This, that and the other thing

I've been really busy lately! A lot is happening at work as well as home. It looks like the 8 month soap opera of my company being bought out by Roche will finally be coming to a close March 25th. On March 26th I will have a lot of cash from all my company stocks/options that I have to figure out how to invest in a crappy economy. Fun! And the thought of doing 2009 taxes is already giving me ulcers.

Then there is of course the question of what will happen after the merger. Roche continually says they will keep the "unique culture of Genentech" intact, but we'll see. I do feel my job is pretty secure for the near future, anyway.

On the home front I have been busy training Icon and Rampage. Apollo and Foster have gotten the short end of the stick lately and I feel pretty bad about it. I took them to the park on their own yesterday since Icon had a lesson in the afternoon and I thought I'd give F&A a puppy break, but they didn't seem to care about the lack of border collies so I doubt I'll do that again.

I was very proud of my direct flight from SFO to CLT for AKC nationals. It was a United flight operated by US Airways. In January, I booked and then called to add Icon, no problems. Other people tried to get on the same flight, though, and they were told NO DOGS IN CARGO. So I finally got scared enough to call and confirm Icon was going to get on the flight.

"US Airways takes dogs in cargo, but not as carry-on," the United reservation agent told me in a condescending tone.

Not trusting them, I did call US Air and the verified that under no circumstances will they take a dog in cargo. Bah! So I had to call United back and change my flights to ones with a layover, which I really didn't want to do. And not to mention, flying scares the crap out me (especially take-off and landing) so I will be a basket case worrying that Icon made the connection flights and wondering if we are both going to die.

Tomorrow morning I'm heading to an AKC trail. It should be pretty fun. I keep on waffling on whether to take the RV or just drive back and forth. On Saturday I will probably be done by 10:30am so it doesn't seem worth it to take the RV. I just checked the weather forecast and they're calling for rain on Sunday so I think I've made my final decision to drive back and forth. That way I can skip on Sunday if it's raining hard ;)

In other news, here is a short video of Rampage I took yesterday for the fun of it. Nothing exciting, just a dizzying view of him as we play. He had just stuck his nose under Icon's stream of pee so he has a yellow nose. Silly dog. I don't know why Icon has so much energy, he had just returned from a 3 hr agility lesson.


Simply Rampage from Agility Dogs on Vimeo.