Irregardless of which way you add up the numbers, I’m going to spend a long time away from work. I have a bunch of leave available and I decided, hey, why not take a bunch of it all in one giant go? I won’t be traveling far from home during the duration of my leave but I’ll have plenty of time away from work to goof around. I only have a few goals while I’m on leave
1. enjoy my time away from work
2. avoid thinking of work
3. goof off whenever possible
4. read a book or two
5. study
6. hang out with Jessica
7. hang out with my parents (who will be here from the 6th-12th)
8. wear all of the dogs out
9. Train for snowboarding season (its right around the corner - hooray!!!!)
10. Go to the Mariners game on the 9th (my birthday coincidentally)
None of the goals are monumental and all are achievable. The only ones that will take a little bit of willpower to achieve are numbers five and nine.
I’m going to study for a few CLEP tests while I’m on leave so that when I return to work I can enroll in school. Due to the manning situation at work (we don’t have enough manning at work) I’ll still be on mid-shift for the next few months. The current schedule looks like I will be working nights until Thanksgiving. It could be drawn out longer but we’ll see what happens when we have people return from this current rotation to the desert. As a military member we sacrifice, this is my current sacrifice; I work a shift that nobody else wants because I’m the only guy that can do it. It messes with my personal life and its going to mess with it further when I enroll in classes in late September. I should have plenty of time to do my homework at night but some of my classes are going to be during the evening. There is no way that I can avoid that - oh well, gotta get my education finished sooner or later.
Training for snowboarding season means a tweak in my workout regimen. I’ll target all of the flexors and core muscles in my body while doubling my lower body workout. I lift legs once every 5 days and do cardio every other day. I’m planning on doing a two day leg lifting split that will have me doing one day of ridiculously heavy lifting followed by another day of endurance lifting. I’m not worried about the heavy lifting - I’m worried about the endurance lifting. Simply put, its going to hurt - alot.
I should have a busy, and hopefully relaxing, month ahead of me.There are times when it’s great to be a government employee - thank god for paid leave.
I had to stay late at work today - joy of joys! They provided me and my car a ride home because driving tired is as bad as driving drunk. Imagine staying up until 3AM - yeah - that’s the level of tired I was experiencing. I had consumed copious quantities of caffeine but the net result was a frantic heart and a barely functioning brain. My body was trying to stay awake but my brain had already hung its hat up for the evening. Jessica’s parents came out and made some “modifications” to the dog kennel and the back yard while I was asleep. I knew they were coming but I was unaware of when they arrived and when they left - when I’m asleep the red army could overrun our country and I wouldn’t have a clue.
The yard is now completely surrounded with hot wire - Texas had old sparky - Washington has dogcatraz.
The dang dog got out again - he broke out of the kennel without too much difficulty. We have had quite a hard time trying to keep him contained in the back yard. We reinforced part of the kennel by placing a piece of fence over the top in an effort to prevent him from jumping the fence. I let them hang out in the house last night after catching him but I think that in the end I was only rewarding him for making another jailbreak.
We left this afternoon to go check “Tall Ships” festival in downtown Tacoma. Prior to leaving, we locked both dogs in the kennel hoping that they wouldn’t be able to get out again. We must have crappy luck. Something set the dog off and he escaped - luckily - our neighbor directly across the street caught him. When we checked out the kennel we found that he had repeatedly smashed against the fence until it broke apart.
We fixed the kennel by completely covering the entire roof - we also chained him inside the kennel. We had to do the same thing to the last dog that I owned - she eventually hung herself during a thunderstorm when she tried to jump the fence while chained. I kept the chain short enough that he can’t get to any location where he could potentially jump and strangle. Hopefully this dog will be smart enough to avoid that fate. The kennel can now be called Dogcatraz - no dog should be able to escape this cage - if he does, he deserves to be free.
For the last few nights I’ve had one song running through my head - Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak.
Let’s hope that I don’t have to worry about it again - if I do - its time to add hotwire to the rest of the kennel. That ought to slow him down.
I’ve dealt with it in the past and I didn’t expect to deal with it again - but - its happened. I have a spastic dog. Fireworks are illegal in the state of Washington - save for a span of about 36 hours around the fourth of July and new years. Despite the fact that fireworks are always illegal in the city of our residence, it doesn’t deter the ingrates that live here.
One of our dogs doesn’t react well to the explosions and he tends to freak out. On the third of July - when fireworks were illegal in the entire state - we had our first jailbreak. Lick had pushed the gate open and took Duke along with him for a run. Luckily for us, they ran into a yard a quarter mile down the road and were wrangled by some extremely nice people. They were just pulling into their driveway when they saw them. They stopped and opened up the rear door and the dogs hopped right in. They called the numbers on the tags and eventually we got the word from Leanne that our dogs were out. When we pulled up we saw two stressed but extremely happy dogs. We had only been gone for an hour or two so we were obviously concerned as to how they escaped and whether they would escape again.
