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Posts Tagged ‘photo’

Rock Band 2 !!!

Sunday, September 14th, 2008



Rock Band 2 !!!, originally uploaded by punquin.

Yey! Rock Band 2!!!

I got my copy of RB2 around 1 pm on release day. The game store didn’t open until 11 am and we went to brunch first… Mm, chocolate chip waffles!

I played two sessions of RB2 my first evening. The first with an online band, 5 Day Forecast, the second with my one-girl band, Images of Broken Light (bonus points if you can name the song that’s a lyric from without Googling!) I didn’t make it too far, but I got to try out about 15 songs. I got 13 new achievements. I’m happy I can finally get them again! I had no one to play BWT with in RB1, so I couldn’t get those.

The majority of the songs I’ve sung so far are growing on me. I did not like Interpol PDA at all. No. I didn’t like “Rebel Girl” on my iPod, but I like it after singing it. Funny how that happens.

Yey, Rock Band 2 in the house!!!

Me = Dork

Sunday, September 14th, 2008



Me = Dork, originally uploaded by punquin.

Yes, I’m such a nerd!

Good morning!

Saturday, September 13th, 2008



Good morning!, originally uploaded by punquin.

Good morning… We are being lazy so far and watching the news. My stomach wants me to get up, though. What’s for breakfast?

Poor Benny…

Monday, September 8th, 2008



Swollen, originally uploaded by punquin.

It’s always something! About a month ago, Benny had two trips to the vet over a yeast infection in his ear. The second one was to switch medicines – the first one caused a lot of irritation.

This weekend, some pink on Benny’s lip caught my eye. He’s always had black lips. Sunday morning it caught my eye again and I took a closer look. His upper lip was swelling and cracking apart to show pink, sore flesh. By evening, it was swollen to the point that his teeth were catching on it and making it bleed. I called the vet this morning and got an appointment set up for when I usually head in to work.

The vet agreed with my guess – he is having an allergic reaction. But, we can’t figure out what is causing it. He didn’t eat anything but his food this weekend. Because of the storm, he didn’t have any unsupervised outdoor time – just leashed walks. Hmm. It was slightly less swollen than the night before because he was asleep and not messing with it. But, it’s still bad. The vet gave him a shot of allergy meds and gave mesome prescription allergy meds to give him.

I also mentioned that his ears were still smelling yeasty and that I was loosing the battle at keeping them clean. Turns out he now has yeast infections in BOTH ears. Great. So, he has a new medicine that he gets in his ears 2 times a day and we have to go back for a re-check in 10 days. If they are not 100% clear, we’ll need to treat them with a more aggressive medicine. He has such heavy, floppy ears that stay really warm inside. Combine that with the humid, swampy weather and you have yeast heaven.

He is supposed to be tired from the shot, but I don’t think it’s really kicked in yet.

Oh, the Place You’ll Go!

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008



Dawn & Tony’s Nursery, originally uploaded by punquin.

We spent our day with the beautiful Dawn, helping her paint a Dr. Seuss mural in her nursery-to-be. It came out super cute!

She picked a great design. Danny helped pick the colors – he suggested the green letters (they match the green trim in the room, and the walls are a greenish-white). I taped up a ton of newsprint paper and sketched it all out before we went to the art store for paints and graphite paper. Once it was transferred, Dawn and I painted it all in, and I did the outline work.

When we were all finished, we went out for dinner in Old Town Alexandria at Austin Grill. We got ice cream cones for dessert (sorbet for me) and wandered a bit. We had to get home though… The puppies had been home alone too long and had to pee!

Mayham \m/

Monday, August 18th, 2008



Mayham, originally uploaded by punquin.

Yesterday we slept in (~10:30 am) before getting up and dressed to head out to Nissan Pavillion for the Mayham Music Festival. Normally I’m to one to say yes to all-day festivals. Danny gets tickets all year for shows, and I always have first dibs on one. I skip the festivals because it is just too drawn out for me. But, this time I *had* to go… Disturbed was one of the headliners!

We headed out at around 12:30 pm once Ivan got to our house. We met Tony in the parking lot and pretended like we weren’t tail-gating for an hour or two (you aren’t supposed to, but everyone does anyway.) There was a crazy long line to get in! Lots of Hot Topic kiddies (Hot Topic was one of the main sponsors, so I guess they were in the right place!)

We had been hoping to see Black Tide – one of the first bands to go on, but it seemed like they skipped them. All of the band afterwards were slightly early as a result. Hmm. There wasn’t anyone else we were interested in on the side stages, so we got a spot of the lawn of the main stage as soon as it was opened.

The first band on the main stage was Mastadon. Their drums are riffs are pretty sick. I had been looking forward to hearing them just to be impressed. Dragonforce was after them. They played well – fast – but, their songs went on forever and weren’t my taste.

I think this concert/festival takes the record for the most people to come up and ask me about my hair. Seriously. Anyway, at around 8:30 pm the Disturbed set started. It was so kick ass! They sounded great and played a good mix of older songs and stuff off their newest album. At one point, David Draiman (the lead singer) stopped the show to announce that a little 9-year-old girl in the pit was the cutest thing he’d ever seen. He had her brought up on stage and told everyone she had been singing a long to every song. He was super sweet to her and told her to cover her ears when he said “the bad words”. He let her watch the rest of the show from the side stage. The whole set was great and I was rocking out the whole time. Many devil horns were thrown and many fists were in the air. He had thousands of people yelling “Fuck!” in unison (cover your ears, little girl! yes, i like angry music.)

