Pooped Pooch

At Tank's new daycare, Fisher's Friends, they are having a "Pooped Pooch" contest.  You send in a picture of your tired out dog after a day at daycare and they will decide which one is the best and that dog receives a free day of daycare.  Tank needs daycare whenever possible just to tire the little meatball out so he's not such a jerk all the time.  I entered in two pictures so we have twice the odds of winning.

Plant update:

It is still alive!!

I have a problem.

I have a severe addiction to online shopping.  I can't resist the daily e-mails with the coupon codes for free shipping and 20% off.  Especially for stores like Banana, PetsMart and Amazon.com.  I did have my debit card number memorized so that I didn't even need to go through the steps of getting my wallet out of my purse and then having to find my debit card in my wallet. This was working out well, too well even. I was purchasing A LOT online.  Packages were showing up daily on my porch.  USPS, UPS and FedEx should have personally thanked me for keeping them in business.  At first I felt bad for the delivery men because they were coming to my house daily, then that would go away as I opened up my packages and felt pure delight.
Then my debit card was stolen at the Bills game a couple weeks ago.  Some horrid person ended up charging about $400 to my bank account.  Luckily I wasn't held liable, but I did have to front the money for about two weeks.  This kept my online shopping habit to a minimum, it was almost non-existent.  (Almost).  Last week Key Bank refunded my money and sent me a new debit card and my shopping habit went into overdrive.  My mind was crazy thinking about the things I needed to purchase. 
Yesterday I came home to two packages on my front porch.  Two more are supposed to arrive tomorrow and one more on Friday.  This is how you know you have a problem.

(Please don't pay attention to the dead plant to the right or the mismatched door and trim.  I will be painting the trim this month)

Too much to ask?

I got an e-mail from Walgreens advertising a desk calendar with personalized photos for only $6.  James is always complaining that he doesn't have a calendar at his desk.  So I think I'm being a nice person and I upload our engagement photos and purchase him this nice little desk calendar.  And I tried to pick out the least girly-est layout.  When it comes in the mail, I open it up and hand it to him and let him know it's for his desk at work.  What does he say to me?  "I'm not taking that to work, it's gay looking".  Really?  I don't think it is.  And is it too much to ask for him to just humor me and pretend to take it to work?  I guess so.  So I decided to bring it to work with me and here it sits on my own desk.

I kill plants

I have this problem with plants.  I tend to kill them and at a rapid pace.  I buy them thinking this will be the time that I will be able to keep a plant alive.  Every time I end up killing it.  When I get it, it looks all nice and fresh and alive.  This is where I forget to water it.  I don't realize I have to water the plant until it starts looking brown and droopy.  Well, I bought another plant today for my desk.  I asked Kelly to remind me to water it at least every other day.  I'm going to try to remember the other days.  We'll see if team work can keep this plant alive.

The vending machine

I'm in charge of the vending machine at work.  Not filling it with candy or chips or anything like that.  I am the one who decided to go with this vendor and their machines.  Well, this machine is a big piece of shit and every single item in there has gotten stuck at least once.  And who do my co-workers blame?  Me of course, because I obviously made the machine and set the settings on it so everything gets stuck.  Some people get a little cranky when they haven't had their daily fat intake.  They also think that slamming their fist and other body parts into the machine will cause whatever is stuck to fall.  It obviously doesn't and they hurt themselves.  So I decided that instead of having everyone bitch at me I will 1) set up a fund of change for those items that get stuck and 2) make a little comic strip about it so people get a laugh and aren't so livid with me. 

Tank is famous

I get a daily e-mail from a website called Owned By Pugs.  The e-mail includes a picture submitted by a pug owner of their dog doing something funny.  Yesterday I decided to submit a picture of Tank doing something funny.  He didn't make it into the daily e-mail just yet, but he did make it onto the website!  Check it out here!

Second Annual Pink Dress Run

This past Friday was the second annual Pink Dress Run.  My friend Kristin Gibny's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago at stage three.  She went through Chemo and had a double mastectomy and is now cancer free.  So last year my friend Kristin came up with an awesome way to raise money for breast cancer research and to honor her mom's fight with breast cancer.  It is called the Pink Dress Run because all participants are encouraged to wear pink dresses, including the men.  I think the men have more fun dressing up in pink dresses than the women do.  This year we got double the amount of participants than last year.  Hopefully we can even double that next year!

Chicken Wing Eating Contest

Two weeks ago our friend Paul entered a chicken wing eating contest and won.  Last night was the so-called "championship", but there were not enough participants to make a real contest.  The two contestants that were going to participate were asked to bring their friends to make it into a legitimate contest.  So Paul called James to see if he would participate.  Apparently James has not taken his own advice about eating contests (the sushi debacle) and agreed to participate.  The restaurant is a bit of a hike for us so on the way over there we pumped up the jams so James could get himself psyched up.  We listened to a little bit of Eminem, Juvenille and of course DMX. 
Also, on the drive over we discussed James's eating habits and how I told him that I hope he does well, but I don't think he will because he is such a slow eater.  Sometimes it drives me nuts how slow he really is.  He contributes it to the fact that he is savoring the flavor of whatever he is eating. 
The contest was three minutes long and you had to eat 90% of the wing meat.  They brought out three huge bowls of saucy, hot wings.  After three minutes of eating hot wings, the boys were definitely on the messy side.  Unfortunately, he did not win.  There were eight contestants and he tied for last with two other guys, one of which being our friend Jeremy aka Cougar.  They ate 11, another guy ate 12, three guys including Paul ate 14 and the champion ate 18. 
I guess word of the contest got out and the reporter from the Buffalo News was there.  There are pictures all over the Buffalo.com website.  Here is a link to check it out!  I copied a few photos from the site and I also video taped the contest for your enjoyment.

Happiness before the contest.   Cougar and James.

Still thinking this is a good idea...

Sorry for the small video :(

Paul: mid chicken wing

The winner with 18 wings.

Post contest.  James is still trying to finish his last wing...

I thought Cougar was going to barf.

Cougar not looking so hot.

Counting the wings.  Notice the gloves.  The wings are so spicy they didn't want their hands to touch the sauce.

The disappointment face

The contestants

Cougar, Kristin and her BF Jeff

Kelly, Brooke and James

Erie County Fair

Apparently the Erie County Fair is the largest fair in the United States.  I had no idea.  It is pretty big but I would have never guessed.  Maybe this is why they call it "America's Fair". 
This year we headed off to the fair with Carter, Danielle and Jeff.  Jeff was our navigator so he led us off to see the hypnotist (which no one would go on stage for), the stunt dog show (which was awesome!) and then to the row of carny games.  In the words of Austin Powers, only two things scare me, the other is carnies.  They have small hands and smell like cabbage.  Well, I don't know if they smell like cabbage, but they scare me. 
James and Jeff decided to have a man-off and compete in some carny games.  James won a huge monkey for breaking 3 beer bottles in a row with a baseball.  Then I kicked every one's butt at the bowling ball rolling contest and won a small gingerbread man doll.  We took the monkey home to see if Tank would want to play with it, but he was really scared of it.  He actually ended up getting hives the next day.  We think it's either from him being super scared or that some bugs were on the monkey itself and they bit him.  Needless to say, I sprayed lysol all over my house that day. 

For some reason they had "Santa's Village" at the fair

The stunt dog show

Pre man-off

During the man-off

The sick carny monkey

My gingerbread man

Another man-off

I took a picture of these pigs because they reminded me of Tank...