Home > Blog

Yesterday was Chaco’s birthday! We returned from Pennsylvania on Friday night and spent almost the entire day yesterday celebrating with him. (I have a funny story from PA to tell you about, too, but I’m saving that for another day.)

At 10:30, we took (or tried to take) Chaco down to the river in Nederland to play. However, it was freezing there — about 48 degrees and terribly windy — so Ben suggested that we drive on down to Boulder. We played in the river at the park and had a great time. However, there’s a festival in Boulder for Memorial Day, so afterwards we walked on over to THAT. OK, this wasn’t really for Chaco’s birthday, but it was fun. (Chaco pulled so hard on the leash to get out of there that I gave up and handed it over to Ben, who fought Chaco the entire way back to the car. We should’ve taught him to “heel” before he became a senior citizen.)

Which he is. The vet told me that they consider any dog older than seven is considered a “senior”. Unfortunately, Chaco seems to fit that bill. He’s getting sorer and sorer these days; after a romp in the yard, a swim in the river, or a chase of frisbees in the park, it’s almost painful to watch him. Getting up is excruciating. Walking up the stairs? No, thanks. I pushed the vet to take x-rays, and they came out clean — no arthritis — but still. It’s painful.

He’s also not as high-energy. This is a good thing. For example, he brings the frisbee about three times before he leaves it in the bushes, and I kind of like that. He’s tired. Yesterday, in the water, he fetched about four sticks before he let them float away. He’s more my speed now.

However, his spirit is still the one of the bouncy puppy we brought home seven years ago. He had a hunger for Q-tips and pizza and a hankering for lots of hugs and kisses. And he still does. If it’s possible, we love him more now than we did back then, and that’s saying a lot.

Happy birthday, Chaco! =)

It was 75 degrees today! Spring is so *weird* here in the mountains. It’ll probably snow tomorrow. Today, however, was gorgeous. We took Chaco to the river for a swim early this afternoon, which he of course enjoyed, and tonight I set up my hammock swing underneath the porch. I’ve yet to see it in the daylight, so I don’t know if it’ll be too bright for me, but I’m hoping that it isn’t.

I’m leaving for Pennsylvania tomorrow to accompany Ben on another four-day business trip. Four day business trips stink! Fortunately, Ben knows my opinion on them and he invited me along before I got all hot and bothered. Wish me safe travels and warm weather, please!

Here’s a picture, since I forgot my camera today at the river. It’s from a site called I Can Has Cheeseburger? There’s another good site called I Has A Hotdog that does dog pictures. If you read a blog aggregator, you can add these feeds if you like. Anyway, the caption on this photo seems perfect for me:

It’s the middle of May. When I was growing up, that meant it was starting to get hot. You’d go to school in a jumper and a tank top and race home from the bus stop to play in the sprinkler.

Here? It’s snowing.

Two days ago we got 8″. Today, I woke up to more of the same, and it’s been snowing on and off since this afternoon.

It HAS been warmer, though. I’ve been out with Chaco to play frisbee all this week. (Despite my case of laryngitis — grr. It’s hard to yell at Chaco to “Drop it!” when you can’t talk.)

Speaking of which, I’ve been hanging out on newf.net the past couple days, reading about what kind of dog to get next. We love Chaco but don’t want to take the chance on getting another Bonzo, so Aussies are out. In the herding group, however, the bigger breeds are known for being more relaxed. They are MUCH less likely to be aggressive and they tend to LOVE people. (Those of you who’ve met Chaco know that he won’t say hello until you’ve been around for at least 24 hours without causing trouble. He’s a friendly dog and he won’t attack you, but he won’t deign to greet you, either.) Of course, if you’ve got a 120 pound dog, they HAVE to be friendly because if they’re not there’s not much you can do about it. Anyway, there’s a thread on newf.net to honor deceased dogs, and I read this poem in there:

I explained to St. Peter,
I’d rather stay here,
Outside the pearly gate.

I won’t be a nuisance,
I won’t even bark,
I’ll be very patient and wait.

I’ll be here,
chewing on a celestial bone,
No matter how long you may be.

I’ll miss you so much,
if I went in alone,
It wouldn’t be heaven for me.

