September Week Four Photo Roundup

Monday, September 22 - Meet Keifer. He is the naughtiest service dog I've ever met. I love him and will let him stick his whole head in my bag any time he wants to. Also, he can lick my toes. I don't care. 

I was at a panel that some of my colleagues were presenting and Keifer and his person sat next to me. It was the best place to sit at a Constitution Day panel ever. 

Tuesday, September 23 - One of my colleagues retired. Sad news, to be honest, because she was wonderful. On the bright side, I get to move into her old office, which is a vast improvement because IT HAS WINDOWS.  As soon as the technology guy moves my computer and phone, I'm going to be in the new office lickety split. 

Old office as I'm moving stuff out.

Wednesday, September 24 - Just saw this in my neighbors' yard and laughed so hard I thought I was going to have sit down. Some of this is because I have the mentality of a thirteen-year-old boy and some of it is because my neighbors are an adorable lesbian couple. 

Thursday, September 25 - Sometimes when I do my quarterly report for goals and I have to report that I have not done training with Hannah, I feel like maybe people don't understand that what I mean by that is that I have not taken 3-10 minutes with her and worked on obedience. But we are ALWAYS training. This following photo looks like a dog just sleeping on the steps, doesn't it? What happened here is actually much more impressive. 

She's anxious and reactive and always on guard. This is me sitting next to her outside with no expectation except that she stay within arms reach of me. She can walk around (there's no leash on her), she can sit next to me, she can lay down, she can chew a stick, whatever. We're working on a relaxation protocol here. She doesn't need this in in the house, where she's a rock star and lovely and chill, but she needs to learn that she can relax outside. 

And after weeks of sitting on these steps for 1-10 minutes a day (it really depends on how much of a time crunch I'm in and what the weather is like), she stood guard for a few minutes and then laid down and closed her eyes! Woot woot! Success! 

Now we'll keep practicing until she learns that she can trust me to keep watch. 

Friday, September 26 - Just both my girls hanging out in the morning sun.

Saturday, September 27 - Have you ever seen a happier dog? We did a family walk and Hannah was so pumped to be with both her people. 

Sunday, September 28 - I forgot to take a photo until I was walking Hannah right before bed. I tried to find someplace with some light, but it was dark outside. 

Monday, September 29 - It was gorgeous here in southeastern Wisconsin today. Highs NEAR 90. Who am I to do anything except bask in the sun?

This fountain is a central location/common meeting location on campus. 

Tuesday, September 30 - First thing this morning I had a periodontist appointment. Unfortunately, the chatty hygienist I usually have was working on another patient and my hygienist was all business. Oh, well. My teeth are cleaned for another three months.

Bonus photo - New office! Windows! Tiny plants near death that I'm hoping to resuscitate with love and sunshine! 

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Do you prefer a chatting hygienist (I do - it keeps my mind off what's happening) or to have one who is all business? Have you ever had a male hygienist? Would you do the annoying thing of moving offices if it meant an upgrade to windows?

A Day in the Life, 5/14/2025

Do you want to know about my day in excruciating detail? Here it is! If you don't want to know my day the tl;dr is that I walked the dog and worked. 

5:30am - Woke up. I finished The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer while hanging out under my SAD lamp. I'm wearing my BGSU sweatpants. I think I mostly like this book, but I'm going to be honest and say that there are some disturbing aspects of it. It's also a bit confusing about who the audience is - it reads very YA to me, but it's shelved under adult fiction. I'll write a longer review later, but the gist is that I liked this book okay, but didn't love it and I have some concerns about some of the messaging. 

6:00am - Go downstairs to take off Hannah's cone (she has a spot that's healing and we don't want her to mess with it overnight) and brush the cat. 

6:05am - Take Hannah out for her morning walk. It's creepy foggy this morning. I literally just wore my sweats and sandals to walk the dog. No "real shoes" or outerwear needed. Woot!

6:40 - I feed Hannah, tell Zelda what a pretty girl she is, get my breakfast ready, and then eat. This is my usual breakfast of yogurt and granola, some fruit that is cantaloupe and the first nectarine of the season (!), some cranberry juice, and some tea.  

7:10am - Upstairs to brush my teeth, get dressed, and put on makeup.

Yes, we each have a clock and a box of tissues on our side of the bed. 

For makeup these days, I have a real mix of drugstore and fancy brands. This is a lot about makeup, so if you don't care, just skip to the next photo.

