It all started Friday when my office decided to take a long lunch and hang out at the Medieval Fair.  What, it was work related!  I am glad I went Friday because I never got a chance to head back out there.  I love the Medieval Fair.  It’s prime for people watching.

Saturday B and I got up early to run some errands.  Somehow in the midst of our shopping we ended up at Lowe’s with the idea to build a stone patio off of our screen porch.  We have been wanted to do something for months now due to the uneven ground and lack of grass.  Outside the doggie door we have a horrible mud pit that forms when the slightest bit of moisture is in the air.  I promise I will posted some before and after pictures once we finish.  Here is a sneak peak for now.

We are 65% finished.  Thanks to yet another freezing weather change we were unable to finish Sunday.

Between the freezing temperatures, the 40 mile per hour wind and the incredible pain we were in from our hard work the day before, B and I decided to have a nice, relaxing Sunday.  And by nice and relaxing I mean shopping!  Both of us bought new sneakers and some spring clothes.  We also did major grocery shopping.

Speaking of grocery shopping, I must brag about my new hobby.  Coupon clipping!  Two weeks ago B signed us up for the Wednesday and Sunday newspaper.  So maybe I only care about the sale flyers and comics, it is only $4.50 a month.  And the paper has already paid for itself!  Two weeks worth of coupons has already saved me $70.

Now the goal is to use those groceries.  I have set a goal of taking my lunch to work at least four days a week.  Tonight we made dinner, first time it wasn’t from a box or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in months!  It has only been one day, but one day at a time right?

So how was your Monday?  Is anybody out there having a nice spring?  I am so ready to be outside!  Stupid weather.

Which is why I guess this weekend shouldn’t have been much of a surprise.

This was my Saturday.

This was my Sunday.

Wonder how many more times I am going to have to switch my heat on before the warm weather decides to stick around for good.

Exhibit A

This is the small bird feeder outside my kitchen window.  I love watching the chickadees and meadow larks hoping around the feeder in the morning.  I do not love finding Mr. Squirrel hording the feeder.  Dude, you are fat enough.  Lay off the birdseed.

Exhibit B

This picture was taken a few minutes after the first one.  This is a completely different bird feeder and a completely different squirrel.  Notice how this guy just knocked the lid right off the top and helped himself to handfuls of birdseed.  Seriously dude, that is just rude.  But wait, it gets worse.

Exhibit C

Also a completely different bird feeder and a completely different squirrel.  This picture was taken a few minutes after the picture before.  I had three squirrels helping themselves to my not-so-cheap birdseed all at the same time!

Oh the huge manatee!  By the way, I think I should stop and tell you I have become a bit of a bird person lately.  Now that spring is here we are spending much more time outside.  I love sitting on our back porch watching the birds flock to our feeders.  Thanks to the small wilderness behind our house we have quite the variety of feathered friends.  So far I have spotted red winged blackbirds, brewer’s blackbirds, cardinals, blue jays, meadow larks, chickadees, a variety of sparrows, wrens, robins, finches, mockingbirds and one giant crane.  My mom is a bit of a bird person too, I think her influence has rubbed off on me.  (Someone else made the comment that I was turning into my mother.  That someone else who shall remain nameless also got the cold shoulder later that night.)

But back to the squirrel problem…

Finally I did what any annoyed crazy old neighbor lady would do, I released the hounds.  Ok, the hound.  Servo loves him some squirrel chasing.  Notice I said chasing PETA.  He has never actually caught one and thanks to the doggie door he has to go through first he really doesn’t stand a chance.  That is of course if the squirrels lay off the food.  Pretty soon those pests are going to get so fat Servo might actually catch one.

I guess I should just be thankful it’s not three raccoons in my backyard.  (Knock on wood times 1,000.  Karma don’t you dare push me this week!)

This weekend B found a black widow spider hanging out on our screened in porch.  I hate spiders and I think every spider I come across is poisonous.  I did not need living proof that poisonous spiders were actually invading my living space.  (I said living proof, but don’t worry, it didn’t live for long.)

Also in recent bug news, I found a tick on Servo.  Yuck, yuck, disgusting, yuck.  When I found the tick, B wasn’t in hero mode and therefore wasn’t jumping at the chance to save me.  Because you know that tick would have soon discovered my sweet, sweet blood and drained me dry.  Shut up, it could happen.  I had to play hero that night and remove the tick.  Servo is on Frontline, but while the tick was not dead when I removed him, he was also not engorged.  Hopefully that just means he bit recently and the Frontline hadn’t killed him yet.  I fear this will be an ongoing problem as Servo loves tramping through all the backyard foliage.

And, thanks to said tick problem and B not being the hero that night, I now have a new pair of tweezers and my old pair will forever remain the tick tweezers.  Not that that has anything to do with anything, I just wanted to gain more sympathy.  I had to surrender my favorite tweezers because we had nothing else in the house for proper tick removal.

