Got a message from Jax that lured me back to make a post.  I'm primarily living over in LiveJournal now, but also have a Xanga that I check most days, and I also just started on the MediFast program, so am blogging over there as well.  I'm 2 classes away from completing my Masters degree, both kids are still doing soccer and are also doing Young Marines, and I'm working in the training dept of a software company and really liking it there.  Umm...I think that's it?  Hope you all are well!

I'm posting this because I know of no other way to deliver this message...Hollywood Farm Girl, should you see this, should you Google for your name, should you somehow wander across this blog...

 

I read your post today and wished I had a way to encourage you, to tell you to keep posting openly, to let you know that I'm surely not the only one out here whose heart swells with each semi-cryptic post and who wishes we knew each other personally.  Not everyone out here is a vulture.  Not by a long shot. 

 

For obvious reasons, you've not enabled comments, nor provided your email address, so it is with a wish-on-a-star that I leave this message.  Perhaps one day you will stumble across this and know that you and yours are not alone.

 

:)

 

And also, unrelated to the above message, but reminded by it:  Last week I saw EIGHT turkey vultures circling a radio tower near my work building.  This morning, one of the turkey vultures was sunning itself with spread wings on top of the building.  I'm glad warmer weather has returned, because I missed seeing these crazy birds.  :)

A coworker and I were talking about the super-volcanoes that supposedly lie under the US and are supposedly going to erupt within the 10 years, and one of them is supposedly right underneath us here in the midwest.  That made me think that we'd be hit off-guard and would be covered in lava before we even knew what to do, and that then thousands of years later, we might be unearthed and the people of the future would have to try to figure out what our poses indicated.  You know, like the people of Vesuvius?

 

I decided right then and there, that when I get covered in lava, I am SO going to strike a walk-like-an-Egyptian pose.

 

Figure THAT one out, people of the future.

It's been forever since I've updated here, and I'm sorry about that.  Life's just been busy and crazy, and I have a couple of other blogs that I keep up with, so this one fell out of date.  :p

 

The HAM is back, something I'm thrilled to death about...I'll add her Space link to my list, so go check her out.

 

I'm still plugging away at LA Weight Loss...down about 10 pounds since I joined.  It's slow, but at least I am losing, and hopefully the slow pace will help it all to stay off.

 

I got all signed up for grad school, and my classes start on Monday.  Eek.  Not sure I'm ready for tons of required reading again, heh.  But it should be fun.  Work's work...more of the usual...though I did volunteer to lead a training class at some point.  That will be cool.  I miss doing training.

 

Chris and the kids are all doing well...Chris's bday is on Saturday (yay) and Brenna's taking the SAT test that morning as well.  She's only in 7th grade, but was recommended to take it just so she'd have an idea of what to expect when the real time to take it comes a few years down the road.  Wish her luck!

 

The holidays were good...nothing crazily wild to post about them this year.

 

*thinks*

 

It feels weird to be posting here again.  I hope I can keep it up.  :)  Drop me a comment if you read this, so I'll know who all still comes around.  :)

For whatever reason, whenever I start a new diet or eating plan, that's ALL I can think about for posting topics.  I've been on LAWL now for 1 week, and have lost 4.4 pounds.  Woohoo!  :D  I won't bore you all with the details of this, but will post my progress from time to time.

 

Anyway, work's work, and home is good, but busy, and Brenna's still praticing with the awesome soccer team, so life is good.  :)  I'm still kickin', just haven't been super-posty much.  Hope you all have a great weekend!

So....I joined LA Weight Loss today on my lunch break.  The program cost for 81 months for me was less than one month's worth of food when I was on NutriSystem, but I do still need to buy some bars and such.  Cross your fingers for me that I can stay on this one.  :)