I start with elf tone adjusting primer as a face primer. I super recommend this if you have red undertones. It's perfect. I also use elf lock it down eyelid primer. It has a bit of a smell that I don't care for, but it works really well and I only smell it for like five seconds, so for the price, you can't do better.

For my eyes, I have a Half-Baked Naked palette from Urban Decay. Honestly, this palette is not ideal for my skin tone. I thought I would try something new and stray from my Naked2 Basics Neutral palette. Lesson learned. No one here cares, but I am eying the new Naked Eyeshadow Sticks from Urban Decay because I think they might be easier to blend. I'd like to get to Sephora or Ulta to try them out. I use Maybelline Great Lash as mascara and love it.

I'm using Real Flawless from Laura Mercier for my foundation. It's a replacement for a different LM foundation that has been discontinued. It's pretty good and it feels nice, but I wish it had a bit more coverage. 

I'm currently using some Cover Girl blush and it's FINE. It's maaaaybe a tad too dark for me. I literally used every bit of a Tarte sample of paaarty and then Sarah told me about the Tarte 7 for $77 sale, but I dithered too long and the sale is over and I had to just go buy some blush at the drug store. If anyone has spare paaarty that they don't like or need, GIVE IT TO ME. 

7:40am - Pack up for work and then head out.

"Please don't leave me."

Lunch is some guacamole, tuna, and a green bean salad. I have pretzels at work to eat with the guac. My salad has green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, kalamata olives, and goat cheese. The dressing is a mix of olive oil, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper. I made enough of the salad last night to last through the rest of the work week, so I can just grab and go in the mornings. 

On the way out of the driveway, my neighbors were walking their dogs and they didn't notice me coming down the driveway as they watched to see what another dog was doing so that they could get their dogs by without their dogs barking.  They were standing right in the middle of our driveway. As soon as their dogs saw me in the car, though, they started barking at me. I had a short conversation with them and headed on my way. 

7:45am - Drove to work. I was listening to the above pictured Garth Brooks album. I listened to "In Lonesome Dove" twice, "Rodeo" once, and pulled into my parking spot just as "What She's Doing Now" finished. It's still foggy, so it was sort of a creepy drive. 

8:01am - Unpacked all my gear. Checked email, set up appointments, tried to get ready for some appointments later on in the day. We also debriefed about a training we all went to yesterday. THEN!!

9:00am - DUDES!! The police K9 came to visit my boss. I asked first, but I pet her. She's a German shepherd who is nine and is dog reactive. What a girl. I liked hearing that a dog reactive dog can still be a working dog. 

9:20am - I uploaded these photos and started the bare skeleton of this post. Took far too much time trying to get a photo of myself in my office. I cut off my feet in the photo. Oh, well. 

9:30am - Worked. Here's what I did:

Talked with my boss about a new hire in our college

Sent out a series of emails about one of my students and some work they had completed

Completed a change of status form for next semester because I'm teaching an overload 

Made a phone call to a student

Sent an email to a chair about a tricky advising situation

Sent an email to a student panicking about if they met graduation requirements

Contemplated grading, but decided I didn't want to

10:45am - Met with students, primarily calming them down about end of the semester meltdowns/low GPAs/possible academic dismissal/major changes.

11:45am - Debriefed with my boss about my student meetings. She laughed at how casually I say things like "oh, so you failed that class?" without skipping a beat. Wrote up meeting notes.

12:06pm - Lunch outside! People kept coming by to chat. Good times.

12:35pm - Talked with our janitor. He's starting a landscaping business with his brother, so he was telling me all the details.

12:45pm - Virtual stretch class. My local healthcare group does stretch classes two or three times a week. It's free! It's fun! It's a reason to block fifteen minutes off your calendar to devote to self-care. We talked a lot about snacks today.

1:00pm - More work. Here's what I did:

There's a new software rolling out that is going to change a lot about how we advise and register students. The rollout has been dodgy. Somehow I have been given "expert" status on this software that only sort of works and have to do a training of our summer advisors on it for freshman orientation. That training is next week. I worked on the presentation and diving deeper into the software. 

2:10pm - Co-worker comes into the office to talk about an articulation agreement. 

2:40pm - Back to the PowerPoint. 

3:18pm - Bestest Friend butt dials me. I don't actually know what happened, but I answered and said hello twice and then she hung up on me. 

3:40pm - Brief freakout with my boss because the software isn't working. I need a snack.

4:19pm - Time to get out of here.

