she turned on the mic for all TWO of us.

i made crockpot roast beef yesterday. as great as it taste, i was not thrilled to arrive home today to an apt that smelled like..well, roast beef. so i opened the windows and then took the boys for a walk. when i got home, it was still roast beefy. so i threw everything into the dishwasher. there's something strange about my dishwasher...at first i thought it was the classical music on t.v., but when i came into the living room, i realized it was not.

i think there is a tiny man inside my dishwasher conducting a symphony...perhaps he wears a scuba outfit...idk, but it sounds like a musical arrangement of various instruments.

so, saturday i ventured out to find some things; i found myself not happy with the options at walmart-although i still found some things that i needed. so i turned around and went to the container store. i found some great stuff! i was especially looking for an appropriate clothespin-holder-deal for room 109 (i don't even know what to call the room that i 'board' in). 

while i was there, i was looking at the push pins and magnetic strips when a lady approached me with a card and a pen to fill out the card. then she asked me to come see the shelving presentation in 5 minutes. i asked her how long it would take, and when she said 7-10 minutes, and you could win a $20 gift card, i stuck around for a bit. not that i was bothered because it was raining out pretty hard, and this would be a great moment to avoid that.

so i walked over to the shelving area and filled out my card. there was one other lady there besides the lady giving the presentation. yes, if you are counting, that would make two of us plus store lady. and then she did the unthinkable. she turned on the microphone and she began broadcasting. did i mention that there were only two of us? so she began reading her cards and we muddled through. i tried to look like i was really interested and planning on eventually getting something. they really do have some great stuff.

and when it was over, she mixed the cards....all two of them for the drawing and the other lady drew a card. it was mine! woohoo! so i got a $20 gift card which i immediately put to use. and i felt even luckier when i saw that they had the umbra card holders! i have been looking for another ever since the little bungee-elastic on mine broke and i had to re-tie it!!

i had a 50/50 chance..i usually don't win.

i really like this hanging deal with solid shelves-i could think of many uses in a classroom.

my new umbra case with the thumb tacks that were so colorful.

i went from there to the 1/2 price bookstore. i purchased several new mentor texts for writing and reading. i love books! i sat myself down and went through my list of authors and filled up my cart.

most girls treat themselves to new shoes. new clothes. a manicure. a pedicure. i went to the gun range. it's been awhile. i need to go more often. i'm still a pretty good shot; next time i am going to try a couple of different rental calibers. if they don't have too much of a kick i might actually look into getting a .40 or .45 because ammunition is a little easier to come by.

yesterday i was working on some reports and questions with our system. so i was e-mailing our amazing rep from all in learning, and i meant to send some screen shots of the issues that i was having so that he would have an inkling of what i was talking about. i thought i had chosen the 5 screen shots that i had just taken, but i was having 'outlook-difficulties,' and my computer wasn't showing me the attachments that i added. then i got his response:

hmmm...

 apparently i sent this in one of the attachments...

let's not like, he is kinda' cute. (and if you don't think so, you can go ahead and lie anyway)

i think we got most of our issues resolved.

remember how i went to the discovery gardens and purchased some fun plants for school? well, after having the milkweed in the car for a couple of days, i was ready to be rid of the creeper.

totally peeking around the headrest...backseat driver-tickled my ear and scared the crap out of me! and made me think of audrey II in little shop of horrors.

and then when i went to the store the other day, i found myself haggling over 9/10s of a cent. what in the world? no wonder it sometimes takes so long to get what i need and get out.

must-live-more-simply....please tell me it's not just me.

i think the lady next door moved saturday. i'm glad. she was kind of an odd bird. bruno and chaco were talking about her dog. he always growled at them and chaco would start the whole 'hold-me-back' routine, knowing full well that his leash kept him safe. anyhoo, i noticed that their welcome mat is gone, so i'm pretty sure they went with it.

