Upgrade, Oh Yeah!

The Broncos broke my TV. No seriously, my TV died during the Bronco game on Sunday and I am not sure I can blame it!! I'm glad we have a little over a week to get ready for Monday Night against the Steelers with 40% chance of snow!!!

I've been wanting to get a new TV for a while, and I knew mine was starting to flake out. A few times during each viewing session, the screen would just turn itself off. Sound still worked, but the screen went black. Turning the TV off and on solved the problem so there wasn't a reason to buy a new TV. Until Sunday.

Here is my "small" old TV:

And here is the new 47" with a picture of Michael Phelps on it that I bought at Sam's:

Unbelievable difference. In the past 12 months, I have wasted approximately $240 on HDTV. I had no idea that football players looked that detailed when you pay Comcast for HDTV because my TV wasn't big enough for the details. After some half hearted Halloween cleaning, I spent the evening giggling at how close everything was and otherwise enjoying my new toy.

No comparison, right?And for my girl-power story of the day, let me tell you one other part! So, the TV weighs about 61lbs according to the box. And about 90lbs with the box included. I got this sucker into my house and set up ALL-BY-MY-SELF!!! I almost called to see if I could borrow Mike, but then the engineer in me took over and I did it!! Let's just say the couch helped a bunch!

My only other thought??

Maybe I should have gone bigger!

Happy Birthday Puggle!

This morning, I'm especially happy that 2 years ago today a litter of little puggles was born, just in time for Christmas 2007.

Here's my Maggie telling all of you how old she is. We did it three times so you can see that, of course, she really understands all this.

Anything for a treat mom!

Love her!

Go Broncos!!

Last year, I couldn't WAIT for Bronco season. I knew that it meant I would be just about done with 6 months of renovations and on my way to having a new (old) house! This year, I am still excited about Bronco season (that's not news) but I am also, finally, feeling settled in my house. Stuff has it's place and I am planning my next projects!! I keep going back and forth on what I want to do next, but I think the yard needs attention the most. Time to start some real planning!
But, this post is about the Broncos :) hehe!

I had so much fun at the Bronco game. Everything was perfect - the weather (yes, alot can change in Colorado in less than 24 hours); the energy; the WIN; and of course having good company. I got to bring a friend that was in town visiting to the game - he had never been to an NFL game, and I think he is a Bronco fan now!

Turnovers (and then touchdowns) on the 10 are exciting when the action is on the south side of the field:And this picture shows why the 90's were so amazing (ha! I include Terrell here. He is still my favorite Bronco of all time). Welcome to the Ring of Fame Shannon Sharpe!
And please don't cry - you're making me cry:

I would have taken more pictures, but I had a lot of beer (it was hot and I needed to keep drinking cool fluids) and forgot about my camera!! Oh well, only 12 days until the next Bronco home game! Bring on Tony Romo! But first, the Raiders - where are my Raider Haters at??

My Lap Dogs!

I was going to do a post all about my Broncos and the things that I actually liked about the game on Sunday (specifically the defense, welcome to Denver Brian Dawkins, and my fantasy kicker Matt Prater), but I'll stick to dogs this week since I have a couple of cute pics in the camera that need to be shared!!

Here is my favorite 8 year old lab... She should be in calendars, maybe I will make my own calendar this year, hmmm... Friends and family, you now know what your Christmas gift will be!! Calendars of Sadie and Maggie!!
Maggie doesn't usually go in her cage without a treat, but the other day, she went straight in. Sadie was a little confused too. It was a one time thing, she hasn't done it since :)

She does like to sleep in her beds, does this look comfortable to any one??

This is her favorite spot to sleep. She is such a little lap dog!! If I'm laying on the couch, I can usually count on Maggie to come lay on my lap.

Oh that's right, I have TWO lap dogs. Here is my Sadie on a different day laying in Maggie's "spot".

And on yet another occassion, I ended up with BOTH dogs on my lap. This picture isn't great because it is from my CrapBerry, but it was all I had handy without moving the dogs. You can see Sadie on the left and Maggie on the right.

And Sadie and Maggie have asked to have a Halloween party again this year! Save the date, Oct 31st at our house. I am planning to clean up the garage and have either beer pong or flip cup (or both?!?!) so plan on it.

Maggie, Speak!

We've been working on this trick for a while... Finally Maggie can reliably speak on command. Cracks me up every time.

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day Weekend!!

It's Bronco Season!!!

And I think I might be the only person in Denver that is still pumped about the Broncos...

