happy birthday MOM

i hope you have a fantastic day! thank you for making my lunch every day (and dinner and breakfast) and driving me around everywhere for the first 17 years of my life!

and i wish you saved all your clothes from the 70s - 80s. you were always pretty stylin!

good use for the money section

and they're off

my money's on the chocolate dog. 

5 minutes after eating the leftover prime rib

you may remember nachodoggy won a contest a couple weeks ago for $25 gift card to outback.

we went last night and used it. that place is not great. it is not cheap! a (small) glass of wine was $7. to add 3 super-SUPER-measly dry shrimp (size of a poker chip) to your steak was $4. a salad was $12, and the dressing choices were ranch, bleu cheese, 1000 island, and bleu cheese vinaigrette.

anyway we had a gift card and it was nacho who won the contest so we brought home a few bites of prime rib and sweet potato for him to eat. he shared with his brown bro eli.

then they wrestled for 20 minutes. nacho's head was inside eli's mouth for 15 of those minutes.

leo!

everybody's favorite shar pei - golden retriever is here for the weekend.

reo red panda!

he is even clownier than nacho, if that is possible.

he snorfles.

he snuggles.

he also is 'marking' the furniture. not sure how to get him to stop doing that.

his breed is golden pei, so what do i expect.

he also doesn't eat much. i just don't understand dogs that don't eat much. my dogs are obsessive vacuum eaters. reo gets top of the line newman's own wet food and looks at it just like 'eh, not hungry,' takes a bite and walks away.

mufasa & smashley

kinda strange names, but i hope those kids make it.

seen in the ladies' room at the thirsty purple monk. after a highly overpriced and underwhelming dinner at a mexican place downtown with a name that rhymes with dimones, we walked over to the thirsty monk, which happened to be in medias celebratus of belgium's independence, with discount beers.

how fortunate!

yessss

when you bank says no, champion says yessssss.

crazy basil

shit's going berserkus.

pesto recipes, anyone?

i walk funny

i'm pigeon toed. but probably not as pigeon toed as i would have been had my feet not been stuck in shoes attached to a bar hanging on my crib for the first year of my life.

i hated this bar and broke the wood on my crib by banging my feet against it trying to escape.

this medieval contraption is called a Denis Browne bar, and may or may not have something to do with my lifelong propensity for flight rather than fight.

google plus one

there's a new button on the "share away" bar at the bottom of every post here. it's for google plus one. onto whose bandwagon i jumped last week. less jumped, more limped. if you are also using such technology, please enjoy.

checkin out the piggies

went to charlotte this weekend for a super fun british open party. here is emmitt, a ridiculously cute nugget of 10 month old sweetness. how awesome are his cheeks? and his hair? and his name?

shady bluff, charlotte's rockingest trio also graced our ears with a noon set.

later i walked around the corner and found these two nutball sisters by themselves frozen and whispering. i said "what are you doing?" and they said "being statues." i said, 'can i take your picture' and they said "YES!" and here we are:

the dog lover - flying henry

an artist named l.a. shepard from ontario canada paints these dog portraits. i think they're spectacular. and her story is particularly moving:

I have been a full time artist, specializing in animal portraiture, since my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer in July 2006. Since he could no longer work, we had to close our wholesale business. At 54 , I needed to find a way to support our family and take care of him 24/7. Luckily, I had my art ability to fall back on, and I have been painting diligently ever since.

this one is especially funny because my furry brother henry looks just like this but refuses to go outside in the snow. my dad shovels him a path in the backyard to do his business.

the dog lover's paintings on etsy: here