What I'm Loving Now

1. FALL
2. Getting our kitchen closer and closer to being done, albeit very slowly!
3. Rainy Sundays
4. Starting Christmas project plans
5. My puppies!
6. Cheap tickets to Europe - ok, I don't have anything booked, but I could!
7. Dogs in socks - I'm trying to keep Kami from overly licking her back paws and it's VERY cute!

Update on the YouTube Videos

I updated the chipmunk video link to the real one that is funny!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw&mode=related&search=

The next one in the list can no longer be played - search YouTube for 'more cowbell - SNL'- the original hilarious one was set to BlueOyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper. The new one is not quite as funny.

In Best Homer Drooling Voice...

Mmmmm.....Top Gun......mmmmmm

It was on today - love the opening sequence, love the music, LOVE the beach volleyball scene, mmmmmmmmmmmm

Despite my current feelings toward Tom Cruise (what an arrogant ass), I love this movie. Never did see it in the theater, however.

13 July, 2007

Friday the 13th! Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released yesterday, but being in a new city and very tired, we didn't make it. In fact, I didn't make it until we got home - oh well - I got to see the real thing! We decided to do a bus tour today to see part of the Georgian New Town and the Royal ship Britanica.

Amy and a bagpiper near Princes Street Gardens

After the tour, we walked through parts of Princes Street Gardens back towards the Old Town, up more steps to the Royal Mile and over to the Candlemaker Row area. The Elephant House Cafe is where JK Rowling wrote parts of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Greyfriar's Bobby was a little dog that belonged to a bobby. After the bobby died, the dog would spend each day sitting on his master's grave until he died and was buried with his master.

Some shops in the Candlemaker Row area

Is it a real statue?

This sure spooked A.! She thought it was real until she saw it move, so we had to do the whole thing - first he kissed your hand, then he 'knighted' you with his sword, then he put his hand on your head, then he gave the thumbs up.

We walked back to the Royal Mile and back to the hostel for a short rest before dinner and our evening activity - a Haunted Walk!

Here is one of many closes along the Royal Mile - small alleys off of the main road and really pretty and mysterious

A. remembered a sweatshirt she had seen the first day we got here - it said Live for Rugby on it and we'd been looking for it all day. (With A., there is always lots of shopping while traveling to find the perfect stuff - nevermind that we can't see any of the things we buy souveniers of because we're shopping!) Anyway, we looked and looked. We walked down the Royal Mile and decided to eat real food - not just sandwiches. We chose Italian - Bella Italiano. I had a grilled chicken ceasar sald and A. had pasta. After eating and before our haunted walk, we continued our search. A. was sure that we hadn't gone this far down the Royal Mile, but I kept pusing forward and sure enough, we found the shop jsut before they were closing and got her sweatshirt and her dad a rugby shirt that "he has to wear to every one of my rugby games". Whew! Meltdown averted!

We made it the Mercat, which is olde English for market, where we met our tour.

We left from the above monument with our guide and unfortunately a group of smart-ass, unruly kids. The tour itself was fun, not scary, and we got to see some parts of the Old Town we wouldn't have seen on our own, including some underground caverns. Unfortunately, the rotten pre-teens ruined it and the tourguide, along with many of the rest of us, were quite upset at all the interuptions and disruptions.

So, after the tour, we headed back home to this lovely view of the Castle. The bleachers were set up because that night Blondie was performing at the Castle. Pink was performing on Saturday night! We got a free concert that thankfully didn't keep us up too late cuz we were tired after a restless night with a coughing roomate and all that walking! We wrote in our travel journals and did a few scrapbook pages, but called it an early-ish night again.

A Poor Gimpy Collie Girl

...has a strained left shoulder after falling off the bridge at agility a few weeks ago. It hasn't got any better, so I took her to the vet. She was prescribed NSAID's and I'm going to start her on a glucosamine and chindroitin supplement that has been tested and proven effective in dogs in maintaining joint health. NO MORE CHASING SQUIRRELS - which is what continues to aggravate it!

I'm Done

... feeling sorry for myself. I was feeling bad cuz I have to diet and need to work hard to be 'where I want to be', but for now, I'm done. I'm thankful that I have the physical ability to move, the mental capacity to understand how to do this and the means to carry my plan out. And I'm super-excited to get back on track and lose that fat and build lots of muscle! (and fit into those cute pants that I bought for fall - I'm nearly there!)

Tired

I have been so-very-tired the last few weeks. Is it the crappy eating? Or the stress at work? Or the wierd weather changes - hot and humid one day and just right the next? Not enough exercise? Whatever it is, I must do something on the weekends besides watch tv and fall asleep on the couch. Ugghhh - I'm sooooooooo tired.....I'm off to lay on the couch, watch You've Got Mail (AGAIN!) and catch a few winks.

