After this weekend, I am now more than ever looking forward to spring and warm weather. Things I am looking forward to:
1. Having the windows open.
2. Going for walks and/or eating outside at lunchtime.
3. More frequent and more pleasant walks with Leela.
4. Hanging out in our sun porch.
5. Our trip to Seattle! (Suggestions of things to do and see are welcome…)
We made a number of updates to our kitchen over the last few months. This project mostly spanned from September through November, but we are still putting a few finishing touches on, like getting things hung back up and such.
Check out the photos of our labor and the fruits of that labor. Most of the credit and immense gratitude goes to Dave for making our vision a reality. The room not only looks nicer and bigger, it’s more functional and welcoming. YAY!
So I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been busy. I’ve wanted to post about the things I’ve been busy with, but I’ve been waiting for my significant other to give me the photos of those things. One of those things includes a brand new kitchen floor and assorted upgrades to go along with it. This made things quite interesting from October through, well, we’re still working on the details. But despite little details here and there, the kitchen is done, and I love it.
We’ve also had a number of visitors and gone on a few trips ourselves, including to Orlando for Thanksgiving. It was awesome to have my whole family together, which is something that doesn’t happen very often.
In not-so-big news, but the reason for the title of this post, Leela has discovered that the fence in our yard isn’t exactly air-tight. She has found that if she runs behind the giant arborvitaes on the side of our yard that she can, in fact, gain her freedom. This is bad for many reasons. You can guess most of them, which center around her being A LOT faster than Dave or me. It’s also bad because this particular path is home to poison ivy. I had a bad incident with this poison ivy (and this photo was just the beginning) this summer. That’s how I know it’s there. So, each time (twice in two weeks and counting…) Leela takes this trip, it requires a full rub down with Technu and a bath (for her AND the bather)!
Despite Leela’s adventures around the neighborhood and house projects, we are gearing up for a great holiday week and some much-needed time off. One of my main goals this week is to catch up on my giant pile of magazines! Happy Holidays. 
These days, we all complain and hear a lot of complaints about how customer service is lacking in all kinds of industries. I’ve certainly experienced my fair share of far-too-long waits on hold, rude sale associates, and otherwise unsatisfying (or worse, infuriating) customer service experiences.
I’m happy to share a GOOD example of customer service. The company in question: The Container Store.
I recently purchased a few organizational items for the kitchen. We are working on some upgrades to the kitchen, so I thought it would be a good time to streamline a few things. I placed my order and eagerly awaited its arrival.
It arrived in a large box that was sort of mangled at one end. I tore the box open and found one of the four items inside to be completely crushed. I was bummed because the item was unusable, but also because I envisioned sitting on hold, dealing with paperwork, and other annoying chores to have the item replaced.
I’m happy to report that I was completely wrong! I found that The Container Store’s customer service hours extend well into the evening (it was after 8 p.m. our time), so I went ahead and called them up. I was connected with the service rep almost immediately, and she was pleasant, helpful, and knowledgeable. She put a new item in the mail to me right away and didn’t require that I send back the old one. I was off the phone, problem resolved, in under two minutes, and the item was on its way in about a day.
It’s probably good that Pittsburgh doesn’t have a Container Store because I’d spend way too much time and money there. But when my experiences with the store are repeatedly as good as this one, I can’t help but wish we had one locally.
Leela has been following me around all day. I’m sure not what this is about. Normally she follows Dave around. He has an entourage in fact, as Mojo does this to him too. Both of them (Mojo and Leela) will wake from a dead sleep if he leaves the room and follow him wherever he’s going. I guess Dave hasn’t been moving around enough, because today I get the shadow.
Since the bigger of the two shadows has seemed restless this weekend, I figured we’d better go for a walk. She didn’t get one Friday or yesterday due to some ugly rain, so I figured today she needed a good hour hike around the neighborhood.
I suited her up with her back pack (she carries her own water and poop bags), her collar, and her leash. I suited myself up with sneakers and sunglasses, and we were off.
We got about 15 minutes into this walk on mostly level streets, and Leela started pulling toward the grass. Since she’d already completed all of her other walk business, I figured she was just angling to eat grass, so I encouraged her to move along. We had walking to do! I gave her some water, and we pressed on.
A few minutes later, she pulled toward the grass again, so I let her sniff around. She decided to lie down. Seriously? You get your first walk in three days and you want to lie down? Get up! Let’s go! So we did. But about five minutes later she plopped down right on the sidewalk outside the elementary school. I realized that it was quite hot out, so we just sat for a few minutes. We were on our way home anyway, so I took off her backpack, gave her more water, and we just sat there. After a few minutes, I got us going again, back toward home.
She couldn’t even make it the rest of the way. She insisted on another break in a random yard, so while giving her yet more water, I called Davey to pick us up. I was already carrying the backpack — there was no way I could carry a 55 pound dog even a few blocks home.
Not to worry though, she is fine. She had yet more water and ice cubes, and I even held an ice pack on her to make sure her body temp was coming down quickly enough. She’s still following me around the house, but while I’m sitting still, she’s sound asleep. Who knew a 30 minute walk could be so exhausting!
