seeing if my NowPlaying plugin is working

Loldogs made me laugh today. I needed that because I can't get half of my software working.

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Cassie-b asked that I post photos of my dog neckerchiefs. She specifically mentioned the Cinco de Mayo ones, but my dogs refused to pose for photos that day because I forgot them outside for two hours on a cold Michigan morning.

Here they are in their lookout window sporting their "Denim Love". (The word love appears in brown scattered among the hearts.)

The dog neckerchief mania started when I found some western print fabric on clearance around the same time I stumbled across a link for dog collar slipcover neckerchiefs. In case you didn’t know, my dogs both have western-themed names. Annie's registered name is Annie Oakley "AOK". Her initials plus my last name are A-OK! Dell's namesake is Della Moore … a prostitute, turned bank robber, turned teacher.

Their old dog collar slipcover neckerchiefs are getting donated to the animal shelter along with collars.

Here’s a rundown of what they have (see the photo on Flickr for notes):

Did I ever tell you there was almost a mutiny towards me when I proposed changing our department's lunch hour years ago when we first started doing four 10s during the summer?

You see, almost everyone in my department (me, my female secretary, & 11 men) watches Y&R at lunchtime. Changing it would have caused serious distress. I will catch Y&R when I can. If I miss it during the day, it comes on in the evenings on SOAPnet. If If miss an episode or a week or more, I can always ask one of the guys for updates.

Let me tell you, those updates are often more dramatic than the show itself.

Anyway ... I didn't take lunch and had to stay at work until quitting time yesterday because BossMan and Secretary were both out of the office. That last hour made the day seem really long. Worse yet: the phone rang off the hook for the better part of that hour.

I wanted to punch the weatherman. He informed me that we had 30" of snow over our normal average ... and most of that overage happened in April. He also tells me that May temperatures have been below average.

Today I went shopping for plants for my vegetable and flower gardens just to get a little glimpse of color and a warm fuzzy feeling. There was no way I was going to purchase since the rule-of-thumb in this neck of the woods is to wait until Memorial Day weekend to plant outdoors to be sure we are after last hard frost.

Maybe I wouldn't be so cranky today if the squirrels didn't eat all of my early-spring flowering bulbs.

My computer spent last night at ExBoyD's again. That new motherboard he attempted to install last week had issues and he needed to get a replacement that he put in last night. He was also installing new memory (went from 512MB to 1G) and a new video card. I had also been having issues with my wireless adapter which he was able to fix.

True to form the computer decided not to cooperate. He had to re-install windows. Now I have to re-install most of my programs. Oddly enough I did not lose any of my IE bookmarks, but lost all of my Firefox bookmarks and add-ons.

But, damn ... this sucka is more speedier.

I had a couple of extra riders on my truck for a couple of days and didn't even know it. Let's first trace my path from when they first appeared:

• Saturday - went from Kat's apartment to my house


• Sunday - went to the movies, then the mall, gas station, WalMart, and McDonalds, came home


• Monday - picked up Kat, dropped Kat & KiKi & my dogs off at Ruth's, went to work, went to all 5 jobsites, came home, went thru the credit union drive thru then to DrHawt's, came home

Here's the extra riders:

Those are Ernie's bungie straps that we used to hold down the tarp covering the load of Kat's belongings that was on my truck.

Can you guess how many pairs of dog neckerchiefs I finished today?

I'll tell you: 1.

I do have seven more pairs cut & pinned ... so I at least accomplished that much. I did get the sewing machine lubed up also. All I could find was a 4-ounce bottle of machine oil for $5. I used a whopping four drops and dribbled some on the floor. That bottle is going to last me forever. My dogs are currently sporting Mexican stripes in honor of Cinco de Mayo tomorrow. It was important that I completed that set first because I still have Valentine and St. Patrick's fabric hanging around and didn't want to miss out on this holiday. It took me for-effin-ever to get that one set done tonight. The rest should go more quickly now that I remember how I made them.

I've always said that if I could combine the life I have here with the hills and outdoors and arts and stores of Mqt that my life would be complete.

The trip to Mqt yesterday made me miss the city even more ... stores, pedal bikers, snow still on the ski hill, one-way streets turned to two-ways and two-way streets turned to one-ways, stores, community theater & museum posters plastered around, restaurants I loved and that delivered, and the scenery plus the expansion of chain stores.

I would so live there again if the weather there didn't suck during winter and I could get a job as good as the one I have.

One of the best memories I have of Mqt is before I lived there. My wedding was coming up and Mom needed a dress. The wedding colors were immediately picked ... fuchsia, white & black. We did some frantic dress shopping. In case you don't know, it was 10 weeks from the time we decided to get married until the actual date.

Dress after dress after dress ... weird sounds of frustration would come out of either Mom's or my mouth after seeing her in what was available and what it looked like on her. At one point she said while walking out of the dressing room, "I look more like a Cambodian refugee than a mother of a bride." We laughed and cried together.

A few changes later, she waked out of the dressing room in the perfect dress.

Our quarterly girls night is coming up in a few weeks. We know where we want to go and where we are staying, but the rest is up in the air.

I've been doing some planning because I don't want to just sit in a hotel room or just make the whole outing about going to the bars. A few months ago I came across a post that gave me an idea. I've got a draft done and going to run it by the other girls to see if they have any fun ideas to add.

We'll each get a scorecard and see who ends up the winner at the end of our outing.

It was very odd not to have my computer here for three nights in a row. It probably would have not been so bad if I had some time at work to goof off on the computer. Those participating in the poll were equally divided among man vs. hobby ... except for the two that had the men are hobbies opinion. I didn't count their vote.

I love the rush I am getting from the start of another building season kicking off. After several weeks of preparing and waiting for winter road restrictions to be lifted so that machinery and materials can be moved, the announcement came yesterday morning. One of my crew members said he heard it on the morning radio. Huh!? My head swung around so fast I almost broke my neck.

I keep my ears glued to the radio this time of year to hear when restrictions are being lifted. This year I completely missed the announcement. Not only that ... instead of being lifted in increments it was lifted county-wide.

So now I'm all *chop-chop-chop* ... "Hustle boys, we've got houses to build!"

I had planned on posting from work yesterday, but I was busy or when I had a moment my mind went blank. So you're getting a quickie post before the crew gets here.

My computer again decided that it is not going to cooperate getting a new piece or hardware. It's in ExBoyD's possession since Sunday getting a new motherboard and video card.