caught in the act...

while alex and i were christmas shopping last week, he needed a pit stop, so we ran inside to find a bathroom. unfortunately, the men's room was out of order, but since the woman's room was just one stall, i guarded the door while he went in...i caught a picture on the way out for proof, haha :)

coach heacock's first meet!

this is LONG overdue, but at the beginning of december, alex had his first track meet as a college coach! the meet was at illinois state university, which is located in Normal, IL...that's right, Normal is the name of the town...not totally sure what makes it any more normal than the rest of illinois, but there you have it, haha.

anyways, because it is december in illinois, the meet was indoors at the field house. i had never been to an indoor meet before, and i was totally impressed by how much they pack into this place! the running track obviously goes around the outside, and that includes sprints, distance, hurdles, relays, etc. inside of the track, there is a long jump pit, a high jump area, a pole vault area, and the throwing area.

at indoor meets, only the shot put and a modified hammer (called a weight) is thrown, so no javelin, discus, or real hammer. they throw from within a cage and there is sector with lines showing the distances, just like an outdoor meet (except no grass of course). it was really neat to see alex coaching something outside of his comfort zone, and i even got to meet some of his athletes (who were hilarious). it was a lot of fun to see alex doing something he clearly cares a lot about, and he looked totally official in all of his coaching gear :)

here's a view of the whole meet.


here is alex hard at work, demonstrating something to one of his athletes for his next throw.


this is the throwing area, with the cage and everything!

i promise i have more fun blog posts coming but...

for now i need to express my extreme frustration with president obama and illinois politicians. the obama administration announced today that the federal government is buying a prison complex located approximately 150 miles west of the city of chicago to be used to house detainees currently held in guantanamo bay. you can read all about it here if you're interested in the details (there's also a good/funny quote from my boss on the first page of the article), but i'd also like to give you my side of the story.

president obama pledged to close gitmo this year, but had been totally unsuccessful in finding a place willing to hold the suspected terrorists (what a shock that most americans are opposed to housing terrorists on our soil near their homes). in a last ditch effort to follow through on his pledge and avoid the political backlash from a failure to close gitmo, he approached sen. dick durbin and gov. pat quinn of illinois, both fellow democrats from obama's "home" state, to call in a favor. then, without fully investigating the impact that moving suspected terrorists near america's third largest city could have, durbin and quinn agreed to make it happen, no matter the reaction from illinois' citizens. the pitch was simple - opening the thompson correctional facility will create new jobs, about 3,00 of them.

this situation blows my mind for 3 reasons. first, apparently illinois democrats in charge of the welfare and protection of their state cannot find a more creative way to create jobs than to bring in terrorists. second, our president refuses to acknowledge the reality that most americans don't want terrorists brought to their country, let alone chicago's backyard. and third, if anyone thinks that closing gitmo will stop terrorists from using this new facility in in illinois as a recruiting tool, they are completely bereft of common sense. moving gitmo to illinois will not undermine the stigma of gitmo; it will only relocate it.

that is enough of my soap box for one day :) i am loading pictures to my computer tonight so i should be posting lots more fun things soon!

the real arctic tundra

today in chicago it is FREEZING. when i went downstairs at 7:00 to take leonidas out, the thermometer outside the house said .1 degrees. POINT 1 degrees. when i got to work, this is what weather.com reported:


if you can't read it, that's "Feels Like -21". poor leonidas was doing really well in the snow until today...today it is just too cold for his little paws to handle. obviously, he'll have to go out sometime to use the...facitilities...but this morning it wasn't happening. maybe i'll try again later when we reach the high for the day...12. at least it's still double digits (for now!).

first day of snow!!!

two posts in one day is totally unlike me i know, but there were just multiple noteworthy things to share today, so here we go!

today is the first day of snow in chicagoland! it's just some flurries, and the ground is still too warm for anything to stick, but still...it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

as a general rule, i love the snow from December through the end of January, so for about 2 months. any snow before or after that, and the pretty white snow turns into brown, cold slush and that i do not appreciate. but for now, i'm going to celebrate the beginning of what will hopefully be a very white Christmas season!

this just happened...

but first, a little background. as you know, i bring leonidas to work a lot and he's always been great, never had any "marking" problems (i.e. doing his business in the office), very calm, etc. there is another woman who works in the office who has a cavalier king charles spaniel puppy named lucky who is probably 18 lbs. or so. she's brought him in a few times and he and leonidas haven't really gotten along - lucky is pretty hyper and jumps all over leonidas (and me - he scratched my face once) and then leonidas barks, yada yada yada.

well today, hudson was going to be alone most of the day and i knew we had no volunteers in the office this morning, so i decided to bring both he AND leonidas to work with me. for the first several hours, everything went great! the dogs were calm, chewed their bones, slept, etc. no trouble at all.

then lucky arrived. as the three started playing, leonidas started freaking out, so i picked him up and went to lock him in my office. i came back out to the front just in time to see hudson challenging lucky by "marking" a trash can. thankfully he only got a few sprinkles out before i stopped him. i took hudson back to lock him into my office with leonidas and went to clean up the mini-mess. i came back to take both of my dogs outside, and while i was putting their leashes on, lucky decided to leave some #2 all over the front office. awesome.

so, i finally get hudson and leonidas outside, and all is well until leonidas starts to do his #2. as he is squatting, hudson starts to go #1, aimed right at leonidas. thankfully, i knew to watch for this, as it happened earlier this week and unfortunately my mom wasn't able to stop it (this incident was immediately followed by an extended bath in the laundry tub). i caught hudson in time, but just barely.

to top things off, hudson tried to eat a dead bird on our way back to the office. good thing he knows what "drop" means, because there was no way i was yanking that out of his mouth.

normally, having two dogs is actually more fun than stress. not today. but at least i got a good story out of it :)

here's a picture of the calm before the storm.