Christmas Dogs

It's that time of year again. October and November absolutely flew by. We had the dogs in costumes for Halloween, but there was nothing new and they didn't do a very good job of posing for pictures. :) So, now this brings us to Christmas! Tonight is our annual Christmas party. It is not a Holiday Party - it is a Christmas party. And tonight Mac gets his first turn at hosting the festivities!

Metrodome!

This weekend we joined the family in Minneapolis to go to one of the final Twins' regular season games indoors. Growing up, with Dad's bank's connections to Carl Pohlad (owner of the twins and dad's bank), we were fortunate to go to many many games as well as both '87 and '91 world series games. This weekend it was fun to get back together there again for one last time, as the Twins are moving outside next year for some chilly, rainy, and windy baseball.

The Twins didn't disappoint! We went to Saturday's game with Aaron's family, and, thanks to Dustin & Michelle, Sheila and I were able to join almost the entire Robish clan at Sunday's game as well! After sweeping the Royals and getting some help from the White Sox, they now have another regular season playoff game to decide the AL central tomorrow for the second year in a row! This is the first time in MLB history that a team has had 2 consecutive playoff games for a division title. They did this by going 16-4 in their last 20 games! Amazing!!

Yesterday, they had a post game tribute to the dome with a bunch of old twins players from the metrodome era. They finished it off by having Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and Tony Olivia, who were stars from the Twins' outdoor baseball era at the Met, raise up the flags at the new Target Field.

However, the dome isn't done yet! One more game tomorrow and hopefully alot more playoff games there yet this year!!

Here are some photos!

Sheila and Owen got to meet TC!


And so did Abbie!


Here we are at Saturday's game!


Here is most of the Robish family at Sunday's game! Almost all of them were there!


Here is Jason Kubel's second 3-run homerun of the day!



Louie Anderson was at Sunday's game too!!


Here we are at Sunday's game.


Darin Kleinsasser was helping with crowd control after the game!!



Kent Hrbek gave the farewell speech. He said "this was supposed to be the final regular season game here and these guys went and screwed it up, now we have to come back here on Tuesday and drink more beer!"



We miss you, Kirby!

Bailey's Adventure

Today, Bailey had quite an adventure that nearly left us with only one dog-child. This morning we put Mac & Bailey in the car and headed down to Braidwood, Sheila's hometown. We went down there for a memorial mass for her mother (it has been a year since she passed), as well as to help Brother-In-Law George celebrate his retirement.

We left the dogs at Chris and Sheree's (Sheila's brother and sis-in-law) place in their fenced in yard with their cousin, Daphne. Daphne is a dog about Mac's size and they got along great running around the yard and chasing each other. Well, it turns out that Bailey found a way out of the yard and decided to go on a jaunt around the town.

Luckily for us, Sheree's father, Francis, just happened to be riding his bike along the street and noticed a small dog wandering alone. Thinking this was odd, he picked her up and saw her nametag said Bailey and that she was from Hoffman Estates. He remembered that we were from up this way and thought maybe it was our dog, so he took her for a bike ride back to Chris' place. There, he saw that Mac was from Hoffman too and reuinited the siblings. Sheila left her cell phone at home, and her number is on the dog tags, so that wouldn't have helped much either!

Here is a map of how far she actually travelled. The 'A' point is at the end of Chris' driveway, she actually got out from his backyard to the left of that marker. The 'B' point is where she was found. We were at church, which is the brown buildings and black parking lot on the left center of the picture. Bailey had to cross Main street, and that total distance, according to Google Maps is about 0.2 miles.


So, we are extremely fortunate that she wasn't hurt crossing a busy main street, attacked by any neighborhood dogs, and finally, found by someone that knows us! Lucky Bailey! If she was a cat, she would have just spent about 6 or 7 of her lives today.

Still Alive

Wow, it's been a long time! It has been a pretty quiet summer here in Illinois. Mac is still around and running the house. He has grown up quite a bit and has gotten over his in-house relief patterns. His favorite pasttime now is seeking and destroying any magazines that are in his reach. We have come home a couple of times to think that someone put new carpet down only to realize that Mac has completely covered the floor with shards of People magazine.

Here are a couple of pictures of Mac and Bailey. Bailey is feeling football season and is excited for Brett Favre's arrival to the Norsemen! Skol Vikings!


Mac is still feeling baseball season and is super stoked that the Twins are putting the white sux in their dust and nipping at the heels of the tiggers. Should be a fun end of summer!


Here is a photo taken several weeks ago right after Mac & Bailey got furcuts!


Oh, and back to Sylvester.. Sheila performed surgery on him tonight, finally. He has this new Government-Run Health Care plan, so he wasn't able to get in for life-saving surgery until 3 months after his guts were spread around the living room. Good thing he's a stuffed animal or else he'd be dead by now. Well, Mac took him and had him split open again within 5 minutes. Sufferin' Succotash!

