Joanne’s Blog

I am woefully behind in blogging!  Lemme see what’s happened since September…  I’ve finished my Christmas shopping and I’m getting ready to wrap everything and start mailing the gifts out.  Yesterday was Thanksgiving and we ate two dinners - one at Phil’s the other at my brother’s place.  We played mah jong and I won $11 after two full rounds.  My second fish died so now all I have left is Piper. But I’m convinced that Piper is a boy as the fish is pretty and big and eats all the food.  The other two were much smaller.  Seth traveled a lot the month of November for work.  He also started playing ice hockey with his friends in a league.  He’s also signed up for the SF Kaiser Half-Marathon in February.  I will eagerly watch from the sidelines.  The puppies are good!  Casper keeps on growing little bumps on his skin but I’ve had 2 of them checked out and have been told that they are benign, so I guess he is ok.  Moobo still has lots of energy.  The two of them do circles around the living room.

I’m heading downstairs to make paw prints of the puppies!  Seth is playing LAN games with his friends.  I’m going to put on pajamas, make paw prints, put in a movie and get to wrapping presents.  Yippee!!

I hadn’t been back to Montreal since I was a little girl, so it was super fun to go with Seth and our friends Takane, Barry & Mika!  We also signed up for the half-marathon “Marathon Oasis de Montréal” during our trip.  We figured it would be a great way to see the city and do a race!

Seth and I were in Taiwan the week before (pics coming soon), and unfortunately I sprained my ankle while we were on a tour.  When we got home the doctor prescribed a huge walking boot and she told me I could do a 10k so long as I wore this snowboard boot size monster on my foot!  OK - cool!  I didn’t want to cop out since Takane was doing the race so I was excited that I got the go ahead to do the 10k.  I tried hard to recover during the in-between week, but sprained ankles seem to take a long time to heal - especially at my age!  So I took my boot to Montreal but eventually decided to just wear the brace for the race.  It would take me 8 hours to do a 10k with that dumb boot!  I was excited because we finished the 10k just in time to get set up to take pics of Takane! 

Takane had been training hard for her first Half too.  When I saw her I thought “Dang!  She looks great!”  She’s totally lean and skinny and elite runner-ish!!  She was planning on running the whole half-marathon so she did serious training.  I always intended to walk, and after the sprain I definitely had to walk.  Seth was nice and did the 10k with me and walked too.  It was an icky cold rainy day - but it was still a fun event! Mika even participated in Le Petit Marathon - 1k! Barry ran with her and so they both received participant T-shirts and medals too!

We ate well!  Duck in a Can and croissants…  The hotel had a great breakfast every morning so we chomped down every day!  Ha ha.  (I went on a diet as soon as I got home though… oops)

Here are some pics and a video of Takane almost at the finish.  She said she felt like she was about to throw up, but she looked great! 

» Joanne, Seth & scenery in Montreal
» Takane, Barry & Mika
» Video of Takane (avi, 10mb download)

Today we celebrated the marriage of two good friends - Jahna & Nam!  The nuptials were held at the Hotel De Anza in San Jose, CA under a canopied sky where we didn’t even realize we were in the middle of a huge city.  The ceremony was fun and touching, the food was yummy, the cake was yummier, and the speeches showed just how much Jahna & Nam are loved by all of their family and friends.  The bride & groom’s dance lessons paid off as they glided effortlessly across the floor with grace and rhythm!  Everyone had a fantastic time and we’ve never seen so many people stay on the dance floor, no matter what type of music was playing!  From rock to cha cha to polka to easy - the dance floor stayed hoppin’.  As always, I had a camera stapled to my hand and this time I had reinforcements of Seth’s camera and his Flip video!  Ha ha - gadgets are us!

» View all the wedding pics (Aug 09, 2008)

Videos will be posted shortly!

I finally decided to get Moobo some training for his little issue with onleash aggression.  We were lucky enough to get Rich Mason (http://dogskool.com) who was great as Casper’s trainer.  Rich will come to the house for a few lessons to try and get Moobo to be better onleash and quit barking at people, bikes, dogs, cats, cars, squirrels, leaves, etc.  You get the idea.  Moobo is an angel at the dog park - he’ll lick ya to death!  But out on the street he’s like a mini Cujo!

I’m way behind on posts and I’ll catch up soon. But this conversation happened today in between Dr. Bob poking and drilling in my mouth:

Joanne: “Hey! How was your triathlon?”

Dr. Bob: “Oookay. I would have done better if I was in better shape. But it was good…”

Joanne: “Cool!” [looked at Dr. Bob intently since I had a bunch of gauze in my mouth]

Dr. Bob: “Yeah, I got 4th. 4th in the world, guess that’s not too bad.”

Joanne: “Yah. Not too bad.”

Ha.

Yeehaw! I’ve decided to quit my bagfancy.com website so I’m having a huge 40% off sale! That barely recoups my wholesale costs, but I don’t care - I’m just trying to liquidate my inventory and GET MY GUEST BEDROOM BACK! Yes, the floor to ceiling bags must go! I’m so excited to finally be moving on. I think that I would have had some profitable months in 2007, but I realized that I really love high tech and wanted to stick with web development and not the bag website. So come to my site for a great deal - http://bagfancy.com! Just in time for Mother’s Day!

Nothing much else going on as this is definitely keeping me busy! Seth and I didn’t get into the Nike Marathon this year so we’re looking at another half-marathon to do somewhere else. Yes, we’re nuts.

Seth is doing great! He still loves his work and his train rides into SF. We went to a BBQ today and Seth found that he loooooves Guitar Hero. I bet we have one before the week is out.

Casper and Moobo are doing fantastic! They are super cute with their haircuts. They’ve been enjoying the dog park and playing with all their buddies. Casper had stopped playing at the dog park, but recently he’s been playing more with his old friends like Travis and Scooby. Whew! At least he’s having more fun! Moobo is the same Tigger as always.

I started taking guitar lessons about a month ago with a great musician - Bill. I still suck, but I’m learning the chords and always have fun when I practice. I’m even developing callouses on my fingers! I think I’ll get a tattoo now.

ROCK ON!