People who have wronged me

I always do this. I don’t post for weeks at a time and then I feel the need to post less than 24 hours later. Oh well. Here goes.

Lindsey reminded me that I neglected to mention the great injustice wrought upon the Kodkagel and Johnson households this weekend. A few weeks ago we discovered that Lindsey was to arrive in Chicago days before we were to leave Chicago. She has family in Rockford, IL see. There was great joy and celebration at the revelation that Lindsey could not only come by for a short visit—but that she could even stay overnight with us. Wine was stockpiled. The guest room was prepared. Her flight was supposed to get in around 11:00 am. I am sure you can see where this is going. Since she was both flying United and flying into O’hare (the black hole we call an airport) I was certain we could expect her around 4 or 5 that evening. The weather was mildly cooperative. Her plane was not. United kept my Lindsey on a play for like 4 hours and didn’t take her anywhere. They also wouldn’t give her a meal voucher, and I’m pretty sure they made unkind insinuations about her mother. They cancelled her flight and refused to bring her to Chicago until the following evening—completely cancelling what was going to be a wonderful visit. This is not the first time United has wronged Lindsey, but it will be the last.

Also, there is a bit of a blizzard going on outside the office windows right now. It’s gonna be a fun drive to St. Louis in a few hours! At least we’re not putting our faith in United to get us there. They would probably hold our puppies hostage and make us go to Cincinatti or something. I’m pretty sure they do that sort of thing.

What? I have a blog?

I think this whole remembering to blog thing will be on my New Year's resolution list. I have several important things to tell both of you.

1. It is very cold in this Chicago place. Also, Kenny and I are brilliant. We decided to wait until yesterday to dig our car out of considerable ice and snow. It was 4 degrees below zero while we did this.
   
2. Leroy expressed his undying love for Jack today. He gave Jack a thorough bath. Licked the inside of both ears thoroughly and then moved onto the nether regions. Jack seemed to either not mind it or enjoy it. Either way, it's a victory in Jack-Leroy relations.
3. In other news and evidence of our high intelligence--it did not snow today or yesterday. We are opting to drive to St. Louis tomorrow night during the snow and ice storm.
4. Happy Hannukah or Hanukkah or Chanukkah. The burning candles are among the few items keeping us not completely frozen. If only it were not merely the second night.
5. Kenny has both of the puppies right now. This is in clear violation of the rules attached to the thermostat agreement the cheap bastard drew up a few weeks ago. I still love him.
6. Monday night football is a crappy way to squeeze more unwanted football into my life.
   
7. I really don't mind cleaning up puppy feces as much as I feel like I should.
   
8. I might have to go see two movies on Christmas day in allegiance to both Brad and Jen.
9. Numbers are an excuse to not have to come up with cohesive thoughts or segues.
   

Kiss kiss.

Soon he'll be cracking safes

Before I got home last night Kenny asked me to guess what Leroy had gotten into that day. We keep Leroy in the bathroom with the door shut. We tried keeping him in there with a baby gate reinforced with chairs, but he can easily clear the baby gate and apparently move chairs. I guessed that maybe he had gotten into the toilet paper, the towels, or maybe he’d figured out how to open the cabinet under the sink and distributed my tampons throughout the room. But no. Our new little guy had gotten into the medicine cabinet.

He must have jumped onto the toilet then onto the sink and figured out how to open the cabinet doors. Casualties included chap stick and some candles and lotion knocked to the floor. Thankfully he hadn’t gotten into any of the drugs or such. In his bed, he also had Kenny’s electric toothbrush we keep on a shelf under a window in the bathtub that is at least 4 feet high. He hadn’t chewed on the toothbrush. I guess he was just cuddling with it.

I took pictures of the crime scene, but you don’t get to see them. This whole forgetting to upload pictures thing prevents me from posting quite often. I figured today I would just write about it and you can use your imaginations.

Bad Bad Leroy Brown

Two Saturdays ago we picked out a little doggie named Spike at the animal control shelter. We were excited when we found out that he would have surgery (get neutered) the next morning and that we could pick him up later that day. We went straight to PetSmart and Target to buy him a bed, collar and of course clothes. You can't have a dog without clothes, right? I began rolling up and storing away all of our carpets. Sunday morning we got a call from the shelter saying that Spike could not be adopted because he had a cough. Kenny was getting ready to watch a football game with some boys and I was getting ready to go shopping with my friend Amy. We were both devastated. I was horrible company for Amy and spent most of the shopping trip mopey. The phone call had been sort of cryptic and we were half-way worried that they were just going to not treat him and euthanize him or something. I had asked what was going to happen to him, and she just told me it was complicated and we should pick out another dog. We barely slept that night. The next night I picked up Kenny after work, and we went back to the shelter so that we could figure out what was going on. By then Spike had been diagnosed with kennel cough and was in isolation and receiving treatment. For some reason they couldn’t just call us when he was better. A nice man who worked there gave us his cell phone number and said we could call him every three days to check on Spike’s condition. Finally when Kenny talked to him this Tuesday we got good news. He said we could pick him up between five and six on Wednesday.