When I was about eight years old, my [black] cat Frosty had to be put to sleep. I was distraught. I knew it was for the best — he was in a lot of pain — but it still sucked. In church the following Sunday, I asked my pastor, “Do cats go to Heaven?”

“Well, do you think God loves them?”

“Yes!” I cried. Everybody loved Frosty.

“Then I don’t see why not!” It made sense to me. I felt much better.

To all the moms out there, happy mothers’ day! (I’m a day late. I apologize.)

Today started late. Ben came home around 8:15am; he’d been playing poker all night. (”Will you promise to be home by 3?” I’d asked him. “Uh … sorry. No can do.”) I got up to pee and then contemplated checking my email, but Ben convinced me to go back to sleep. Which I did. I’d gone to bed at 11:15 yesterday and woke up (again) at 11:45am today … 12 1/2 hours of sleep. That’s pretty amazing!

I woke Ben up at 2:30pm this afternoon, and he got out of bed with no complaining. Good boy! We headed over to the Tropicana Hotel and Resort about 3:30pm to see “Bodies”, the exhibit featuring … you guessed it … bodies!

It was phenomenal. They’ve taken at least one hundred bodies and preserved them in all their glory. There are bodies featuring the digestive, urinary, respiratory, muscular, skeletal and venous systems. There was even a stroke-brain! (I wouldn’t have wanted this particular stroke. 75% of the brain was black, indicating clotting.) Overall, it was really cool.

The most interesting part, in my opinion, was the fetuses. They had fetuses from all stages of development: an eraser-sized fleck of skin at three weeks to a tiny, tiny baby (with toes!) at 8 weeks to a full-sized baby at 40 weeks. They had congenital twins (which looked very painful to give birth to!) and a baby with its organs outside its body (yuck!).

There were two doctors circulating the exhibit to answer questions. “What’s a jejunum?” I called out as one of them whisked by.

“It’s part of the small intestine,” the guy answered. Wow, he knew! “It’s between the duodenum and the ileum.”

“Ok, thanks,” I said, completely clueless what ANY of those things were, but pretty sure that the small intestine did something related to digestion. It was a neat idea to have real doctors there, however. Ben cornered one of them at the exit.

“Why are there so many males and so few females?” he asked, echoing one of my earlier comments. There were hardly any full-body females, and there were lots of males.

“Partly because females are less often organ donors, and partly because of some reason I don’t know,” he said. “They had another female right next to me yesterday, but they took it away for some reason. I assume it’s because of our impending move to the Luxor, but I don’t understand why they didn’t take one of the men.” Interesting. I thought it’d be the other way around; that women would be more likely than men to donate their organs. I’d think that to be a donor, you’d have to be more trusting; I’ve heard that some people aren’t organ donors because they think doctors will let them die so that they can feast on their organs. I’d think that women are more trusting, but what do I know … (I am an organ donor, by the way. Are you?)

Anyway, after our Bodies adventure we had dinner at Hooters (Ben’s choice) and then we had dessert at Emeril’s, a restaurant/bar in MGM. I got flourless chocolate cake. It was GOOD. It tasted like a brownie but moister and chocolate-ier.

On Wednesday night I had the pleasure of dining with one of my high school buddies, Andy, who was in Vegas for a convention! We ate at In N Out (I love In N Out). We were talking about jobs, and he said something that really resonated with me: “A lot of people our age want jobs not so much for the money, but to feel useful.” That is EXACTLY how I feel. I don’t need the money; Ben and I are doing fine right now on one income. However, I really want to feel useful. I sort of feel that tutoring at the high school is useful, but … well, not really. How useful can it be if nobody’s willing to pay you for it? That’s bad logic, I’m sure, but there’s something about being told, “You’re doing a great job! The kids love you! Would you like to come back and teach?” that I would like to hear. No, that’s not correct … I would LOVE to hear it. I don’t expect to hear it from the kids, most of whom *hate* math, but it’d be nice to hear it from the other teachers. Andy works as a manager at Wegman’s, a New Jersey grocery store, and he said that while his job is “good” in the sense that it pays well, it fails on the “feeling useful” scale. Does anybody else out there have similar feelings?