Sooooo.....Brenna's an Avellino girl now!  :D  (http://www.avellinofc.com) We took her to practice with one of the Avellino teams last night (there are 2 U-13 girls teams within the Avellino Football Club), and the girls on the team immediately pulled Brenna in and were nice to her, and called her by name when they wanted to pass the ball to her, and when it was over, all the girls said in unison, "THANK YOU BRENNA!", then the coach pulled her aside and told her he had room for her on one of his teams.  :)  He told us to bring her back to practice with this team again next week (and this is the stronger of the two teams, so it's a good sign that he didn't tell her to come back to practice with the other team, but I'm aware that he may place her on the other one since she's new), and then he'd let us know the specifics of which team she'll go on.  But she's on!  With a coach from Manchester United, who has played with David Beckham!  *squeezes herself into a ball and shakes from excitement*  This. Is.  SOOO.  Awesome.  Yeah, we'll be broke, but money's money, right?  *happy!*

Well, there's no turning back now...this morning I registered for classes for grad school.  The wya they have it set up, there are 2 sessions during the spring, so I took 2 classes for the first session, and one class for the second session.  The classes sound interesting, or, well, one of them does, at least...the other two are kind of prerequisite intro classes.  The one I've signed up for for the second session is called Images of Crime and the Criminal.  Woo.  I'm hoping it'll be a little like CSI stuff mixed with psychology.  :D 

 

Going from high school to college was scary, but I quickly learned that the classes weren't super hard in college.  I'm hoping I'll have a similar transition this time, too.  *crosses fingers*

 

Here I go!!!  :D

 

 

So, I figured out via some Googling, that what I needed to do with the dog is to do a "takedown", which essentially means that I need to pin the dog to the ground with my whole body for at least 30 seconds.  At 10 months old, she's already 80 pounds, so me laying on top of the dog won't kill her (though, hah, the idea of doing a full-body takedown on a chihuahua makes me laugh).  This maneuver will show her that I'm the boss and that she's still on the bottom rung of the dog-society ladder.  I relayed this info to Brenna, who was at home with the dog, and the next time Brenna took the dog outside, she ended up laying on top of the dog, in the snow, freezing her knees off, until the dog realized that oh-yeah, she's the dog, and must behave.  All of us have been doing this off and on over the weekend, and she's becoming quite the well-behaved dog. YES!!!  :D

 

In other news, the sun is shining and some of the snow is melting.  Sad, kind of...I wish the snow would remain all over the grass and stuff, but just melt off the road.  That would be nice.

 

Brenna's going to go practice with a new (to her) soccer team on Wednesday...it's going to cost us an arm and a leg for her to play with this team if she makes it onto the team, but it's a phenomenal team and the head coach actually spent 4 years playing for England's Manchester United team.  Whoa.  So it should be good.  Just need to figure out how to make it work financially.

Just about done with the Christmas shopping....need to make a Target run for some things that Chris wants, but other than that, am just waiting on an Amazon.com order and then need to buy stuff for the stockings, and I should be done.  Hooray!  I love not having to worry about buying stuff at the last minute.  :)  If only the money didn't run out so fast.   ;)

 

Life's good again.  I'm almost all over with the cough...still have random coughing attacks at night sometimes, but most of the time, I'm good.  A toast to a healthy month for all of us!  :D

 

Oh, and p.s.  The party I needed the recipes for got postponed, so if/when it gets rescheduled, I'll post about what I ended up making. :)

Not a great start, but could be worse, truly.

Yesterday, my schedule ran thusly:

Woke up coughing at 4am, went downstairs to sleep on the couch, sitting up, so I wouldn't wake Chris.

Woke at 7am, called my coworker Donisha to see if she went to work or not.  She didn't.  

Called my boss to tell him I wasn't coming in....sick.

Went back to bed in the actual bed while Chris got ready for work.

Slept till 9:37am.

Got up, took the dog outside, watched her slip all over the ice, yelled at her to stop digging, yelled at her to stop eating the baby trees, yelled at her to stop digging, played the dog-by-the-door, Megan-opens-the-door, dog-runs-away-because-haha-just-kidding game with said dog at least 4 times before stomping up the stairs, grabbing a granola bar to open its crinkly wrapper within her hearing, temped the dog with the oatmeal cookie granola bar until she got close enough for me to grab a handful of her scruff and dragged her back into the house.

Made some soup for lunch.

Took a shower and got dressed in clean pajamas.

Took a new dose of Nyquil and went back to bed, dog in her crate.

