The Good,The Bad, The Ugly.

The Good, Dog Parks... we love them. The dogs all go running, jumping, getting all slobbered up by one another all in good old fashion dog loving fun. It gives us a chance to meet some new people. The last time there we met a couple with a yellow lab that was about 9 months old and was new to the whole dog park thing. We told them the about the first time Ditka got hurt. and shared stories like he was our kid. We think if we continue to see them there we could become close friends with them. Also taking your dog to these open fields and letting them run for 2 hours really tires them out and anyone who has ever had a lab knows how nice it is to have a worn out dog at home who doesn't to play every second of every day

The Bad, We do not run into a lot of bad things at the dog park. Most of the time it comes down to people not picking up after their dogs or just letting them get away with everything such as jumping up on everyone, humping (people and other dogs), and you have the dogs getting up on the few picnic tables there are, oh and there are the dogs that tip over the water bowls... why they do this I have no idea... but if they don't have water at the parks dogs could overheat and get hurt.

THE UGLY, There hasn't been a lot of run-ins with the Ugly. Actually today was only the second time for our Ditters to have this unfortunate thing happen. What am I talking about?...Our helpless dog got attacked... yes attacked by a wolf of a dog that came tearing out of left field and into a big group of dogs. It just so happens he singles out Ditka.. why? Maybe because he was the biggest dog in the group... maybe it was the first dog that he was face to face with... but before we knew it our 100 pound dog was laying on his back tail tucked between his legs and the attack dog we will call him "WD" (WOLFDOG) was on top of him biting, and shaking his head viciously. Don't get me wrong... he plays on his back with a lot of dogs such as; pit bulls, Shepards, and all kinds of puppies. He is kind of a wuss, when playing with these dogs they will often nibble on each other. This time was different!!! He was on his back and the other dog was not backing off and was biting and shaking his head as if he was trying to kill him. Ditka felt it and was yelping loud and more then once WD was not letting up so I had to step in and pull the dog off..... If you aren't familiar with dog parks there are signs posted everywhere that prohibit aggressive dogs. Amy and I are pissed... Amy storms off in the direction of WD's owners as I am separating and making sure our dog is not hurt... thankfully he was not. So Amy starts asking if that was their dog knowing that it was because we were talking to everyone else. They say "yes" and Amy tells them to "put their dog on a leash and get it out of here", the guy tells her that she knows nothing about dogs and that if our dog was trying to be dominant their dog would put it in its place (So they were admitting that they had an aggressive dog)...regardless... our dog was on his back (being as submissive as a dog can get!) We tell them that and say that since their dog can't handle being off-leash then they need to leash it up and get it out of the park. Everyone else had their dogs at there hips and would not let the dogs go far until they got their WD out of the park and that is just what they did.

Amy returned to us and the group of people were shocked and pleased that we stuck up for our dog that way. Apparently there is another dog owner who has a 2 yr. old pit bull who she is trying to "socialize" and refuses to leave even when her dor terrorizes other dogs. She will only leave if her dog starts an actual fight! They said they wished we would have been there to take care of her as well. As fate would have it...about an hour after Ditka's traumatic incident...the pit bull owner shows up with her agressive dog. The girls wanted us to stay and handle that situation as well as we had handled the WD situation. But Ditty had his fill of attacks for the day and we didn't want him to have to deal with another one. Everyone gathered their dogs and left instantly. We left the park feeling like badasses who were still shaking from the adrenaline of the first attack.

sorry

I have nothing to say because i have been watching season III and waiting for amy to get home so i can finish watching it that is all i can do. Ohh i did hear that you can watch all of season 4 on-line. so i might be doing that but i think Amy might get mad about that. so i might have to wait till that comes out on DVD.

How i met your Mother?

The very first time I saw this show, I was not very impressed and I told my brother this when he asked me what I thought. He gave me a look of disappointment not unlike the look that Lora gives me". I could not just forget about "The Look" knowing that my brother and I have similar taste for the most part. When I got home from a month long vacation and had nothing better to do and had already watched all of the Sopranos and Entourage yes all seasons and yes the ending of sopranos sucks and yes the end of the new season of entourage is damn good. There is nothing to watch in the middle of the day so I thought I would give it another shot and download the first season. I have been hooked ever since. Not only that Amy started watching. However Amy will not watch shows on the computer so we had to go buy the second season on DVD. Some people ask me if I drank this weekend... no did nothing worth talking about other then watching one of the best comedy shows ever not to mention the best show on CBS.

You might think... could they really watch the whole second season in one weekend. Then I would sadly tell you that we did not. Dinner and taking our dog to the park, and damn pottery barn got in the way "thanks Josh and Lora". With all of the distractions we did finish the first season and 2 DVDs of the new or second season.

