Happy Birthday Cameron!

Last night was Cameron's birthday. It was also the first time I met her. I was actually prepared for her not to like me, as most girls don't.. but I pleasantly surprised because her and I seemed to get along pretty well.. and we had a lot of fun together. Cameron, her boyfriend Troy, her friend Marcus, Justin, myself, Eldon and Warren were the party people of the evening.

We started the night off at Pala, a fashion bar downtown. It was an interesting place, but not very crowded (for a Thursday). We had a few drinks there and Justin gave Cameron her birthday present. A brand new My Little Pony after reading her blog about her birthday.


We then started dancing to music typically played on at a fashion show, while the tv screens showed models strutting down a runway in atrocious outfits sporting the signature "runway scowl".





The mural on the wall was amusing.. Is this what they mean when they say "life imitating art"?









Shortly thereafter, Justin comes in from outside and informs us that the bar across the street has mechanical bullriding! Woo Hoo! So we all left the fashion club, for the rock and roll ambiance of Dixie Tavern . What a great time.

Being that it was Cameron's birthday, it was REQUIRED that she ride the bull.. She didn't put up a fight at all, and got right up there.



I also tried my hand at it. It's harder than it looks, but a whole lot of fun!





Justin kept buying us Jello shots... Thank you Justin. :)





Warren and I prefer birthday kisses to spankings. Incidentally, Warren looked great last night... He was the only one of us who looked like he belonged at Pala.






After that, Cameron comes up to me and says, "Hey, they'll let us ride the bull together!" Well let's just say this picture doesn't do it justice. The entire bar was watching and cheering, and then the camera's battery died, right before we really gave everyone a show. You'd have to have been there..... and if you were, you know what I'm talking about. *wink*

This says it all.... Today at work some friggin person walked in a just set down a shoebox in one of the aisles and left. In the shoebox, were three kittens less than 4 weeks old. This is not an isolated incident... It happens all the time. If you don't want the responsibility of baby animals, spay or neuter your animals! I know I sound like a hypocrite because I have two dogs and neither of them are fixed. However, I don't let my dog wander around and impregnate other dogs, and my female will be spayed next month.

I especially like the wierd friends and relatives part... if only we could do that.... our idiot population would decrease drastically if people had to take a psych eval and an iq test to be allowed to have children. The problem with this world is that the stupid people are out-breeding the smart ones. The smart ones wait till they are financially and emotionally ready for the task of parenthood, and then produce one or two offspring and stop when they feel they can no longer produce another child without causing financial or emotional stress.... Not the dumb ones.... they just keep on breeding.. and WE have to pay for them... Pretty soon we won't even need a sign to identify them, the idiot gene will tell all and they'll just start being born like this.

Ok, so I ranted a bit. It just irritates me when people leave baby animals for someone else to take care of.... we can't do that to kids... why are animals any less living creatures? I've found animals in boxes on the side of the road before too... that's why I always try to avoid boxes and bags in the road.

I went to lunch with my mother today at Billygan's Roadhouse. While the food was good, I would definately avoid going there for lunch. We barely got our food in enough time to eat it before my mom had to go back to work. It was definately a different place though.. it was one of those "cowboy type" restaurants where, when they seat you, they grab a bowl full of peanuts out of a keg to put on your table, and you are encouraged to put the shells on the floor. I thought they went away with those kind of regulations simply because of the slipping hazard. Speaking of, the service was a little on the unavailable side too... I had to practically trip my waitress to get her attention, and then she seemed put out when I asked her for a refill of my strawberry lemonade. Can probably get comparable food someplace else without the hassle, but it didn't cost me anything so I guess I'm complaining for nothing. :)

Tonight I had another graduation. This class was smaller, but it had some interesting dynamics. All of these dogs still need more work.. hopefully I will see them in another class soon. They accomplished the goals for the beginner class, but the Chocolate Lab and the Brittney Spaniel were incredibly hyper.. they calmed down so much since the first class, but they have a long ways to go still. As for the Husky... he's going to need a lot more work because he's already borderline dog-reactive... I hope they sign up for intermediate so we can actually work on his reactiveness.

