1.  I am trying to convince myself it is time to give up my chai that I buy by the case from this one place in Santa Cruz. I can’t get two cases that taste the same each time and it is making me crazy. Right now I have 5 gallons of a lot I can’t stand. No amount of tinkering with it is making it right. I am seriously bummed because it is Saturday and I like to sit and drink many cups of chai while working at the computer. Regular tea doesn’t do it for me. Not enough something to help me pop up.

2. If I give up chai I might go back to coffee. A few expressos in the morning would be good. But if so, I am going to have to buy one of those wonderfully expensive automatic ones that my friend Mac has so all I have to do is put the cup under it and push a button. It even cleans itself. If you have one and you love it, tell me what kind/model. If I don’t do chai or coffee I really need a breakfast drink. Part of it is to help me wake up (not a morning person) and part of it is the routine of getting into my morning by prepping those things.

3. Same friend with the fancy expresso machine remodeled his kitchen and gave us his nearly new Bosch dishwasher to replace our very ancient one. It is waiting to be installed by someone who won’t cross the wires and burn the house down. But here’s the thing, the dishwasher is white. All the other appliances are black. I like the black. I put black handles on all the cabinets. Black works. I think the black is going to bug me a lot. Hubby won’t even notice. Bosch does not, like other dishwasher manufacturers, make a replacement panel for it. Sigh. So I am wondering if I have it installed in white or try to take it to an auto shop and have them paint it black. What would you do?

4. Cassie is being tapered off the steroids and I can see hints of our wonderful dog coming back to us. Poor thing has serious steroid hunger pangs and wants to eat all the time. I found a woman on the German Shepherd forum whose dog Sean also has this auto immune disease and has been doing fine on the Atopica for many years. That’s heartening. And I had a realization about Cassie last night. Every since we have had her she has sneezed a lot. I mean every day, every time she would get up from sleeping she would sneeze several times. Considering how many naps she took every day, that’s a lot of daily sneezes. Since she has been on the medicine she hasn’t sneezed once. Makes me wonder how many other things are going on inside this poor kid. Ditto her ears. She was always shaking them as though they bothered her but the vet could never find anything, even going deep down to look. We finally just decided that she didn’t like any wax buildup at all and I just clean her ears a lot, which she is fine with. But since the medicine, no issues with the ears. Which leads me to her coat. We thought her problem with her coat was a bad diet. When we got her at about 9 months of age she had a shiny stripe down her back and dull, lifeless coat everywhere else. We figured good food and fish oil would help and it has some. Now instead of a 1 inch healthy fur stripe she has one that’s about 5″. She is slowly getting a shiny coat but now I am wondering if it isn’t also tired to this auto immune disease that she has?

5. I am frustrated with my pot ponds. After all the work I did soaking them to get them to hold water up to the top, now that I have them planted the water is leaking from some places and the wood won’t swell back up again. I am really tempted to dump the one in the backyard and give in to my desire to have a bigger one that is partway in the ground. But it would mean a fence around it to keep Cassie out because she thinks it is her job to remove anything that is floating in water, from the water.
6. There are still a few spots left in my online class on Social Networking for Authors and Illustrators. We’ll explore all the various online opportunities authors have today (Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc) and how authors can best use them to build their online presence. I’d appreciate it if folks could help pass the word along. I don’t post at Verla’s or the Blue Boards (or are those the same?) and would feel awkward to go sign-up just to post about my class. But if you do, maybe you could mention it there? Thanks!

Whoops!  I forgot to add the link for the class info/sign-ups.
http://www.backup.susantaylorbrown.com/classes.html