Wednesday, April 22, 2009

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!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

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!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

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.

Monday, February 16, 2009

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!

Monday, January 19, 2009

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!!!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

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!!