Puppy Days

So I realized in my post-Thanksgiving 'good God there is a lot to do at work' haze that I never put up a Thanksgiving blog post. In perusing my pictures to decide what all to write about I realized that I have two categories of pictures - 1) people cooking and 2) dogs. Now while Thanksgiving is definitely all about eating...hence the many pictures of cooking...that's not very interesting blog material. Thus, we shall instead peruse some pictures of dogs, since they are far cuter :)

The drive to Brandy and John's house, which we shall be refer to from this point forward as the 'drive that shall not be named' began with me sitting in a traffic jam that took 2 hours for me to move the 4 miles between the first Summerville and the last Summerville exit. Leaving me an additional 4 hours to actually GET to my destination. It was not a pretty experience. But, I did in fact get there, puppy in tow. Sandor drove up that night as well but separate from me because he had to work that night, and work on Friday (can't really ask off work on Black Friday when you work retail), and my parents drove down the next day because my dad had to get his ankle checked and his stitches taken out.

So, the next morning dawns, we allow the dogs to go outside and play because they are annoyingly excited about life together. Dudley has a boundary collar so that keeps him in range of the house and Kaylinn generally stays in the same general region because her purpose for being outside is in fact to play and he can only go so far, so they settle for near the house playing.

Dudley and Kaylinn's idea of a good time together -
looks uncomfortable to me, but they love it

Previous to the boundary collar, however, Dudley kindly showed Kaylinn where the small creek that runs behind their house is located. Apparently Kaylinn remembered said creek and decided to go play in it real quick and then come back to wrestle Dudley because this is what she looked like when we went outside to check on them...

Therefore into the hose went the two dogs so we could head out to go climbing. The pups went along with us and enjoyed the hike up to the climbing walls.

And while at the climbing walls they enjoyed chewing on some sticks, which are apparently very tasty in dog world.

They are so cute, I just had to put more pictures of them on here...


oh and since this was Sandor's first try at tackling a vertical wall, I figured I should put that on here too...he did quite well in fact

Mom, Dad and Nikole arrived that night and the next day we got up ready to cook! Brandy and I took care of the pumpkin pie, my mom took care of the turkey and stuffing, and then we sat around for the better portion of the day while the turkey cooked before we started up the rest of the dinner. Having realized that every time we left Kaylinn and Dudley out of the house Kaylinn ran straight for her little mud pile of fun we devised a scheme to tie her to to the car.

Problem being she would get herself all wrapped up around things because she wasn't used to being tied up. We looked out and saw her sitting next to the one bush looking all cute and I went to get my camera to take a picture, at which point I realized she wasn't sitting there looking cute, she was all wrapped up in the tree and couldn't move :)

I realized in all this I never mentioned the poor Belle. She had a rough week of it last week - nearly meeting her maker. However, she rallied through it and thanks to some antibiotics and pain pills she was her normal begging self. Man that dog can beg with the best of them!

Dad hung around the house for most of the time since he couldn't really do anything with the broken ankle (it's been a rough few weeks in the Walker household between ankles being broken, dogs unable to walk, and cars breaking). The pups took breaks from their wrestling to keep him company though.

And then back to wrestling they would go, which would then instigate us putting them back outside to wrestle where they can't knock things over. We did go out and get a run line for Kaylinn so that she wasn't tied up where she could wrap herself around as much. They seemed to enjoy it much more.
They could also dig in this area since there was less grass and more dirt. Although they always insist on digging the same hole.

My caption for this photo: What? We didn't do it.

It was a great weekend, all topped off with a great meal. And now it's finally time for Christmas!! I LOVE Christmas! And I am not in any way joking. It is absolutely my favorite holiday of all time. This is the first year I won't be going home to my parent's house for Christmas so this weekend I'm decorating the condo to get in the spirit...and maybe I'll even start cookies :)

Free Rice

Check out this fun little site I found on Rachel's blog. As we discussed before I am not as technically inclined as her and therefore I can't figure out how to make it a little picture link on my blog, but I can figure out how to do it as an entry - so click on the picture and it will take you there :)

Cue the color

As you see I have a new blog banner, title and profile picture. All thanks to my wonderful Rachel who somehow figured this all out on her own....my blog changes included many calls to her at late hours and her putting the banner together for me. But I think it's looking mighty snazzy if I must say so myself. So welcome to the new and improved blogging world of Becky!