And now Jake is pestering me to take him to the slot machines. YES, BECAUSE I’M GOOD AT SLOT MACHINES AND I WANT TO MAKE MONEY. We’ve decided to go tomorrow morning. BUT I’M FEELING ESPECIALLY LUCKY *NOW*. Well, that’s tough, Jake; I suggest that you plug it before I change my mind about taking you tomorrow. HHRRMMPPHH.

Well, not really “jackpot”, but Ben taught me how to play Blackjack this afternoon and I left with a little more than 250% of what I started with.  I made like $155.  I don’t consider that very piddly!

We’re on our way to Bonaire! At least we *think* we’re on our way.
We got a good start out of the gate; we left home at 1pm for a 6:06pm
departure. The airport’s only an hour from our house, so we diddled
around in Boulder for a while, having lunch, buying suncreen and bug
spray, visiting the Boba tea shop, and mailing a mother’s day present
home. (Mom, when you get a package, please don’t open it until the
11th!)

We finally headed to the airport around 3pm — still PLENTY of time,
right? Ben let me out at the curb with the luggage (which is pretty
heavy, since we’re bringing our own gear with us), parked the car, and
met me inside. We proceeded to the Continental ticket counter
together.

We’re flying Continental because they have a nonstop flight from
Houston to Bonaire and we were reluctant to subject ourselves to
another dreaded stop in Curacao, which lasted 10 interminable hours on our last trip.

We head to their electronic check-in counter, where everything goes
fine until we have to scan our passports. When we returned from Paris
in December, Ben held onto them and put them in the laundry when we got home. Mine is wrinkled and the back page, where the barcode is, is delaminating from the back of the book; Ben’s back page is
completely dismembered. He tried scanning mine three times, to no
avail, and finally input my data manually. A lady finally came over
to help us.

“May I see your passports, please?” she purred. We handed them over.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Who put these through the wash? They’re
terribly damaged.” They’re not, really; they’re just a little
… used. She looked at mine closely, then turned to me. “I can’t
let you fly. This is not up to code.”

Thank goodness Ben was there, because I couldn’t come up with the
words I needed. Her ruling was ridiculous. Ben has flown with his
damaged passport before with NO complaints from the customs
authorities. (Our lady said that United may have been fined ten grand
because of it, but I don’t think so …) Moreover, Ben’s passport is
way more damaged than mine, so why did our lady decide to nitpick
MINE? Finally, despite the damage our passports have sustained, there is no way that they could have been altered. The pictures are still
there, along with the numbers, and they’re encased in laminating
plastic. We didn’t screw around with the information. They haven’t
expired yet.

I was almost ready to break out into tears, but Ben took us over to
the United ticket counter. We waited in the 1k “line” (where there
was all of one man in front of us) and talked to a very helpful agent.
United scans passports optically, so we were fine there. She booked
us to Houston, where we hoped they would inspect our passports
visually before allowing us on the plane. Four hours and four
terminals later, we were in Houston.

Anna greeted us at gate E-1. We set our stuff down next to her and
went to get some food. Unfortunately, everything is closed at 11pm in
Texas. I settled for a bagel and a cup of chocolate ice cream at the
only open cafe. The gate agent was checking passports when we
returned, so we stood in line. The moment of truth: would we get to
Bonaire, or would we get stuck in Houston?

The guy took our passports and immediately frowned. “These aren’t
good enough to travel on,” he complained, “but I’ll ask my manager.” He hopped on the phone and turned to us, still frowning. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It says on your file that the agent in Denver told you you
couldn’t get on the plane …”

Ben argued with him for a while, but every time he started to tell his
version of the story, but every time the agent met him with a, “It
says on your file that we told you in Denver …” Finally, Ben said,
“I’ll just wait and explain this to your manager.” The manager came
over and Ben began what turned out to be a VERY long conversation with him. We had an audience; Anna was very eager to hear the verdict. I decided it’d be better if I sat down. I was pretty tired and not helping anyway.

Half an hour later, a dejected Ben sat down with us. “Nope, they
won’t let us on the plane,” he admitted grudgingly. I expected this,
and I was oddly un-angry. Anna looked horrified. If it had been her,
I suspected there’d've been some tears and … well, lots of tears.