I listened to Garth again on the way home. "Burning Bridges," "Which One of Them," "Papa Loved Mama," "Cold Shoulder," and "We Bury the Hatchet." "In Lonesome Dove" is up next for when I get into the car again. I have thoughts on this album. I think "We Bury the Hatchet" --> "Cold Shoulder" --> "Burning Bridges" --> "Papa Loved Mama" is a better sequence for the STORY of Ropin' the Wind. I keep saying that I'm going to write a huge post rating the Garth Brooks albums, but now I'm just giving away all my thoughts about it here. 

Small town life alert: I have an acquaintance whose father just died. I knew the funeral was today, so I was a bit shocked when I saw her walking her mother's dog as I was driving home. I stopped my car (in the middle of the street, as you do in a small town) and talked to her about how she was doing. I will have to text her in the next week or so to set up a time to have coffee.

4:40pm - Hannah and I are out for our afternoon walk. It is a glorious day.

5:30pm - Doing some yoga. This video was too advanced for me, so I mostly just listened to the nature sounds in the background and did my own thing which included a million shoulder stretches and some ab work.  

6:14pm - I changed back into my regular clothes and started making popcorn. We're doing reheated frittata for dinner tonight and the popcorn is just a fun little add on. 

This is my Whirley Pop. I love it. 

6:58pm - I started walking to the library. Seriously, this is such a gorgeous day.

7:05pm - Got my books! I know that I have bragged about our public library before, but it truly is a lovely space.

7:12pm - I'm home with my books. Here are the ones I borrowed.

I then proceeded to lay on the couch listening to the newest episode of Sarah's Bookshelves Live in a vain attempt to get the cat to come cuddle. She was not interested in cuddles, so I got up.

7:30pm - I wandered over to the table and opened up my laptop to start working on this post. I also have to buy my husband a birthday present and figure out an ebook that I can download on my Kindle because I finished The Wishing Game this morning and have no book to read on my Kindle! I also should probably work on my book review post for The Wishing Game, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of time before I get to that, but a girl can dream. 

8:11pm - Gift purchased (a boring shirt he asked for) and two books put on my Kindle - The Beekeeper of Aleppo and What You Are Looking For Is in the Library. I also snagged an audiobook - The New Moon's Arms. Starting my review for The Wishing Game now. 

8:31pm - Collect the trash and take it out. Then I take Hannah for a walk. It's PERFECT WEATHER, but she's not into it, so after twenty minutes, we're done. 

The sunset!

9:10pm - I start taking my evening medications and brushing my teeth. While I'm upstairs, I grab a pet sympathy card for a co-worker who had to put her dog down today (Jack was an adorable guy) and a condolence card to write to the acquaintance who I spoke to when I was driving home today out of the card box. I'll write them tomorrow, but I put them on the table downstairs so I won't forget. 

9:20pm - Into the shower. I'm listening to the newest episode of 60 Songs That Explain the '90s: The 2000s with my guy Rob Harvilla. In the twenty or so minutes I listened, I audible laughed several times and was nearly in tears at one point. The episode is covering Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" and one of the things that made me laugh was Rob's utter disdain at the lack of an Oxford comma in the title. One of the things that nearly made me cry was Rob having to describe what the phrase "let's roll" means in the context of September 11, 2001. I know that Rob's schtick is not for everybody, but it really is for me. 

9:40pm - Back to my laptop to finish this post. I need to fill out my habit tracker still (133 minutes outside today), do a couple minutes of training with Hannah, put her cone on, turn on the dishwasher and then I'll go upstairs to read for a few minutes. Whatever book downloads on my Kindle first is the one I will start. Hopefully lights will be out by 10:15pm.

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What did you have for dinner last night? When's the last time you went to the library?

Tuesday Things

 1) Just to update you on the mundane dreams of my life, Sunday night I dreamed that Dr. BB ate one of my yogurts and it threw off my entire breakfast for the week. I was pretty mad at him in my dream.

2) On Saturday morning I donated blood. I ate what I thought was a hearty breakfast of yogurt and granola, tea, and fruit (two giant strawberries and a pear). Things went well at first with my Sprite and orange stress ball. 

But when I went over to the snack table, things went poorly. I had a bag of delicious potato chips and a bottle of water and things started...circling. I flagged someone down and they put me flat on the ground with my feet on a chair with an icepack. Then I slowly sat up again and the world was spinning and eventually I was back on one of the fancy chairs where I stayed with some Gatorade for an hour. I finally texted Dr. BB to come get me. LOL. 

