andrea's spare time

i'm thinking of the david bowie song as i write this. i'm actually surprised no one has blogged about the chinese decision to put the "best voice" with the "cutest face" during the opening ceremonies.

if you hadn't heard, the 9 year old that came out before the cameras to sing that beautiful anthem was lip-syncing. the voice was from a 7 year old whom the chinese said was not cute enough... because she had crooked teeth.

give me a break. that girl was plenty adorable! that decision takes my opinion of the opening ceremonies down a notch or two. it's been pointed out for me that that's par for the course in china. they'll do anything to make themselves look good.. and hide the many, shall we say... not so good things that go on inside their borders.

what do you guys think?  do you think anyone in the u.s. would do what the chinese did?

hey you guys! do you have a favorite bread? you thought i was talking about money didn't you. no i'm talking about bread bread.

my husband just discovered that the only reason he likes toast is because the bread we normally buy is so wonderful. to save money (ok save some bread) we tried a cheaper brand, and now his love for his morning butter and toast has slipped away. what's the good stuff he misses? we call it "green" bread. but it's really orowheat's "oatnut" bread. (has a green label.) and i have a hunch that stuff is pretty popular.

a store i used to go to wasn't good at keeping it on the shelves, so when they did stock it, people like me would buy several loavesat a time. (yes, hoarding is bad. i know.) now i don't have that problem... but i usually notice that the green bread is never fully stocked like the other breads. and more than once i've had to climb up the shelves to pull the last loaf of green bread from the waaayyyyy back.

so any other oatnut lovers out there? if not, what's your favorite bread?

yes... it's come to that i hate to say. my pups are not doing well enough in the housebreaking department, and i'm looking at these for 2 reasons: saving the carpets and a training aid, as in: i take the diaper off when they go outside.

it's frustrating because they can be perfect angels when confined in the kitchen. they know to ask to go outside. but let them have the run of a few more rooms and they only ask -sometimes-. and little rocket has a way of coming up to me and confessing -after the fact.- no kidding.

i've been treating the carpet, and i'll be doing that more and more, and i run them out of rooms they have no business in (where they like to do their business) but having two of them makes it really tough to keep watching both.

i go on line and i read about how doxies are notoriously hard to housetrain. pickles and rocket are 10 months and 8 months old... and some people have trouble for 18 months! but i can't wait that long.

btw: keeping them in the kitchen sounds like the answer but it closes off easy access around the house. when it's just us it isn't so bad, but when we have guests and family over it's a real pain.

what do you guys think?

i'm just curious how many people spent christmas trying to keep their dog out of trouble and/or safe?

pickles and rocket made me crazy... finally they just had to go to the crate for chunks of time during christmas. every gift they could get their mouth on was fair game whether it was left it on the floor or the coffee table. if anything was missing we had to track down the dogs under a bed or behind the couch... lift the bed off the frame... pull the couch away from the wall! voila! there it is! but usually it was decimated or in a mangled state.

but the worst part was the chocolate. ok... we're all chocolate lovers in my family... so chocolate treats are usually the stocking stuffers. but pickles and rocket ate all or part of  4 different chocolate gifts over christmas eve and christmas day. we had 12 people at our house christmas eve opening gifts like rapid fire because andy (4 year old) took charge of passing them out. long story short i found myself scanning the internet for info on what to do if your dog eats chocolate. i came really really close to just taking them both to the emergency vet.

i became an expert for the night calculating what would be a lethal dose of chocolate for my little guys. it's a factor of their weight vs. the amount of chocolate, vs. the type of chocolate. when i was able to determine the bulk of what they ate was milk chocolate i was a bit more at ease, but i did watch them for toxicity symptoms (hyper, vomiting, seizures, etc.) luckily they had none of that.  

yes i've had dogs before, but my last one was totally content shredding wrapping paper into 1/2 inch size peices. these doxies were TERRORS!  wrapping paper wasn't even on their radar! when you read about the breed, doxie people say they are adventuresome and get into everything... but sometimes i feel dog lovers say that about all their favorite dogs to brag about them. well not so with daschunds! they're all that and more!

