And you though your life was hard!

From the pages of oddly enough... huh... who'd have thunk it?

Boozy chimp sent to rehab

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Fri Feb 26, 11:23 am ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian chimpanzee has been sent to rehab by zookeepers to cure the smoking and beer-drinking habits he has picked up, a popular daily reported on Friday. An ex-performer, Zhora became aggressive at his circus and was transferred to a zoo in the southern Russian city of Rostov, where he fathered several baby chimps, learned to draw with markers and picked up his two vices.

"The beer and cigarettes were ruining him. He would pester passers-by for booze," the Komsomolskaya Pravda paper said.

It added he has now been transferred to the city of Kazan, about 500 miles east of Moscow, for rehabilitation treatment.

(Reporting by Tanya Ustinova, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman)

From exciting plans to my favorite things...

This was suppose to be a post with cool pictures from Argentina...  but alas, my best laid plans are once again foiled.  Should I start by stating that I'm not loving Delta airlines and the Atlanta airport?  Deb and I have been talking about a trip to Argentina for a while and after Christmas we both spent a lot of time planning and looking up information and hotels and flights and all of that kind of stuff and when we both got the necessary OKs from work etc, we made reservations.  And I have REALLY been looking forward to this trip.  And then on the day I'm suppose to be flying out from Atlanta, they get almost double their annual snowfall and the airport shuts down (3 inches of snow... c'mon!!).  So after spending two nights experiencing the delights (??!!) of the airport and being told I can't get to Buenos Aires for a few more days, I weep (no wailing or gnashing of teeth, just a lot of weeping) and decide to come home.  Side notes:  there's no comfortable place to sleep in an airport, there's really no difference between breakfast, lunch and dinner in an airport - it's all just food wrapped in grease!  So instead of having great pictures and stories more interesting than whining about an airport, I am compelled to do what I do when the world seems gray...  list a few of my favorite things (this always seems to happen in February...)

So without further delay and in no particular order...

Favorite thing #1 - my brand new ipod touch.  I was determined never to jump into the whole ipod frenzy, but I have seen the error of my ways.  I bought my ipod touch with gift cards and credit card rewards and before my "trip" to Argentina, loaded it with a bunch of music and over 30 movies, and if I never use it again, it paid for itself during my 2 1/2 days in the airport.  I've now watched all 6 Harry Potter movies back to back...

Favorite thing #2 - my Netflix enabled Blu-Ray player.  I have LOVED the instant watching of movies and TV series - my current favorite is the BBC series Robin Hood!!  But I'm also getting a kick out of the old movies and musicals.

Favorite thing #3 - chocolate milk.  I blame this one on the LoveBug...  but I've become a serious chocolate milk addict.  And I only encourage myself because there's lots of research coming out that calls chocolate milk the ultimate sports recovery drink (of course I can't find the exact article I wanted to prove it, but google it! Totally and completely true!)

Favorite thing #4 - books.  I love books.  I would love to have a room filled with books... all kinds of books.  Mom calls the money I spend on books my drinking and smoking money...  hmmm... hopefully a little better for me than cigarettes and alcohol!  But I do love books.

Favorite thing #5 - my friends.  I am seriously blessed with really great friends and I mean really beyond amazing great.  From my friend Bonnie who did a last minute airport run and didn't mind waiting forever while I tried to figure out where my luggage was (in Buenos Aires - not cool when your luggage is better traveled than you are!) and then brought me all kinds of food so I could shower, eat and go to bed, to my great friends from work, who I'm pretty sure were as upset as I was about not going on my trip (either that or they were worried about how grumpy I'd be when I came back to work!!), to my friends who hear my hidden dark fears and secrets, to my friends who live further away, but there's no doubt in my mind that they always on my side.  I'd be nowhere and nobody without my friends!

Favorite thing #6 - nieces and nephews (and by default their parents and aunties and grandparents) - all 10 of them now.  I have a great family - I don't know what else I can say except how grateful I am for them always.  And these kiddos give really great hugs..

And I know there's more...  but at the moment this is what came to mind!

Salsa and pants...

First... the dog is driving me crazy!! She's like a super charged Energizer bunny this winter with a bottomless pit for a stomach (although none of her recent eating feats can beat the consumption of an entire 15 lb bag of dog food when she was a puppy...). When we walk the only time I can keep up with her is when she's grazing for food and that's not good because the food she finds to eat results in a messy backyard cleanup (aka bomb retrieval).   At the moment I'm doing my best to remember that I really do love having her and that hopefully we're good for each other... Isn't a human year equal to something like 3 or 4 dog years? Which would put Salsa squarely in the teenage raging hormone years.... hmmm.....  Look at that precious "baby" picture... She is kind of cute, huh?  And she is a good buddy.  And she does seem happy to see me when I come home.  And she does help me get outside and at least walk during the winter.  And it's been shown that people with pets live longer and are happier... I probably should keep her...  Yeah...  I do kind of like her... Guess I'll keep her...

And second...  do you ever have those days where nothing quite goes right?   Today was one of those.  I knew I had a tight schedule and I'd have to start early and everything needed to go smoothly so that I could get home at a decent hour.  Well, I did get to work early, but NOTHING went smoothly - from an electrical outage to computer and network problems to missing equipment to a coworker that I know exists solely to torment and torture me - by 1 this afternoon I was where I'd planned to be at 10 (and I started at 5:30!!) and then suddenly I hear the dreaded sound of denim ripping.  That's right, I split my pants.  At work.  A big rip.  Across my big bum.  I still had about 4 hours to go.  Ahhh....  life IS funny.....