Drive by update

Not only is this the last week of the term for my college writing class, this weekend is also Sew Expo. I'm working in the Bernina booth selling (hopefully) sewing machines all four days. Here's a sample:

5:00 a.m.: alarm goes off
6:00 meet at Bernina to carpool
7:00 arrive at Sew Expo. Gates not yet open.
8:30 sales meeting
9:00 - 6 dizzying whirl of people and noise and sewing machines, with occasional very short breaks of standing behind booth curtain snarfing down sandwich and tea.
7:10 p.m. arrive home
7:45 return home with Thai take out
9:00 a time, now past, by which I needed to go to bed in order to get 8 hours of sleep before repeating all of the above (except, possibly, the Thai takeout).

I'm doing this all weekend. Sunday we finish an hour earlier, but since grades for the writing class are due Monday morning at 10, I don't really foresee sleeping much that night, either.

If any of y'all are at Sew Expo, stop by the Bernina machine booth (it's big and red - you can't miss it) and say hi. My hair is now shorter, but I'm wearing a convenient name tag so you can recognize me.

The dog came over the mountain

Meet Kidd
We have a new foster dog. This is Kidd, who arrived today from the Wenatchee shelter. (We don't love the name. The shelter was apparently naming all their dogs after pirates for awhile.)

We don't know a lot about him or his background. So far, he's been an absolute doll. He rode home on Trent's lap. He seems to only want to be petted and adored. When we brought him home, there was a great deal of sniffing among dogs, and then everyone settled right in. Kidd loves to have his head scratched and his belly rubbed, and it's also pretty obvious from his layer of pudge that he loves his chow. We'll work on that.

Kidd is available for adoption through Rescue Every Dog. Right now, a lot of the dogs that R.E.D. is taking in are from eastern Washington. They're buried under snow over there, and dogs continue to come into the shelters even if people who want dogs aren't. A couple who work with Seattle Purebred Rescue made a trip in order to bring over a batch of Siberian Huskies who had been seized from a (fortunately no longer in business) breeder, and they brought a few dogs for R.E.D., including our Kidd. Animal rescue people are good folks.

He's pretty darn adorable and well-behaved, so I'm betting it won't take too long for him to be adopted.

Meanwhile
I think I'm going to live. According to the doctor, I had (have?) really bad bronchitis, not flu. He said I'd feel worse if I had the flu, which I find difficult to imagine. I spent the entire week at home, not venturing out except to the doctor until Saturday. I'm still feeling seriously wheezy and full of phlegm, but I'm no longer having the all over body aches, so I guess I'm mending.

Blurgh.

Ugh. I'm sick. I think I may have the flu. I don't think I've ever had the flu before - every other kind of respiratory crud known to medicine, but not the flu - so it's at least an event.

We had a lovely weekend getaway to Vancouver BC, where we walked, ate, and shopped. We came home on Sunday in time to watch the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet before switching over to that other bowl for the fourth quarter. We probably would have stuck with the Puppy Bowl, but Pedigree was a sponsor and they were consequently showing a really heartbreaking "adopt a shelter dog" commercial. It made me cry every single commercial break. (Go ahead. Click on the link. Watch it. You'll see.) After a couple of repeats, we had to start flipping the channel during the commercials.

Anyway, since Sunday night I've basically been bed- and couch-ridden with the ick. I've now completely lost my voice, which is driving me crazy. I'm going to try to get in to see my doctor tomorrow, since at this point it's not looking like it's going to get better on its own.