I honestly was miserable for the rest of the day.

The phlebotomist was horrified at my breakfast. "That ain't hearty, girl. You need some eggs, bacon, and peanut butter toast." Lesson learned, I guess.

3) Guess who came to my office yesterday for an hour while her person was in a meeting. If you guessed it was Blanche the Puppy, you're right! She's 8.5 pounds now, which puts her at just about the size of Zelda. Also, she's a little rascal and I hardly got any work done while she was hanging out with me. 

4) I hosted book club on Sunday night and Hannah did an amazing job. She expected everyone to give her sweet potatoes and they did and then she laid down next to me the whole night. Thumbs up. Next, we'll have to find some time to do a game night where we have more than three people over. Maybe some men. Let's see how that goes!

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What do you consider to be a hearty breakfast?

Christmas 2024 in Photos

These photos are not in any real chronological order. But this is what it was. 

12.2 Entertainment - More Dog Park Adventures

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined them chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the second day of the month is "Entertainment." 

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On Friday afternoon, we met up with Humphrey and his person at the dog park.

Since Hannah was a grown dog when we got her, she's never been as much of a wiggle butt as Humphrey is. He never stands or sits still, so getting a good photo of him is impossible. In the meantime, do enjoy this blurry photo of him jumping with the sheer joy of the freedom that comes from the dog park.

To get this photo of Hannah, all I had to say was "Hannah stay" and she just stood there while I circled around her taking photos. Humphrey's person was perplexed. How did you get her to do that? Years of training and NOT being a puppy. LOL.

We had a discussion about whether or not Hannah should be allowed to go to the dog park after her biting incident at the dogsitter's house. Our vet suggested that the dog park is actually great for her because she'll never feel trapped - all she has to do is run away from anyone she thinks is threatening. I watch her super carefully and she lets everyone at the dog park pet her, even men, without ever acting stressed at all.

I'm starting to really believe that the biting thing would never have happened if we'd been there and it was a fluke. It's a fluke I am taking seriously, but I'm absolutely less freaked out about it than I was a month ago.

This isn't the best comparison shot because they're so far apart, but Humphrey officially weighs more than Hannah. He's eight months old and had to switch to the big dog flea and tick medicine. He's still growing!! And he's still pretty annoying to Hannah. It took about 10-15 minutes for her to stop snapping at him when he tried to jump on her. Humphrey is learning pretty quickly that not all dogs appreciate his enthusiasm for life.

Once again, I'm so thankful for our dog park. It's so big that we rarely actually interact with other dogs or other humans. Yay for a fun dog playdate!

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Have you ever had a puppy in your life? When do they stop being...crazy?

11.20 Message - Another Photo of Humphrey

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the twentieth day of the month is "Message." I have decided that I'm going to write about the last photo message I sent and/or received via text.

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Our county has us do jury duty for an entire month, so technically I've been on jury duty all month, but I've been checking the schedule every night and I haven't actually had to go in. The most recent text message I just got, though, said I have to be there tomorrow morning at 7:45am. That's even earlier than the 8:15am appointment I had this morning, so let's see how all this shakes down. 

But.  The last photo message I sent was where I hid our keys when I was going to be leaving before my husband got home so I don't want to share that and the message before that was the hairball I took a photo of to show Dr. BB that we were idiots for missing it this morning because that's gross. 

Wow! I'm really going back far to find anything that's appropriate.

Here's a picture Humphrey's owner sent on Saturday to let me know that Humphrey now officially weights more than Hannah. He's such a cute goober.

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When's the last time you took a photo of cat puke? LOL.  What's the most interesting photo you've gotten via text recently?

10.30 Depression - Doggy Playdate, Part II

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the thirtieth day of the month is "Depression."

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As an antidote to the dread I feel as September rolls around, Hannah and I went on another playdate with Humphrey and his human. Things went just as badly well as they had last week at the start, with Hannah bullying poor Humps for the first 5-10 minutes. But then something magical happened and Humphrey started puppy bowing towards Hannah and initiating play and then they wandered around together as Humphrey tried to copy everything Hannah did. 

Progress. I think?

There was a Great Dane at the park named George. I don't know why I think it's so funny when dogs are named people names. My own dog has a person name! But George? It just tickled me.

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All right, back to the guessing game. Humphrey is about eight months old and weighs about what Hannah does (maybe a tad bit under 50 pounds).  How big do you think he's going to get? (Look at those paws!)