Just remember folks, with totally awesome large backyards that have their own little nature scene behind them, comes great responsibility, I mean bugs.  Horrible, nasty bugs.  Seriously, the first snake I see I am out of there.  (Knock on wood x1,000.  Of course there are no snakes near us.  What would a snake be doing in an overgrown, wooded area that few people disturb?  Right?  RIGHT?)

* How many people have the heeby-geebies after reading this post?  How many people are thankful I didn’t include pictures?  Don’t say I never did anything for you.

Zoey has always had a thing for black and white animals.  I swear she can tell they look like her.  Penguins are one of her favorite animals.  Taking Zoey to a dog park full of black and white dogs that look and act exactly like she does is like Christmas, if dogs knew what Christmas actually was.

Taking Zoey to a dog park also reminds us how bad she can act sometimes.  At home we don’t have many problems.  She isn’t disobedient and she doesn’t get into much trouble, but at the dog park, her flaw shines.  The dog does not listen.  At. All.  She does pretty well, just running around greeting everyone, chasing balls, but if you need her to listen to you, ha.  Forget it!

Oh well.  At least she is cute.

That is Zoey in the red and white collar doing what she does best.  Chasing a ball.  Zoey made fast friends with this guy, another ball freak.  Imagine, another Boston Terrier who loves balls.

Yes, there is Zoey again.  Yes, she is the one with her nose in the other dog’s butt.  And yes, I am so proud.

More ball time.  This went on the entire hour we were at the park.  You can bet Zoey slept the rest of the day.

And that would be Zoey misbehaving.  See B trying to corral her?  Zoey (and really all the Bostons there) thought it was their personal duty to greet every new visitor to the park.  Such a friendly breed!  If you enjoy a dog who’s goal in life is to stick her tongue in your mouth, eyes, nose, ears…

I will leave you with the cutest guy at the park that day.  His name is Okie and if you start seeing more pictures of him on my blog, don’t turn me in ok?  I was very tempted to take this guy home with me and B fully supported the idea.  I am proudly a dog freak and I am taking B down with me!

Tonight was another rip roaring weather evening. (Like my Oklahoma lingo, smack-dab and rip roaring!) Funny thing about about tonight, we have no idea it was coming! I should probably watch the news more. It was a nice sunny day and I had no idea storms were on the horizon. B and I had only been home about 20 minutes when thunder started, quickly followed by rain and and more quickly hail. Large hail. Hail that left some nice damage on my car. Sweet.

You know that whole calm before the storm? Totally had that tonight. After the wild hail storm, everything went quiet. So what did we do? Go stand outside of course! B and I watched a large rotation pass right over our house and head north. I did my state proud today; I stood outside with no shoes, pajamas and no bra, looking for tornados. The only thing missing was the news truck stopping to interview me. Oh, and I was taking pictures. Of course!

But let’s get on to the cool stuff, the pictures!

Here is the hail falling in our front yard,

And the backyard, after it stopped falling,

Some of those are golf ball sized!

And here is my poor car.

Here is the awesome rotation that went over our house. I say awesome only because it didn’t turn into a tornado over our house. I would have a few choice words if that happened.

And one more,

Just imagine that cloud in the middle rotating, occasionally threatening to lower into something more… Like this,

See those two tails in the distance? Those are lowerings. A tornado never formed from this super cell, but in northeast Oklahoma there was a touch down. No major damage being reported right now, at least not from the tornado. The hail damage is another story. Some areas had baseball size hail and 80 mile per hour wind! Yikes!

The cold front is coming through now, so probably more storms and high winds, but hopeful no tornados! Who wants to come stay with me? I know you are excited to read this!

Finally!  I pulled the pictures from the April 12 MS Walk off my camera.  I only had 200+ pictures to go through!  I was a little snap happy with the bears.

There was a fantastic turnout for the walk.  Team Sagowitz had 16 members and a total donation of $1,260.  We rock!

Two team pictures, but I never managed to get everyone in one shot!  *Second picture courtesy of Traci.

Check out the crowd.

My mom will probably kill me for this picture, but look how adorable she is!

Eh, who am I kidding.  Mom doesn’t read my blog.  I should post more pictures of her.  Maybe she might read it then.

The monkeys were having some sort of power struggle while we were there.  It was entertaining to watch, but I was terrified we were going to see one actually get hurt.  They kept running around screaming and biting!

This one is my favorite shot of the day.

That is the one and only time I successfully took a picture without the fence showing.  I know there is a trick on how to make the fence disappear, but I can’t remember.  I was just lucky this one time.

Well duh!

Talk about big feet!  This bear was just snoozing away by the window.

Did I mention I love the bears?  The two grizzly bears were putting on quite a show.  I could have sat and watched them play all afternoon!  Except there wasn’t a bench and my feet were starting to hurt.

Wait for it…

SPLASH!

How cool are they.  They played forever… splashing, dunking, biting… it was so neat to watch!

Then this guy got mad and the party was over.

I totally made my brother go stick his head in the hole.  Ahh, the power I hold with a camera (and an 8 year old begging!).