Oh by the way... you might be asking your self why would they not just go to the local Blockbuster to rent the second season? The answer is that the second season is like the lost season. No Blockbuster this side of the cascade mountains has the second season for reasons unknown to Amy and I. they only have seasons 1&3 so I look at bestbuy.com they have season 2 but it is $32. But we were not going to best buy so it would have to wait. Little did I know Amy wanted to go to Target "one of our favorite stores". MAN was I happy to my surprise not only did they have season 2 it was $17.99 and you know the rest.

I think are dog is scared of the dark

Amy Ditka, and I are living in a small house in a small town. I like our house but there are some not so good things about it like no closets and no back door. The bedrooms are nice size considering we don't have a roommate and can use the other room for storage the other room is smaller so we sleep in the bigger room although it has the only closet in the whole house so it is like a changing room for Amy. I don't get to hang up any of my stuff.

This last weekend we thought our 1 year and 3 month old baby,who's actually a 100 pound black Lab was ready to make the big step of not sleeping in his cage and sleeping on the $50 bed that we bought him. Should be easy we thought even though going into this i knew dogs get attatched to their cage, because it gives them a safe feeling. We figured why would our dog not like sleeping on are floor? Plus it would give our room more space maybe we could use the door that leads right into the bathroom even though all you have to do is take 2 more steps and you are in through the other door. Plus no room looks that nice when you have a huge cage taking up %15 of the room.

The first night we knew there was going to be problems and after about 15 minutes of the dog walking around whining like a little baby, us telling him to go to bed, and him getting stuck on the side of the bed, because we pushed it closer to the wall and his cage used to be there. He could not turn around but what our little Ditka could do is jump right up on the bed and before i could say anything to him he was curled up in a tight ball in between my legs snoring louder then i have ever heard any human. At this point it was 12:30 and i thought... no use in fighting it we will just work on it the next night. That night comes and before i know it... dog in bed...with us. I don't know what to do. Amy and I are not sleeping, and the little sleep we do get it is interrupted by our dog snoring while his feet end up in our backs. So tonight the cage is going back up and we are going to try and see what he is going to do if we leave the doors open. Hopefully he will be ok with this and we can get 8 hours of on and off sleep tonight.

i will keep you posted.

Why Now TV Why

In my life i have only bought One TV and have had it for 4 years and it works great. However i have had 4 other TV's in this time 2 of them we gave a-way one i was not very happy about. The other one was more of a loan that i don't think i am going to be getting back. Then it comes back to the one 27" TV i bought 4 years ago and the 32" sony HD TV that i got from work for free. Let me tell you when i got this TV i was really happy it was about $1,000 new and i paid nothing for it. The only bad thing about the sony, it was 300 lbs. and that is alot of TV. Amy was worried about are new TV stand breaking and to tell you the truth i was a little nervious. Not even to mention who would help me move the TV?

So about a 2 months ago on a i woke up and went to turn my sony on and i got notthing but heard it clicking so i pressed the power and the tv came on but as time went on it was harder to get going so we stoped turning the tv off yes this is the not the most "Green" way to live but some times you jsut have to do stuff like this and we just thought we would get a new tv after are wedding.
So this was a bad week we had a power outtage and no more tv. We thought if we could not get the tv to turn on after a hour of pressing the power button it was over the best TV i have ever had in my house was no more. I relized why you see TV stacked ontop of other TV's now becuse they were in the same spot that i am in right now.

Now i am back to whear it all started and i now know why i bought the TV i did a nice 27" Philips it is not wide screen it is not 32" it is not HD but It is a working TV. I know my day will come and i will get to join the likes of my brother josh my friends mike and james. i just keep telling myself one day nick one day

All the time in the world

Right now i have all the time in the world. between jobs or just wasting time till sears gives me a call back to a job that i am not the best at but at the same time i had no training a year ago and now i am leaps and bounds better then when I started and i feel like i get better every day. That is some thing i have to do or so i am told from the guys i worked with last season. They told me "nick I have been doing this job for 20 years and I still have to learn something new everyday". Man that made me feel like I was in Iowa out back of my house with my dad and he was showing me how to change my breaks or my oil or my windshield wipers for the first time. not that all the time my dad Knew exactly what he was doing because it was almost cretin that he would start dropping "F" bombs when something went wrong and in most cases did go wrong. My dad knew how the simple things on cars worked so in most cases he could figure it out but he would have to work on it the first time and i went threw some cars and most of the time it was his first go round with that car type so it would be a little different or we would need a new tool so that would be some more time he would have to use on one of his few days off or the little time he had before he would go into work but we would always get the job done.

Why not

So i have seen some blogs and i like them so i thought why should i not give it a go. Not that There are a lot of people that would read what i have to say. If nothing less it might give my mom something to do when she is at home waiting for my dad to get home from work.

So in this blog i think i will just tell you about what Amy my dog "Ditka isgod Thiessen " and myself are up to. I will give you updates of what is going on with my job and more important Amy's job because that my friends is the key to all of this and when we get to rejoin the insane life of Iowa and all of our loving family and leave this hateful place called Oregon.