Doggone Lazy Sunday

12 July, 2007

Our first day as total tourists! We didn't really have a plan - I knew the things that we HAD to see and it was really up in the air. We ate breakfast at the hostel (of course, A. won't eat cereal, so she'll be awfully hungry later on), then walked up the million steps to the top of the Royal Mile (can I just say that I was SO happy I'd been working on squats with heavy weights - I could fel my legs, but they weren't sore. A.'s were very sore and tired). I had decided to do a bus tour first, but as we got to the top of the steps, there were so many people going towards the castle that I changed my mind and we went to the castle instead!

The weather was nice - on the cool side and cloudy, but at least it wasn't raining!

On the bridge to the castle

We met up with a tour that was just getting started. Our guide, Nigel, brought us to all the main sites in the castle grounds and delved into the history of the castle.

It is built on a huge chunck of volcanic rock and has never been penetrated during a battle.

There are currently troops that still live and work there. They discovered the timbered ceiling of the Great Hall I believe during the Victorian Era - it looks the the hull of a ship turned upside down. (Ona asidenote - Meredith Viera interview JK Rowling in the Great Hall of the Castle ~10 days after we were there!).

Inside the Great Hall

We were just in time to see a performance in the Great Hall of two Jacobite soldiers - they did a reenactment of what the soldiers would have worn, their weapons and how they fought, plus described the battles they fought in.

After the re-enactment, we toured some more buildings and saw the Crown Jewels of Scotland (no pictures allowed!). The following pictures are the view of Edinburgh from the Castle.

The water is the Firth of Forth and land beyond the water is the kingdom of Fife

Arthur's Seat as seen from the Castle

The wonderful Scots love their dogs as much as I love mine and they have graveyard for the dogs of the soldiers at the Castle.

We ate lunch at the Castle, wrote some postcards and were just in time to see the One o'clock gun fire - they fire it daily at 1:00 p.m. as a time signal to the boats on the Firth of Forth. The name of the gun is the Mons Meg.

Me without a hairdryer - our roomates with the adaptor that worked had already left that morning!

A. outside the Castle!

After the castle, we wandered down the Royal Mile, stopping in shops, buying souveniers and postcards.

We made it to the bottom of the Royal Mile and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which is the Queen's official residence when in Scotland. We opted to not do the tour (OK - I was being cheap, but there are only so many tours one can do in a day!) and just took pictures through thte fence with the Japanese tourists!

A rock at the palce of Holyroodhouse that looks like Pumba!

After walking around a bit at the Palce, we were getting tired and hungry and headed back up the Royal Mile (did I mention it was all downhill on the way there? That means it was all uphill on the way home!) We walked and walked and walked. We decided to find a grocery store and after more walking, we finally located it. We got some groceries that we could take with us and would be ok wothout a refrigerator and some frozen pizzas for dinner. We made it back to the Royal Mile, but by this time we were really tired and had bags of groceries and souveniers so we found a cab to take us back to the hostel. We made pizza, had lemonade (it's fizzy!) and basically chilled out til time for bed. I gave A. her travel journal and while reading it, she found out we were going to Paris. Boy was she surprised! We had some new roomates that night - 2 nice Australian girls - one was a runner who was doing races throught the UK, the other was living in London and was just travelling with for fun. They invited us out to the pub crawl, but we were tired (not to mention that A. is only 16), so it was early to bed!

A Saturday Night Party

Sadie - asleep on the couch

Kami - asleep in the front hall

We lead very exciting lives in these parts!

Eclectic Ramblings On A Saturday Night

if i didn't know me and was somebody else, i'd totally read my blog cuz it's cool


check out this blog - http://london-underground.blogspot.com/ - a fun reminder of London


and how cool is this? http://www.jigzone.com/puzzles/F1055D4C8EEB?z=34


some really cool photography - http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=13988 - i think i may become to ADDICTED to Etsy in the near future (just stay away, far, far away!)

and this is the purse that i bought in edinburgh - when in scotland, ya gotta buy a tartan and this was oh-so-cute, i couldn't pass it up - http://www.nessbypost.com/

"a hazy shade of winter" - remember that song? i haven't heard it for ages - it's on tv right now - less than zero is playing on encore

i really want to rent one of these cottages - http://www.crystalcovebeachcottages.org/html/index.html

and wow! i wanna be as eloquent and thoughtful as this blogger, know as hottt cheryl on pottercast - she was the continuity editor on the last 3 or 4 harry potter books - http://chavelaque.blogspot.com/

i have no idea how to make the links be just an underlined word or a phrase and not all that "http:// stuff" - how can i do that so i don't look like an idiot???

why does font size and type and spacing just automatically change on me? i hit "publish", then go read what i wrote and it's different than what i just did - i don't get it!