No Power

I woke up this morning around 5am to the sound of a power transformer crackling. My alarm clock was dead and none of the lights would turn on. The battery backup for my computer was beeping as it normally does when the power drops, driving my puppy crazy. So April and I both woke up for a bit. At first I was afraid to let the dog out in the off chance there was a downed power line in the area. The wind was so strong that that very feasibly could have happened. At first I took her out on a leash, surveyed the area, and then let her run around on her own.

It was about 11am before the power came back on. If another hour had gone by I most likely would have gone to my mom's for the day. The house temperature had dropped to below 60. Winter is not a good time to lose power.

Puppy Action Shots

The day after Christmas, I decided to go ahead and pick up the Canon Rebel XSI camera. The first thing I decided to do was try and take some action shots of the puppy with it. At first I tried the sports mode, but I found this to be kind of lacking. It doesn't use the flash so for indoor pictures they came out very grainy with bad coloring. Instead, I tried to capture the picture by just focusing and then timing my click with the puppies catch of her toy. The camera was very responsive and this ended up working. With my previous camera there is no way this would have been possible. Enjoy the pictures!

Noah's Public Talk

My brother Noah gave his first public talk yesterday. He did an amazing job. A lot of people agreed that it seemed like he had been given talks like this for years. He demonstrates great ability as a speaker and I can tell he is only going to get better.

After his talk the entire family and friends went up to Champs and had some dinner. Even though they packed us in tight we all had a lot of fun.

Lizzy Playing In The Snow

This is Lizzy's first time really being able to play in the snow. Last year she was too little to really run around in it. Now she's much bigger and loves it!

Snow Part 2

It's hard to tell from the picture how high the snow is piled on my deck, but let me tell you, there was a ton of snow to shovel.

Auto Companies Getting Bailed Out

Snow

We've already gotten a ton of snow this morning. I did an initial bout of shoveling so I wouldn't have to deal with shoveling 12"+ of snow at once. When it gets that deep everything goes soooo much slower.

What to buy?

So I'm debating between picking up a camcorder or a new digital camera. I'm currently looking at the Sony SR11 HD Camcorder and the Canon Rebel XSi. I already have a digital camera, but the quality of pictures could definitely be better and the startup time and shutter lag is a pain sometimes. Having a camcorder would be really handy though. We just finished watching through some old home movies of April's the other day. It's very nice to have videos as pictures can only tell so much.

Decisions... Decisions... Decisions...

Yet Again

So I started a blog on blogger for my soon to be coming kids. I've decided I'd create a blog for topics that don't really fit on that blog. Granted, I've already got my own blog on my website, but I find it a pain to continue to host it myself. One day I'll get around to copying my posts over. Really it ended up just being a blog about my dog Lizzy.

Hopefully with things consolidated on one site I'll post more often.

Little Big Planet Soundtrack

Tracks:

1. DJ Krush - Song 2 <itunes> <amazon>
   
2. Cafe Tacuba - Volver A Comenzar <itunes> <amazon>
3. Kinky - Cornman <itunes> <amazon>
4. Battles - Atlas <itunes> <amazon>
5. The Go! Team - Get it Together <itunes> <amazon>
6. Jim Noir - My Patch <itunes>
7. Alexander Nevsky Op.78 - Battle On The Ice <itunes> <amazon>
8. James Pants - Rhythm Trax 7
9. Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra - Tapha Niang <itunes> <amazon>
10. Noveltones - Left Bank Two <youtube>
11. Ananda Shankar - Dancing Drums <itunes> <amazon>

Puppy at 18 Weeks

Lizzy is now 18 weeks old and 37.2 lbs. Overall she is doing very well. We’ve only had one accident in the past few weeks and that occurred on the stairs leading outside. She had just recently been outside so I had ignored the fact that she was by the side door. I’ve learned my lesson, now regardless of how recent she’s been outside, I put her out again.

Her learning pace has slowed down, but overall she is progressing well. She has learned what “puppy class” means and will go crazy if we mention it. So we have to be careful so we don’t get her over worked up. Our biggest problem still is that she wants to jump on the furniture. We’ve tried a number of methods, but they don’t seem to be working. I’m just hoping that after a few more weeks she’ll stop trying to jump on the furniture. We’ll see.

Puppy at 15 Weeks

Lizzy is now 15 weeks old and 30.6lbs. She continues to do well and hasn’t had an accident in over a week now. Night time sleeping is going much better also. We’ve been able to put off taking her outside until 6 am now. It makes a big difference for me since there have been a few times I’ve woken up at 4 am and have not really been able to get back to sleep. I’m guessing over the next week or so we’ll be able to test out waiting until 7 am.

She continues to do well with puppy class. There wasn’t as much time for free play so she was still excited near the end of the class. I think we need to start introducing her to our friends dogs so she can get more social interaction with other dogs. It’s tough in the winter though since she really can’t be left outside for more then 10 minutes. Having a bunch of dogs running around in the house does not sound like fun.

She also conquered the stairs this past weekend. It has been tough since our side door requires going down a short set of curved stairs. It can be tricky even for me to go down them if their are a lot of shoes. Lizzy was very scared at first, but with a little pushing from behind and some motivation with treats she now goes down them with ease. It’s amazing how quickly dogs can learn and transition between things. April is very glad the puppy can now go down the stairs as she was getting too heavy for her to carry.

Puppy at 14 Weeks

Lizzy is now 14 weeks old. This has been a very eventful week for her. On Monday she went to the vet for another round of shots. She pretty much has all the shots she needs now for another month. She’ll be getting her rabies shots and another around of parvo/distemper I believe. Also, on the same day she started her puppy classes. I really wish I would have remembered to take the camera to class, but it was a mad dash to get to the class on time. It is at 5:15 and I had a work meeting that ran over. I’ll make sure to get some shots next week.

She did very well at the puppy class though. She didn’t play too rough and responded very well to the few simple commands that we went over. She had already known them, but it was nice to see her respond in a very exciting environment. The instructor used her as an example a few times. I really view the class as more of a socialization place then a learning one. Though I have already picked up a few tips that I’ll be trying to use.

On Tuesday she had her first walk around the neighborhood. I was amazed at how well she did. I followed the walking instructions and kept a short, but loose leash on her and had no problems. Most of the time she walked right by my side and needed very few corrections. The following day we did a few more walks and she was a little more excited, I think it was because it was when the sun was out, but overall she still did very well.

Puppy at 13 Weeks

Lizzy now weighs 26lbs. We’ve been having a few accidents lately, about one every other day. So we still need to keep her close to us and make sure she isn’t getting into trouble. Otherwise she is doing great. We just got back from petsmart and registered her for puppy classes starting next Monday. They had a puppy class going while we were shopping. They are so cute. I love seeing the different breeds and how they interact.

Puppy at 12 Weeks

Lizzy is continuing to grow. I just weighed her this morning and she is now 22.6lbs! So she is staying pretty consistent gaining approximately 2lbs a week. She’s gotten more and more consistent with her commands and is not biting nearly as much. Also, we haven’t had an accident since last week Tuesday. That really is the greatest relief. Cleaning up messes in the house is probably the worse part about having a puppy.

Lizzy has also started learning the command Stay. She’s doing pretty good with it. We are still consistently using treats, but she’ll stay for almost 30 seconds now. We’ll keep working on increasing the time.