The final band was Slip Knot, who I don’t care about. We happily left early to avoid the traffic.

Disturbed

Puppy Photo Shoot

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008



07/29/08, originally uploaded by punquin.

1. China, 2. China & Benny, 3. Enjoying the Backyard, 4. Enjoying the Backyard, 5. China, 6. China & Benny

Yesterday evening, the puppies and I braved the swampy heat to have a little mini-photo shoot outside. It was so hot that Benny’s tongue was a mile long in every picture.

I’ve started redoing my braids… Maybe *I* need to think about a photo shoot… More later!

My Birthday Party!

Monday, July 21st, 2008



My Birthday Party!, originally uploaded by punquin.

Yey! The party was fun! There was a good turn-out. I was happily surprised to see a lot of my coworkers, in addition to Dawn & Tony making it after just arriving home from the beach.

The only thing that went wrong was that our Xbox officially took it’s last breath and went into permanent RRoD. So, no Rock Band. Dan got a 2 year warranty from Best Buy when he got the Xbox (the receipt says 8/26/06). It looks like you have to go online and request a cardboard coffin for it. I’m not sure what that means for our content on the HD. They warranty says it doesn’t cover lost data. Hrm. Danny apparently does not care to play Rock Band anymore, so I don’t think he really is motivated to get it fixed. I love singing on the game and just bought a year of Xbox Live which is now useless. :/

Back to the party! So, there wasn’t any Rock Band, which left the boys to mostly hang out and watch Danny’s Lamb of God dvd. Us girls dominated the craft table. I had set up 8 paint-your-own bobble-head dogs and 6 color-your-own fuzzy velvet jewelry boxes. We ran out of everything!

The photo booth was a hit, and it didn’t fall down, so I was happy. I hung paper clips on the outside of the booth so everyone could display their pictures in a “gallery”. We ended up filling all of the paper clips before the last guest left.

A lot of the girls were wearing dresses so they couldn’t play Twister, but we did have one good round (that I won!) I had to excuse myself from the party for a little while around midnight when I got a bad stomach ache. But, it got a lot better so that I was able to go downstairs to clean up and say goodbye to the last of the guests.

I was so, so happy that Mel was able to fly out for the party! She was a huge help setting up and decorating the rainbow cupcakes. She was with us until Sunday night. I miss her already! I wish Johnathan had been able to come too.

Click here for all the party pictures – including the photo booth shots!

Expo Dog

Monday, March 31st, 2008



Expo Dog, originally uploaded by punquin.

A quick Rock Band note… I have a blog for that over on rockband.com so I’m not filling my journal up talking about it. Check it out here. If you have an account, send me a friend request! I’m still really enjoying singing and feel so much less stressed and sick now that I’ve been spending time with it. Now, if I could just figure out a way to keep my allergies from interfering with my singing abilities, it would be great.

Yesterday, Benny and I worked at the Super Pet Expo for our company’s booth. Benny was so, so good. He was stressed when we arrived – I’d never seen it so busy. Even *I* was stressed! But, once we settled into our booth, we were both fine. I wore my Stunt Puppy convertible leash around my waist the whole time. Benny sat or laid beside me, greeted dogs, and let all sorts of children and adults give him hugs and love. Not once did he ever jump. He even did great when a man in a wheelchair wanted to love on him.

A half hour before the show closed, Benny and I got the opportunity to do a quick run of all the aisles (we had originally hoped to do that with Laura and her boyfriend when we first arrived, but circling the parking lot took up all my spare time.) Benny and I made a stop at three different bakeries for treats. Everyone was great about pointing out which treats would work with his poultry allergy. We ended up with: peanut butter bones, apple snaps, beef patties, cheesy sesame twists, peanut butter canoli and a lamb and rice bone. And, being that it was the final hour of the final day, We got a lot of leftover/broken cookies as a bonus. The only other place we spent money wasthe golden retriever rescue, where we made a donation and got a cute bone key chain.

At break-down time, Benny did great once again, calmly following at my side as we torn down the booth and packed up. He is such a good little man.

For those curious, Benny wears an Easy Walk harness. The feeling of resistance that his collar was making was causing him to pull even harder. With the front-attached harness, he walks calmly, and if he pulls (which is rare), he is turned to face me by the leash.

4 Stephanie’s A-Leapin’

Saturday, March 1st, 2008

Leap Day

I had hoped to do some leap day themed photos on leap day for my 366 photo project. But, I got home from work at 8 pm, had dinner, then felt really sick to my tummy. Not so good for jumping up and down. So, this morning I set up a tripod and my camera’s timer and proceeded to jump up and down about 50 times. 30 photos made it down to my computer, where I narrowed it down to 14 worth saving. 5 were good enough to by my picture of the day.

I’m not sure which photo to use. I’m also not sure if I should cheat and make it yesterday’s photo, or just have my leaping photo the day after leap day. Hm…