Cheesy, we know.  We do this at every walk we participate in.  I should make a collage one day.

And finally,

THE END.  *Picture courtesy of Traci.

I have so many more I would love to share, but I don’t want to over load you.  It was an awesome day!  I can’t wait to go back next year.

Apparently on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, a torrential downpour came through Oklahoma.  I was too busy sleeping like a log to notice.  So when it came time to leave for work Thursday morning, I thought nothing of checking the weather report.  Mistake number one.

B and I get halfway to our destination when we see a road closed sign.  We carelessly thought it was for one of the dinky backroads that often gets flooded.  We continue on our journey.  Mistake number two.

We found out what that road closed sign meant.  It meant the ROAD WAS CLOSED!  Well why didn’t they say that in the first place!  So we U-turn with the 10 other idiots who also thought the sign didn’t apply to them.  After back-tracking a few miles we turn down one of the dinky backroads.  Remember when I said they often flood, yeah, that was mistake number three.

At this point, I was laughing hysterically trying to convince B we should give up and go get back in bed.  Determined and frustrated B had other plans, and apparently some work to do that day.

It only got more convoluted from there.  Perpendicular to our route to work was major road construction.  That major road construction had detour signs set up all over the dinky backroads.  B and I thought the detour signs were directing traffic through the flood.  This brings us to mistake number four.

Finally after 45 minutes of rights, lefts and U-turns, we made it to the highway.  Only to realize we could only get on the highway in the opposite direction of the way we needed to go!  I will leave out the profanity that was now spewing out of B’s mouth.  We had to drive five miles north before we could finally exit, turn around and head south.

After all that, I finally made it to work an hour late.  I walked in, set my stuff down and the roof above my desk was leaking.  I should have stayed in bed.  Mistake number five.

But I am not here to talk about that, I am here to remember my glorious weekend, pictures included.

In my College Town, Oklahoma, there is a wonderful duck pond near campus.  It is often the site of fraternity pranks, but in the spring it is home to cute puppies, young couple and kids galore.  I can’t wait to move closer and become a regular at The Duck Pond.

On Sunday, B and I needed to get out of the house for a few hours so we decided to take the dogs out and enjoy the nice weather.  Since Servo hates dog parks we have to find other public, dog friendly (but not dog saturated) places to take him.  The Duck Pond is a great alternative because it is large enough that you can avoid other visitors if you want to.  Zoey and I never want to though, our goal is to meet every puppy and cute kid in the joint!  She is just like her mommy!

I present to you, The Duck Pond.  (BTW, I am using capitals because that is what it’s called, The. Duck. Pond.  I don’t think anybody knows what the formal park name is.)

See ducks!  Very loud ducks.  They were none to happy about having their picture taken.

Zoey made friends with this guy.  For a minute I thought he was going to come home with us.  He kept following me around the pond.

Servo was less concerned with the ducks and more concerned with swimming in the pond.  He loves dirty pond water!  And no, we did not let him swim.  I save that for the farm and times when I have easy access to a water hose.

This picture almost makes me forget how bad he can be sometimes.  So regal!

My boys!  Like two peas in a pod.  I am getting all misty eyed over here.  Moving on.

Servo found a cute kid, and then he slimed her.  Zoey is really the licker in the family, but since Servo has a height advantage he doesn’t miss an opportunity to slime a child.

This was my best attempt at getting the heathens to pose together.  Rat bastards.  Remind me to work on the “look at the camera” command.

Finally, I leave you with a shot of my princess.  I love this little girl.  She was so good the whole day!  Just happy to sit and watch the ducks go by.  I want another spring weekend, soon before summer hits and ruins everything!

Since my work has a little bit to do with making the Medieval Fair happen, I went Friday afternoon to take pictures. Strictly work business only, I promise I did not enjoy myself, or have a corn dog. Or a root beer. I love my job!

You see lots of interesting people at this type of event and if I had some serious kahunas, I would park myself in the middle of the fair and take pictures of the craziest people I saw. Unfortunately for you, I am not that bold, yet. I did take 204 pictures in the two hours I was at the fair. I narrowed down some of my favorites below.

This guy was awesome. I was a little afraid of him but I loved watching him walk around.

Mean old B wouldn’t buy me an elephant ride. Actually it was my fear kicking in again, well that and I didn’t want to be the only adult standing in line to ride the elephant.

They even had a real dragon at the fair! I kid, I kid, but it made you think twice didn’t it?

Real or fake? It was fake, but seriously, those eyes creeped me out! I was afraid to get to close.

These guys were a hoot to watch. It’s all a little D&D if you ask me.

Here is some of that root beer I didn’t have. Homemade and delicious! Or so I heard. Seriously, I was on the clock. Working. Working very hard.

And finally, I leave you with this,

The most interesting person I tried to sneakily take a picture of. See why I am not brave enough to photo stalk people. She could totally kick my ass! She kind of looks like she was going to. I quickly put the camera down after this shot.

I love the fair!