We left again on the fourth to go down to a BBQ. Prior to leaving we locked the dogs in the kennel complete with a 7 foot tall fence. We also shut the front gate so if they made it past the first line of defense we hoped that they wouldn’t make it past a second. A few hours after we left we received a phone call from the same nice people that caught our dogs on the third - they had Lick but didn’t have Duke. We left immediately and Jessica dropped me off at the front gate where I found my dog in the back yard alone and distressed that he couldn’t get out. I took at look and couldn’t find any spot where he dug to get out - he jumped the fence - he jumped a 7 foot fence. Jessica returned with Lick and we stuck both in the back of the car and took them to her parents house where they had kennels complete with floor to ceiling fences. They made it through the night without issue. When we returned home I added another three feet to part of the fence to prevent further jailbreaks.
We brought them back today and stuck them in the yard hoping that the majority of fireworks were over. We had to run out to the grocery store to grab a few things and came home an hour later to find only one dog in the back yard. Jessica didn’t react well to the discovery. I put Duke in my car and started driving around the neighborhood. She drove off in her car and started searching all of the side streets in a two mile radius.
I couldn’t see anything from my car so I dropped it off at home and started by walking streets with Duke in tow. I gave up after a few miles knowing that the odds of finding him were low - really low. I came home and looked up the animal control and humane society phone numbers. I called both only to receive recordings. Jessica came back after some time and was still stressed because we had no leads - there was nothing that we could do.
Luckily someone found him. We got a call and drove a few miles away to find him in the car of a pair of extremely nice people. The guy, who was much larger that I am, was quite surprised by how hard it was to control Lick. He didn’t think it was dog - he thought he had a pony.
At the moment, both dogs are sitting at my feet and are quite happy to be in such proximity to us. Tomorrow I’m going to fully enclose the kennel - we’re going to hope that the fireworks stop and that I can contain our spastic dog.
We traded dogs - yet again. We thought that Violet was going to be happy out here but it turns out that she only thrives when living in the pack. We packed the two dogs in the car the other day and took them down to her parents house while we were at Kayla’s birthday party (Jessica’s niece). The closer we got to her parents house the more we could see the change in Violets behavior. By the time we got to the house the dog was as happy as we had seen her in weeks. At our house she simply hid out in the kennel and wouldn’t come out - I guess she was so used to the kennel with the rest of the pack that when she was given the opportunity to roam alone in our yard she freaked out. We ended up with Lick (Licorice) - he’s a little bit bigger than Duke and he knows how to play fetch. He looks like he is going to be a pretty good fit. We haven’t brought the dogs in the house for any amount of time but we will when Jessica finally puts the rest of the stuff in the living room in its place. There are times when I think that she is stalling so that I’ll take care of it. (she denies this vehemently) She knows that it drives me crazy when stuff is out in the open - I think she is plotting my demise. She isn’t on my life insurance policy yet so I don’t know why she is trying to get such a big head start.
We started with two dogs and traded one back in - she wasn’t a bad dog - she was just ridiculously lazy. We’re back to two of them and I forgot how much I missed having dogs. I moved away from my parents house years ago and that was the last time I had really spent any length of time around a dog. My last pet was a bit of a nut job and was banished to an outdoor existence after tearing the house apart for the last time - certain members of my family did not want to put the dog outside or place it in a kennel when we left home. She had a “bit” of separation anxiety and proceeded to destroy anything she could find - you know - dads shoes, any scrap of paper she can grab, the Christmas tree.
Our dogs live in a massive backyard and have plenty of room to roam. Violet, the dog we got in the trade deal, is a little skittish (still) and won’t roam far from the kennel area. She’ll get used to it in time but its a change of environment. She has a unique and disgusting habit - she burgles turds. Yes, after she or the other dog leaves uhh… waste behind she will collect it and place it in her dog house. Apparently, she has been doing this for years. I really don’t know why a dog would collect turds aside from eating them which is a bit odd - dogs normally go for cat crap, horse crap, pig crap, cow crap, and well - essentially any other crap but their own. You may not notice it when you look at the dogs in this picture but Duke and Violet are trouble - I just don’t know how much trouble they are going to be - yet.
I’ve got a few videos of the two dogs in action and they may only be interesting if you really like dogs. You may want to check them out because you can see the scale of the yard that I get the “opportunity” to mow.
Then again, you may just watch the videos if you’re bored and you’ve got a high speed internet connection. Whatever reason - here they are.
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