Spike’s new name is Leroy as he is from the South Side of Chicago, stands about six foot four, and is meaner than a junkyard dog. Kenny took off work early to go pick him up. We were told and assumed he’d be groggy from having had his balls cut off earlier that day. This was not the case. They think he is part beagle part Jack Russel.

He'd been home for about a whole half hour before I had to put clothes on him. In all fairness though, we keep the house barely above freezing.


Jack is of course a little mad about the whole situation. He has moved from anger to tolerance. Leroy keeps trying to teach Jack about playing. Many have tried this. None have succeeded. The picture below features the backsides of the THREE boys with whom I now live.



We're going to have to work on this whole "sleeping" thing. Leroy tried to sit on my head at 2 am, 4 am, and 6 am this morning. Also, there was a scuffle at some point that resulted in Jack being ejected from his spot next to my legs and being replaced by Mr. Brown. The excellent news is that so far there have been zero accidents in the house.

Click here for more pictures.

Oh yeah, that

Since we made the decision last fall to move to Chicago, I have been applying for jobs. I opted to not sign on for another year-long contract with the World Bank since we were not planning on staying in DC. I had my last day there in February. Yes, February as in NINE months ago. My resume and profile are on every job-finding site ever created. I've been on twenty-one interviews in Chicago. There were multiple interviews for several of the jobs. I've been close to getting about six jobs.

I did a search of my gmail and found 30 emails where I wrote, "Please find my application for the...position attached." In addition to those 30, there's about a gajillion jobs I applied for through companies' websites. I am 100% sure that Gallup, Amnesty, and the University of Chicago have no interest in hiring me, ever. I know this because I believe I have applied for every job they have posted for which I felt even remotely qualified. I wrote so many cover letters. Like most people, I really really hate writing cover letters.

So I think it's funny that the job I ended up getting is one for which I never applied. I did not come across the job posting. I did not write a cover letter. The people with the job contacted my people (the temp agency). An interview was had and voila! I'll be a research analyst at a company that helps rich people (which of course is similar to my life long dream of helping the poor and saving the world--only different). I start December 1 unless my background check turns up something bad I did in the past of which I am totally unaware. I will continue to do the organizing thing on the side. I have a feeling it will not be too much to handle since I have had a whopping one job this month.

Birthday Boy

Jackson turns 4 years old today. To celebrate we are giving him the wet version of his regular food. Funny how that is a reward for a puppy. He has received two birthday presents. The lovely jaunty sweater pictured above and below was made by his friend Whitney. Patrick and Amy got him the lobster costume featured in the Halloween post. They gave it to him early for obvious reasons. In lieu of a birthday party, Jack has requested that we spend a few hours on the couch taking turns rubbing his belly.

Why you should listen to your mother

And father and brother and brother-in-law (but not really in law because the laws are unjust):

We registered for and were given some very nice non-stick pots and pans. All of the aforementioned folks said it was a bad idea and that the non-stickness would peel and be bad and all. We thought we were smarter and thought we could take such great care of them that they would not peel. We own no metal utensils. We always waited for them to cool before cleaning. Still, they peeled and probably poisoned us and we'll probably now never conceive children or our children will have extra fingers or toes because we have consumed so much Teflon or whatever it is that made up that non-stick surface. On Saturday we wrapped them up in towels. We called my not quite brother-in-law who used to work at the store they came from, is an expert returner of goods, and an experienced finagler and asked for advice. We successfully returned them after acing a quiz about how we cared for them and got new pots and pans. After about two minutes of contemplation, we allowed ourselves to be talked into very expensive cookware. I think we were led to believe that our food would taste better for the rest of our lives and that our great-great-grandchildren would be able to inherit the set.

The temp work I did working at a packaging expo for the next three days paid for the difference in cost. This temp job is the type of job that I decide future Emoly is up for. Present Emoly has absolute disregard for the feelings of future Emoly. She will sign future Emoly for a variety of things future Emoly is bound to hate. I was told that it would be a lot of standing on my feet and that I would need to be peppy. I was most concerned about the being peppy part. Turns out, I am totally capable of being peppy. I was, however, allergic to the expo. If you're wondering what a packaging expo is, it's an expo where companies that make machines that package come together and try to sell their machines to people who need to package things. During the course of the three days, I sneezed no less than 500 times. That is not an exaggeration. I tried and failed to get out of the third day for I feared it might send me into anaphylactic shock. I suppose that is my punishment for not listening to my family. I did, however, learn a whole lot about shrink wrapping.