i'd love to respond to your blog and chat with you... but i can't figure out why your blog has no link to accept comments either! i've noticed that quite a few times on blogs i'd like to comment on and it's been bugging me. i kept thinking maybe the blogger had some setting that took out the comment link, but i know that's not the case with you. so i hope our administrator can figure out the problem and correct it for you.

so that has a lot to do with why no one's responding! we do love to have new people on the blog. most of us don't have much to say either but it's nice to get out there and say hi to friends.  thanks for sticking with us and hopefully we'll get this fixed for you. 

meanwhile... has anyone else had this problem? no hot button for comments?  

it's been scorching hot, but thank goodness for the thunderstorms! the dog days (and dogs pickles and rocket) took a brief vacation.

my family and i headed to galveston with our camper for the weekend, despite the high probability of rain. sure it rained some, but that was mostly saturday afternoon when it would have been too hot (and too intensely sunny) for us to really want to be at the beach.

we all enjoyed getting completely sandy building a sand castle city, but i think pickles enjoyed it the most. he and rocket had a blast digging and digging... and then playing king of the hole (as opposed to king of the hill!) 

this was the dog's first camping trip with us, and their first trip to galveston (or any beach for that matter). lots of new stuff had them a little nervous, but when they started wrestling in the camper like they do at home, i knew they were back to normal.

what i like about camping is the ability to "tune out" for a while. i mentioned on the news this morning that we "forgot " the portable t.v. that was what we told the kids anyway. it was a good thing though. it made the camper much more quiet,  and made andy and pete find something else to fight about.

on the drive home i got caught up with the news... and hearing that hurricane dean is likely to hit well south of us was the best news of all! so happy monday everyone!

any other campers out there?

ok... i'm speaking for myself. not the young whippersnapper we know as ned hibberd!

these are the two very nice trophies that snoopy gave to us as "pageant" winners.

 it was a fun surprise from snoop but the biggest surprise was winning at all!  thank you again for the votes and very nice compliments! the trophy will always be a nice reminder of my blogging friends!

let me just say i'm -not- a big movie buff... but i saw this movie with my husband and kids yesterday and i really liked it! sure there were some corny and way-too-unbelieveable scenes in it, but it was fun and funny and had a great message. "follow your calling" no matter how crazy.  following your heart will always lead you down the right path (or river, if you will!) it was nice to see a live-action movie instead of an animated one for a change. and the animals were lots of fun too!

also, you gotta stay for the credits! the cast and crew actually do"the dance" while they're filming the movie and this behind the scenes look becomes part of the credits.

anyone else see it this weekend?

great cliff hanger last night on the deadliest catch!  it's horrible that there was such a tragic accident among the fishing boats, but it's very interesting to see the coast guard's hard work to save these guys. i know not everyone survived when the boat capsized, but so far they've only saved one guy. looking forward to seeing them find others on the next show.

it's just great being back in dutch harbor! another round of competition among the captains. i sure wouldn't want to be on the maverick this year, though. the new skipper doesn't seem ready, yet "this is not a democracy." look out.

did anyone notice (how could you miss) the "yellow book" crab count? how about the lexus sponsorship of the locater map they use at the beginning of each segment (which is now in living color.) ca-ching!

what did you all think of the show??

i know we're all going to watch american idol tonight... but i hope deadliest catch fans will also be able to catch the start of season 3! i hope to make time to watch both shows, but if i do i won't get much sleep. (i don't watch anything in real time. my t.v. viewing starts after the kids are in bed, the kitchen's clean etc.)

i've heard this season is very dramatic,  but i'm just looking forward to cheering for the northwestern and the hansen brothers again. i wonder if becoming famous has changed them and if it will show in the series? i noticed that all the captains were better groomed during season 2 than they were during season 1.

do you have favorite ships or favorite captains? i'll be interested to hear everyone's opinion of tonight's show! check back with you tomorrow on that!

okay! i'm psyched! i just went to the discovery channel web site and found out that season three of deadliest catch starts on april 3rd. i even watched a clip from the new season, which they say is still being filmed now. it looks like there's a good mix of old and new sea captains there. and i'm happy to say that it looks like sig hansen and the northwestern are back again this year. any other crabbing fans out there??