This is where I bitch.

Christmas was nice. We went to the Twin Cities to visit Paul's family. His mom was awesome and made the same dinner my mom makes on Christmas eve, Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes. Not quiet as good as my mom's, but delicious and very, very nice of her.

We spent most of the time visiting with his family. The dogs stayed with his sister the first night, letting Paul and I have a night off. They did well. Remy dose not do well in hotel's though, barking at every sound in the hall. He kept me up most of the night.

Yesterday at work was busy, but today was nice and calm. I'm hoping that keeps up for the week.

The house is almost clean, just the bathroom to go. Becky and Drew might stay with us after the New Year's party, so I want the house to not be gross.

I think I found this story off of a podcast site. I didn't want to listen to it, but read it instead. Dudley's Memories and it's sequel Snape's Memories is awesome. Totally worth the read.

I got to leave almost on time today. I have a half a vacation day left, and my company doesn't let us roll them over, so I decided to take the second half of today off, make it a 4.5 day weekend. This was a good plan when we thought today was going to be slow. But one client has been late on getting me things for like two weeks, so I was sitting around, nothing to do all morning, waiting for an email. At 1pm I bailed and my coworker John said he'd watch my email and get things done. It's nice having a team where we can all cover for each other.

Saturday we will head up to spend Christmas with Paul's family. Tonight and tomorrow are for relaxing, but mostly cleaning. The house really needs it, especially if we are having people stay over on New Years after the party.

Hopefully next week at work it will be slow and I can do some catch up.

Tonight's big chore: Washing both dogs (along with furmination, teeth brushing and ear cleaning)

We had a great time on Saturday at our friend's Jeremy and Chad's house. Other years they have had a ginger bread decorating party, but after a few years of that it seems that new and interesting house ideas are becoming scarce. So this year they made large, like 8 inch long, ginger bread men to decorate. There were 9 people there, some we knew, some we just met. Jeremy is a interior design major, so their house is always amazing. The food was good too. We brought the pugs, and they seemed to have an OK time as well. There were 5 dogs total, which is a lot, but after a hour or so of crazy running around, they all clammed some. Remy spent most of the night next to me or in my lap, he's not too social yet. And JP peed on Jeremy's fabulous tree. They weren't upset, they have a pug too, but I was mortified.

Sunday Paul tried to buy us the cheap HP TouchPads, but the internets denied him. I went and played the last night of volleyball for this season. I played well, had a blast. I think out team ended up 2nd over all.

Good weekend all and all.

So... we have a new pug. I had no expectation that we'd come home with him. Paul follows some pug rescue websites and got a notification that there was a new post for a pug in our state. They are a retired couple that are moving to Florida for the winters. They have 3 pugs, 2 boxers and a cat. Too many dogs for the place they are moving to. So they made the really hard decision to get rid of a pug and a boxer. Paul contacted them and we set up a time this afternoon to go and meet them, with JP with us, so we could see if everyone got along. They lived near Milwaukee, about an hour from us. Their house was huge and beautiful. I have no idea why they couldn't find a place to live that would allow them to keep all of their pets.

I expected us to met, them to ask us some questions and then maybe they would come and visit us to see our house. But after 45 minutes they loved us and handed us the papers. The woman seemed very upset that she had to get rid of Remy. So we took out leave with a new six year old, normal sized (i.e. half the size of JP) pug.

Here is Remy, and here are both of them after a long day of getting to know each other.

it only took two days to get though Catching Fire, the second book int eh Hunger games series. I was wrong thinking it was going to be all political. I couldn't figure out how they'd keep the same feel in the 2nd book, but they did it the easy way, break the world's laws. Well done. I did care about the characters more, probably because I was more invested in them. And I don't even mind the semi-three/four way relationship mess. Not a huge fan, but handled better than most YA.

Will have to grab the 3rd one soon.

Not much happening this weekend. Working at the mall, chores, walks/dog park trips with JP. Tomorrow we have plans to go and meet a pug that we might adopt. Give JP someone to play with and keep him company during the day. We will see, details are fuzzy, but the first step is seeing if the dogs get along.

The weather is beautiful, I don't care who says its too hot.

The last Drabblecast was really cool, made me think, in a good way. No link, sorry, their website isn't being updated. You have to find it on iTunes.

It was a pretty uneventful weekend. My face was swollen and red through most of it. I mostly sat inside and watched TV without my glasses, as they hurt to wear with the swollen nose. I only left when JP needed a walk, and when I did that it was with a hoodie on pulled low over my face. Didn't want to scare the neighbor kids.

I took pictures along the way, mostly so I could track the progress.

By Sunday night the swelling was mostly gone, but I still have a red, scaly rash from my eye over to my nose and down to my mouth, and that will last for another 2-3 weeks. Joy.

But I'm back at work and things are going fine. Our full team is in the office again, and thus the stress and work load is evened out again.

JP is on the Battle Pug website, that's the new web comic I'm following.

Been a very stressful and busy week. I'm looking forward to the weekend, even if I'm working at the mall for a lot of it. I'm so, so, so very far behind on my email/RSS/blog reading. Like scary behind.

I had a weird dream last night, and I remember it, which is odd for me. It was kinda long and involved, but the only part I really remember was talking with Paul about how many party's and events we had to go to in the next week. We had to go to an AIDs fundraiser (which dose exist, but we can't make it), Ben's house warming party (which also exists and we are going to tonight), some event of channonyarrow's (I don't remember exactly what), a cookout thrown by Shannon, and a party thrown by exairian (she had drag queen strippers at it--I don't know why, but she did). Bizarre.

No weekend word at Omnipress, though I did get to bring home an iPad so I can play around with eBooks on it. I've used them a few times, but am not nearly experienced enough with one to do tech support for our products with our clients--something I think will be happening. I do need to swing into the office today and send out an email I forgot to send on Friday.

Working at the mall this morning, then I have an organization project at home. Paul has been redecorating, moving stuff around so that the house's Chi flows better. Things are a lot less cluttered and there is lots more open space. But I have a bunch of things to put away that he shouldn't have to do. Then tonight is Ben's house warming party, where I get to see my college/gaming friends again. It's been a while.

I have some freelancing plans in the works. More on that as they develop. I was really happy that when I asked my new boss if it's OK for me to do freelance book design and eBook conversion she said yes. She told me they encourage that, as I'll pick up more skills that I can then use at work. As long as I'm not working for a customer or a competitor it's no problem. The new company is pretty cool.

And as a random side, here is our little dragon slayer.

PugFest in Milwaukee today was fun. There were tons and tons of pugs. And all sorts of other smushy face types. The cutest costume was a couple of pugs, dressed in black suits in a wagon done up like a black car (think Men In Black). JP had fun sniffing butts. We got t-shirts for a new web comic, Battlepug. JP got a doggie cookie. And we got a caricature done of the three of us.

I decided to join the "Jane in June" read along of Pride and Prejudice over at Book Rat, a book blog I follow and have won a few books from. One of my favorites.

I haven't read P&P yet, but did enjoy Little Women last year. The boyfriend is a big Jane Austen fan, so I've become interested in it.

I've tried one of these read alongs before, I think it was with Dorian Gray, but got too busy and then got behind on the reading and fell out of the group. That copy was online though, and I find it hard to read long prose on the laptop. I picked up a paper back of P&P today used, so I can read from that. Should be fun.

---

It's been a good day. I went book shopping--see above--but also picked up some cheap, discount supernatural fiction. I got to have lunch with Wendy, she is in town for a day dropping the kiddies off at the grandparents while she is at navy reserve for two weeks. I went running. And took a nap.

Tomorrow is a shift at the mall, yard work and the dog park.