Sewing Sensation

For my birthday, Paul got me the sewing machine I had my eye on for a while. It's a Brother cs6000i, which probably would not impress the people on Project Runway, but it is by far fancier than anything I'd ever need. So far I've fixed 3 shirts that Binsey ripped up during her earlier puppy shenanigans. The machine has 60 different stitches, of which I've used two, and I have no idea what the heck you'd do with most of them!

I'm hoping to make some neat thing with my new machine, like window treatments. Last week there was a sale on sewing patterns, so I bought four of them. My plan is to buy fabric as it goes on clearance since my first few projects will probably not be anything close to professional grade. But I'll learn as I go along!

For now, though, I'm just glad I don't have to pay someone to fix puppy tooth holes or to hem new pants!

Training Continues

We're about half way through Canine Good Citizen training at Hacker's Creek Kennel here in Bloomington. We decided after boarding Binsey there over Christmas that we just had to go there for training beacuse she came back behaving WAY better than when we dropped her off. Jeff is a fantastic trainer and has basically devoted his life to training dogs, particularly labrador retrievers. He sells some of his trained dogs to families, so if you're in the market for a dog and don't have time to deal with all the puppy shenanegans, this is a great option! Since we've been working with him, we've even noticed that Binsey is listening to us more because we've learned how to be better leaders for her.


Sure, we did the PetSmart puppy class, but Binsey is such a strong-willed dog that she needs some extra training (or at least we needed extra training in how to deal with her!). Positive reinforcement only (treat training) is a great way to go if you have a mild-mannered dog, but for a brute like Binsey we needed more variety. Remember that Yuppie Puppy harness I was so excited about? It is not a good solution and I think it just brings out her husky instinct to pull! So we started using a choke chain (I hate that name), but Jeff explained to us how it's actually more humane because it distributes the pressure around their neck rather than just on the front with a regular collar. It's true - she stops pulling and doesn't cough/choke like she did with the regular collar. And now that we can "communicate" with the collar, she's listening to us more even when she doesn't have the chain on.



She's still a work in progress, but she's turning into a real sweetheart who loves to fetch and chew her toys and lie at our feet for belly rubs.

Here she is fetching for Paul (she decided for the past few months that she didn't want to fetch, and then one day she randomly decided she loved it):

New glasses

It's been nearly 6 years since I got my last pair of glasses, and since my prescription changed it seemed a good time to get a new pair. So here's the new look.

Today's Dear Abby made my day

One of of my favorite sections in the newspaper is the "Dear Abby" column. While the questions written in are usually not all that relevant to me personally, it's interesting to see what the "official" etiquette is for whatever social trouble is going on and to see what kind of "comebacks" she has for some rude situations. Today's column, however, included something I would have liked to send in myself because I have been unsure of how to handle it. A reader wrote:

"I am a 29-year-old female who would like to know why people feel compelled to tell random strangers to 'smile.'"

She then goes on to describe several situations where random men have asked her to smile in a variety of comments, and how their remarks were offensive to her.

Dear Abby's response:

"The man who asked if you had "lost" something may have been making a clumsy attempt to pick you up. That sometimes happens in markets. As to the "older people" who comment on your expression -- or lack thereof -- they may consider themselves so "senior" that they can "coax" you into doing as they would like -- like "coochy-kooing" a baby to make it laugh on cue.

Making personal remarks to strangers is, of course, rude. My advice to you is to distance yourself from those individuals as quickly as possible. Speaking personally, if I was approached the way you have been, the last thing I'd be inclined to do is smile or engage them at all. I'd be offended, too."

I am so glad to know this is a more widespread problem than just affecting me and a couple of my friends who have had the same thing happen. It really does feel insulting, and I usually want to say something nasty in response, like "I'm not smiling because I'm looking at your ugly face", but clearly Dear Abby would not approve of that.

So thank you, Dear Abby, for confirming that I should just continue to ignore these annoying individuals.

Snow's melted

Well, it seems we're free of snow for a while. It's nearly all melted, so on Saturday we took Binsey to McCormick's Creek park down the road from us. The weather was great - in the 50s and sunny! Yes, finally sunny!

The park had some great things for retriever puppies, like sticks


and big leaves (note how suspicious she is of the leaf)


You may also notice that she's got a loose leash in the top picture - an important thing if you've been through any basic dog training. Well, it's not because of training. It's because we got this device for her from Yuppie Puppy. It's a harness that goes over her head with loops attached that go around her legs. If she pulls, the loops tighten and she stops. It is sooo much better than the nose harness we were recommended during the puppy training classes (she'd just freak out and rub her nose all over the ground trying to get it off). So for the park, we attach the Yuppie Puppy to the expandable leash and she can check out all the leaves, etc while still being able to keep her close if other people walk by.

Snow!

We've been hit by several snow storms, as has much of the rest of the country. While it's not so fun for us to shovel it, nor to try to drive on it when we don't have 4WD cars, Binsey is one happy puppy.

She really wanted to help Paul shovel...

So I brought her outside and she got right in there and told the snow where to go


And when the snow got out of line, she snuck up on it


Meanwhile, we're on week 3 of waiting for our HOA to approve our fence. It will be so nice to let Binsey run around off leash! And nice for us not to have to bundle up in our snow gear every time she needs to go out... Hopefully it'll come through soon!

Big Week!

This week Paul finished his first week at his new job! He's working for the local small business development center and we're excited about this opportunity! His commute is even shorter than mine - just 5 miles versus my 7 to campus. What a change from Chicago where we commuted 25 miles in bumper-to-bumper traffic taking an hour or more each way. It is so much nicer to be driving quickly past cow pastures and forests rather than sitting in that dense traffic.

On my end of things, I'm struggling to come up with an "interesting" and "feasible" master's paper topic since my previous master's thesis doesn't count here. Given that I have never done sociology research before, it's a challenge to come up with something new!