Mac The Knife

For the past couple of weeks we have had a webcam running at home so that we can keep en eye on the dogs while we are away. We decided to start leaving Mac out of his cage because it was really annoying to have to clean out the cage and clean him up in cases where he had accidents in the cage. This experiment has been pretty entertaining and, umm, instructional, I guess. We are seeing things that we probably would be better off not seeing, such as Mac playing tug of war with the curtains and the couch, as well as Bailey, Miss I-never-do-anything-wrong wreaking some havoc of her own during the day.

There hasn't been any major major destruction. The biggest thing so far is the splintering of one of Sheila's Longaberger or however-its-spelled baskets. And, for that one, we caught Bailey in the act of hauling that around the room in her mouth before she sat down to shred it up.

Another thing that is fun to watch on the cam is Mac and Bailey playing and Mac assaulting his toys. He has a few stuffed squeaky toys that he pounces on and gives death shakes. Well, today, he finally succeeded in murdering Sylvester the Cat. Here is the screen capture of the murder scene. Mac hasn't even bothered to leave the scene of the crime.

And yes, that is one of Grandma O's afghans that he is laying on.

Mac Visits SD

Mac made the trip home with us overnight. He was a great car traveler - he never once forced his way into the front seat like Bailey does. No barking or whining, and no accidents in the car. His first day in Grandma and Grandpa's house has been fine. He loves the doggy door and him and Bailey have had a lot of fun racing in circles outside.

He has yet to see the World's Largest Pheasant, and we didn't take him to the Corn Palace either. Otherwise, being at Grandma and Grandpa's house on Ravine Lake is the 3rd coolest thing to do in Eastern South Dakota!

Dog Update 4

Mac made it through today with no problems again. We think he is past his sickness and whatever anxiety he had from moving into a new place with an established alpha dog.

To honor Mac's rich history with us, I am going to post a picture that Tom put together for us. He titled it Dogforce 1, but I think Brent came up with a much better name, Air Force Deuce.

Barring any catastrophes tomorrow, Mac seems to be cruisin' for a cruisin'... Right down I-90!

Photoshops of Air Force One

At the National Review Online, they had the same idea I did, and some readers submitted some photoshopped pictures. Check it out here.

Dog Update 3

Mac had a great weekend. He was even left out of the cage for a few hours on Sunday while we went down to Aurora (Wayne's World! Wayne's World! Party Time! Excellent!) to go to a home show. When we got back, all that seemed out of place was that Sheila's sandals were now on the couch, and one of the curtains on the front window had migrated over about a foot. No accidents and nothing broken. Not too shabby!

Today, Mac and Bailey went to get furcuts. He was great in the car ride and the groomer said he was good for her, which was a relief. When I went to pick them up, they weren't barking and he didn't soil his cage there either. Ahh, the little things in life!

I will post pictures soon of the freshly shorn siblings. Mac seems to be alot better in the last several days and he seems to be gaining weight finally. So maybe we're out of the woods and now we can concentrate on just having a puppy instead of a sick dog.

Dog Update 2

So Mac is still under our ownership. He had a good day on Friday and throughout the weekend so he received a stay of kennel return. He seems to be gaining weight and his "movements" have become regular and are happening outside of the house, which are both good things. He did have a minor tinkle accident last night, but it was on the tile and therefore easy to clean up. The secret to no cage number 2 accidents seems to be not giving him water while he is in there.

Tomorrow, he and Bailey are going to get furcuts. And, if he makes it through the next few days without dropping deuces throughout our house and his (the cage), he just may have won a round trip ticket to visit SD!

More to come!

Hey Government, Meet Photoshop

So today, the White House ran a "mission" with one of the airplanes that become Air Force One when President O gets on it for a ride. This "mission" was to fly low over New York City near the Statue of Liberty with 2 fighter jets trailing taking pictures to "update their file photo" of Air Force One. They wanted to get the Statue of Liberty in the background of Air Force One in flight. The mission was kept secret, with the FAA and New York authorities knowing on a "need to know" basis, which didn't include the mayor of the city.

To anyone with half a brain, it should have been apparent very quickly that this exercise would be construed as another potential attack. Understandably, they are still quite skittish in New York City when it comes to planes flying low near the buildings.

So, to recap, the White House, in this economy, decided to spend hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars to run a flight that scared the crap out of people just to capture a photograph that could have easily been done by some high school kid with mediocre photoshop skills.

Here is my first attempt using MS Paint, the crappiest of all crappy drawing programs:

Now just imagine what you could do with a real graphic program like Photoshop and some really good stock photography of Air Force One and the Statue of Liberty. I'm sure the government has access to all three of those things. But no, it's much better to just go take a picture of the real deal, not tell anyone, and put Lower Manhattan into a panic.

