Baby Slavik

This is pretty late but welcome to Baby Slavik! Evey Ryan Slavik was born 2AM 12/17/06 - 20.5 inches - 6lbs 6ozs. Baby, Mom, and Dad are all home and well.

If you're curious about the name: "Ryan" is Marni's maiden name and "Evey" is Paul's middle name, so the name was a natural fit.

Monnie and I are super excited about the new addition and can't wait to meet her! There are rumors of a WI-tour this summer and hopefully Madison will be one of the stops.

P.S. No, Paul's middle name isn't "Evey"

More Cowbell!

A bit back, local know-it-all Tom Geer recruited me to be part of a group of bloggers at More Cowbell! A blog dedicated to music - show & cd reviews, general thoughts, and the like.

We've been at it since early November so there's a decent amount over there to check out already, but I wanted to save the announcement here until I could combine it with the announcement that the content will also be featured on madison.com. Yes, the site that brought you Nutritilicious will also be hosting our content.

We plan on keeping the posting our content at both locations. morecowbell.info may someday have more bells and whistles, but that remains to be seen. For the time being, you can get your RSS feed here, so make sure to add that to your reader.

Should be fun!

Howie!

Monica and I are the proud new foster parents of Howie, a 7 month old Golden Retriever from WAAGR. Why "foster parents" you say? Well, we haven't technically "adopted" Howie.

I think when people hear "dog rescue" they think "humane society" and then have visions of a bunch of cages in a big room where there are all kinds of dogs. The way WAAGR works though is that when dogs come in they are immediately put in foster homes, which are just normal peoples houses. Normally these people will have a dog or two that are "their's" - meaning that they have adopted. and then another couple that they are just fostering.

After the dog has lived with them a while they have a pretty good idea of what is going on with him/her. So, they can tell prospective adopters: he's a great dog but he really doesn't like kids - or whatever the case may be. Hopefully they can give a report of "world's greatest dog" but if the dog really isn't great with kids... you're not doing anybody a favor keeping that a secret. Basically, the process makes it much more likely that the home the dog eventually ends up in - will be a good fit.

Of course, the other part I'm leaving out is that often dogs need to be in foster homes because they have some larger (health) issue. The rescue doesn't want to give someone their first ever dog when it has some serious concerns that need to be addressed.

Anyway, all that explanation behind us - Howie!

Howie has been great so far. Quite the bundle of energy, but I think he's starting to get used to his new surroundings already. He was given up by a family in Beloit who just didn't have the time for a puppy (side note: puppies have a lot of energy. This may seem obvious but there seem to be a lot of people that this is a surprise to).

We'll be crate-training him, so he will sleep and spend some day time in there. He'll also be getting a bunch of walks and a lot more playtime than he was getting in Beloit... and there's a certain appointment scheduled for next week that may CUT into his energy level a bit.

We're really looking forward to getting to know Howie better and if he plays his cards right, maybe he'll get permanent resident status in the not too distant future!

Las Vegas

We just got back from another great trip to Vegas. This time the group consisted of Aly (who lives out there), Ericka, Nate, Monica, and I. We stayed at the Mirage which was a small step up from my last trip out there.

One of the trip's highlights was the new Cirque du Soleil show, "Love". This was another great show - a bit different than the other Cirque shows I've seen. Lots of acrobatics, but definitely not as much as O and Mystere - equally strange but in a much more familiar way (if that makes any sense). We all really enjoyed it and I would definitely recommend checking it out.

Monnie has written up some in depth coverage of our trip, so I'll cut mine a bit short here.

I will say though that my initial search for a link to the Cirque show was just to enter "Love" into Google. #1 on the hit list was "The Love Calculator" which I had to check out.

Looks like Monnie and I are not exactly a sure thing. The site says (based strictly on your names) that we have a 44% chance of love. The description following says that we have a chance but that it will probably take "a lot of work". It also cautions that no matter how much work we put in - it can't guarantee anything.

Of course, it didn't surprise me to find that Kevin (Burg) and Monnie would have a 91% chance. He's quite the ladies man, I bet I could put kevin and about anyone in there and it would be 90%