Here is what Season Tickets look like!! This year, I was smart enough to take a picture before ripping the first tickets out - go me! It's the 50th Anniversary of the Broncos this year and some of the tickets look extra cool - like the brown/tan ticket for when the Broncos did the unthinkable in 1960 and beat the Boston Patriots (look it up, cool story). Ok, the brief story is the Broncos were a po-dunk (sp?) first season team that got less press coverage than the School of Mines football team (OMG, right?). In their first season, they only won three games, but one of them was against the Boston Patriots who were as good then as they were in 2007. Maybe there will be some 1960s magic in Denver on Oct 11th and we can beat the Patriots again??First game! And it didn't rain, was about 70 degrees outside, couldn't have been more perfect football weather!!
Anne and I may have had a cocktail (or 2?) before the game and when we got to our seats, there were these awesome paper helmets. We wore them long enough for a couple pictures. They were hot - don't know how players stand real helmets...
Yes, we were those people. But only for like 10 minutes... :)
The hardest part of the game? No, not the score board... This:
I'm still sad that Cutler is not a Bronco and the game made it real. I can't bring myself to rename my fish, so I think I will have to draft Cutler on my fantasy team and keep rooting for him, just a little. Hey, I always liked Griese (ps played for the Bears and was briefly on my fantasy team) and Plummer after they left the Broncos so cut me some slack!

And for any of you that think my enthusiasm for the Broncos will be any less if they only manage to win one game this year, let me remind you of something... For four years, every Saturday in the fall, I painted my finger nails blue, half the time drove for 3-6 hours each way, put on a cute little blue skirt and a pony tail and cheered for the School of Mines football team. In four years, I saw them win 9 games. Yes, the total games won in four years was NINE. They played 11 games a year, so that means I saw them lose 35 times. And I still cheered for them every Saturday. My Junior year, they won ONE game and were even beat 70-3 (or something ridiculous like that) at home and still I was there. My love for the Broncos is at least on par for my love of the Orediggers. Take that.

And if anyone wants my prediction, I actually think the second half of the season will be very different from the first half, like last year, only the opposite. I think the talent and coaching will start to click and the Broncos will win a respectable amount of games. And I'll be there cheering for them no matter what. ORANGE AND BLUE.

Slumber Party!!

I know, it's been a while... I just bought a new camera (I bought one not that long ago, but it broke on my 30th b-day). Hopefully I can post more pics of the most adorable pair of dogs around! And I still need to post the finished pics of the basement, so I'll get to that soon!

On Saturday night, Nicki and Chip ended up staying overnight for a friends wedding, so Denny came over for a slumber party. I tried my best to get a picture of all three dogs together...

Maggie and Sadie are total camera hams, but all I caught of Denny the first time was his tail.
Almost caught all of him the second try...

Third try was the best I could do, but then I cut half of Sadie out of the picture! Guess it wasn't meant to be. But the dogs had so much fun playing together. They stayed up late and woke up early just to play. I needed a nap today!! Notice how Sadie is looking at the camera in EVERY picture?? I have her trained ;)

Maggie loved being on the couch because then her head was at the same level as Denny's. And then she could launch off the couch right onto his head! It was really funny.
Sadie was the first one out. Leave the playing to the 2 year olds (btw, Happy B-Day Denny!)
And one other thing my "good" dog did... I've blogged before about how Maggie likes to dig in her bed. Well, now she is digging in MY bed!! To be fair, these sheets had seen better days, but they are by far the most comfy sheets I own. Darn puggle.

Bronco season is upon us! I'm excited to have Season Tickets again. If anyone wants to come to a game with me, let me know!!! First game is next Sunday night when Cutler and the Bears come to town, preseason style.

I didn't get laid off today...

And I'm trying to be really hard to be happy about it.

I've been planning to be laid off for the last few weeks and was really looking forward to it. Now I don't get 7.6 months of pay check for 0 days of work. Darn.

Oh well, gotta make the best of it!

Sadie's Birthday, A Wedding and Visitors!!

I seem to be on a monthly posting pattern - sorry about that. I really need to buy a new camera because the one I have doesn't work very well, it's bulky and I just don't really like it so I never have it with me! Fortunately my sister was in town for the last week and she had her camera and took some fun pictures!!

Turns out, dogs can get their learners permit to drive when they turn 8 years old. Not before that, of course because dogs have to reach a certain maturity level before they can learn to operate heavy machinery! Lucky for me, Sadie turned 8 on July 8th so now she is my driver!!

She's still trying to figure out how to put the car in reverse without thumbs, so sometimes I have to take over the wheel. When I do, she recruits her sister (Maggie) and her cousin (Ted) to make sure I am driving properly.