Woke up at 3:47 and took the dog back outside, watched her eat the new snow, yelled at her to stop digging, yelled at her to stop eating the baby trees, yelled at her to stop digging, yelled at her to stop eating the baseball bat already that got left outside, played the dog-by-the-door, Megan-opens-the-door, dog-runs-away-because-haha-just-kidding game with said dog at least 3 times before calling Chris on my cell phone and having a mental breakdown and crying in his ear because THE DOG WON'T COME IN GODDAMMIT AND I HATE HER AND SHE'S EATING ALL OUR PLANTS AND SHE WON'T COME IN AND THE KIDS ARE NO HELP AND I'M SICK AND I DON'T WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME ANYMORE!!!  *sobs*  Listened to Chris tell me that he can't do anything about the dog when he's at work, and that I'd just need to MAKE the kids help.  *cries*  BUT THE DOG!!!!  No, Megan, calm down, put the kids on the phone with me if you need to....and the rest went unheard because I was buried in my pit of despair.  Hah.  Yeah, looking back on it, it's funny, but it wasn't at the time.

Talked Brenna (who had just gotten out of the shower) to go out and get the dog (no easy task, because dog thinks you're playing when you try to touch her and bolts out of reach).  Brenna agreed and spent 20 minutes chasing damn-dog around the yard before she grabbed her scruff and pulled her in the house.  Back into the crate went the dog, back into bed went me.

Chris got home around 6:30, mad because no one had shoveled the driveway (uhh, it was still snowing, why would we shovel when it's still snowing? Make the dog shovel it if she likes being outside so much), so he went out to shovel while I made some dinner of eggs and sausage.  After dinner, he tried taking the dog outside (hah, YES! FINALLY!!!) and I heard him yelling at her to stop digging, yelling to stop eating the plants, yelling to COME HERE RIGHT NOW, until I guess he tackled her and scared the bejesus out of her and she came barreling in the house and went straight to her bed.  Har.  

He got her to calm down and we went downstairs and watched the DaVinci Code again, since Brenna hadn't seen it.  Dosed myself with NyQuil once more around midnight and went back to sleep.

Am at work today, the roads in weren't too bad as long as I took it slow, and for some odd reason, people here are expecting me to work.  What's that all about, I say.  It's Friday, and it's a payday.  No work will be done, of course.

Well, okay.  Maybe a little.  But only because it gives me an excuse to not have to go back home and let the dog out again.  Seriously, we need a zip-line to hook the dog to, so we can reel her back in when it's time.  I'll be so glad when she gets older and stops being such a pest.  Gah.

I am SO much more a cat-person.  :p

You know, it's really too bad that we're not all made of money...there are quite a few items I'd love to just be able to run out and buy.

Didn't sleep well again last night...not sure what the trouble is, other than the obvious issue of not taking my NyQuil.  But I've never had trouble sleeping as a rule...hmm.  Hopefully I'll feel better soon and can then get back on track with exercising and losing weight and doing all those other things that are supposed to help with sleep.

We decorated the tree last night....*happy sigh*....it's SO pretty.  :)  I just love the blend of classic ball ornaments and old, time-worn, handmade ornaments.  We've got a construction paper star that I colored on when I was three, hanging next to a silver cardboard star that Brenna glued tiny star pastas to when she was six.  There's an ice cream wooden stick painted and dressed to look like a snowman that Connor made several years ago (no year on it, dangit), and some of the ancient fuzzy ornaments that I loved from my childhood.  We're having a progressive block party on Saturday and our house will be one of the stops.  I'm thrilled, 'cause it means we'll get to share our pretty tree with the neighbors now.  :D

On that note...I'm searching for a few really good recipes of things to make that pretty much everyone will like.  I need a couple of appetizer recipes and at least one alcoholic drink recipe that can be made in bulk ahead of time.  Anyone have any good ideas?  Whatever I make will need to be able to be made earlier in the day and then either refrigerated or put into a crock pot, 'cause we've got a birthday party to attend right before the block party starts, so we'll be running home and then immediately joining in the fun.  Each house on the route only gets 30 mins to entertain people, so recipes like margaritas that need to be blended in small batches won't work.

