tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

I started this in February, and it is finally off the needles!! This has been a true labor of love. And I even have one lonely ball of Alpaca to spare.

I haven’t blocked it yet, and I need to sew in the zipper, but all the knitting is DONE! I’m not thrilled with how the hood looks from the front when it’s on, but other than that I think it turned out pretty well. Aaron says it’s very warm, and I guess that’s what really matters.

Elephant-4, originally uploaded by MissRancher.

My coworker recently went home to Bangladesh for a month. He brought back gifts for everyone – I got this little elephant. It is not very large, but it probably weighs 3 pounds. I can’t imagine what kind of baggage surcharge he had to pay to bring back all these gifts. I’m not sure what it’s made of, but it’s gorgeous, and I love it.

Illy stays at Dogtopia when we go on trips. She spends all day in doggie day care, hanging out with all the dogs, and then sleeps in a crate at night.

She loves it.

Every time she stays there, she comes home a little bit more adjusted. The first few times she was a little overwhelmed and sat on the futon most of the time, but she’s starting to interact with the other dogs more and more. The owners love her and even they look proud of her when they tell us how she’s getting better and coming out of her shell more and more with each visit.

The past two times she’s spent the night there, however, she has chewed the corner of her bed at night. I’m not sure why since she likes her crate at home, or at least she used to – she doesn’t go in it much anymore, preferring the couch. She doesn’t have separation anxiety at home, ever. She never chews anything at home, either toys or furniture. So I’m not really sure what to do about it.

Anyway, we picked her up this morning, and she was clean from a bath and had her nails clipped – and she had a scratch under one eye. I guess she was playing with the other dogs and took a claw to the face. It’s not bad but we put neosporin on it. It just grazed her, I don’t think it even really broke the skin too much. She doesn’t seem to notice it.

But this is big for her because it means she was actually interacting with the other dogs – she never used to ‘play’ before. They said she even went outside of her own free will, whereas last time she either refused to leave the building or had to be gently coaxed outside.

She seemed really happy to see us and Aaron took her outside while I settled the bill. When I went back out to find them, she was off sniffing something in the grass. I called to her and she perked up.

I called her again and told her to come to me.

And then?

She ran to me.

This dog has never run before in her life unless it was after a rabbit. She has certainly never run to us before. Even in obedience class when we practiced she would just sort of saunter over to us.

But she actually ran to me!

It was one of the best feelings ever.

Although, I wish I had taken her out while Aaron paid the bill, so she could have run to him instead.

Next time!

We flew to Indianapolis Friday morning to watch the Moto GP race. We were greeted by wind and rain, not an auspicious start to a race weekend.

We were debating driving to Chicago, which is only 3 hours away, but we would have had to come back the same day, and Chicago was getting hit by storms as well, so traffic would have been a nightmare. It was too wet to go to the track and watch the practice sessions, so we took a nap and checked out Indy.

We stayed at the Hampton Inn Northwest, which was actually a great hotel in a good location. The room was large and clean, the staff were super friendly, and they served a hot breakfast! (And coffee 24 hours a day – very helpful!). If we go next year, we’ll probably stay there again. It was relatively close to the Speedway, but in a decent neighborhood, and there were some restaurants and shops not too far away.

We drove downtown. wandered around and grabbed some food. The city was all decked out for the race:

We didn’t find much to do downtown, so we headed to Borders and browsed some books, then had dinner at Cheesecake Factory near our hotel. We were hoping the rain would be gone by Saturday.

And it was! As soon as we found our seats, the sun came out and the clouds disappeared. Thus began the sunburned part of our weekend. We were too little, too late where the suntan lotion was concerned, but at least I wasn’t wearing a tank top. Aaron’s knees took the worst of it, I think. I’ll spare him and not post those pictures.

We watched the practice and qualifying sessions. The Moto GP bikes are so incredibly loud – and yes, we did wear earplugs.  Aaron greatly enjoyed Rossi’s bike backfiring down the straight, which I got on video as well for posterity. Our seats were in Stand J, section 4, Row GG, Seats 7 & 8. We had an awesome view of 7 turns, and we were right in front of T15 and T16.

We wandered around the infield a bit and I found the bike I would get if I was going to get one:

Aaron found his future car:

And some fun sidecars:

We picked up some hats and t-shirts, and watched some more laps.

Happy boy:

When we got back to the hotel, we found a gift from the hotel! I couldn’t get a great picture of it, but it’s a crystal block with a 3D motorcycle in the middle. A small thing, but kind of cool.

We went to dinner at Palomino’s Saturday night, and they had a special Moto GP menu – complete with the logo on the menu and some of the more, uh, refined fare removed (apparently motorcycle riders don’t like lamb?). We had the mushroom soup, chicken pizza and prime rib. It was all very delicious. So delicious we had to have the bread pudding for dessert. That was excellent as well!

Kim checked us in to our Sunday night flight while we were at dinner (thanks!!), alas, the weather had other plans for our travels. More on that later.

Sunday morning started out cloudy, but we wore our rain gear since the radar was not looking friendly. We were able to watch the 125 race and then the rain started. We had some burgers and beer, and chilled out under cover under the stadium for almost 2 hours.

It was bucketing down for a while – remnants of Hurricane Ike. Luckily the storm was moving fast and it stopped raining in time for the 3pm Moto GP race.

Rossi had pole, but Hayden got out in front early on:

He’s still in front of Rossi – but not for long.

Rossi eventually passed Hayden and then started breaking away.  Surprisingly, there were no wrecks even though the track was still pretty wet.

It started raining and getting gusty midway through the race, and they red flagged it after 20 laps, with Rossi taking the win.

During the 125 race I got a voicemail saying our flight out of Indy was cancelled, since it was connecting in Chicago, and Chicago was shut down due to flooding. They couldn’t get us rebooked until Monday, and we didn’t have a place to stay so we decided to drive home.

