today i ate a tootsie pop at work and felt slightly unprofessional. but i didn't have a choice because i forgot to bring a new pack of gum.

also, i have been reading too much MLIA, because now i'm talking like those posts. awesome.

4th of july weekend

this weekend i went down to williamsburg to welcome alex back to the states from nicaragua and celebrate 4th of july in our nation's birthplace. unfortunately, he came back with a bout of bronchitis, so we spent most of the weekend eating, watching movies, and napping (pretty excellent weekend if you ask me, haha).

as for movies, we saw public enemies with johnny depp (pretty good if you like gangster movies), taken with liam neeson (awesome but kind of makes me afraid to travel alone again), and valkyrie with tom cruise (didn't have the same enthusiasm for this one as maggie...i feel asleep like 4 times, and as expected, i struggled to find tom's portrayal of a nazi at all convincing).

we also drove down to the law school to watch the fireworks from the car, which was fun. leonidas was less than pleased with all of the exploding noises but he recovered. then while sitting in traffic to get home, alex and i traded off throwing snappers out the windows, which was surprisingly quite amusing.

hope you all enjoyed the long weekend! happy birthday america!

keys in a tree

today while walking leonidas, i saw this:


it is a set of keys in a tree. i have no idea what they were doing there, but let me tell you, it took all my willpower (and the desire to avoid having the police called on me again) not to take the keys down and try them in various things (i.e. the car in this picture, the house whose yard the tress was in, etc). so as a note of caution, don't leave your keys in a tree, because someone with less restraint than i may try to break in :)

ugh work

today work is so slow that i actually considered putting my head in my hands and taking a nap. no joke. instead i decided to stay awake and regale you all with tales of thrilling office life. maybe i'll go take some sporcle quizes...

new puppy purchase

today i finally broke down and bought a backpack carrier for leonidas...listen to my reasoning before you judge me too harshly :)

i'm taking him on our family vacation to colorado in a few weeks, and although he's a great walker, sometimes he gets tired out and his little legs don't have the stamina of, say, hudson or jack (my parents'/cousins' black labs, both of whom will be in attendance). so rather than leaving the little guy at the house (where he could pee on things and scratch up doors) while the big dogs get to go on hikes, i figured i'd find a way to carry him in case he gets tired.

i considered the baby-bjorn style with the carrier in the front, but then i saw this other product and it has room to carry treats and a water bottle, and i could zip him in rather than just using a drawstring (in case he tries to wiggle out), so that's what i went with. now you can judge; i know i deserve it, haha.

weekend with my bro

this past weekend my brother was in the burg for a fraternity conference, so i went down to see him and then bring him back here for a few days of relaxing. he finished up at the conference on sunday morning, so i picked him up for a little double-duty church...we went to the 9:00 service at chapel and then out to peace hill at 11:00. chapel was great, bill did a really nice job with the sermon, and afterwards we got to see alex in action at his internship for a little while.

out at peace hill, everyone was really surprised and excited to see us :) driving up to the church, my brother was like, "whoa, that's a church??", and i think it's safe to say that stunned sentiment continued all the way through the birthday song, haha. afterwards we hung around and ate and talked to people and just generally enjoyed ourselves.

that night, he, alex, and i went to see startrek at the movie tavern and it was AWESOME! first of all, the movie tavern is sweet...$6 student tickets and you can order beer for movie (alex got a cherry coke, but my brother was brave and sampled the movie tavern ale...wouldn't recommend it, haha). second, the movie was sweet and we all really enjoyed it (alex too, i knew he would!).

scott and i drove back monday morning and then spent the afternoon seeing the sights....not true, we actually played diddy kong's quest on super nintendo for like 4 hours and it was awesome, haha, really brought us back to our childhood years. we discovered the lost world and everything! that night, katie and maggie came over to hang out and we enjoyed some excellent 5-5-5 pizzas.

overall, it was a great visit, love my brother lots, and if anyone wants to continue conquering diddy's lost world, i'm game :)

"concerned citizen"=crazy person

today i dropped my brother off at the airport (we had a great visit, more on that later) and took the dog with me to say goodbye. on the way home i decided i'd swing through the grocery store to grab a few quick things on my list. well, i cracked the windows for the dog (a feat given the crank windows and a tiny dog that can squeeze through small spaces) and headed inside for about 10 minutes. when i got back in my car, a woman knocked on my window and this was our exchange:

random woman: "i wanted you to know i called the police on you"
me (befuddled): "why did you do that?"
crazy woman: "you left your dog in the car and it's hot outside!"
me (annoyed): "i was inside for 10 minutes, the dog is fine..."
crazy b****: "i called the police 5 minutes ago!"

i decided rather than respond i would just go home and call the police to straighten out the matter, which i did and all is well. they had "dispatched a unit" but i was already home and had unloaded my groceries before they had even arrived at the "scene". i am glad to report that i have avoided yet another day on this town's most wanted list.