Final Post

This will be the final post on this blog. It is too painful since Sabrina died on 12/25/2008. She led a good life and no dog was ever more loved. Some of my favorite memories of her include:
Her penchant for drinking my coffee out of my cup

Kristen dressing her up in a princess hat at a birthday party

Her absolute hatred of camping

Her crawling around on the floor as a seal

Her sweet dispostion when Kristen loved/tortured her

Her love of sauerkraut and her hatred of dill pickles.

She tried to catch ducks flying overhead by jumping. She missed them a lot.


Sabrina, we will miss you.

The new blog is at www.ninjaandbandgeek.blogspot.com

Matt and Kristen dressed up

Matt refused to smile as a protest for having to get dressed up. Also including a pic of Sabrina who tried to stop me from going to work by laying on my laptop cord.

Vent-Names have been changed to protect the innocent

Tonight was the combination band/orchestra concert. It was the symphony band's 1st concert on stage. Apparently once marching band season ends, the band automatically morphs into symphony band. The marching band still has one more marching activity(the Holiday parade on Sat). I digress. The evening was already going to be rushed since Kristen (from this point on known as Diva in training or DIT.)stated she had to be up there at 6:15 and Matt had to be up there at 6:30 and Randy had a 7pm conference call(For once Randy would be the least of my problems). When I arrived home, DIT announced she had to be there at 6pm. Thanks for telling me. 15 minutes on this kind of evening makes a huge difference. Ok, work on making dinner after of course washing a few pans. DIT and her brother apparently can not do anything without being told 7,578 times. Finally get dinner going and Bassman decides it might be nice if he took a shower. Keep in mind at this point he has been home two hours. Can't think of that any sooner? DIT goes to get dressed. Ask if she ate anything for dinner? Chips. Way to go. Making shrimp, she can eat that. Comes down dressed and has to explain the latest teenage style of wearing two shirts and the 1st one longer than the one on top. Get the kids up to school and then find out the reason she had to be up there that early was so she and all her DIT friends can take pictures of themselves. GRRR. Get up to the concert and sit with someone from church. Concert starts and goes fine. Matt plays well even though most of the orchestra pieces were not familiar. The stage is then shifted by 5 members of the b and including suck -up- who -giggles -too -much -girl. She is daughter of lady-who-talks-too-much. (This person and I used to be friends but ever since I stated I do not have the time to be Uber band parent, our friendship has waned and is now extinguished).
After the concert, the jazz band was playing with cookies as refreshments. Very nice idea since the orchestra will be selling them in Feb. Yes, I am in fund raiser hell between the band-lollipops, Christmas plants and the orchestra-candy and stage tech-play tickets.
They made announcement that all band parents need to pick up the plants. I see Matt and corral him to help me. DIT was no where to be found. Lady-who-talks-too much made a point of telling me we have to take all of the plants we sold with us. No shit, sherlock. The girl shows up with cookie crumbs hanging from her DIT lips. Just great, we are taking care of her stuff while she socializes. Did I mention that these plants were lined up on the stage and due to the stage lights were half dead by the end of the show? One of them was so damaged that it is basically a stick with 3 pink leaves. I guess that is my $12.50 worth. Too bad that I wanted it for a gift. Most of the plants were sold to people at church. I ask her where are we supposed to keep these until Sunday considering we have a dog who tries to eat the carpet on a nightly basis? Her room. No, then the dog has no place to escape to. I now have to drive her to school tomorrow to get rid of at least three of them. They really are in terrible shape. They used some place in Westminster instead of a local nursery. I hope they never use this place again. Mike's hard lemonade is kicking in. Time to go. If you made it this far, you deserve a medal.

Thanksgiving

Sabrina

She seems to be doing ok. She is wearing the cone of shame. Needs warm facial soaks 3 times a day. Vet tech said she loves it. Not seeing it. she is on antibiotic which is light sensitive, anti inflammatory and tagamet. She is wearing the cone of shame which doubles as a snow shovel apparently. Is on soft food for a while. Loves the ID canned food. Have to go get more. Acting more like herself-annoying which is great. Getting stuck places because she does not take the cone into her calculations when deciding where to go. She gets the drainage tube out Monday and then goes back on 11/25 for the stitches removal. Should have the path report from CSU back by then.

Halloween- Kristen

Bless you my child

Chicago, Chicago...

I was in a suburb of Chicago for a conference. I took an extra day to see some of the sights. Unfortunately the weather was not cooperative. I will post the best of the pictures to my Flickr acct. Click on Flickr to see what is there. I did the north side and south side tour. The north side included some fantastic architectural sites included the most guarded place in Chicago-Mayhor Daly's residence. More firepower and security agencies that Barack's house(will get to that later.) Also included a driveby at Harpo studios. Did not see any celebrities. Saw Wrigley field and all the rooftop stadiums. Saw Ganster sites including Al Capone's business,residence, Bugsy Moran's residence. Site of Valentine day Massacre. Had a 20 minute stop at the Elk National Monument. Saw some of the few buildings that survived the Chicago fire and learned that you can not drive more than 4 miles on any street without getting to a hospital. This was done on purpose after the fire. Drove on Lake Shore Drive, saw the lake, etc. South side tour included Hyde Park- home to Barack, Jesse Jackson(whose son owns the Chicago branch of Budweiser), Farquan, relatives of lots of prizefighters, and of course Barack. It was evident it was his house because the street access was blocked off and you had to show evidence you lived on that street to gain access. Chicago police there in addition to Secret Service in full riot gear. This neighborhood of mansions in second only to Newport, RI. Saw two Frank Lloyd Wright houses. Did not go to Navy Pier and my train left from the new part of Union station, so no shopping. Only food there. Will have to attempt souveniers at the airport. Did not do Navy pier, sears tower or hancock tower. Weather too awful at that point. The Donald is building the Spire-will be twice the size of Sears Tower. Overall, beautiful city.