Way to go!

Dog Update

Mac had a good day today. No accidents so far, but there are a few hours left in the day.

We have decided to rename him. His new name is Number 2. We also tossed around the ideas of McCrappin and McPoopin. Number 2 was the winner because of the Austin Powers reference.

So, How's That Dog Doing?

Well, I've been holding off writing updates about Bailey's new brother because we just weren't (and still aren't) sure that he was going to work out. Three weeks ago, we went and adopted a dog from the same shelter where Sheila got Bailey. He is a poodle mix and is about 1.5 Bailey's. His name is McLovin Smalls. We had to compromise. She wanted McLovin and I wanted Smalls. We call him "Mac" for short. And no, I am not going to calculate 1 Trillion Macs, but feel free to do it yourself!

Here he is, doing his usual thing in crowding out Bailey from her previously owned space.


It has been interesting, to say the least, bringing another dog into the house. Bailey still isn't quite sure what to think of him and her patience has dropped quite a bit on everything. Also, we have had quite a few problems with Mac. First off, the first few days he was here, he had Kennel Cough, so that was the first visit to the vet. He also had problems with uncontrollable number 2. So he was put on medicine and a strict rice-hamburger diet. Once that ran out, we fed him some hard food again and the number 2 problems came back. That was a week ago and he is still having problems. Vet visit #2 came around last Thursday and he got some more medicine. I didn't know this, but apparently you can fill pet med prescriptions at Walgreens. So now, McLovin Smalls Schneider is in their database. Just so he doesn't go and buy any Sudafed and get on a government Meth list!

The last few days he has really been trying our patience. We have had to clean out his cage 3 times and give him baths. Bailey is a busy couple's dream. She needs at most 2 walks a day, hangs out all day outside of the cage watching out the window and has no accidents. Mac can't go 3 hours without leaving some evidence somewhere. So we're getting the point where we may take him back because we can't give him the kind of attention he apparently requires. 6-7 walks a day 2 hours apart.

As for the title to this post, it's an homage to one of the funniest stories that my Grandpa Vic has ever told us. Grandpa is tireless and is always up to something. He can't sit still. Sometimes I wonder if Sheila is his real granddaughter and I came from someone else because she is like that and I am pretty much the opposite!

So to recap the story, way back many years ago when my Grandpa was working at Armour's, one of his coworkers was trying to get rid of a big mean dog and a big matching doghouse. Apparently the dog had a mean streak and the guy's neighbors were done with it so he had to get rid of it. So, my Grandpa, living on the farm thought having a dog out there might be nice, and a good large sturdy doghouse would look good on the property as well. He got the dog and the doghouse chained to the pickup and drove them out to the farm.

Well, when they tried to get the dog down, it started growling and barking and was extremely agitated to have been moved from the city to the farm. My Grandpa wasn't about to let the dog loose and have it attack him or my uncle so he says to Rick, "Get the gun." You can fill in the blanks from here, and that doghouse sure made a great house for all the farm cats that lived out there from then on!

So I guess for a few days/weeks he was trying to avoid the dog's previous owner, but one day they met up and the exchange went something like this:

"So, how's that dog doing?"

"Well, not too good."

"Why, what's wrong?"

"Well... I shot him."

"YOU WHAT?!?!?!?!?!"

To get the full effect of this exchange you have to hear it straight from grandpa, but suffice to say, when he tells that story, we nearly fall off of our chairs every single time, even though we know the punch line.


So, in dealing with our little Mac, I must be honest, we have actually brought up Grandpa's method of getting rid of a problem dog, but rest assured we won't go that route! But we may be cutting our losses and sending him back for someone else to adopt.

We'll be up in SD next week for cousin Scott's wedding and we may or may not have a second dog in tow, you'll have to wait and see!

One Trillion Baileys

Today I was reading The Corner blog at National Review and I came across this link demonstrating what $1 Trillion would look like. It was pretty eye opening. I also came across this post where someone took it a step further and gave some more examples trying to help us fathom just how much $1 Trillion is. For example, 1 Trillion $1 bills laid end to end would reach close to the Sun. $1 Trillion in $100 bills laid end to end would go out 4 times farther than the moon!

So, I figured, hey, why not see what we could do with 1 Trillion Baileys? I know, the one we have gives us infinite amounts of fun and laughter and kisses, but lets see what else we can do!

As you can see here, Bailey is roughly 25 inches long. Also, she is about 6 inches wide at her shoulders and 8 inches high when sitting.


So, this means:

• 1 Trillion Baileys laid end to end would reach 394,570,707 miles. That is more than 2 round trips to the Sun!

• 1 Trillion Baileys laid on top of each other would reach 94,696,969 miles. That is just a mere 1 million miles farther away than the Sun.
  

• If Bailey walked up and down our driveway 1 Trillion times, she would have walked 4,734,848 miles. That's 17 trips around the equator of Jupiter.
  

