Polo's Christmas

Our miniature schnauzer, Polo, had a very good Christmas.  He got a new toy. It’s a round ball-shaped toy. One side of it has round holes in it, the other is solid and it has little nylon strings hanging out so that he can grab it. You put treats inside it through the holes, and your puppy then goes crazy trying to get them out. He is so funny when he plays with it. He gets his face into it and grunts and snorts and rolls around with it. By the time he gets a treat, his little beard is so wet. He looks like a mad dog...but cute!

We also got him a little Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, which he wore on Christmas. They are available at http://www.polo.com in the “For the Pup” section. He looks absolutely adorable in it. He doesn’t seem to mind wearing it at all. I know some dogs (*cough*Miss B*cough*) just hate wearing any kind of clothing item.

Polo is getting to be a big boy. I guess he’s going through a growth spurt. He’ll be four months old next week. We’ve been giving him a little more freedom in the past week. He’s only had one accident in the house in the past three weeks, and that was two weeks ago. Yesterday, he was upstairs with me, playing with his new toy while I was working on the computer. Suddenly, I noticed that he was gone. I got up and looked around, and he was downstairs patiently sitting on the rug in front of the door. I went down and let him out to go potty. He is such a good boy!

What Did You Get For Christmas?

I had a very good Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we went to see the lights at Lake Lanier. I’m so glad we got the chance to do it. It was really cool.

So, what did you get for Christmas? I got some really nice things... a couple of nice shirts, a nice sweatshirt, a BlueTooth headset, and some Clinique for men products... And a new iPod! It’s a 60GB model in black, with video support. It’s freakin’ awesome. The screen is very nice. The video quality is surprisingly good. I also like having the color display with the album art. I can see what people mean about the scratches, though. It would be nice if Apple would come up with some kind of coating to protect it from scratches and fingerprints.

Outlook 2003 not compatible with Vista

I finally got to spend some time with the Vista December build. I was hoping that this build would be my switch over, where I would make Vista my primary OS and boot into XP only if necessary. Unfortunately, I have run into a pretty big showstopper for me. Outlook 2003 won't receive e-mail messages. I spent a good amount of time tinkering and re-booting before I saw a message in the beta newsgroups that other people are having the same problem. I absolutely don't want to switch e-mail programs, so I guess I will continue to run XP day-to-day. Hopefully, this problem will be corrected in the next build we get.

'The Da Vinci Code' Trailer

Before King Kong, the trailer for The Da Vinci Code was shown. It looks great. I am very excited to see this movie, which comes out next summer. I loved the book. Tom Hanks isn’t exactly who I pictured as Langdon, but he always does a great job with any role. With that and X-Men 3, May 2006 should be a good month for movies!

King Kong

We saw King Kong this weekend. I was surprised at how much I really enjoyed it. Peter Jackson did a wonderful job. The movie doesn’t feel like a three-hour movie at all – it flies by. The only place I could see trimming down would be the beginning section before they get on the boat to the island. Jack Black was not nearly as annoying as he normally is, so that was good. The natives were actually pretty scary. The most impressive thing was Kong himself. He seemed so real. His facial expressions really conveyed emotion. You really felt for him and I might have been moved to tears once or twice. I’ve set the Moxi to record the original 1933 version for comparison. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid.

Sci Fi picks up Night Stalker

The Sci-Fi Channel has picked up the first season of “Night Stalker.” It would be nice if they kept it going, but at least I’ll get to see the conclusion to the last episode that ABC aired, in addition to the other episodes that never aired.

Site Outage

My web site was down for over 12 hours. I put in a support ticket last night, but it took Interland until just now to correct the problem. That is so not cool. It took another two days before FTP access was fixed so that I could update the site.

Polo's First Grooming

Polo got his third set of shots on Saturday. He was a very good boy with the doctor this time. He didn't cry once. He also had an appointment with a groomer and I felt so bad leaving him with her. He got his first schnauzer cut and his silver coloring is much more evident now. He doesn't have that curly puppy look anymore, but he is still adorable! His fur is so soft. The groomer said he did fine, but he seemed nervous when we picked him up. Once we got him home, he was back to his normal happy self. Doug took him for a ride this morning when he went to get breakfast and he said that Polo was shaking like he was nervous the whole time. Maybe he needs to get used to going to good places in the car, instead of only to the vet and the groomer!

His potty training is going very well. He hasn't had an accident in about a week.

In all of the pictures, he has blue eyes... I guess for dogs that is like "red eye." It gives him a wierd look.

Dinner with Friends

Last night my friends and I got together and went out for dinner. Well, Holly was getting ready for vacation and stuff, so she wasn’t able to make it, but everyone else was able to come. It was really nice that we could all get together and have fun, just sitting around a table eating and talking. We were originally going to go to Dominic’s in Norcross, but they were closed for a private party.

Once we get to the fall, there aren’t a lot of birthdays or parties, so we miss each other a lot. Holly’s twins, Anna and Riley, do have their birthday party in November, but that’s really about the kids and their guests, so we don’t really get to sit down as a whole group to talk and eat and laugh.

We did set a date for Friends Christmas as well, January 7. Once we get to January, then we have Friends Christmas and both Cindy and Jody’s birthdays, and we get into a pattern where we see each other more often. By the time summer comes around, we also have fairly regular pool parties and cook-outs at Todd’s house.

Polo Update

We’ve had Polo for two weeks now; this is the start of his 3rd week with us. He is such a good boy! He is definitely getting bigger. He only had one or two accidents in the house this past week. I think he’s getting the hang of the potty training. He is so smart. He seems to be starting to understand that “go potty” means to run to the door so he can go outside and potty. I don’t think he likes going outside in the rain, though. Not that I blame him, since I don’t much like standing out there either! He also is getting to know “crate”. When you say it, he runs to his crate and sits down. Usually he gets a treat, so he is happy to go in there. He really likes the bacon and cheese twisty treat. Doug has been reading Puppy for Dummies and it has a lot of good information. He has also been trying to teach him “sit.”

Cindy came over on Thursday and Polo loved her, of course. I think she wanted to trade him for her miniature dachshund, Miss B. Hell to the no!

We spent some time yesterday cleaning up the yard… it was becoming like a mine field! We noticed a couple of “mines” that were clearly not left by our puppy. Yuck!

Harry Potter and the Boring Movie

We saw the latest Harry Potter movie last night. It was okay. I’m certainly no Harry Potter fan and I don’t really get what the fuss is. That said, I thought the previous movie was a better movie. This movie was too long. After they get rolling with the first challenge in the tournament, the movie slows down to a crawl during an overly long section involving a Christmas dance (where Harry and his friends turn into Dawson’s Creek and Doug fell asleep). Once that’s finished, they get on to the challenges again. The thing is, the challenges build up to “the dark lord” being resurrected and then the film is suddenly over. It was really strange. One second, Harry is in the middle of a battle of whose wand is bigger and then he runs and gets back to the school. They find out one of the teachers is not who he seems and then literally the next cut, the snow is gone and it’s the end of the school year. Clearly, the whole thing’s just a set up for the next movie, but some closure of this story would have been nice.