Speaking of an 8 year old dog, I can't believe my Sadie is getting so old! I was in Longmont and I found a dog bakery with a Pup-Pie, so I got her that as a b-day cake.

Don't worry, she shared!!
My sister came into town on July 4th and we got to spend just over a week together! It was an awesome time, and I can't believe we got along so well the entire week! She is on a biz trip to NYC right now, so I get to experience the joys of 3 dogs for the next two weeks!! Ted is so tiny, I'm afraid I might lose him, or sit on him!!

Our 2nd cousin got married on the 11th in Colorado Springs and my sister and I decided to have our own little photo shoot at the reception. There are lots more pictures, but these two are my favs.Oh the hotness. We always seem to have a hard time take a good shot of the two of us, but I really like this one! Miss you sister!!!
For those of you keeping track, my company is announcing layoffs on Wednesday. I find out my fate at 10am!! I'll probably post to Facebook with my status and maybe I'll even post a quick blog note. Fingers crossed for funemployment!!

Updates and Such

Here are some of the pictures that have been hiding out in my camera. Don't worry, we haven't missed too much...

A couple weekends ago, Tanya and I took a little sewing class! It was a good experience and I definitely left class feeling like I could sew a sunglass case and maybe even some curtains. I haven't sewn since class though and I feel my skills quickly slipping away.

Maggie is being funny on a daily basis, as usual. She is really helping me get to know my neighbors. Today while I was on a conference call, I noticed that Maggie and Sadie were barking for too long at a dog walking down the alley. Turns out the Beagle - named Miller - had wandered a few blocks from his home and was alone. I tried to take him home, but no one was there so I decided to leave him in my yard for a bit with my girls. Not 10 minutes later, that dog (not one of my princesses of course) opened the gate and Maggie and Miller ran off. I went outside and Sadie was sitting on the deck like "see what a good dog I am, I didn't run away". After about 20 minutes of searching the neighborhood (and the ditches on the busy streets), I couldn't find either Maggie or Miller. A little while later, I got a call from a lady who lives almost on Colfax and she had my dog. Apparently Maggie and Miller were still together when they caught Maggie, but Miller slipped away. He was last seen by the ice cream shop. His parents weren't worried, apparently he gets out all the time.

Maggie's favorite ball right now is this old golf ball. She thinks it's the perfect size!

And here she is, just enjoying the sun. This picture cracks me up. "Please come rub my belly"!!

All the rain has been making my weeds grow like crazy! All I had was a push mower and these weeds were way to high for the push mower to do any good. You could lose a dog in that!! Don't worry, I have a lawn mower now and the weeds are under control. From a glance, it almost looks like a grassy yard!!
And I can't believe I never posted these two pictures of Zoe Saba!! I love the first picture of her and Ruthie - so adorable!! Much love to the Saba's!

Sooo tiny! Well, I'm sure she is about 2x this size now... I need to go see for myself!

That's about all I have taken pictures of in the past month. I'll try to do better... Or not. I hope everyone has a great week!!

1952 vs 2009, A Time Capsule

In 1952, my house was renovated. Under the hardwood floors that were installed then, the previous owners left me a type of time capsule in the form of a few old newspaper clippings. Based on the clippings found, I think they were trying to let me know how much things cost in 1952.

The following pictures are from The Denver Post, November 10, 1952 (my parent's were 2 at the time...)

I can't figure out what the top item on the left was, but 1lb of Chocolate Covered Cherries now goes for about $20. Which is about 40x the 1952 price.

Minute Maid OJ varies depending on if it is on sale, but you can buy it on the internet (seriously) for $4.49 for a 12 oz can. The 10.5 cent can is 6oz, so relatively speaking, OJ is up 21x.

Wrigley's gum now goes for about $0.50 a pack instead of 1.5 cents a pack, so 33x the 1952 price.

And yummy potatoes... Now let's say they cost an average amount of about $0.50 a pound. This 25 pound bag would go for about $12.50 today. That's a 14x incease over 1952.

The interesting thing here is the lotion that costs $1 for a 16oz bottle. I could probably get a cheap bottle of 16oz lotion at the dollar store. I could also pay about $56 for 16oz of Keils, so anywhere from 1-56x the price of 1952. Who loves their digital TV? I know I do... Can you imagine spending even $309.95 today to watch about 3 channels, each with only a few programs airing? Seems outrageous to me! Considering the typical inflation since 1952 is about 8x, maybe I need to start looking for sale food items to compare with instead of internet prices... But that still means this small, heavy TV would cost $2472 of today's dollars!

Any hockey fans out there? Can you imagine what it would be like to have only 6 teams?!? What, no Avalanche?

