It's time for 2009!

Happy New Years!!!!!
I wish for everbody to have a better year then 2008.

I think our only resolution for 2009 is to lose weight - I know, original, right?

We had a really fun time this New Years Eve with Jimmy's mom -Marie, Angelique (Peter's wife) and Peter (Jimmy's lifelong friend). On our way down to Jimmy's mom's house we picked up some take-out from our favorite Thai restaurant in Duarte. Then spent the rest of the night in our PJ's watching Dick Clark, drinking cheap wine, playing Yahtzee, and watching the boys play old school Street Fighter on Peter's PS2. It's sounds so basic but I must admit it probably rated in the top 10 New's Years stuff I've ever done. I've heard that you should do on New Year's Eve what you will do all year, well, I can't think of anything better to do than laugh a lot, spend time with my love Jimmy and spend time with family.

Happy 2009!

Mozy on Over..

Jimmy and I have been researching options for backing up our home computer since my newest project is to take all of our photos and our parents' photos and scan them on to our home computer. We've been researching different methods when I asked the IT guy at work and he suggested Mozy.com. He is starting to convert all his clients to this site and couldn't find a bad thing to say about them. The company I work for even uses them. It's about $60 a year for unlimited backup of music, movies, photos and documents- about the cost of an external drive. My complaints with external drives are- what if the drive crashes? What if the drive is stolen along with my computer? Mozy.com instead is an off-site backup using your Internet connection. They use a secure line and it runs in the background of your computer so you don't even have to remember to backup files. Mozy will do it automatically! If you buy a year then they give you a free month of service plus I found a coupon code online for 15% off (EBAY15) so the fee is now $3.85/month!!

Check it out!!

My Favorite Testimonial: From BusinessWeek
When Damian Zikakis' laptop computer was stolen last May, he figured that was the last he would see of it. A thief had broken into the Birmingham (Mich.) offices of his employer, Boyden Executive Search. Zikakis promptly bought a new computer. He had subscribed to an automated computer backup service called Mozy, and he reconnected via his new laptop. That's when the Mozy service, which costs $5 per month for individuals, really paid off.
Zikakis noticed that some photographs and other files that weren't his were being saved by the backup system. He realized they belonged to the person who now had his original laptop. Doing a little sleuthing, he examined the photos. A teenage boy had posted images of himself mugging for the camera like an urban gangsta. A woman, who turned out to be the boy's mother, had stored a document on the laptop that included her name, address, and cell-phone number. With a little help from the police, Zikakis recovered his computer. "I'm a very happy Mozy customer," he says.

I just wish I had known about this site years ago when our original home computer was stolen!

Ouchy!

I don't consider myself a clumsy person but when I get hurt it seems I go all out! Friday, the first day back after it snowed, Jimmy drove me to work because he was worried about the road conditions -even though I only work 4 miles from home. I had just finished putting my stuff down at work and walked outside to get some pictures of our building covered in snow. As I'm walking across the street. Wham Bam! I slipped and fell on black ice in the road.
I managed to get myself up and even took a couple of pictures while I was just in agony from the back pain and my hand slightly bleeding from getting cut by the ice. I waited a few hours at work while I caught up from being out for two days, but after waiting all that time and the pain never eased up I finally had Jimmy pick me up and I went to Urgent Care.
It was nice to know I wasn't the only person to slip. Everybody at the doctors was there for the same reason. It was frustrating that it took 2 hours to be called in and then waiting for three hours in the doctors room to only see the doctor for 5 min and the nurse for 10 mins. I received a tetanus shot for my cut hand, a shot in my tush for pain (which only made it hurt worse!) and some band-aids for my hand.
They did take x-rays and even though the Doctor "didn't have time to review them" before I left from the hospital. I called later that night and thankfully nothing is broken.
I'm still hobbling around with a bit of pain when I bend down four days later and the cuts on my hand are mostly healed. I see the doctor again tomorrow for a check-up.

Snow Day, Part Two

From The Next Day

Well, my work called another snow day! Yippee!

After breakfast we walked up to the neighbors to help them clear their driveway- after all, they help do ours yesterday. Then we started finally having fun in the snow. Our neighbors, Rich, Christie and Brandon, and Jimmy and I, sledded down our hill, made snow angels and had a snow ball fight (I wanted to make a snowman but after all the other stuff I was pooped!). Even all our dogs got in on the fun - Missy, Gypsy, Rusty, and the neighbor's dog Buddy! The sledding was the most fun - we didn't have anything to sled down the hill with so we started getting creative. First we used a boogyboard - that didn't work so well. Then we used one of those plastic kiddie pools - nope, that didn't work either! Ah ha! I remembered that the lid to our neighbor's trash can had broken off and it hadn't been thrown away yet - it couldn't have worked better! (Just a little ghetto-fab!)

It was a great day and we never had to leave the house!!


Tomorrow, it's back to reality and back to work!

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

We woke up this morning and what did we see? Snow! and it hasn't stopped since. I don't know what the official count is but just taking a ruler out to the middle of the yard it looks like we have 10-inches of snow. Luckily my work called a snow day today so I didn't have to go in - except to go and put a closed message on the answering system.

Jimmy and I are stranded in the house. We tried to pull both of our cars out of the driveway but neither could make it up the slope of the driveway. By the time we finished shovelling our driveway this afternoon we already had half an inch fall again.

I called my boss and she thinks we'll have another snow day tomorrow but we'll see what happens.

This is a video of our neighborhood when we woke up the next morning.

Party at the North Pole!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Seriously?!?

So we have these neighbors behind us. They bought their house about the same time we did. Two weeks after they moved in they started building a shed in their backyard. Well, it's been almost three years now and the shed is still not completed. I once saw them start a random fire in their backyard in the dirt at night. Neither of these have much to do with my point except to give an example of how trashy they are. Well yesterday it was raining all day here and has been getting as low as 30 degrees. Their poor dog was chained up ALL DAY in the backyard without shelter from the rain. They don't have a fence around their yard so they chain her up. We called the humane society on them twice yesterday and they never showed up!! It's illegal in California to have a dog chained for more than 3 hours. During the year I've ignored them doing this because they don't have a fence and I already get irritated by their two chihuahuas they have running around unleashed.
We have another neighbor who is a very sweet older lady that walks her four dogs everyday around the neighborhood. She came up to Jimmy late yesterday afternoon and said she was out walking her dogs when the son of my neighbor ran up to her to tell her that they are moving out tonight and aren't talking the dog. She asked Jimmy if we could take the dog for a couple of days until she finds a home for it or a no-put-down shelter. It happened so quick that Jimmy said yes and now we have a year and a half old pit bull mix in our backyard!!
As the trashy neighbor walked the dog over to our house Jimmy looked at it closer and asked our neighbor: "Is she pregnant?!?!" Our neighbor speaks hardly any English but told Jimmy that she's due any day now!! WTF! After the drop off the trashy neighbors were gone within the hour.
I'm so upset at these people!! To have a dog that they never payed attention to, chained up all day for most of it's life, don't spay it and then plan on just leaving it at the house you're abandoning while it's supposed to have puppies "any day now"!! I'm mad now because we're nice people and we've taken a dog that I wish the humane society had picked up yesterday like they're supposed to.
We can't keep this dog. Gypsy, one of our Labradors, is the alpha female and keeps trying to bite the pit bull. Besides, I never want a pit bull. I just don't trust them and especially this one who, I know, will probably have some behavior problems from these people. So now we have to shift the dog from one area to another when it's time for our own dogs to use the backyard. We called around today to every shelter and rescue in the area to get rid of this dog by tomorrow.
UPDATE: On Thursday we finally got a call back from one of the rescues, The Sound of Silent Spirits (Jimmy asked: "if they're silent then how can they make a sound?" Smart ass! ☺), they found a foster home to keep her at until she has her puppies and can be adopted!

