours house, so they don't care (I talked to him last night). The next step is putting in a gate and fence on the other side of our house between us and our other neighbour. Those posts are done already, so it's just a matter of constructing the gate and doing a bit of fence to close it off.
We are hoping to do the remaining sections of deck soon that still need to be started (railings and bench). That might be something for the long weekend... or next year the way we are going!