Help me, O You of the Successful Parties?  :D

Oh, and P.S. ... Making that horrid Everclear crap with the fruit in the trashcan like we did in college is a definitely no-no as well, lest you suggest that.  Har!  ;p

The rest of the weekend went better, yay. :)

So...Thanksgiving's done.  I guess that's that.  I'm at work today, a fact I'm not thrilled with but am making the best of.  I wasn't going to post today, 'cause I'm uber-grumpy, but maybe if I grouch myself out on here, I'll feel better for the rest of the day.

 

--WARNING--

Grumpiness follows.

 

---

Happy Turkey day to everyone now, since I'm sure I won't be posting tomorrow.  :)

My 20 pound bird is thawing (I hope) in the fridge, though I suspect he'll need a long bath in cold water this evening as well.  I'm trying an almost all-new lineup of recipes this year, but have bought the standard (canned) backups that will work if the new recipes bomb.

My traditional meal included:
Turkey cooked with stuffing
Stuffing recipe of my mom's that included mushrooms and celery, plus Pepperidge Farm Stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Gravy (usually canned, plus drippings)
Le Sueur Peas
Green bean casserole (though I learned last year that Chris doesn't like it, heh)
Ocean Spray cranberry sauce - the jellied kind
Crescent Rolls
Pumpkin Pie with cool whip 
Fudge

This year, I'm trying the following:
Turkey cooked without stuffing (will put a carrot, celery, and onion in the bird instead)
Stuffing recipe that includes sausage and apples
Mashed potatoes (can't mess with a good thing)
Homemade pan gravy
Green beans with nutmeg
Le Sueur peas as a backup
Homemade Orange-Cranberry Sauce
Ocean Spray sauce as a backup
Regular dinner rolls, cooked from frozen (not as happy about this, but I had to go with quanitity and price over tradition this year)
Pumpkin Cheesecake 
Fudge
Possibly also homemade apple crisp

Chris's dad is bringing a birthday cake and ice cream, too, because it's the birthday of one of our guests (exactly who, I'm not sure, heh.)

Can't...WAIT for tomorrow. The adventure awaits!  :D

Thanks for all of the well-wishes, y'all!  :)  This morning I woke up before the alarm (and actually got out of bed, then, too), and although it still hurts to swallow, my head and body no longer ache and (knock on wood) I don't have any sniffles or anything.  So if we can just make the sore throat go away, I should be good to go in no time.

 

Anna, the diet thing isn't going so well.  I'm eating smarter, but still haven't eliminated all of the bad stuff (hard to do when you work in an office filled with women around the holidays, heh).  I'm eating more whole grains and I think overall, I'm eating more healthy, but the complete axing of all sugars hasn't happened yet.  Small steps, I guess.  If I can make THIS much a permanent part of my diet and do it automatically, then maybe I can tackle the no-sugar part after that.  What I don't get though...they say to not buy anything that has simple sugars (etc) within the first 5 ingredients, and yet they also recommend Cheerios, which has sugar listed as the 3rd ingredient (I think).  Same with Activia yogurt.  I'm confused by that.

 

I guess as long as I've switched to plain shredded wheat and Cheerios over Captain Crunch, that's a big step right there, hah.  (though I didn't eat Captain Crunch for real, I WOULD eat things that SOUNDED healthy but still had sugar and stuff added.)  I really should measure my waist and keep an eye on that measurement.  No change on the scale just yet, but if I can keep from GAINING over the holiday, I'll count that as a win.  ;)

The weekend began well...got my Thanksgiving dinner shopping done, went to a jewelry party, went to a housewarming party, baked some bread, took the bike out for a short trip to the gas station and back, took a 3 mile walk with the dog...and then...sickness set in.  :(  Just a mild head cold/sore throat, I think (hope), but enough of one to put me into a fog.  Blech.  Hopefully I'll shake it off in a day or so, because....:

Thanksgiving.  Yeah.

 

So...you know how I was all excited to cook?  Adding our house, plus Chris's dad, plus his brother and family, I figured I'd be cooking for 8 people.  And I'd want leftovers.  So I thought I'd grab a 14-16 pound turkey.  However, the store only had 12 pounders, and then 20 pounds and up.  Hmm.  I grabbed a 20-pound bird, just to be safe.  When I got home, I rethought about who was coming, and realized that my kids will be with their dad.  So I now have a 20-pound turkey to feed SIX people.  Heh.  SERIOUS leftovers, anyone?  :o

 

I doubt the kids will get turkey at their dad's...he's more of a ham kinda guy, so at least there will be plenty for them to munch on when they get home, at least.