Tis the Season....

From Rancho Cucamonga Christmas Lights

Last night we went to Rancho to go look at Christmas Lights. If you've never been it's a definite must see. The lengths these house go to for Christmas decorating is just amazing. My favorite house was the Disney Fairytale house and the Gingerbread House that we took a picture in front of.

Right when we got there it started raining. We tough it out and the rain stopped after about 20 minutes. Jimmy, Rusty and I got a little soggy but we had a good time! This was the first time we've really taken him out on an outing and he was on sensory overload. He was so excited to see all the people and smell everything. He did very good on his leash and never barked once. While it was raining he got to cuddle in my jacket and watch the lights from my arms because he's still a little under weight

From Rancho Cucamonga Christmas Lights

Puppy Love....Hate the bills

It's coming up on Christmas and every year we have the hardest time trying to find good gifts for Jimmy's mom. We decided this year that we are going to give her a dog. So Thanksgiving weekend we went on a search for the perfect little companion. After 2 trips to PetsMart, 1 trip to Petco and two shelters we finally found our little guy! He is a terrier mix, about 4 years old. We've decided to call him Rusty which even on the first night he started responding to. He is the sweetest dog and I swear he is half cat because I've never seen a dog that likes to cuddle or be pet as much as Rusty. The Apple Valley Animal Shelter was a really nice place to go. They let us take out a couple of dogs for a walk to see if there was a bond. Rusty was our first walk and he won our heart. We found him on Saturday and the vet was not in so we weren't able to take him home until Tuesday. Right after Jimmy picked him up we went to PetsMart to get him groomed. I wanted the shelter smell off him before bringing him home. It was like taking him to a carwash . The made him smell like a sugar cookie.!!

The shelter also sent a certificate for a free vet exam which we used the next Saturday because we were having a hard time getting him to eat anything. The vet noticed that his incision from the neutering was infected (The vet said this is why he wasn't eating) and gave us some medication and an e-collar. But it wasn't but three days later he was cuddling on the couch with us when he started acting weird. His stitches had broken and he started bleeding on the couch and the carpet. We quickly scooped him up and put him the doggy kennel. It was Tuesday at 10 at night and knew he wouldn't make it till morning bleeding the way he was, so we took him the emergency vet clinic. Well 2 hours later, 8 new stitches, 2 medications and a $260.00 vet bill we have a beautiful happy little dog.


Little Rusty is doing great now, eating well (the vet says he's 3 lbs under weight so I feed him junk food like pizza), happy, barking and playing.

Rusty's Bill.........

• Adoption Fee? $75.00
• Leash, Collar and Toys that he doesn't like playing with? $30.00
• Visit to the Groomer? $45.00
• 1st Vet Visit? $60.00
• Kennel to Help with Potty Training? $28.00
• 2nd Vet Visit? $260.00
• Saving the Cutest Dog in the World from an Animal Shelter?

Well, just look at that face!

Priceless!!

Happy Halloween!

Since we haven't had a single trick-or-treater in the last two years we went down to our friends, Robin and Mike's house down in Foothill Ranch. Their streets were covered with kids. It look like three elementary schools just let out. I was utterly amazed at how many people were out in their community. I had never seen anything like it. Robin and Mike's little girls went out - Alyssa was Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Brenna was a fairy princess. Unfortunately, the minute they came back from trick-or-treating they immediately stripped their costumes off so I never got a picture. But trust me, they were adorable. The great thing about little kids and Halloween is that they are really too young to eat all that candy so after the kids went to bed we all poured our drinks of choice (rum & coke zero for me!) and raided the candy bags. I just can't believe how much the girls are growing up and how smart both of them are. Alyssa is reading at four

and Brenna is only 22 months and she knows her phonetic alphabet.