The past few Weekends in Review + our unexpected hiatus

I've had a bit of a hiatus from updating this blog because our dog was hit by a car.  Poseidon's going to be fine, but we've still got 6 weeks to go before we get full clearance from our vet that is broken arm has fully healed.  He hasn't been impressed with our insistence that he wear his cone of shame (although he's been trying to style it more like a cape).

Prior to his accident, we were enjoying the Ottawa winter and were exploring our local dog park with our good friend Susie and her blonde sidekick Simba (aka Poseidon's canine bff).  Simba is a 5 year old golden retriever who loves being chased and is starting to tolerate Poseidon's enthusiasm.

The morning of the accident, at Poseidon's insistence, we were out of the house at 8 am, we managed to brew ourselves some coffee, picked up some cookies at Bread and Roses Bakery, and the continued on our way to the river path.  That's when we spotted this monster of a contraption breaking up the ice. 

It was pretty loud and menacing looking, but it did a great job of breaking the ice.  The 'claw' arm would haul the body of the boat (is it a boat?) up onto the ice, and the weight of the boat would crack the ice.  The purpose of breaking up the ice is to prevent homes further up the waterway from experiencing floods in the spring time.  If they just waited for the top ice to melt, it would take too long and many people would have flooded basements, so they blow up the ice literally every year.

The machine was pretty cool, but the dog park beckoned, so we didn't stay too long.  After a good 20 minute romp with another golden retriever (Poseidon isn't exactly loyal to his go to canine pals, he's ready to play with anyone who is game, sorry Simba), we continued down to the Rideau Falls where all that flowing water was gushing.

In the meantime, we've been hanging out with Poseidon in our mudroom, trying to keep him entertained and limit the amount of movement he insists is minimum.  He's been enjoying an unusual amount of treats, chew toys and belly rubs.  This past Wednesday he finally had his stitches removed and was de-caped.  The vet says that he's in very good shape and that he expects him to be 100% in 6 weeks.  Yay!

Thomas' dad came up for a visit and we took advantage of his visit to go out and celebrate St Paddy's day in the Market.  We stopped in at our ever trusty hang out The Brig.  Thomas managed to order a green beer (pictured beside the Guinness below, I'm not sure if you can see its tint), and we considered our civic duty fulfilled.

On the topic of civic duties, we also needed to replace our toilet.  Our toilet in the basement gave up after/during the keg party, and the the toilet upstairs started giving us trouble too, so Thomas and his dad rolled up their sleeves and replaced it.  Here's the before picture, we'll try to post an after picture next week.

The Weekend in Review #1

We've noticed that as a result of having a very energetic dog, one side effect is that we walk around our neighbourhood much more than we would if we didn't have a dog.  We're blessed with an awesome dog park less than 2km away from our house, and during our hike, we were greeted by this very friendly tree:

Which boded quite well for the weekend.  Our neighbourhood friendly tree was featured on: http://blog.spontaneoussmiley.com/?p=9584 .  Way to go Ottawa!

On Saturday, our usual antics were enriched by the company of our friend Dan and his side kick Barclay.  Once again, we were off to our favourite park, but this time, with our cross country skis AND the dogs!

The car ride went rather smoothly, thanks to Barclay's supervision of the backseat passengers:

The cross country skiing went remarkably well, considering how much of a gong show it could have been with two energetic puppies, but they stayed near us, and were troopers despite the lack of treats being dolled out.  Our outdoor adventure was  cut short, due to the -20 degree weather, and the biting wind.  

On Sunday, we slept in for a whopping 30 minutes, and by the time we got downstairs, Poseidon left us a little reminder of why he doesn't let us sleep in.... In the afternoon, we realized that we had run out of dog food, so off we went to our local pet shop to pick up our usual 60lb bag of dog food.  You'll note in the picture, that the bag is so huge, Thomas couldn't even close off his backpack.

After solving the mystery of why the water in our dishwasher kept shutting off, and fixing it, we decided to make our new dishwasher more aesthetically pleasing by mounting a front on it (truth be told

I bet Ikea never thought of selling plywood as a cabinet door.  Shabby chic?

We had to replace our old ceiling lamp in the living room.  It had emphysema or something from the 30+ years of smoke that it had been exposed to.  We found this great replacement at the Home depot.  You can find a similar one here .

One more trip to the dog park with the cross country skis, (it was fairly dark out already, and Poseidon prefers not to be seen in his winter jacket) and that was our weekend.

Ride the wave, pet the dog

Today was a pretty good day, all things considered. I'm still a bit on edge about taking my language test next Monday (!), but have been doing my best to slowly, quietly, plow through the prep tests.

I did my sun salutations this morning as usual, but because I've been taking a bit more time lately in toning my arms, and as a result, today I was strong enough to 'ride the wave' (when you go from plank to cobra by pulling your body forward) and it felt fabulous. It was really nice to just flow from one position to the next, without having to crunch/flip my toes. Very, very pleased with this progress.

Today at lunch, I decided to come home to make myself a lunch (not too far away from work), and on my way, I saw a dog walker ahead, with 3 dogs. One was a Cairn Terrier, the second looked like a beagle mix, and the third had a swagger like my old dog, but I wasn't sure because he had so much white on him... So, I decided to ask the walker what kind of dog it was, and lo and behold - it was a Portie! His name was Bailey, and apparently he loves water so much that instead of drinking it from his bowl, he likes to put his front paws IN the toilet and drink out of it! Bailey was very pleased with himself to be getting so much attention, but then a squirrel ran across the road, and they were off to it again.

Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to getting a dog.

K