A Walk on the Pink Side

It's Friday, yay! I've been working hard on Book 4, and am almost 1/4 of the way finished with the rough draft. Right now, I'm easily on schedule for a mid-May release! I also have some exciting news waiting in the wings about my next series! Stay tuned.

For fun, I decided to color my hair again. As you know, it was purple, then I went teal, and now, I've gone PINK! Here's a pic I took right after I finished this morning:

Sometimes, you just need a change. I love that I have the freedom to change my looks whenever I want to. Just another perk of being a writer without a full-time office job or desk job or teaching job or whatever. It makes me happy :)

Also, we have a house full of poodles. A friend of ours went to Vegas this weekend with his wife and parents, and his parents have three poodles. They don't do so well at the kennel, so they asked us if we could keep them for a few days. How could I resist? They are super cute! I love their little waddly bodies and their super curly hair. Here is a pic I took of them a few minutes ago, all tuckered out from playing with me for a little while.

I'm excited to have them here for a little while. Snickerdoodle, my pom, doesn't really know what to make of them. She's decided to stay in her own room upstairs most of the time, but she's being sweet when she says hello to them. No doggie fights or anything yet, which is good.

In other news, G and I are playing Everquest II again. <3 As anyone who's been following my blog for a while knows, G and I first met playing that game. It's an MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game) sort of like World of Warcraft. Only better. When we first met, G and I spent a lot of time playing together. Doing quests. Helping each other. Raiding and grouping. Etc. Then, we moved to a station exchange server where you can buy and sell money and characters for real world cash, and we kind of switched our focus to making money for a while. It helped us pay for our wedding big time! The downside there was that we were spending less time just playing together for fun.

Last fall, we stopped playing all together. Canceled our accounts and everything. Then, over Christmas break, we bought World of Warcraft and decided to give it a go. Well, G maxed out his character in less than a month. Due to me writing a lot and not having much time to play, I was still stuck in the 40's. That game doesn't make it really possible to group and quest together in low levels that way EQ2 does, so we weren't spending any time together playing, which sucked. Sooo, long story short, last weekend we decided to go back to Everquest II! This time we're playing on a regular, non-exchange server, and we're leveling up together. He's playing a tank, and I'm playing a healer. It's been fun. We're back to doing the things we used to do together when we first were long-distance dating. Only this time we're sitting next to each other. :) It's awesome.

I'm looking forward to a good weekend of poodles, gaming, and writing!

Our Pet Squirrel

Okay, so we don't really have a pet squirrel. There just happens to be a squirrel in our backyard most days. And in our front yard. And on our roof. And in our trees. He seems to be a friendly little thing. I don't feed him or anything, but most afternoons when I open the back door to let Snickerdoodle (our pomeranian) outside to go potty, the squirrel is there, hanging out and watching. G had a theory that since Snickerdoodle has a bushy tail, maybe the squirrel thinks she is also a squirrel and not a dog. Hmmm.... maybe the squirrel is in love with my dog.

There's also the fact that I will often find Snickerdoodle hanging out on the stairs, gazing into the backyard through the back windows. Maybe they have a secret way to communicate and have become secret friends? I can't be sure.

All of my thoughts regarding the squirrel are not happy, friendly thoughts. Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if this squirrel decided to jump down from the fence and into the backyard while Snickerdoodle was out there. Would they fight? I'm quite sure Snick would try to run after it, but what would the squirrel do? It's not like my dog is exactly trained in squirrel fighting. And those bitches have some heinous claws! That squirrel could really fuck up a pomeranian, I have no doubt.

And sometimes, when I open the door to let the dog back in, the squirrel comes running down the fence straight at me, no fear in his little black eyes. I get scared sometimes that he'll run and jump, maybe do a little somersault into my dining room. Then what? Put up his dukes and challenge me to a duel? Or maybe he'd just rummage through the kitchen, grab a bag of chips and hang out on the couch all day. /shrug. I don't think I want to know.

Snickerdoodle's Hair Cut!

Snickerdoodle got a hair cut! And boy did she need it!! OMG, I wish I had a "before" pic so that you could see just how out of hand she had gotten. Her hair was wild, and I mean seriously wild. She had this ever growing collection of undercoat or just shaggy hair that kept leaving little white puffy balls of hair all over our carpet. And her nails were crazy long. (I hate to cut dog nails, so scared I will hurt them!) So yesterday, I bit the expensive Pet Smart bullet and had her groomed.

*So hard to get a shot of her looking at the camera, so this is about as good as it gets.*

When I saw her it was like the sun peeking through the clouds after weeks of rain. She was a new dog! I had them shave her again, like I did a couple times before ( according to their computers, it was november '08 the last time I took her in - what? bad mommie!). They even put these super cute pink and brown bows in her hair:
Of course they are no longer in there. The bows are always the first thing to go.

She looks absolutely adorable. Her nails were ground down and look smooth and short. She walks with that extra little pep in her step and wag in her poofy tail. Now if only this haircut could last forever and we could have this feeling all the time without the extreme pain to my wallet! Ah well, I'll just enjoy it while it lasts!

---> This picture is so cute! She was SO TIRED when she got home. It took so much of her energy to go on a car ride and hang out with all those other dogs and groomers all day! She was tuckered out.