visits, ladybugs and dogs

My father came up for a visit this weekend, which was nice. We bought a bunch of new stuff for my house and unloaded the free (and unbelievably heavy) desk that my mother found for me on FreeCycle, so my office is now quite office-like. He got to meet the new dog (she’s quite an attention whore; she kept running from me, to my mom, to my dad, back to me, etc, etc), and so of course, I got a bunch of cute pictures. I took him to the Okefenokee Heritage Center, which is a wonderful museum located here in Waycross. (I try to go to the Heritage Center every time I’m home, mainly because it has an incredible old steam train - complete from engine to caboose - on display, and you know how I love trains!)

Dad and Elphie

Mom and Elphie

Me and Elphie

Me, on the caboose at the museum.
No, that's not photoshopped in; the caboose number is 0443.

On Friday night we went to the Waycross Applebees, which was quite a disappointment. They had a new Tuscan Shrimp Salad, which looked quite enticing. Now, I have a passionate hatred for Iceberg lettuce. In fact, I hated salads until I went away to college and learned that salads can come with things like Romaine and Baby Spinach. (Don’t laugh at me! Consider the redneck black hole in which I was raised. I’m not kidding when I say that every salad I was served prior to the age of 19 contained Iceberg lettuce. And even when I began to learn about *other* kinds of lettuce, I still pretty much avoided salads until the past few years.) Anyway, the picture of the Tuscan shrimp salad showed Romaine lettuce. Imagine my consternation when a plate full of Iceberg appeared in front of me! I couldn’t help myself; a horribly bitchy “There’s Iceberg on my plate” burst forth from my lips. I meant to suffer in silence, and I certainly didn’t mean for the waiter to hear it, but he did. He offered to take it back and have it remade with Romaine, and of course I agreed. Well, it came back with a thin layer of Romaine covering the iceberg and a ladybug crawling along one of the leaves! Probably most people would have demanded to speak with a manager, but honestly, a bug in my salad is a lot less disturbing than Iceberg lettuce. I got the thing onto my fork, and then my mom took it outside and deposited it on a bush. The salad would have been quite good had it not still consisted of mostly Iceberg. I ate all the yummy toppings and every scrap of Romaine I could find. When the waitress (she wasn’t the one who’d brought out the food, so I doubt she knew of the snafu) saw my plate she said, “My goodness! You ate everything but the Iceberg!” I just smiled and told her I didn’t like lettuce. She’s probably wondering why in the hell I ordered a salad.

As I mentioned above, we still have Elphie, the little dog. She really is too big to be a purebred Chihuahua, so perhaps she’s a Chihuahua-something else byproduct. My mom thinks she’s a rat terrier (follow the link, then scroll down - Elphie really does look just like some of them!). Who knows? If any of you out there are from the Waycross area and know anyone who is missing a little Chihuahua type dog, please let me know. She’s obviously accustomed to living in a loving home and getting a lot of attention - surely the family who trained her to be such a sweetheart wouldn’t simply abandon her! But, you never know; people do cruel and stupid things sometimes. I toyed with the idea of taking her with me to Korea - Gwen (for whom I’ll soon be working) has a Yorkie (I think - Gwen, correct me if I’m wrong!) and it’d be a lot of fun for the two of us to hang out with our little dogs... But then I started worrying about all the potential problems, like what if someone in the apartment complex complained about her barking or something... So I guess she’s going to stay here. She’s been having fun playing with the next door neighbors’ dog, Rock and with mom’s dogs. She tries to play with the cats, but (other than Ruffy) their reactions range from disinterested to violent, although Isis is starting to come around.

She likes to sleep on my pillow.

Elphie and Rock play through the fence

Rock's a cutie!