Before work though, I decided to give Wesley probably his last "hurrah" on the beach before the weather turns to crap. I also wanted to see how Rikka would react. Wesley does love to swim. Rikka not so much, but she did love chasing Wes around when he came back on dry land.

Corpse Bride

Tuesday Eldon and I went to see Corpse Bride. You can't really go wrong with a Tim Burton film. If you like him, you'll like pretty much anything he does. It was a dark but cute movie and a lot of fun to watch. I especially loved "Scraps" the skeleton dog.





I also love the way a a lot of animated movies make the characters look like the person playing them. This was very much the case in this movie as well.

more graduates...

Monday my big puppy class graduated. I'm gonna miss this class. It was my biggest class since I've been on the west coast. 2 yellow labs, 1 chocolate lab, a malamute/shepherd mix, a sheltie, a pug, and a basset hound.

Lord of War....

Sunday, Eldon, Warren and I went to see the new movie Lord of War. We mostly went to see it because of Warren's obsession with weaponry... but I thought it was incredibly well done. It was visually stunning and gritty with a message, but it wasn't thrown at you.. instead it was subtly aimed. I never stopped to think about how the gun running industry worked. I'm sure it was pretty much like that.

I'm posting this picture ----->

because Warren really liked it. After the movie, we wandered around the theatre looking for this poster and he couldn't find it.

So I finally got some pictures developed. They included pictures taken from when Jesse came to visit.. Those can be seen in my archive titled "Labor Day Weekend Yay".

It also included picutres from the Dog Park opening I went to the second week in July. I had just moved back from NY and was grateful to find a cool place I could take Wesley. The park is located at the Ross Complex in Hazel Dell and is 8 fenced acres of doggie goodness. The opening was incredible. There was about 60 dogs from what I could tell, all breeds, sizes and ages. I discovered that dogs seem to have a really great knack for finding their breed and get really exicted when they see them. Wes picked out the other weims right away.

There were also pictures from the Combichrist show I went to back in July with Corey at Sabala's.
There was a crazy cool fire show before Combichrist went on. I'd seen plenty of fire shows, where girls often twirl the fire on some batons like this,



but I had never seen anyone set a whip on fire and crack it around and whip people with it. That was a new one for me. It was fascinating. Corey's take can be found here. (You will have to be a member of myspace to read it though.) :P






As you can see, it was quite a messy show. Even I got slimed by the fake blood. This is me doing a shot with Andy from Combichrist right after the show. He jumped off the stage and boogied to the bar to buy a crapload of Jager shots and handed them out.







And last but not least, there was a "doggy swim" at the Hugh Pool in August. It was a fundraiser for local humane societies where they drained the pool of all it's chlorine and allowed dogs to come and swim indoors. It was very cool. I had some pics of that on my rolls as well. I really have to get either a digital camera or make more money so I don't just get film developed every 3 months!

I went to lunch with my mom and brother at Applebee's. She said she wanted to help me get a job in administration at her work. That would help me out financially, but I'm not so sure I want to work with her. :P

Then I took Rikka to work with me to help aid her in her socialization, and graduated my problem child class. I got to feel quite successful actually. While I was attempting to take the class picture, the dog-reactive Shepherd/Rottweiler mix (Tiny) who growled and lunged at every dog in class the first week and the super-shy Pit/Lab mix (Shyanne) that had to be dragged into the ring the first week, were literally playing with each other very sweetly while I was getting everyone set up in the pic. THAT made me feel good. How's that for success? I took pics but they will be a bit before I can get them developed. I'm so low tech!

So now it's time for me to sit back, relax and watch the Lost and Nip/Tuck season premiers that I Tivo'd. If it werent for the ability to record crap and watch it later, I'd never watch TV. I'm sure some of you would think that's not such a bad thing, however until last night I don't even think I have turned my TV on in over a month. So I definately don't watch too much. I do love me some ALIAS which season 5 premieres next Thursday at 8!!! I also like Grey's Anatomy, Lost and Nip/Tuck, and of course Family Guy.

Random...

Since I don't have anything interesting to say, I decided to post some random stuff... However, since my life revolves around dogs...