Oh and for those of you who were wondering I have successfully completed attempt #2 at pumpkin pudding gingerbread dessert thing. This time there was no burnt milk smell or pudding dumped down the drain. In fact it smells pretty good, but we'll let Sandor test it when he gets home from work :)

The Pudding Disaster

Not much going on this weekend. I did a bit more scrapbooking Saturday morning and then went and hung out with Andrea and a sick little Emily who slept for the better portion of the time I was there. The animals were their silly selves, although I've noticed they are definitely allowing each other to hang out more with fewer attacks - this being during the middle and end of the day though, mornings anything is fair game.


Sunday morning I went to church and then headed out for a little grocery shopping, as well as to get ingredients for the dessert I was taking to Thanksgiving dinner at church that night and Thanksgiving lunch at work on Tuesday. I originally was going to make this recipe I found in a magazine but once I reread the recipe I realized you had to make the filling for the cookie sandwiches 2 hours beforehand, which was clearly not going to be happening on Tuesday so I searched the trusty Food Network site for something else. I found a simple enough little recipe for this gingerbread and pumpkin pudding layered dessert so I decided to give it a try.

I mixed up the gingerbread and put it in the oven with little incident, and moved onto the pudding because it was the cook and serve kind so it needed to cool in the fridge before we headed to church at 6:00. Since I was making this for 2 events I figured I would just double the recipe right away and save myself some time Monday night - therefore I had bought two packages of pudding. As I was dumping them in the pot I was reading the back to figure out how much milk I needed and noticed that it said I just mixed the milk in - no heat or anything. This shouldn't be the case, especially since I was looking at the front of the other pack and it said cook and serve in big letters across it. While I'm turning the box over trying to figure out if those were directions for some other recipe, I emptied the second package of pudding mix into the pot at which point I noticed they were two different colors. Now I thought I had two different flavors which would not be good since I had just dumped them in the same pot, so I flipped both the boxes over to the front and realized one was cook and serve and the other was instant (idiot grocery workers who don't know how to stock shelves!). Needless to say I was a bit dismayed but in the interest of time and money I decided to make the best of it and push onward.

Therefore I dumped the 6 cups of milk in and started cooking away. Of course I picked a burner that I had previously overflowed instant mashed potatoes on (I am infamous for doing this) and so it starts smoking and the fire alarm is going off and the dog is barking and the house is smelling like burned milk and the pudding all the while is needing to be stirred - I'm moving with the punches, telling the dog to be quiet, jumping up on a chair to quiet the fire alarm, back to stir, opening the porch door, back to stir, running after the dog to make her stop barking back to stir...you get the picture. Meanwhile the horrible smell of burned milk is not going away even though it should have been burned off the burner by now - so I suddenly realize maybe the mixture pudding is not turning out well. I tip the pot to the side and realize the bottom is burning because the pudding is thicker than it is supposed to be in the beginning and therefore if I let the wisk scrape the bottom I'm going to pick up those gross burned things on the bottom. Again, instead of admitting defeat I power through and decide I'll just wisk the top of the pudding and deal with with burnt bottom after the fact. The pudding is thickening, and finally it's time to finish up so I dump it in another container where I can mix in the pumpkin and put the pot in to soak.

At this point the house has quieted down, although it still smells like burned milk. I'm a little concerned the pudding is going to taste burned, but it's too hot to taste and I figure the pumpkin will mask it so I dump it on it, along with the brown sugar and cinnamon to complete the recipe. I throw it all in the fridge and start dishes while I await the gingerbread to finish cooking. Once the dishes are done and the gingerbread has cooled a bit I start crumbling it in the bottom of the bowl as directed by the recipe. I figure at this point the pudding will be cool enough to taste, so I pull it out of the fridge and grab a spoon...and wouldn't you know it it tastes like burnt milk - which is about as pleasant as the smell. So now I have an enormous bowl of burnt milk pumpkin vanilla pudding and half crumbled gingerbread, and the church dinner is 2 hours away - cutting down significantly on any chances of trying a new recipe or doing this one over. I'm annoyed that I just wasted all this time, Kaylinn starts barking again, the house still smells like burnt milk, and I'm getting ready to pour 10 dollars of food down the drain.

So I accept defeat and cut up the other half of the gingerbread that is not yet crumbled and put it on a plate for church. Unfortunately I still have half of the gingerbread crumbled in a bowl, so I will therefore attempt this experience tonight in hopes it turns out better for tomorrow's Thanksgiving meal!

The Big Cut

Well ladies and gents it is official...my hair is 10 inches shorter than a mere 3 hours ago. To spare you the suspense I will start with a before and after shot...