“I’ll try to get your money back on the lodging,” she promised. “You
work on the airfare.” Ben agreed. They got on the plane, and we
waited, and waited, and … waited. Finally, the gate agent
approached us with our “package”, which included a flight home to
Denver and lodging overnight in the airport’s Marriott. They even got
us our bags, which we had to trudge all the way across the airport.

We tried to take the train. We’d taken it from terminal A to terminal
E when we arrived. My goodness, why’d the make this airport in a
straight line? I thought at the time. There were some guys on the
train as it pulled up to the station, and they motioned for us to join
them. Ben and I boarded separate cars, because with our luggage carts
and other people already in them, we wouldn’t have fit. And then we
waited, and waited, and … waited. The doors didn’t shut. The
trains didn’t go anywhere. I looked at my watch; 12:30am. The
trains’ stopping time. I reluctantly gathered up my
seemingly-overlarge luggage and exited the car.

Ben and I trudged awkwardly a half mile to the Marriott, which was
near terminal C. At least the aiport was quiet — it’s a ghost town
at half past midnight. We reached the Marriott and had to ride the
elevator up three stories. Ben checked us in, and then we had to ride
it another three stories up to our room. The only problem was we
didn’t fit in the elevator — our luggage was too big. (These
elevators were evidently smaller than the ones we’d ridden up thus
far.) I guess we took too long trying to fit ourselves in, because
the elevator suddently said, “This elevator has entered Fire Safety
mode. Blah blah blah blah blah.” After trying for a little while,
we decided to ride up one at a time — tricky because you needed a key
to reach the upper floors and they’d only given us one.

“This just puts the icing on the day,” Ben griped. I agreed, but I
was so exhausted that I couldn’t respond. Once we got to our room, I
collapsed on the bed.

Which brings me to a VERY IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: I can sleep! I was
worried that, perhaps, I was simply unable to fall asleep anymore.
Every night, I would toss and turn for an hour. Without the Adderall,
however, I can fall asleep in about 15 minutes. The Ritalin isn’t
perfect — for instance, I fell asleep this afternoon and hour and a
half after taking it, and that isn’t supposed to happen — but this
being ABLE to fall asleep is WONDERFUL. I may start a habit of taking a nap every afternoon! I’ve got some kinks to work out (like
adjusting my dosages of Ritalin and timing them optimally), but I
will *take* it!

Anyway, after 8 hours of sleep, we had to wake up again to fly home.
We had ‘breakfast’ at the airport Ruby’s (who said chocolate
milkshakes weren’t nutritious?) and Ben spent the entire meal glued to
his cellphone, arguing with the folks at Continental for the right to
get a free flight to Bonaire to make up for keeping us off this one.
He won. And we arrived in Denver on time.

“How’d you like to go to Las Vegas?” Ben asked me.

“I really don’t want you staying out late playing poker,” I answered
truthfully. “How about Havasu?”

“We’d have to fly there. It takes 14 hours to drive there, and I’m just not up for that. We wouldn’t be able to bring Chaco.”

“Oh.”

“I promise not to play poker late,” Ben said. “I just really want to go somewhere WARM. The weather’s not so good in Miami this week, and we can’t go anywhere out of the country.”

“Sold.”

Ben went to pick up our luggage and drop it off at the car. I went to
the Vegas gate after a quick stop at the Paris Cafe restaurant. Ben
joined me in about half an hour. “It went fine, except my car keys
are right here in my travel bag,”– the one I’d been holding for him.
“So I just left the dive gear under the car. I don’t think anyone
will take it. Scuba diving isn’t very popular in Colorado.”

“The resale value isn’t so shabby, though.”

“Oh. Well, we’ll just hope that nobody takes it.”

“I guess we will!” I said with a smile. This “vacation” was turning
out to be so … well … terrible, what could it hurt to return with
a little less dive gear? =)

Ben got us tickets in under an hour using awards miles, and now we’re
basking in the warmth of Vegas. We’re staying at the MGM’s Signature Towers, where there is no casino. The room is delightful; we’re on the 29th floor, we’ve got a great view of the strip, and the window is tinted just the way I like it — DARK. It’s not a tropical island, but it’ll do for now.

And a word of advice to y’all: don’t put your passports in the laundry
and try to fly anywhere on Continental afterwards. Read the rest of this entry »