 

Someone please do some magic to make this workday go by a little faster, please.  I really just want to take a nap.  Zzzzz....

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!  :D

 

I will get to make Thanksgiving dinner after all!  Chris's dad came over last night and we talked about it...I guess the big issue was that they just didn't want to "put me out" by asking me to feed all of them.  *blinks*  Umm...it's Thanksgiving.  I'd be making enough food for an army anyway, and I'm thrilled there will be people there to eat it. 

 

So now Chris will finally hook the big screen tv downstairs back into the satellite so we can have football going in two different rooms, I'll focus on cooking all day and we'll serve stuff buffet style so no one has to feel like I made a big formal spread just for them, and Chris's dad will buy a birthday cake because I guess two of the family members who are coming have recently had birthdays.

 

*happy*

 

That's good news, indeed.  Now to find a big enough turkey so these people don't eat it all.  I MUST have my leftover turkey sandwiches.  Heh.

 

 

Got to work at 6am this morning, ouch, but I need to get out early enough to pick up Connor's fundraising stuff and also clean the house and cook for a PartyLite show that's happening at our house tonight.  Woo.  Good times.  Not sure how many people will be there, but hopefully we'll have at least 4 guests, plus our own little family.  I've promised people chili, so chili it will be.  Yum, yum.

 

The lady I'm assigned to work with has already given me work to do this morning...aacckk!  It's too early!!  Hah.  Ahh, well...at least I'll leave early.

 

Boring post, I know.

 

Oh!  Anna, I eBayed for an eBook version of the diet book...I'm only on page 31 (have to read in between work items) and so far I love it.  Can't wait to get to the part where it really tells me what to do to get healthy again!  :D

 

I'm out, I'm spent.  ;p

I'm back, yay and boo, both, and here's the rundown of my whole vacation for your reading pleasure (get some coffee...this'll take awhile, heh.)

I took Wednesday off, and hung around the house, got some errands run, did some cleaning, and at night went to parent teacher conferences for both kids.  Both kids are doing well, hooray.  

Thursday morning, Chris and I loaded up the car and headed north, intending to grab some brunch with a friend of his in Bethany, MO, but the friend didn't answer his phone when we called, so we kept on going, up and across Iowa, across Illinois, and finally found ourselves in Fox Lake, IL, where I spent my junior high years.  We wandered through the tiny town, stopped to see my old house and stomping grounds, had dinner at Dino's Den, a Denny's-ish sort of place that was there when I lived there and still runs today.  The food was pretty darn good, I must say.  Stayed that night at the Fox Lake Motel, as this tiny town doesn't have even one chain motel in it.  The motel was dinky and old, but as clean as it could be under the circumstances.  The bed was hard, and I didn't sleep much, so we were out the door by about 7.  We went through the town again, this time in the daylight so we could take some photos, and then we headed south to Chicago, where we began our tour of museums.  I was excited to see so many different kinds of museums, as I've recently decided that I'd someday like to work in a museum.  Woo.

We spent the middle part of Friday at the Museum of Science and Industry, where we took in as much as we could.  We found that probably a majority of the computer-related interactive things didn't work, which made us sad and reflected poorly on the youth of the city.  Imagine Science City on steroids, and 8 times as big, but in which hardly anything worked.  :(  Bleh.  I decided I didn't want to work in a museum like that....I wouldn't do well working in a place where people were so disrepectful so as to destroy the very things they'd come to see.  One good point of it, though, was that we caught an OmniMax show about the Volcanoes of the Deep Sea.  Fun.  We left the museum around 2:30.

When Chris lived in the Chicago area, he worked at an Italian place called Barnelli's, which is attached to a hot dog place called Portillo's, and which also includes a rib place called Barney's.  (confused?)  He's been telling me for years how good all the food there is, in all of the areas, so our first order of the day was to find a Portillo's and get us some hot dogs.  We found the place, and dove into our dogs and fries, and also split a shake.  Mmm.  Soo good.

It was nearing 4pm, and as I'd told the Marriott where I'd made reservations that we'd check in around 4, we headed back out west toward Oak Brook, a suburb, where the Marriott was located.  And then, we hit traffic.  BAD traffic.  And then the rains came.  And wind.  

There we were, stuck on the interstate, in a monsoon of some kind, while drivers squeezed in all around us, chatting on their phones, not looking as they changed lanes, honking for no real reason, all as the flow of traffic sat between 0-20 miles an hour.  It took us an hour and a half to go 20 miles.  :(  Our original plan was to go check into the hotel, find a different Portillo's and Barnelli's to have dinner at, and then come back into the city to see the sights from the Hancock Observatory.  Didn't happen.  We opted instead, once we got to the hotel (which was WONDERFUL, btw...the bed had a down duvet, tons of pillows, a chenille throw....*sigh*....I didn't want to leave), we drove out to Naperville where Chris used to live, and he showed me all around HIS old stomping grounds, then we headed to the restaurant where I got some pasta and he got some ribs.  I fell alseep on the drive back to the hotel because I was so full.  :)

Saturday morning, we got up early again, had breakfast at the hotel, then headed to the Field Museum of Natural Science  That was fun, as I'm always one to see taxidermied critters in natural looking habitats.  We skipped the King Tut exhibit, as the place was packed and that cost extra to get in there anyway, and after we saw all that we could there, we crossed the parking lot and went to the Shedd Aquarium.  The Shedd was PACKED.  The line outside stretched half a block, but as we'd bought CityPasses at the MOSI the day before, we got right in.  We saw a dolphin show, sat and watched the penguins for about 20 minutes as we made up stories for each of them, peered into each of the aquariums with different fish, and so on.  That was really fun.  

The day was nice, the weather no longer rainy, and we were already IN the city anyway, so we decided to go visit the Hancock Observatory as well before dinner.  We found a place to park, plugged our coins into the meter, and then wound our way through the crowded streets to the Hancock building.  We got up to the observatory and realized the camera was in the car.  Dangit.  Ah well, trust me when I say the sights were incredible.  We got a shared audio tour, so we wandered around the deck, both plugged into the same audio device, and we learned things about the city that we never knew.  I'm sad that we didn't have the camera, though.

Once we finished with that and got back to the car and back out onto the road, we headed to Schaumburg, where the Portillo's & Barnelli's was that Chris was trained at.  This time we shared a salad and an italian beef sandwich, and Chris got more hot dogs.  *sigh*  Yes, we each gained about 5 pounds each on this trip, heh.  We left there and came back to the hotel, where I'd arranged for champagne and chocolate covered strawberries to be waiting for us.  We fed each other the strawberries and both got the giggles from the champagne, then we crawled into the bed....and promptly fell asleep.  *laughs*  We are old, and we are geeks.  ;)  Chris felt bad about it the next day, but I'm of the opinion that if we both needed sleep that badly, then it was good that we slept.  :)

Had breakfast again, checked out of the hotel, and then went to the Adler Planetarium, where MOST of the interactive exhibits worked (hooray!) and we got to see another show...this time about space.  Very cool.  

During this trip, I was reading the book "The Devil in the White City", a book about the 1893 Columbian Exposition World's Fair that was held in Chicago, and about how a serial killer was making his rounds at the same time.  I wanted to go see if we could (a) find the site of the fair, and (b) find the house of the killer.  We did find the site of the fair, now marked by a giant golden statue.  As we parked the car so we could get out and get photos of the statue, I saw a Canada Goose sitting in the grass near where we parked.  Odd, I thought....why isn't he moving?  I got up close to him and saw he had fishing line wrapped around one of his legs before he flapped his wings and scooted along the ground away from me.

Ahh, yes...here we go.  Note that I'm a Cancer, note that I'm a mom.  Note that my first degree was as a Veterinary Technician.  Note that I'm a member of the National Wildlife Federation, and that I subscribe to National Geographic.  Note that earlier on the trip, before we entered the MOSI, I made Chris stop the car at a park so I could feed a flock of Canada Geese the rest of our vending machine cookies.  Note that the Canada Goose is my alltimefavoritebird.  Note also that I was pissed off about the non-working computer exhibits and therefore mad at all Chicagoans for their lack of respect and care.

