An oldie, but a goodie

Hey, remember this. Believe it or not this is the first thing I ever bought with my own money. I had just gotten a job at Burger King in Fort Lee when I was 16 (21 years ago) and I bought this guy used in a nearby Bike Shop. I brought it here to work, because I thought it would get more use. So far it's been true.

What a shame

I read this morning that Cindy Sheehan gave up the fight against the war in Iraq, proclaiming that her son had died for nothing. I agree with her. I can't understand what we are still doing there. Personally, even the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction doesn't give us the right to invade someone else's country. What makes us so great that we can have them and no one else can? Well, not no one, but you know what I mean. Maybe if we kept our noses out of everyone else's business we wouldn't have so many people hating us. I really don't think that the people of the world who hate the United States, hate us for our blue jeans and overeating. I think they hate the hypocrisy of our leaders and our policies toward everyone else but ourselves. We have our highest officials breaking laws and lying to fulfill their own agendas.

I think the American people made a huge statement on Election day last year, and neither side has listened. I think America needs to start worrying about it's own and stop being the holier than now state that is getting us into trouble in every corner of the globe.

Just my 2 cents

One step closer..

It was a pretty good weekend. A little windy abut the sun was out for most of the weekend. We were in Millersville, MD at the Artful Dodgers USDAA agility trial. Sassy and Tracey had a really good weekend, with two highlights worth mentioning. First, after 19 tries they finally got their third qualifier for Performance II Gamblers. Now they are in all Performance III classes. The other good news was that they got a qualifier for the Perfomance National Standard. This means that they qualify to go to a Regional competition and try to get a qualifier into the Nationals in Arizona this November. It didn't come easy, of course. We had to wait around for about 3 hours for Sassy's turn. A lot of dogs usually run in this class and she was near the end. They ran first thing in the morning, so Tracey took off her cleats and put her sneakers back on. When they ran, the course was 4 jumps into a curved tunnel. As Sassy went into the tunnel, Tracey put on the brakes in order to pick her up at the other end. Tracey slid and her feet went up in the air. She landed flat on her ass, but was able to scramble up before Sassy came out of the tunnel. Luckily it went down like this. Sassy can get very weirded out by something like that, and she didn't even notice. Tracey was careful, but finished the run just fine, and Sassy made it to the end with 3 seconds to spare. Thank God, the next qualifier would have been 5 hours away.

Unfortunately, Princess' weekend wasn't as good. She has been running really slow and can't make time in USDAA. She does fine when she runs NADAQ (another agility organization), vut USDAA is just too fast for her. I guess it's probably retirement time for the old lady. She is 9 this year.

Gotta go
Steve

This weekend in Manassas, VA

It was a weird weekend. We went to a flyball tournament in Manassas, VA. We got terrible news on saturday morning. Renee, the captain of our one team, got into a terrible accident on the way to the tournament. She was coming off of 81 and getting onto 66, when something happened that caused her to go off the road. The van rolled 4 times. She had something like 10 dogs in there with her, but amazingly no one was terribly hurt. She had to climb out the window to get herself out, but could not get any doors open to check on the dogs. A couple of truckers were able to stop and help her out. They called for help and the cops and firemen were able to get the dogs out. They also called Dee who was already at the tournament. They were taking Renee to the hospital and putting the dogs up at the shelter. Dee left the tournament to go get the dogs and bring them and Renee home. We don't have any pictures of the van, but from what I hear it was completely totaled and it's amazing that they all walked away.

Unfortunately, Luke didn't get to run on saturday, but Dee returned on Sunday and they were able to run. They didn't do very well, but they did have a lot of fun.

Hi there

There's nothing more depressing than an empty blog, so here we go. I don't find myself with a lot of time, but I come across interesting stuff now and again so maybe I can organize it all here. We'll see how it goes.

No better place to start than with what's been going on lately. Nothing much has changed. Still in the same old house doing the same old job. I've started taking vanpool out of Frederick and carpooling there with a woman who lives near me. SHe just sold her house, so I am on my own at the end of may, but at least it is getting warm enough to ride down there. The big thing is someone else gets to drive through the hell that is Route I-270. It's more comfortable than the bus, cheaper and the people are all from NIST so I get dropped off at my building. That has made my life much less stressful, which is good as you will hear in the next paragraph.

This winter was really tough on me. I've been trying to feed my depression and it finally caught up with me. I finally got my blood work done and my cholesterol was REALLY high. The doctor didn't put me on medication yet, but he has given me 3 months to clean my act up. For the past two weeks, I've changed my diet and have been making time to walk and exercise here at work. I've dropped a few pounds and feel much better, so don't worry I'm pretty optimistic. It was really hard at first. Quitting the McDonalds was harder than quitting smoking in my opinion, but much like it after the initial detox it's not so bad.

That's it for now. Gotta get back to work.