tigergladys is out tracking with Lucy, and I am home working on taxes.

And it figures. I owe between state and federal taxes about $200.

There is a job opening up at the central business office that looks really tempting. I should decide whether I'm going to go for it by Monday, that way I can turn in a bid form for it first thing.

Bother... GW also posted a position I could apply for, and a year ago I probably would have. But it's in HR rather then in accounting... Ah well.

Man I feel like crap right now. Sunday night my nose started running. Monday my throat got sore. By Monday night I was feeling downright awful, but I made it through class. After I got back from class I took some NyQuil and tried to watch the pilot of Heroes. I think I remained conscious through the whole episode. Of course I some funky dreams when I did go to bed.

Tuesday morning, I wasn’t really feeling any better. I took some Sudafed and headed off to work. Managed to make it through the day, but tigergladys ran Lucy in agility class. I was sure I’d end up falling, cracking my head on something and bleeding on the floor mats. Then I’d get yelled at for staining the floor.

Wednesday was still crappy. My boss actually just told me to go home around 1, so I did. Took sort of a nap, relaxed, read some and had some soup. Tigs has been wanting mozzarella sticks for a while now, so when she got home we went down to the TT diner and she got her sticks and I got some more soup. Then I went to class.

Now it’s Thursday. Still feeling crappy. I wish I was sicker. As it is I just feel sick enough to feel sick, and not sick enough to stay on the couch and watch movies and drink tea. At least I don’t have anything I need to do tonight.

Tomorrow night Tigs goes to visit her sister for the weekend. So it’ll just be me and Lucy. We’ve got big plans too! I have to go to school first thing Saturday morning to take a test that I’m going to miss on Monday due to picking Tigs up from the airport and taking Lucy to her Rally class (not in that order though). Then I’ll be taking Lucy up to Oregon Ridge park for a dog charity event. When that’s over we’ll head home, and I’m going to study for the upcoming accounting test. Sunday will be more studying and some hiking with the Lucymonster. Not sure where we’ll go yet.

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In other news, my X-Box power cord has decided that it doesn’t want to play anymore. For those who don’t know there is a built in fuse on the plug. Well, mine has apparently burned itself out. It was kind of a bummer as I wanted to shoot some stuff in Halo. Anyway, I called the X-Box help desk, and talked to a nice lady in India , or maybe Pakistan , and spent a little bit of time going over the problem. They are sending me a replacement cord…. FREE! It turns out that all cords made before some point in 2003 are defective and can cause fires! Awesome! Now I just have to wait for it to arrive...

I have also painted up a number of BFG ships. I hope to have Tigs take some decent pictures of them tonight. If we succeed in getting decent pics, then you should see them this weekend. Aside from that I don’t have anything I really want to do except relax and try to feel better.

Also, an icon I've been meaning to upload for a while.

We visited a new park this weekend, Oregon Ridge State Park . I’m not entirely clear on how we missed this one in the book, considering how often we’ve referenced it, but it is a beautiful hike. At a little over 4 miles, mostly in shade, and of moderate difficulty (aka not really flat, but the inclines aren’t too bad) it was a good workout. Plus at the end is a beach! Now the neat thing about that is the beach has an entry fee, but if you hike your way into the park along the trails, you can get to the it without having to go through the gate. Maybe they figure that if you are willing to hike a couple of miles you deserve to swim free? The only downside to the beach is that they don’t allow puppy swimming.

After our hike we headed over to Gaer's for the Craft and Movie Night. None of us were in the mood for anything too angsty, so we watched I.Q., 9 to 5, and a couple of episodes of Dougie Howser MD. Tigs and I sewed up some dog toys that Lucy had unstuffed to various degrees. Tigs also worked on her latest cross stitch project. Gaer knitted, and changed outfits a couple of times, and I painted the elementals. Pictures to be taken tonight (maybe). Commentary on them when I post the pictures.

Sunday we headed out to Ikea for breakfast, and to look for a new TV stand. The one we bought last year just isn’t holding up to the weight of our hefty TV. It was (we discovered after we bought it) designed for a flat panel TV, rather then our big ol’ CRT, and now it is bowing. Plus the open bottom allowed the Monster to chew on the AV cords and a controller for the N64. We were successful both in obtaining breakfast and the TV stand.