well, it's time for bed-
julie

your flea ointment looks like an alien

so this morning i opened my eyes and bruno was ready to be up. chaco...was hiding deep under the covers somewhere off in a corner. so i told him, "oh chaco! you were in your man-cave!" he believed that it was a man-cave, so that will cut costs in the far off future when we look for a house-all i have to do is throw a comforter on the floor and say man-cave and he'll be happy. bruno on the other hand just sat behind chaco looking at me, shaking his head with that 'i-can't-believe-you-just-told-him-that-and-he-fell-for-it' look. now i just have to distract him if we're ever watching hgtv and they have a segment about man-caves.

after i woke up and checked on my loin. if you're dyslexic, you might think i'm a zookeeper checking on the king of beasts...if you're not, you might wonder what? didn't the men in the bible 'gird their loins?' but if you read last night's post, you will recall that i prepared pork loin and put it in the crockpot. and wowzers! i stepped into the kitchen and i had one last step to prepare it-one more hour. but i wanted to eat pulled pork for breakfast! it is so juicy and sweet! again, i wish this were a scratch and sniff blog!

since it wasn't ready, i just had some caramel truffle coffee with my heavenly creamer! (i was actually introduced to the caramel truffle by my previous roommate, heather-we love our coffee!)

and then when i got the keurig, i loved the kcups. although they can get ridiculous expensive! so thank goodness for the filter! if you have a keurig and haven't heard of them, the filter is a must! it allows me to go to central market and get my texas pecan coffee! melt in my mouth please!

and for the record, once i pulled the pork out, it was falling apart as i tried to take it out of the pot! i may or may not have gone ahead and eaten a generous portion for breakfast...it was so good i really didn't want to stop eating...i kept praying that i wouldn't get full. but i did.(which is actually good so i will have a meal or two more during the week). honestly i didn't use any measurements, but if i were guessing, i used about 3 squirts of honey mustard, about 3/4 cup brown sugar, a little garlic powder, a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar, and after poking several holes in it, i rubbed it all over with this little mixture and let it go on low for about 9 hours. then i drained it and took about 1/2 cup of brown sugar mixed with dried onion, garlic salt and a little more honey mustard, rubbed it on and let it form a carmelization for an hour..delish!

i know it's hard to tell, and it would look prettier with some colorful veggies, but i thank the pig that gave his life.

 well, we went to the vet for bruno's blood draw (finally) and he came out smelling like alcohol (rubbing alcohol, not like he'd been back doing shots with the techs). and they told me he has fleas. ew. so we got flea stuff for both of them and i couldn't think of where he could've gotten....oh but wait! when we went to the doggie park...? or how many times has he been in the kennels there at the vet over the last week around the dogs there? or...it could have been that wasp banging on the door yesterday-perhaps he was carrying his little flea friend on his back and dropped him off on my balcony-jerk. (remember the old cartoons with the flea circus??) inevitably when one of our students has lice, my head begins to itch. well, today the same thing happened with the idea of fleas.

so i took them for a walk because the weather was beautiful and we were right near the beautiful dog-walk area in addison. so here are some pics from our walk.

again, wishing for scratch and sniff because these bushes with the white flowers had such a light and airy, delicate smell. a little secret garden

this is one of the secret entrances. it's kinda nestled into this neighborhood and you don't recognize it from the street because there is a huge bush wall hiding the area; we just stumbled onto it one day.

this is a view of the length of the pond-walk

duck..duck..duck..duck...CHACO!!

once we got home, i got the flea ointment out and pulled out treats so they would associate good things with this nasty ointment. i think it must tingle because bruno used to go nuts when he was littler..and this time it seemed to affect chaco a bit more. rolling around on every surface possible-couch, floor, chair, stair, anything...

my biggest issue was 1. that it looked like alien ointment and 2. that they are speceists (like racist only against a species-against cats in particular).

and now there will be no dog bathing for 48 hours.

as the Bible says, fleas are evil. oh, it actually says flee from evil,
julie

p.s. i stand with israel-in case anyone was wondering.