I love it!!! My head feels 10 pounds lighter :) So now through the process. Maia assisted me in my hair shedding extravaganza. She want to get glossy locks and I went for the big cut. Ronnie, our gloriously wonderful hair guy (who gave me this awesome haircut for free by the way!) started by measuring out the 10 inches and cutting away for Locks of Love. I was actually not really all that concerned about it. I think part of that was because I was ready to cut my hair 2 months ago but it wasn't long enough to get the 10 inches for Locks of Love and still have something for Ronnie to play with, so for all this time I've been eagerly awaiting my new do. So, off we go...



At this point Ronnie had control over the scissors. Seeing as how I've NEVER had my hair this short I decided someone who knew how to cut hair (and was voted best in Charleston twice) would be much more qualified to determine how to cut my hair. Thus he began.

And in the end Maia was a little sad she wasn't getting her hair cut off too...although she did get a little cut :)
So, in the end here is the before and after from the back...

And two very happy ladies :)

Another 700 miles

Yet another work trip is complete - I filed the travel reimbursement yesterday and am working on typing up my to do list today. And as all work trips go I got as much as I could out of my weekend before the meeting started. This time I visited Stacy in Woods Hole, MA and Lauren in New Hampshire before heading down to Providence, RI for the conference.

I flew into Boston where I was welcomed by the remnant tropical storm that had just passed us by in South Carolina. I was a bit concerned sitting in the Atlanta airport during my layover tha I may not get there, but the flight went out on time and the pilot did a good job navigating the weather. We landed with barely any turbulence and I was off and running (well driving) to the Cape. The drive down to Stacy's house was not as intense as it could have been - a bit windy and rainy but all in all not that bad.

on the road in Massachusetts

When I arrived Stacy and Brian were hanging out in the house and happy that I got there while there was still electricity (they were figuring they would lose it sometime soon). We hung out for a while chatting (as the storm carried on) and then decided we should go check out the water and see if there were any big waves. We navigated the puddles and downed trees, rerouted due to a closed road, and eventually ended up looking out on the storm. The waves were not as intense as we thought they may be but the wind was doing it's thing for sure!

me, Stacy and the chicken in the wind of Tropical Storm Noel

We decided that since the restaurant right down the road still had electricity we should hedge our bets and eat there rather than find ourselves back home without anything to eat. It turned out to be a good decision because back at the house it was dark and cold. We sipped some tea (complements of the gas stove!) and snuggled under blankets, which before long put us all to sleep and we called it a night. The next morning we got up to a clear, beautiful day with the sun shining and the idea of a storm crazy to imagine. We made ourselves a very impressive non-electric breakfast of eggs, chai tea and toast (toasted on a frying pan) and then headed out for a walk on the beach to see what washed up in the storm.

we didn't find too much but there sure was a LOT of seaweed!

I then headed out to get to Lauren before it was too late in the day to take a hike in the mountains (we jumped back an hour that night, plus it gets darker up there than in SC). We took the pup and headed to the White Mountains which are beautiful! I always forget how much I miss mountains :) One thing I noticed just in the drive from southern MA to mid-NH was the fact that the colorful trees turned to trees without leaves in just the 2 and a half hours of driving! Irregardless it was beautiful!

our hike in the White Mountains

The next morning my non-work days were over and I headed down to Rhode Island for the remainder of the trip (except for my quick trip up to Boston to talk to Stacy's class). I stayed at Jen's parent's house in southern RI (granted RI is about 45 minutes across so southern is a relative term) where the leaves were again in full color. Each morning we headed out to Providence and by the time we got home it was near dark, but the day of my presentation I headed home a bit early to rest and got to take a picture by the little lake next to their house!

At the end of the week, back up to Boston I traveled to fly home. Another 700 miles of traveling down. No plans for work trips in the near future, but we'll see what the next trip holds! :)

Scrapbook Binge

Sunday morning I got a call from Brandy saying she was going to come down to Charleston for the rest of that day and Monday since John was away all weekend and she was bored. We decided to make it a scrapbooking weekend so in a few hours her, Dudley, and a trunk full of scrapbooking materials arrived at my house.

