All aboard!

Aboard the Ruby Princess

Embarkation Day!
I'm on board the beautiful Ruby Princess. After waking up at 3:30 in the morning to catch a 6:55 am flight from O'Hare - thank you, Hope, for the ride! - I boarded the new Ruby Princess for a week-long cruise in the Western Caribbean. There's a nifty Internet Cafe here on the ship, but unfortunately the PC doesn' t seem to want to give up my pictures from the memory stick from the camera. I'll email Hope and maybe she can post some pictures!

This ship is so huge I've already gotten lost three times. I expect to get lost many more times before the week is up. Did I ever mention my horrible sense of direction?

More to come...

Hope's on her own!

I'm off tomorrow to cruise the Caribbean! What could be better in the middle of winter than to go on a cruise. Palm trees, rum punch, snorkeling. And no snow. I'm feeling a little guilty because (here's a deep dark secret) Hope gets seasick, so she's not going. It's a cruise with a bunch of friends, so we didn't choose the venue. I'll get over the guilt, but I guess I'd better bring something really primo back!

Get out there!

This session I'm teaching the Novice Obedience class. So, despite the fact that Dax and I haven't yet qualified in Novice, we're in the Open Class. Now I know for sure that we'd stayed way too long in Novice. We had a blast in class! She jumps! She fetches! She heels! What a good girl Dax is!
It's all my fault, I know. I love the training part, but the competition is stressful. So I've avoided it and now we're paying the price. My solemn advice to anyone who's training in any dog performance sport: Get out there and compete! The more you do, the more fun it is, the less stressful it will be and the more you'll succeed.
So don't be like me! Just do it. (Nike's right!)

Princesses do, on occasion, harrumph!

When Dax and I got home from Agility Class on Thursday evening, the other dogs had to check us out. It was the usual "Where have you been?" "Who was there?" and "What did you bring me?" sniff-a-thon.

Golly usually gives Dax a cursory sniff and then goes looking for the treat she always gets when we came home. This Thursday, though, she took her time and gave Dax a thorough sniffing. Then she looked at me, actually "harrumph"-ed and plopped herself into a sit, clearly outraged by the results of her investigation.

It took me a minute to figure out what was going on. That evening Dax said "hello!" to MacDuff. Apparently, it's not allowed - MacDuff is Golly's boyfriend - they even hold hands! (MacDuff is a Border Terrier, Golly is a Brussels Griffon)

Getting back to normal

It's been almost a week since the great deluge and we're just about back to business as usual. We still have to deal with insurance matters, and we have to repurchase the inventory that was damaged. The new (replacement) label printer is working and we're shipping out orders as quickly as before the flood.

It could have been worse.

A really, really bad day

When I got to work this morning, I knew something was wrong. This is how the door to the building looked.The landing leading to our store wasn't good, either. And this was the sight that greeted me when I unlocked the door. Apparently some pipes in the upstairs apartment burst. And water cascaded onto our suspended ceiling, bringing it and a deluge of water into the shop.

This is my desk. Poor little mouse.

My desk, again. Believe it or not, the desk lamp did work after we dried it off.

Fran's desk didn't look any better.

Our comfy customer chair was ruined.

Apparently I couldn't get over the mess of my desk.

There was about a half an inch of water all over the floor.

More mess.

My desk, again. It apparently was in the path of the waterfall.

The worst part of it was that our landlord didn't even call us when it happened. We lost a day, the label printer that was on my desk, a good bit of inventory, and our composure. We're really, really sick of winter. And water.