Today was a pretty good day. I worked both yesterday and today. The cool thing was that today I could tell I am getting better at my job. It doesn’t seem like the opportunity to see improvement happens very often, so it is cool when you can look from one day to the next and see how you did things better.

It is interesting how listening to music can affect what you think or even write. For example I am listening to a song right now that has the word “cool” in it a bunch, which caused me to incorporate the word into my previous paragraph a couple times.

Sometimes I wish I had a video camera to capture all of Pounce’s funny antics. Although he would probably do the same thing he does when he sees my regular camera and stop doing whatever it is that he is doing at that moment that is cute. Since I can’t capture it, I will just say that it is pretty funny to see him try to play with an empty kleenex box… (he ran towards it and stuck his head inside like he thought there was going to be a mouse in it.)

Life is busy and I miss my sister. I haven’t talked to her in awhile it seems, but that happens when you grow up and have real life to attend to. No more Saturday afternoons playing outside with Kittie in our white with blue trim playhouse that Dad & Robin built us. Let’s reminisce sometime soon, call me…

I just couldn’t resist posting this. It is such a funny & too true poem…

“When I purr
Don’t infer
It’s because you pat.

No, you pat
Because I purr.

I am the cat,
Don’t forget that.”

It is almost the start of a new week… (I know that technically the week starts on Sunday, but in my world I prefer that it starts on Monday). This week should be a good one hopefully, although fairly busy. I work of course and have ballet, plus I have my sewing class again and I am going to get my hair cut this week. Nothing too exciting though with my hair, just a trim since the layers are growing out kind of funny. I am wanting to do something exciting with my hair soon though as I am getting bored of the black. I did have sudden inspiration today of an idea to try, but I will keep it a secret until after it is done:)

What does everyone else having going on this week?

I just thought I would post this adorable picture of Pounce. Hope everyone enjoys it!

So yesterday I had two 40% off coupons for Hobby Lobby. You could only use one per person, per day though so Ben went with me to Hobby Lobby last night and we looked at fabric and patterns. I bought a pattern to make scrubs and with the two 40% off coupons I got two fun fabrics to make scrub tops with. Since I can’t seem to find any scrub patterns with pants that I like, I am just going to buy some of the kind that I like in solid colors to go with the two tops I make. Here are the two fabrics that I bought…

It should be fun to see how the two tops turn out. Maybe I will post some pictures of the finished product (that is if they turn out good enough to show everyone:).

I believe I have handed in a total of four reading cards at the library as of today. That means that since mid-January I have read 20 books (5 books per card). It is kind of cool to get to enter a contest based upon how much I read. Sometimes I wonder where I get all this free time to read all of these books though… especially when I wish a lot of days that there were more than 24 hours in a day!

I had my very first sewing class last night and it was pretty cool. We didn’t do too much actual sewing this week, but I still learned quite a bit. One of the ladies in the class has the same sewing machine as me and she already knew a little bit about sewing and her machine, so that was kind of helpful. We are working on sewing a shirt (my teacher calls it a blouse:) and we are actually using a pattern that you trace rather than just cut out. I like that because switching to one of the cheap cut out patterns will be easy, but if it was the other way around I probably would have a hard time learning how the tracing works all by myself.

The teacher for my class is an interesting lady, she is from Germany (so she has a pretty heavy accent despite living in the states for a long time) and she seems like one of those sweet, but yet spunky grandma types. Of course, she prefers the higher-end sewing machines, thread, fabric, scissors, patterns, etc., (and she can since she has sewn a long time), but when you are first learning I don’t really think putting a ton of money into something is always such a great idea. Although I must say that I have a very nice sewing machine and a pair of very fancy scissors (which I actually found very on sale, thanks to Ben’s help). Anyways, I think the more high end patterns will be fun to sew, but for now I think I am going to start with the cheap cut out tissue paper type of patterns and fabric that I won’t cry over ruining if the pattern doesn’t turn out.

I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since Saturday… Both Sari’s and my last posting were on the same day:)

Life has been kind of busy with work and everything, but I am really enjoying it. Monday I didn’t feel very good and had to stay home, which wasn’t much fun. Although Pounce and I hung out a bunch, since he wasn’t feeling too good either. We are both doing much better though. He went and saw the vet, who gave him some medicine to take and he seems to be doing better.

Yesterday, I was feeling better so I went to work. It was a pretty typical day for the most part. We have two new vet students there this week (we get new students every two weeks), and they were trying to give treatment to a dog who has a wound on her foot. She is a really sweet German Shepherd who was brought in to the shelter because her daughter or mother (I can’t remember) kept attacking her. Well they were both adult unaltered females, which would explain why. Anyways, she was pretty freaked out at first by everything (especially other dogs), but she is slowly warming up and you can tell she is a sweetheart of a dog. So back to my story about the students treating her wound… well she was whining a bunch and generally not happy about it, so I walked up to her and started talking to her. She recognized me as a familiar face and settled right down. In fact, every time I tried to walk away she cried and whined some more. So I ended up staying by her for a little bit, and it felt kind of nice to be recognized as a friendly face.

Today Pounce and I have been taking it pretty easy. He is fast asleep right now, while I type and wait for Ben to come home from work. Tonight I have my ballet class (good news about that - my teacher is having knee surgery, not so good, but we are getting a different teacher who I already know is a good teacher, very good). I am not sure though what week the new teacher will be taking over the class. Tomorrow night is the first night of my sewing class, so I am pretty excited about that. I keep seeing and thinking of all sorts of things that I want to sew, so I can’t wait to actually get started. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult…

I feel like an obsessive compulsive hand washer. Working with animals means that I have to wash my hands a ton during work. Every time we treat or handle a different animal, we have to wash our hands afterwards so not to pass on any germs. So washing hands has a great purpose, but it does make my hands incredibly dry. Thank goodness for Neutrogena (fragrance free) hand lotion!

Ben & I are listening to Prairie Home Companion right now on the radio. (Pounce listens when the radio makes a louder noise:) Definitely one of the best radio programs out there (well next to the radio stations that my Dad runs;) I love music, but sometimes it is fun to listen to talk and whatever Prairie Home Companion would be considered. Someday I want to go to a Prairie Home Companion broadcast show, and I will say hi to everyone I know when they read the hello notes in the second half.

I gave vaccinations to a couple of dogs & cats today for the first time. It was really interesting and not too difficult. I really like all of the stuff I am learning at my job. One of my favorite kitties got adopted today. That is a really good thing, although I will miss seeing her at the shelter. The couple adopting her though looked like they will definitely spoil her. She had a really nice carrier with a thick blanket on the bottom & a ton of toys in it. It is always cool to see the animals go to a good home, since it is so hard to see them come in to the shelter in the first place.

The weekend is just flying by, just like last weekend. Life flies by the older you get…

I read quite a few books and so sometimes I will want to read a book that our library does not have. This is becoming more frequent the longer I read, since the library only has so many books (and only so many of these are actually decent and well written). So today I received a notice that one of the books I had requested a couple weeks ago was in at the library. I waited until Ben got off work so that we could go together and we went to the library. At our library, when someone requests a book there is a set of shelves near the checkout desk that the book is put on wrapped in a piece of paper with the requesting person’s last name. So when we got to the library I walked over to the shelf to find the book that I had requested. It wasn’t there though! So I asked at the counter and they couldn’t find it anywhere (including in the place it would have been if it was not requested). Well, I was kind of bummed since I had been waiting for the book, but they put me back on the list of requests for that book since another couple of libraries in the area also have it. I am still first on the list too, so hopefully I will get it soon:)

Today I had to go to a class/presentation on dog introductions for work. It was basically about how to introduce two dogs in a shelter environment (be they two shelter dogs, or one shelter dog and one dog owned by someone who wants to see how it interacts with a dog they are considering). For the most part it was just a review for me about how to read dog reactions and expressions (yes, dogs do have facial expressions:). Although it is always good to review that kind of information, plus I learned a little extra.

Last night was supposed to be the first night of my sewing class, but it was canceled so next week will be the first week. We had some icky storms come through in the late afternoon and I think power was out in some parts of town (it wasn’t in our part of town though). So I can’t wait till next week and finally getting to learn how to sew. I even checked out a book at the library tonight that a website I had seen recommended on sewing. I need to learn soon, since I have already seen some patterns that I want to try!

Wow I haven’t posted since Sunday…. at least I figured out how to get my background to work in both internet explorer and firefox. I have no idea why it works, but I do know what I did to make it work at least.

I am so excited, tomorrow night is the first session of my sewing class. I can’t wait to start sewing all sorts of cool stuff. My first project when I am done with the class will probably be something simple like throw pillows. Then I want to make a set of scrubs and all sorts of other clothes.

We have been cleaning and organizing our apartment a lot lately. It is really cool to get things exactly the way you want them. Last night we put together this cabinet that we bought this weekend (well okay, Ben put it together after I tried to start it). It is a really cool cabinet and will hopefully give us some more storage for kitchen stuff.

On Monday when Ben went grocery shopping, he brought me home the March issue of Real Simple, one of my favorite magazines. Better Homes & Gardens is my other favorite - are you still saving them for me Mom?:) It has a couple of really cool stories/articles. On article was called “Friends Again” and it was about childhood friends that had lost touch and reconnected later in life. The other really cool article was “Best in Show” which was written about a dog and his owner. While I don’t agree with everything in the article, the basic principle that animals can teach us a lot about ourselves and life is cool. What can I say, I just really like animals:)

Speaking of animals, there is one right here who has been begging for attention and someone to play with him all morning! So I think I will go play with him and hopefully wear him out so he naps some and I can get something done:)

Awhile back Pounce discovered the drinking fountain that someone had installed in our apartment, solely for his use. This drinking fountain happens to be our bathroom sink. Whenever you go to wash your hands, brush your teeth, or just stand to look in the mirror above the sink, Pounce automatically thinks you are going to allow him time to get a drink. At first he would only expect a drink if you were already in the bathroom by the sink, but he has learned that if he paws at the bottom of the sink the drain rattles and we come to see what in the world is going on. Tonight Ben was looking for him (since Pounce was being suspiciously quiet) and happened to find him taking a nap in the bathroom. Pounce occasionally will go in there to nap since it is the warmest room in the apartment, however this was the first time he was napping in the sink! It was pretty adorable, so I thought I would post a picture of it for everyone else to enjoy.

Today it snowed, a bunch… icky… Although it isn’t really sticking to the ground so that is nice, and I suppose seeing as it is still February and this was the first snow we have had in a few weeks, I can’t complain too much about it:)

We went to the seed starting class today and learned all about planting seeds. It is a lot of work if you want to start a garden completely from scratch using just seeds. I think I may end up just buying the seedlings from the store in order to cut back on the amount of time and work. It should be fun to have a garden though, either way we end up starting it.

The weekend is almost over and I can hardly believe it. Weekends always go so fast! Remember when we were just kids with no responsibilities and the weekends seemed to last forever.