We set up shop in the extra bedroom which is now able to allow such things (although since it is able to do that it is no longer able to sleep people, which means Brandy had to sleep on the couch), and started in. By 6:00 on Monday most people would have been ready to pack up shop, but not us! Instead we decided that we needed another day, so we both called off work Tuesday and continued our forward progress in the scrapbooks. By the time we had to clean up Tuesday night based purely on the fact that at some point we really needed to get back to a real life and stop living in pictures and scraps of paper, we determined that we had acted no better than an addict who decided to have a 3 day binge - we had barely eaten, and what we did eat was junk, we hadn't showered, and if the dogs weren't so loud about their wanting to go out we probably would have neglected them. However, it was well worth it! I am now all the way up to my wedding - which is significantly better than September 2005 - where I was at the beginning of the weekend. Brandy is almost all the way to 2007!

The dogs did however garner some attention, just because they are so stinking cute. They certainly didn't have any problem entertaining themselves for the first day, in fact we could barely get their attention. They set themselves up an obstacle course that they chased each other through and any cat that happened to venture out in the midst of the play was sure to be chased as well.

wrestling using body parts - apparent fun to puppies

the bed after one of their chasing-fests - this is what I saw when I got up to find where they were once they were quiet (generally the quiet is actually more disconcerting than the running into walls - at least you know where they are)

Leia decided to set up post outside the litter box

By day 2 the cats and dogs had made a truce - both left each other well enough alone, however if (and when) Leia wanted to start the fight, the dogs were happy to join in. She was obsessed with Dudley and his crate - a point that was unsettling for Dudley at first but he got used to it. Yesterday we decided to let them run free back behind the condos so that we wouldn't have to worry about them being close to the road. This was a new and exciting option for Kaylinn who generally is only allowed to be free at the dog park. She repaid me by running down into the marsh and coming out looking like this... (needless to say her and Dudley had immediate baths!)

After all the excitement the animals were worn out and ready for a relaxing evening at home. So worn out in fact that they could all sit in the same place for an extended period of time without attacking each other! Amazing things are possible :)

The Chocolate Mouse

So one of the purposes of my trip up north was to talk to Stacy's class at Tufts about what being a resource manager actually means. It was actually really fun and makes me think I may like teaching college way more than I know I would not like teaching high school. Anyway, Stacy being the sweet person she is not only paid for my rental car (therefore assisting me in bartering with the state to send me here) but also gave me gas money AND a cute little box of chocolates as a thank you! I opened up said chocolates today as a congratulations to myself for existing (I mean, it's chocolate, you don't REALLY need a good reason!) and was happy to find an assortment of cutie chocolate tastes. Amidst the tasty little gnoche covered in cocoa powder and this interesting ginger one that was really good there sat a little chocolate mouse complete with tail. He was so cute it was difficult for me to finally eat him, but eat him I did and he was DELICIOUS!

Conference Check-in

So, I've been in New England this week, attending the Estuarine Research Federation conference in balmy Providence, RI :) Actually, it's quite a relief as far as weather is concerned since I do love sleeping under lots of warm covers. It's just been a bit of a shock to the system to need gloves in the morning! I finally found time to sit down and check e-mail which then led me to check Rachel's blog, which then made me feel totally inadequate since she has actually stuck to her post a day resolution of the month, while I have a measly one post for November. Thus, my little hello from the Ocean State. I did my presentation this morning, and spoke to my friend Stacy's class at Tufts last night, which puts the stress level of my week back down on the zero scale. Both went extremely well, and I am in fact learning quite a bit - although it's been a while since I've been at a big scientific conference so the brain cells are starting to tire! AND there is this chocolate shop on the 2nd floor of the convention center which you have to walk by every time to change from one set of rooms to the other! So mean of them! So, I guess it's time to get back on my game - I felt I deserved a break after an intense evening and morning combo, but to the grind stone I return. Seeing as how I decided to post this instead of go to the 3:00 talk I've missed 'Circulation in a semi-enclosed bay driven by sea level variations and wind'. Instead I'm off to learn about 'Building Consensus in a Non-Regulatory Approach'... if you laugh at me for choosing this option imagine my glee when I could go there instead of 'Tracking the uptake and fate of benthic microalgal carbon and nitrogen: a dual isotopic approach'. Bring on the caffeine!

Welcome November

So to celebrate the arrival of November I will post 4 last pictures from October I just got that I find especially fun. The first is of the fall leaves in West Virginia, taken by a coworker in the reserve system.
And the second is a glorious addition to baby lobster Ellie's costume. Oh and if you'd like Ad's entertaining take on this behavior check here.

And the last two are of, my other little munchkin, Emily's Halloween costume. She seems genuinely thrilled to be wearing it :)

Now bring on the Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie!