Nala’s last day of Real Life 101 was yesterday over at Waterfront Park. With all the people and other dogs around, it’s a pretty challenging place for dog obedience traning, but all the dogs in today’s class did very well, even when someone’s escaped dog stopped by to check out all the action and maybe get some play time in. The instructor finished the class off with the presentation of the certificates and a little something for the dogs. All in all, RL101 is a great class for dogs and people who’ve been through regular obedience class, and are looking to help improve their dog’s behaviour out in public. We really had a lot of fun working out in public and going to different places for each class.
At the Charity Ball
Yesterday we were at the MUSC Charity Ball, one of those fund raising events put on by a student organization where everyone gets to dress up and look all spiffy. Lots of students and faculty show up to have a good time and showing off their dressy duds.
Since the wife is part of the group that puts the event on, attendance for me is kind of mandatory. It’s a nice event though, and a chance for people to see how really dressed up everyone else can get. It also means I usually end up being one of the helpers at the end too. Generally, whatever organization the wife ends up joining, they usually end up getting a two-fer deal out of us. It’s fun though, and I get to walk around taking lots of pictures. There were a few interesting things that we put bids on, but other people ended up outbidding us on them.
There’s also a silent auction (the fundraising portion) that goes along with the charity ball that the students work hard at putting together. Lots of donations from local businesses are solicited and put up for auction. The money raised helps fund various student-run programs like the CARES clinic.
The end of the evening ends up being a little hectic with people lining up to pay for and collect the items they won, and people running back and forth brining things up to the front table (that’s usually where I pitch in and help out a bit). It’s all fairly well organized though and goes pretty smoothly for the most part. Anything that’s left over at the end of the night are collected and carted back to campus so that people can come by to get their items later.
Looked like everybody had a good time at this year’s event again.
Dust bunnies beware!
After Roomba died, we were stuck with using the old vacuum again (over there on the left). Does a reasonably decent job for being a 10 year old vacuum. We were going to get another Roomba, but then the wife decided she wanted a Dyson. And not just any Dyson either. We were going to get a Dyson Ball.
After some reading and research, we decided to get the Animal variant, partly because of the extra attachments it comes with, and partly because of the cool purple colour.
The wife got to use it first, and after seeing the pictures of what came out of the carpet, I’m sold. Now admitedly, it had been a while since our last vacuuming so that was probably a few weeks worth of dust build up. Still, I don’t think it’s anywhere near what our old vacuum would have sucked up.
The Dyson is a bit on the heavy side, but actually surprisingly easy to move around. It’s also a lot quieter than I expected. I used it a little bit last night to vacuum along the baseboards with the mini-turbine head. The hose is nice and long, although it becomes a little bit cumbersome moving around with the rest of the vacuum dragging behind. The telescoping wand is reasonably thin, and the crevice tool allows me to get into places that our old vacuum wouldn’t (it had a larger diameter hose). I was finally able to get to those clumps of dog hair towards the back of the fridge!
I imagine the house will be pretty clean with the new Dyson (at least for the next few weeks until the novelty factor wears off).