• 1 Bailey takes up about 1400 cubic inches, or .81 cubic feet. Therefore, if you packed 1 Trillion Baileys together into a ginormous box, it would take up 810,000,000,000 cubic feet, or 5.5 cubic miles. An Olympic size swimming pool is 88,000 cubic feet, so 1 Trillion Baileys would be enough to completely fill 9,204,545 Olympic Size pools with enough Baileys left over to halfway fill up the 9,204,546th one!

• Bailey loves to hog our Queen Size bed. A Queen Size bed is 60 x 80 in, or 4800 square inches. Bailey is 25 x 6 in, or 150 sq inches. That means that 1 Trillion Baileys could completely hog every single square inch of 31.25 Billion Queen Size beds.

• Finally, Bailey weighs about 12 pounds, meaning 1 Trillion Baileys would weigh, you guessed it, 12 Trillion pounds, or 6 Billion Tons. This is roughly equivalent to 16,326,530 fully loaded Boeing 747-100 aircraft. That's a lot of Baileys!!

Okay, I'm out of ideas now, but maybe this will help us better understand just how much 1 Trillion of something is. And now, I just read how there's a new bill to loan another $500 Billion to the FDIC. I guess it will never end. Get your money for nothin' and your checks for free!

The Twins Are Coming! The Twins Are Coming!

Bailey is super duper excited about Friday morning. That's the morning that Cubs tickets go on sale! And, this year, the Twins are coming to Wrigley!! Yaaayyy!!

And, as you may have guessed, Bailey is so excited, she put on her Twins jersey and collar to get an early start on cheering!

We're gonna win, Twins!
We're gonna score!

We're gonna win, Twins!
Watch that baseball soar!

Knock out a home-run,
Shout a Hip-Hooray!

Cheer for the Minnesota Twins Today!!

Mommy wants to start singing a different song!

Go Cubs, Go!
Go Cubs, Go!
Hey Chicago, whaddya say?
Cubs are going to win today!

Bailey just wants to go back to sleep. So, goodnight from Bailey!

Bailey Got A Furcut!

Sheila must have read the last entry and my comment about Bailey needing a haircut. Today at about 3pm I received an email instructing me to pick Bailey up at PetsMart after work. So, tonight Bailey was feeling pretty jazzed up about her new 'do' that she asked to pose for more pictures in her spiffy Valentine's Day shirt. So, here are some new pics of her newly shorn bad self!

All ready for the photo shoot!

Red Carpet Angelina Jolie Backside Pose

Ok, that's enough. I've only slept 20 hours today, let me get back to it already!

If you want to see the rest of the photo shoot, go to here.

Thanks Grandma!

Bailey wants to say thanks to Grandma Gloria for the great Valentine's Day gifts! Here she is modeling her new shirt.




We know, she needs a haircut. We're waiting for the warmer weather to come and stay. Hope everyone had a great Valentine's and President's Days!

Overrated.

So the rumor is that Padmasree Warrior is on a short list of candidates for a new Cabinet-level position that Obama wants to create, a CTO of the nation type office. And the short list is apparently two people long. The fact that she is even on a list 1,000 people long stuns me and every other Motorolan who has had the pleasure of working for Mot while she was the CTO under Fast Eddie Zander. She was a travesty for Motorola. All she succeeded in doing was creating the nonsense buzzword "Seemless Mobility", that Zander hitched his CEO wagon onto to ride off into the sunset with her moseying on behind. Under them, our mobile phone division fell so far into the crapper, even Roto Rooter can't help us out now. Also, our Labs division, which she was the head of, as CTO, now no longer exists. So, Motorola, a company known for innovation and inventing, now does neither, and we can send all of our thanks directly to this woman. And now, she may be in a cabinet-level post for the entire country.

Oh, by the way, after she left Motorola once her safety net Eddie was ran out on a rail, she went to Cisco with record speed. And, apparently, being there a year, all she has succeeded in doing there is inventing more buzzwords. This time, its "Brainforming" instead of "Brainstorming." How ridiculous.

Here is a video of her managing to talk for over 3 minutes, yet say absolutely nothing of consequence. See if you can tally all of the buzzwords!!




Shocking. Appalling. Very Chicago.

Say it ain't so, Barack O!!!

Happy 2009!

Last night we went to a friend's house for a New Year's Eve party. It was a fun time and Bailey was allowed to come along. She got into the partying mood. She didn't exactly put a lampshade on her head, but came close.



I found these glasses at Walgreen's for 5 bucks. It occurred to me last night that the next time they'll be able to make glasses like that in the shape of the year with having two zeros in the middle will be in the year 3000. So, for 5 bucks, I got something people won't be able to buy for another 991 years! I don't think Methuselah even lived that long!!

Happy New Year!!