While we were in White Marsh we also decided to swing across the street and hit Games Workshop. I wanted to take a look at the new terrain pieces they’ve come up with. The one I was most interested in was a new forest piece, but I was disappointed by. In person I felt it looked too plastic, and that it was something I could do myself to far better effect.

Next we popped over to AC Moors and I got some new t-shirts for work. I love it when they go on sale. Plain colored t-shirts for $2 each! Can’t beat that. Then we went home, and I got to work on my take home test for accounting.

The test itself wasn’t that bad. It had only 25 multiple choice questions, so it went quickly. There was only one problem that gave me any real pause. it was written in such a way that it required you to make a whole bunch of assumptions in order to be able to solve it. After getting it wrong, then thinking that there wasn’t a right answer, then getting an idea of how to solve it, I finally figured out the correct answer, and the correct way to solve for it. Once I finished with the test I moved onto the homework, and did about 3 hours more work.

Monday was work, then class. After the class had been dismissed, I stayed after to talk with the professor both about the test and about the homework. It seems in spite of the stress I’ve been feeling that I’m actually getting this. It’s always nice to have someone tell you that you are on the right track!

Yesterday was a long day. After work we had puppy classes. That’s right, plural. It was the last night of our agility class, and then immediately after it was the first class of her advanced basic obedience class. For those of you not keeping track at home, that’s 2 and a half hours of class, for a 1 year old puppy. We decided to split the duties:I would handle her for the agility class, and Tigs would take her for obedience.

In agility we started off by reviewing all the basic skills we learned in the first couple of weeks, and then moved on to a new skill, teaching her to go out ahead of us. Lucy did pretty well at that, though when I yelled at her (as we were running) to “GO!!” she did look back at me questioning what it was I was saying. We did that a couple of times, which Lucy absolutely loved. After that we set up a course of 8 obstacles (tire, A frame, jump, tunnel, 3 more jumps, and shoot) and we were timed and scored while going through. I admit the addition of the time certainly made it a little more exciting, but mostly I just wanted to make sure would Lucy actually run the course and not just run around like a crazy puppy. So before we ran I made sure to put her target at the base of the A frame (to make sure she paused at the bottom of it) and adjusted the tire height down to her jump level. Then we ran. It was a great run, in spite of her knocking a bar off the first jump. She hit the target perfectly, listened to my commands, and was fast!! This is the first time we’ve ever done that many obstacles in a row! At the end, because of the placement of the 3 jumps and the shoot, and her running ahead I wasn’t at the end of the shoot to catch her, and being all excited as she was I could see the “WHATS NEXT?!?!” look in her eye. Knowing that if I didn’t give her something to do THAT INSTANT she would probably take off, I told her to run with me to go get the target back at the base of the A frame. We got there at the same time, I praised her, caught her, and gave her treats.

After that we headed next door to where the obedience class was going to be held. The teacher for obedience is the same one we had for the puppy obedience class we took, and Lucy absolutely LOVES her! There was some serious full body wiggling going on. I think that Lucy will really enjoy working obedience again. As much as she has fun doing agility, she seems to like obedience a little bit more. Probably because she gets to be more active, as she doesn’t have to wait for the other dogs to use the equipment.

Once class was finished we headed home, and made ourselves dinner. Lucy was really tired and got very annoyed with us for switching rooms. We kept going back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, and she would always come with us.

Today I actually don’t have class. The professor has an event tonight that she has to go to, and she didn’t think she’d be back in time for class. So I’ll take an hour or two tonight to do some more work on my project and do some more reading. We’ll probably also head to one of the pet stores, as it’s time for another water test for the fish tank. This week we lost Oscar the algae eater, 1 of only 2 fish that we’ve actually named. The neons are more of a hive group then individuals, and I’ve been thinking of the guppies as a matched pair, kind of like the Bynars. We think he may have been trying to clean the intake of the filter and gotten stuck, but we’re not sure. On top of that I also changed some of the water in the tank, so it’s time to test again. The snail we got (labeled “mysterious black snail”) is a whole lot of fun to watch. In addition to hitting Petco we’ll probably also hit the Target that’s in the same plaza, as there are a number of little things we need from there.

Lastly, tigergladys made me this icon a while back, and I wanted to share it with you!

Tomorrow I have to get up early to be at work an hour early. It's a Friday thing. One of the few downsides to my new job. The upside is that I then get out of work an hour early. So, expect a post tomorrow.

Oh, and happy Solstice!