This little blast from the past sponsored by the past and current owner at 1201 Adams St.

Proud of My Sister!!

After three years of hard work, my little sister finished her MBA at one of the top MBA schools in the nation!! Despite the fact that there were 600 graduates in the MBA school (which took almost 3 hours!!), the whole weekend was a blast full of more fun than I can possibly capture here! I'm so proud of her and how hard see worked! This weekend was certainly a celebration and I will remember it and laugh forever!

I got to meet my sisters boyfriend! He is awesome. And his music is awesome too - we jammed to it most of the time we were in the car!

Some of the other highlights included a nice dinner after graduation that my Aunt and cousin were able to attend. The food was tasty, but the company and our reason for being there was the best!

On Saturday, we took an adventure for the record books. I have never laughed so hard and for so long as we did on our little day trip to Santa Barbara. You would think the 3 hour (100 mile) car ride would put a damper on the day, but it left lots of time for a photo shoot!

We got a bit of a late start, and met rediculous traffic, so we didn't get to Santa Barbara until about 3pm. Good thing we found a few tasting rooms that were open until 6pm. We hit up three different locales representing 4 vineyards and managed to get pretty toasty in about 3 hours.

Then the laughter started and didn't end until the car ride home. We rented a 4 person bike and cruised all over thinking we were fast scaring other tourists. We went places we weren't allowed, almost ran some people over, went over a bumb so big it tossed my sisters purse all over the pier, peddled so hard we knocked the chain off, and otherwise had the most fantastic time!

After some brunch and some needed rest on Sunday, we went horse back riding though the Hollywood hills! The day was a little smoggy and pretty warm but it was a great way to spend an hour with family. We also went to see Angels and Demons during the earthquake (I thought it was just good sound effects) and had a good sushi dinner and yummy frozen yogurt.

Thanks "Master" for hosting us and setting up a fantastic itinerary!! It was a perfect weekend and I couldn't be more proud of my sister (and her friends!) for all she accomplished!!

The Un-Crate-Able Sadie Mae

Have you seen (or read) Marley and Me? If so, you know what the first few years of Sadie's life were like. It was tough. She was so adorable I couldn't even stand it, but she was baaaad.

First thing on the list was to crate train her. I worked about 5 minutes from home at the time and so she was never alone for more than 3-4 hours without some play time. She hated her crate. On most occasions, she would poop in her crate. Even in the middle of the night. You can't sleep through that, so a trip outside at 2am to hose off the crate and the dog were required. One night right after she was spayed (at 6 months, about 60 pounds, and about 100 poop clean outs), she was allowed to sleep outside her crate. She never pooped at night again. She also stopped pooping when she was given the 3'x5' laundry room to hang out in. I guess she trained me?

The list of things she distroyed included:

-Any toy. Even the guaranteed undestructible ones.
-Vistors shoes. Sadie had to use her allowance to buy a few people new shoes because she destroyed theirs in about 15 seconds.
-The laundry room. Including riping up the linoleum floor, chewing off the baseboards and 2, yes TWO huge holes through the drywall as she tried to escape.
-The deck. She managed a 1foot x 1foot hole in the deck boards somehow and chewed about 50% of the railing so it looked like there was a beaver in the back yard.
-Countless sunglasses, Playstation games, loaves of bread, pens, markers (on the couch), an ink cartridge, the broom (I'll take the blame for that one, it was funny), you name it, she ate it.

I called her my "counter-surfer" and she still is to this day. If you turned your back for 1 second, she snatched something off the counter. She's a little slower now but she'll still jump up there!

One time, my mom was visiting and she had a new wireless adapter card for her PC. She set it on the table as she got out the rest of her PC stuff. She went to reach for the adapter card and it was gone. She hadn't even seen Sadie come by, but sure enough Sadie had about 10 teeth marks into it in no time flat! She new exactly what to snatch and was bold enough to do it with us right there!! Baaaad dog. But really funny and adorable too, right?

Yesterday, I was looking at the outrageously priced dog treats for cleaning teeth. They're about $1 each for the small ones. I bought a bag of 12 to see if they worked. Sadie ate the entire bag while I was at dinner last night. She's just lettin me know who's in charge around here, in case I forgot.

Overall, Sadie has become a fantastic dog and companion. She has been my rock through the hardest things I have ever faced. She has seen me cry more than anyone or anything else combined. The most amazing thing about Sadie is how empathetic she is to my feelings. She knows when I'm happy and when I need to be cheered up. It is amazing.

Here's to my best friend.

On a hike - she loves to hike: My beautiful girl:
My screen saver for the last year:And of course, the hugging shots:
My favorite picture of all time: