The "Nerve Centre" is being painted!

At long last some of the insidious pink that covered all painted surfaces in this house when I bought it is about to be covered with a different paint colour!

I love colour and love watching home reno shows and have my favourite decorating magazines that I buy almost every month. And finally, after many months (years!) of wanting to get this house the way I want it, work is underway that will drastically change the two areas of the house in which I spend almost all of my waking hours - the family room/office and the kitchen.

I have gone through many many colour choices for these spaces and because one is just an extension of the other, finally decided against two different colours and am going with just one. It's a gorgeous terracotta colour and, for those who must know, the chosen colour is "Flower Pot", #CC-96 of the Benjamin Moore line of paint.

This is such an exciting time for me - to actually know that the transformation of this house is underway - and to suit my tastes!! Marc is a dear soul who when asked what colour(s) he prefers, just tells me to go with what I want.

And in a day or so I will make a pilgrimage to IKEA to purchase new office furniture so my work area will finally look more professional and pulled together than the previous too tiny work area that I've put up with for just over a year of working predominantly from home. Hmmm, beech or birch . . .???

Atlanta (Okay I'm really starting to get excited!)

In just under two weeks, two of my whippet buddies and I will be in Atlanta for this year's American Whippet Club annual National Specialty to be held at the Hilton Hotel at the Atlanta airport.

Last year was the first time I was able to attend an AWC National Specialty, held in Eugene, Oregon, at quite a beautiful and dog-friendly location. I took my little girlie Becca with me and really enjoyed the entire week. My friend Jennifer showed Becca in the Open Bitch class (a huge class of 40 girls) and even tho' Becca didn't make the cut it still was very cool to have one of one's dogs actually entered in such a huge show.

This year I will be attending sans dogs so in some ways it likely will be a bit more relaxing in that I won't be worrying about "does the dog need to get out to go potty", "is the dog making too much noise", etc and can just soak in the atmosphere.

I will be taking the laptop tho'. I still have clients that may have some sort of emergency that week and still am coordinating the work of two other consultants for a shared client. And this year I have a blog that really should been attended to!

And this past weekend was the first lure coursing meet of the season, held on Sunday. Becca outdid herself by initially tying for first in her stake and, after a runoff, finishing 2nd. She just needs another placement and more points but appears well on her way to achieving her Canadian Field Championship (fingers crossed!).

Needless to say on Monday (the first half of the day anyway!) Becca was very tired.

A trip off the Mainland

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So my consulting cohorts Allison and Denise called me on Friday afternoon (over a week ago now!) to tell me to head on over to Denise's place on Bowen Island so we could discuss a work idea that they'd been working on. Oh, and have some wine. Red wine. Amarula in coffee too. Lots of fun and actually when the three of us are together we get incredible amounts of work done.

When they called me on Friday afternoon it was very depressing, only in that I would not be able to give the ladies any of my time. You see my whole weekend was planned out as I was going to our local "Racing For Fun" club's first Continental Whippet Alliance race weekend of the year. And since my girl Becca finally started running like a good little race girlie last year, the whole concept of me attending a race weekend WITH a dog that can compete, well, nothing else can get in the way of that!!

But these two ladies are dynamos that I used to regularly work with (they used to be my consultants in their areas of specialty when I had a regular job) but since I went out on my own, we only see each other sporadically altho' we keep in regular touch. And oh what a fun weekend it would be!!!

Well the doggie event won out - as it should have! And I touched base with the girls on the Sunday to find out where we'd be meeting in Vancouver the following day (as decided earlier). And I ended up travelling to Bowen Island. All very fun and worthwhile especially as Allison and Denise had been worked into quite the frenzied state due to frustrations with a friend not delivering on some things they NEEDED. And they were in need of someone talking them down. And alcohol. Really in need of some alcohol.

I just hope I was able to help them(Hmmm, there is a bit of a demented look here . . .)

The Whippet Van is going to be serviced!

I've been holding off taking my doggie van in for servicing but now the time has come. Decided to call this morning to get an appt and arrange for some additional work to be done in addition to the regular service that is due.

For some reason lately I've been writing a lot of cheques in the $1,000 range and it appears that tomorrow the corporate account will get another whacking! Final quote for the service is just under a grand. And I'm hoping the Honda-gods-that-be don't call me at some point to advise that "gee lady your brakes really need to be turned" due to my usual hard braking style of driving.

And I really hope they do a great job of washing the exterior. After all we have a straight racing meet this weekend and lure coursing next weekend and it would be nice to be able to place my magnetic running whippets onto the van without having to clean the exterior myself!