Couple other bits of info March 3, 2008

I’m no longer the organizer of the Philadelphia Animal Rights Meetup Group. I stepped down for a variety of reasons. Rather then list them all out, I’ll just sum it up by saying things were incredibly stressful and now they aren’t. I’m very content with my decision and know that I will remain active with animal rights work in the future. Hopefully it will be with a wonderful group of people.

We also have completed our first term of pottery, but the second term was canceled. We’re now waiting for spring session II to start. Rob is taking a welded sculpture class and I’m taking a bookmaking class. Fun!

Also, here’s a picture of Chloe:

She’s adorable, right?!? It’s the only picture I have at the moment. I seriously need to take more.

…and this year so far March 3, 2008

As mentioned in my previous post, we brought in the New Year at Tracey’s house. We had a chance to spend time with her, some of her lovely neighbors, Tracey’s mom, Sara, Alan, John, and Cherie. Quite a good time!

(Left to right: Cherie, Sara, me, and Tracey)

Most of January and February has been spent working on the house. Rob has been working on the construction of the new bathroom, while I have been working on odds and ends in the house. Unfortunately, the construction has been put on a temporary hold as Rob found he has to do some rewiring…to the entire house! Ugh. It’s been less then pleasant. He’s been working like crazy on all the electrical work and it seems like it will never end. Poor guy.

Other then that, we had one big bit of news. Or, two rather. One good, one not good at all. So on with the good news!

We have a new addition to our little family. We adopted a rescue greyhound! Her name is Chloe and she’s adorable (and knows it, too). We didn’t plan on taking in another dog at all. Actually, we went to Petco to look at some new vegan dog food when I noticed a greyhound rescue organization was at the place that day. I mentioned it to Rob, then went down on one knee to play with the greyhounds, and the soon-to-be Chloe came right up to us. She won Rob’s affection immediately. He wanted to take her home right then! However, we decided to ask questions and go home to discuss and think about it. We went back and forth, but the next morning decided to make an appointment to see her with our dogs. As you can guess, everyone was on their best behavior and she was a perfect fit. We filled out the appropriate paperwork and picked her up the following weekend.

Since then, Chloe and Remy run around like best friends. She immediately fit in like she had lived there her entire life. It was amazing to us because, by the time she moved in, she had only been retired two weeks from the racing track. She didn’t even know how to use stairs and had to be carried up and down! We’ve made some adjustments and she’s learned some bad habits (like taking off with random objects and chewing on the corners of our coffee table), but overall we’re very happy to have her in our home.

Now the bad news…one of our rats, Neko, developed a large tumor under her left arm and has had some swelling in her left eyes. I took her to the vet and unfortunately, she has cancer in both areas. Although rats are prone to develop cancer, we hadn’t expected it so soon. We’ve only had Neko and Amelie about a year and thought this wouldn’t happen for around another year. The vet said she’s not in any pain at the moment, but she will be later as the tumor grow. He said we have a couple months to decide how we would like to approach this. We have an option to have the eye removed to try to minimize pain and prolong her life. However, it’s not guaranteed. It’s heartbreaking and something we will have to discuss further as time goes on.

So other then that, not much is going on. We’re considering going to NYC for a few days in March. We’d like to visit the city and see Doug Stanhope at Caroline’s that weekend. No other plans for travel at the moment because I’m starting an important part of the study at my job, so no time off for me until June.

Also, the Dell remains dead at the moment, so with that does the bulk of my photos. I’m trying to post something here and there. I don’t have many pictures on my Mac at this time.

Hope everyone is well!

So over the past year… February 22, 2008

I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for quite a long time, but life has been more hectic then I had ever expected. Since moving to Philadelphia, I haven’t had a chance to keep up with everyone in my life as much as I would like. Calling and/or emailing each person to update them on the same stories hasn’t been something I could manage. Instead, I plan to use this forum to share my life with my friends and family, from coast to coast and where ever they are across the world.I started writing out what has happened over the past year when I realized I was writing a book. Instead, I’m choosing to write a very condensed version and add some pictures.

December 2006: moved to Philadelphia! Now live with Rob and two dogs, Buster (a chow-lab mix from a rescue center) and Remy (a lab-terrier mix found on the street). Started looking for jobs immediately after the holidays.

Here’s Rob with his new sunglasses:

…and here after the Dragon Boat Race (which he won!!):

John, our friend and one of the first people I met in Philly. He rocks, as you can see.

