Today I fully intended to post updated pictures of the man-eater (it's finally stopped soley growing the stalk and is now actually blooming), but I've run into some technical difficulties...
So... a while back our dog (at the time), Sophie, ate the USB connection cable for my camera. I was sad, but I accepted it, moved on, and stole the one that belonged to Josh's camera. Then, about a month ago, our puppies chewed through that one too. I was sad, but I accepted it, moved on, and just started using our memory card reader. Now, this is all fine and good, except that our memory card reader is one that I purchased while I was in Rome, and while it's great at getting pictures from the memory card, it's not best ever at deleting images off of the memory card once they're on my computer. This is kinda annoying, if only because it means that I have to manually delete all the pictures from my camera, one at a time. The other reason that this doesn't work super awesomely is because on occasion, I will grab my camera and start taking pictures (of the man-eater) before realizing that I never put the memory card back in after the last time that I uploaded photos. This wouldn't be a big deal except that for some reason, Josh's camera (which I have since claimed as my own since it fits in my purse way better than mine) seems to have some sort of inability to transfer pictures from the camera's memory onto a memory card. It's fine going the other way, but not so much onto the card. This poses a problem (as I'm sure you can see). So this morning, I decided to suck it up and just buy another cable on my way to work. It was 7 AM, so the only thing open was WalMart, which was fine, because I was so sure that they would have the cable that I need. Here's the kicker, though, apparently our cameras need a special kind of cable that most other cameras don't use. So the only options for me were 1) buy a $50 multi-connection cable or 2) buy a new camera. Now, I am currently saving up to purchase a digital SLR. I do not yet have that chunk of change available to me, so that is not a good option, and whether it's out of bitterness, regular ol' common sense, I knew intrinsically that I could not bring myself to pay $50 for something that I knew in my heart of hearts should really only cost me $15. SO, I said to myself, "ok, here's what we're going to do, we're going to go to work (so that we're not ridiculously late), and order the cable from Amazon for a normal price.
All I know is, since college when I would set aside an entire Saturday morning every couple of weeks, go to the laundromat, do 10 loads of laundry all at once (I wish I was exaggerating), and then go back to my dorm and watch Dave the Barbarian while folding and putting away all of my clean laundry, I've LOVED laundry day.
These are our boys. Guinness is on the left, and Murphy is on the right. This isn't the greatest picture ever, but I just really loved the way the sunlight was coming through the window. It's also a pretty good indication of their personalities *grin*. Guinness is pretty mellow, and doesn't really care what anyone's up to unless he thinks that he can benefit from it. Murphy, on the other hand, is totally curious, and has to know what you're doing all the time. Every time I sit down, Murphy has to come crawl all over me to see what I'm doing. It'd be cute and funny if it weren't so annoying ;)
This is the giant man-eating American Agave that lives at our house. Josh's grandmother planted it 40 years ago. It is also called a "Century Plant". This is because it only blooms once "every 100 years" (by this I mean, it doesn't bloom very often, and when it does, it's a really big deal). When they bloom, they grow a stalk that can get up to 25' tall (yes, feet, not inches). Our plant, being somewhere between 30 and 40 years old has never bloomed before. Until now. About two weeks ago, Josh and I noticed a stalk sticking strait up from the center of the plant. It was at that time, barely level with the lowest point of the roof. It is now above the roof.