10 hours.

38 cents a mile with Hertz.

Oy.

We hit up Starbucks and got on the road at 5pm.

One of the highways had this sign up all weekend:

Great, right? Share the road and all that. We thought it was cool.

On the way out of Indy, we were in the left lane with 4 bikes behind us, when we saw a cop come up fast with his lights on. We pulled over to the right lane and 3 of the 4 bikes did the same. The cop kept going, not interested in any of us. I’m not sure what the lone biker who didn’t get over was thinking – either he didn’t think he had room to get over, or he didn’t see the cop, or he wasn’t sure if he was getting pulled over, but the cop got right on his ass. Practically brushing his rear tire. Share the road, right? Right.

The cop is easing onto the shoulder, right on the guy’s back tire. If I was that guy, I would have been freaking out. Then the cop honked at him! Not the normal car honk, but the deep, throaty cop car blare that means MOVE! Can you imagine hearing that from point blank range behind you, with a semi right next to you?

The guy edged over toward the center line, and I expected him to just stay there in his lane and that the cop would pass him on the shoulder. But the cop wasn’t moving. So the bike eased it on over – in front of the semi, who at this point was almost on top of him. The semi swerved into his shoulder and hit the brakes, the cop zoomed past, and the biker held it steady in his lane, now in front of the semi. I thought for sure the semi was going to bump him.

We pulled back out into the left lane and passed them – the biker looked at me when we passed and his eyes were wide and unblinking – the face of terror. I was safely inside a car with 8 air bags and my heart was pounding almost out of my chest. I can’t imagine what that guy felt like.

Turns out the cop was rushing to get to an accident ahead of us – where there were already three ambulances, a fire truck and four cops – because a car going the other direction went off the road into the median. Seriously? It was worth almost pancaking a guy between your cop car and a semi to haul ass to THAT? Nice.

It reminded me that I’m much happier looking at pink bikes than riding them, at least on highways.

Anyway.

We had rented a Mazda 5 – a minivan! Ha! Aaron was surprised how much he didn’t hate it. There was pretty much no power, but it rode pretty well and there was tons of room. There was some sort of leak we never figured out, but the passenger floor was soaking wet the whole time – I guess from the air conditioning. Other than that, it was great.

He looks good with a minivan, right?

We loaded up on burgers and coffee and hit the road.

Aaron drove for a few hours and then I took over for 3. The car got battered about by the wind pretty badly, so it wasn’t a stress-free drive. I got to blast my music and sing along while Aaron watched a movie on his ipod. I was hoping he couldn’t hear me, but apparently I was a little loud. That would explain why my throat is sore today.

I was starting to get sleepy, so Aaron took over for the last 3 hours. There is just nothing exciting about that drive. It was a long, long drive.

We were in the home stretch, 20 minutes from the airport, when we turn a corner on 15, which is a single lane road, and see brake lights and flashing red and blue lights. We come to a stop behind 4 cars, and three more pull up behind us.

At 2.15am we are at a standstill on Rt 15.

We heard a chainsaw and some people had gotten out of their cars to go see what the issue was. There wasn’t really an alternate route we could take, so we had to sit there and wait it out for about 15 minutes. I guess the storm had dropped a tree across the road and they had to chop it up and move it off the road.

We finally arrived at Hertz in Dulles at 3am. We were told it was a 24 hour location, but it looked dead. If I had had the energy, I might have been worried. But there was one guy hanging out inside. The trip cost an arm and a leg – with the refund United gave us for cancelling our flight, we broke just about even with the Hertz fees. Except for the gas money. But oh well. We were home. Well, almost. We still had to shuttle back to the terminal to get to the parking garage and then go home.

I was in bed at 3.56am. Door to door, it was an 11 hour trip.

I’m still tired.

11 years.

It’s almost unfathomable.

And it never gets any easier.

RIP Daddy. I miss you.

I made Aaron get a haircut before I took a picture of him in his new glasses. I think she actually used a blow dryer on his hair:

I’m getting so close with his sweater! I have a bit more to finish up, then I just need to knit the hood on. And sew in the zipper. This picture was pre-hair cut. I believe he calls this one ‘Blue Steel’:

The photos of the new bedroom paint didn’t turn out very well. Not that these did, but at least there is no clutter in the picture. They really make the bathroom more enjoyable:

We’ve been busy with some fall cleaning lately. I never really get into spring cleaning, but it seems like we’re always doing something to the house in the fall.

We’ve been slowly going around the house and replacing our outlets and light switches. My pink toolbelt Aaron gave me for Christmas last year has come in mighty handy for that! The rocker light switches look so much better than the standard ones. Almost makes it feel like a new house.

We also installed brushed nickel faucets in the master bathroom’s sink and shower/tub. It’s amazing how much better everything looks now with just those little improvements. We’re slowly getting the house ready to sell, bit by bit.

My other big project over the weekend was priming and painting our bedroom. We chose Cumberland Fog by Behr, which is a grey-blue, although it’s a little more blue than grey on our wall. It’s nice and soothing, but still relatively neutral. It took me all day on Saturday, which worked out well since it poured all day and I wouldn’t have been able to get out and do anything anyway.

In other non-house related news, Aaron went to the eye doctor for the first time since he was a kid and discovered he needs reading glasses. He said it made him feel old, but I think he looks very dashing in his new specs. Too bad for me he only has to wear them when he’s reading or on the computer!

He also went to a specialist today, since it seems he has an auto-immune disease. He was diagnosed with undifferentiated connected tissue disorder (or something), which is kind of like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. Hopefully the Plaquinel they prescribed will minimize his symptoms, which right now are only manifesting in his hands. Not great news, but I suppose better than it could have been.