I was going to help this bird.  And dammit, just because I needed to swear about it.

I called to Chris, who grabbed a banana from the car, in case the bird wanted some banana.  I grabbed the National Wildlife fleece blanket we'd gotten for joining, that was in the back of the car.  We approached the goose.  The goose, knowing how bad Chicagoans can be (yes, I know, not all, but certainly some, and perhaps even many), didn't want to have any part of us.  He couldn't fly well, but he could fly well enough to get away from us.  We chased that bird all over the park and across the street, until the bird flew into a gated marina sort of area and landed on the concrete.  Each time he'd land, he'd squat back down, as if he was hurt, or tired, or tangled to the point of being hobbled.  A young man carrying a fishing pole passed us, and he followed the gate around to where it entered the water.  He was able to get into the marina this way...YES!!!  I started to follow him, so we could continue on our quest to get the bird, but Chris called to the guy and explained that we needed to catch the bird.

"You're not gonna eat him, are you?" asked the man.  

"Hah!"  I laughed.  "No!!  We want to help him!"

So the guy rolled a barrel over to the sensor that controlled the gate, and he let us in.  We worked together to corner the goose, and then just as Chris got near it, it took off again, still flying low.  Chris sprinted after it.  We lost sight of it as it rounded a corner, and I kept looking into the water to see if it'd gone for a swim.  We finally spotted it up in a grassy area, cornered by the iron fence.  Perfect.  We crept up to it as quietly and gently as we could, trying to keep it calm, and then Chris tackled it.  I quickly wrapped it with the blanket and covered its head.  It immediately calmed down.

Chris pulled one foot out from the blanket, and we saw that indeed, fishing line was wrapped around its leg, but it had been there for so long that it had cut into the leg and the leg had almost grown around it.  It was clear that this was hurting the goose, so we did what we could to loosen the line, Chris clipped the areas he could, but in many cases, we couldn't even tell which direction the line was traveling in.  I mentally crossed my fingers that we'd at least been able to free up any tightness that was hurting the goose.  He did still have some ability to move that foot...I just didn't know how much longer.  :(

We turned our attention to the other leg.  *blinks*  There was no foot.  None.  At all.  His poor little foot had already been cut off.  It was healed, and there was a smooth ending to his leg...just no foot.  I almost cried.  What had this goose been through???  *sad*

There was really nothing more we could do for him, and as he was enclosed in a gated area that had both grass and water, we left him there.  The boats were all gone from the marina, no car traffic could get in, no large predators could get through the fence, so we thought this would be the safest place for him.  Chris said he probably won't last the winter, but at least his last weeks/months will be lived out in safety, away from any other cruel people, I hope.  The young man who helped us asked if we worked for a rescue foundation or something.  Heh.  Nope.  Just have a deep love and respect for animals, good sir.

We took a photo of the goose, and I kept one of the feathers he'd lost, then we photographed the golden statue, and then headed out to find the killer's house.  Never found it, and I read later that it had actually burned down, but we never even found the street it sat on.  I'm guessing they've even changed the street name since then.

We headed for home, and got home late Sunday night.  Took Monday off, as a vacation after the vacation, and now here I am, ignoring work as usual, as I post in my MSN Space.  ;)  Some things never change.  Hee!

Hope you all had a good weekend, and that this week is good for you as well!

I titled this entry "Freedom" for two reasons...one, tomorrow starts my vacation, yahoo!  :D  And second, because my daughter decided to quit her soccer team.  YES!!!  The coach was a mess, he kept overlooking her for tournaments, and she admitted that it was hard to get homework done, plus soccer, plus have a little bit of downtime.  She also wants to get more involved in school activities and soccer stuff was keeping her from being able to do that.  So, she quit.  *dances*  I'm so glad.  I hope she won't regret her decision, because I do think it's the best thing she can do right now, but I know how it is to look back on things and only remember the good things.  Now to find her a more relaxed coach to play for.  Yay!  Freedom!