January 2007: was hired at Fox Chase Cancer Center as a health educator and research assistant. Currently working on a skin cancer prevention study, which is conducted at three of the universities in Philadelphia. Also traveled to Las Vegas to attend the Amazing Meeting, a skeptics convention featuring James Randi, Eugenie Scott, Penn and Teller, Julia Sweeney, and several others.

February 2007: went to the Poconos to snowboard for a four day weekend. Unfortunately, I twisted my knee fairly fast and found snowboarding to not be something a klutz like me can handle very well. I plan to try skiing soon and hopefully cross country skiing. Met Cherie, who is my closest friend in Philadelphia. Also started getting involved in activities through Meetup.com to meet new people in the area.

And here is the lovely Cherie making her vegan specialty, paper towel waffles! Need a recipe, anyone? ;p

March 2007: started attending animal rights meetups and independent movies meetups. Met some fantastic people, including another good friend of mine,Tracey. We also started a huge garden. It was in two parts: one that had existed in previous years and another that we created. The latter spans almost the entire length of the yard and was quite a bit of work. Lastly, we adopted two rats from a rescue group, which we named Amelie and Neko.

April 2007: I became assistant organizer for the Philadelphia Area Movies MeetUp Group (independent films). We attended the Philly movie fest, which shows tons of independent films. We then met a some additional good friends, Sara and Alan. Additionally, we started planting some of our seedlings and some veggie plants we purchased in our garden.

Sara and Alan at Tracey’s New Year’s get together:

May 2007: Cherie, Rob, and I traveled to Washington, D.C. to visit a friend of hers. We then travel to Poplar Springs in Maryland, which has a large farm animal sanctuary. The trip was very moving. We spent some time in D.C., going to some of the Smithsonian and eating at some lovely veg restaurants. Later that month, we traveled to Florida to visit Rob’s parents. It was a wonderful time!

At Poplar Spring with Simon:

June 2007: By this time, our garden was flourishing and we spent much of our free time taking care of it. Since a large portion of it was new, it had to be constantly weeded. By mid-month, we took over as organizers of the Philadelphia Animal Rights MeetUp Group. Again, another thing to keep us very, very busy! Also traveled back to Iowa for a short visit. Wasn’t realy planned well as I found a ticket on sale and just went. Next time, I will try to plan better!

July 2007: we visited the local farm animal sanctuary, Chenoa Manor. All the other free time we had was spent socializing with friends or working on our garden, with an emphasis on the latter. It was also around this time I met a wonderful new friend, Alex, who has also become a very close and dear friend of mine.

August 2007: the garden was out of control! All the produce was coming like crazy and I was having a hard time even giving it away. We decided to then learn how to can. The better part of the month was spent preparing items for canning, then actually canning all the produce. We did something like 6 dozen quart jars of various produce and recipes, so we now know how to handle canning. Next year, we plan to start canning earlier so that we won’t waste r give away so much.

September 2007: First, we went back to D.C., this time for a conference with our friends, John and Cherie. Next, we traveled to the Berkshires in Massachusetts for a week. Such a beautiful place!!

October 2007: I’ll have to fill this in later because I’m drawing a complete blank about this month!

November 2007: we started working on things around the house, fixing odds and ends. For Thanksgiving, or as Cherie appropriately named it ThanksLIVING, we hosted a vegan potluck at our house. We were lucky enough to have most of our closest friends come: Cherie, Frank, Tracey, Sara, Alan, Alex, and Elisabeth. We had the BEST food at our potluck!!

December 2007: we started construction on our house. The upstairs bathroom has been gutted for some time, so we found it was a really good time to start working on that in hopes to finally have a bathroom located on the upper level rather then just the basement. At the end of the year, we attended Tracey’s awesome New Year’s Eve party! It was great fun

….and so that sort of wraps it up for the last year. I’m hoping that I can start updating this more often, sharing a little more detail and fun while I’m doing it. For those of you that have been wanting to know how I am doing, I am doing very well. I love Philadelphia and feel like I’ve been fitting in, thanks to Rob (the sweetest bf ever) and my friends, Cherie, Tracey, John, Alex, Sara, and Alan. We’ve been going out to many different veg-friendly restaurants, making tons of vegan meals, gardening (as mentioned), traveling, exploring Philadelphia and many of its activities as often as possible, and so on. Rob and I have just joined the Cheltenham Arts Center and are taking pottery classes. At the end of those classes, he’s taking a welding sculpture class and I’m taking a printmaking/book binding class.Hopefully I will hear from some of you very soon!

Oh, and I’ll attach pictures really soon. My Dell is sort of dead at the moment. Once I fix that, I’ll add more photos.

Oh, and us at the Tori Amos concert: