der Traum

Remember when I had a dream that I found Rammstein in my neighbor's garage and we hung out and Christoph traded me his autographed drumsticks for my Animal drumsticks, read about it here: and then remember when I found this on their website for sale,

yeah me too. (click the picture to see more images, taken from the Rammstein online store).

ps, if anyone would like to get me these for any reason at all, feel free.

i am freeee!

Hewo, its me agin,

i gues my last riting wuz enuff for candy to let me go outside for a bit.  i wuz so bery happy!

da minute i went outside, i let out a big frap all ober the place.  i had to peepee on ebeyting agin cuz da guys mobed stuff round.

und den candy und me played hide und seek by the castle.

candy had to go inside but wen she call me to come in, i gave her dis look.  i wanted to go see the big monster on the oder side ob the fence.

heer i am on the steps.  dey are much biggr than a corgi but i like them!

My sous chef...

I do most of the cooking in our house and as a result, Gimli and I spend a great deal of time together in the kitchen.

He knows if he's good and stays in a particular area of the kitchen, just in front of the fridge, I'll cave in and give him any number of things to eat.. like carrots and cucumbers.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that he gives me these kind of looks...

Rox from da mines of moria?

Hewo, Gimli heer,

i am bery upset with candy und mike.  i have been trappt in dis haus for the past 2 weeks.  i don kno why it haz to take so longg, are dey bringing rox from moria???

something is going on outside and i cannot go see.  i can only see from the window.

dis guys came and took away the grass in the front where I used to rolly.

and in the back, its even wurse!

this loud monster came and dug up the grass and then got stuk in the mud.  they could have asked me to help dig.  den another bigger monster came and pulled dat one out.

den this slab thing appeared on the ground.  i want to kno why nobody ax me to make sum dsinz, i culd do it.

and then these walls appeared too and i don't kno why they want to make a castle outside, but maybe its for me becus i am a royal corgi, just ask Queen Elizabeth!  it not finish doh, maybe a big monster came und broked it und dey want som roouns.

but we still cannt go outside to run around and play becus now these big flat stones came.

also der are plants and fowers in the front, ready for me to peepee on.

sometimes the work is loud and i want to bark a them but candy has me bloked upstairs with my crate and a skinny box.  i don't know why she is being so mean to me, all i want to do is bark at them and cober dem with kisses und hayr when they come in to use the washroom.

hrmph, i neber get to hab any fun.

Wordless Wednesday - Red is my color

Dr. Corgyl & Mr. Gimli

I had an entire post laid out in my head about our visit to Woofstock a week ago and how Gimli was such a well behaved boy.  Until yesterday happened and Gimli exhibited such a horrid display of behavior, an onlooker would swear Mike and I had never given him any training whatsoever.

I shall begin with the events of Woofstock.  Mike and I went to the festival a couple years ago, when we had no dog and the pain of losing my other dog was still too near the surface.  When Gimli came to live with us, I always wanted to take him to Woofstock and this year was the first time our schedules allowed us to do so.

We arrived and of course, Gimli was excited due to all the dogs and people and sights and sounds of the city.  He'd never been to Toronto either and I'm sure all that hustle and bustle was sensory overload for him.

Mike took control of him and through a series of slow introductions, Gimli calmed down enough so that he wasn't trying to get into every dog's face and get into every owner's pockets for cookies.  The atmosphere was still one of chaos, vastly different from the one at the Dog Jog, but at least Gimli was starting to calm down.  We walked by each vendor, sampled some cookies and Gimli sniffed a great deal of doggie butts and unbeknown to him, his butt was sniffed a great deal too.  Gimli doesn't like other dogs sniffing his butt and often puts up a fight, however I feel he surrendered and allowed the other dogs to sniff away.

We met a great deal of different dog breeds.  Gimli was finally able to meet another corgi, who was all too interested our cookie bag, than us.  Hmmmm, greedy little Pems!

 

We met a Spaniel and a French Bulldog.

We even met a little girl and Gimli was such a gentleman, he didn't try to jump on her, he allowed her to pet him.  I was soooo very proud of that moment.

Of course, Gimli was his usual dashing self and plenty of people took pictures of him.  See for yourself!

Then, a week later, Gimli turned into a monster.

We had guests over yesterday for Father's Day.  I was pretty sure, Gimli would be his usual rambunctious self at the beginning of the evening, but that he'd settle down.  Boy, was I wrong.

He was excited and then when people ignored him, he became more excited and very barky.  Then the whole toy fiasco started.

He fixated on one of his bones and decided he wasn't going to allow anyone near him by grumbling and showing his teeth.  Of course, our guests all thought it was funny and so the more they antagonized him, the more he hoarded the toy.

I told Mike about 3 times to take the bone away, he finally did and Gimli calmed down a bit.... Until he started doing the same thing with a different toy.  This time, it was full on throwing the toy back and forth, with Gimli going back and forth, sometimes giving him the toy, sometimes doing the "Automatic Corgi" so that Gimli was doing his entire routine like a trained seal.  Then, Mike made the mistake of showing the butt wiggle, so now that means its going to be added to the repertoire that Gimli will need to perform before he gets his cheese.

Needless to say, I was livid.  But, silly me, here I thought people would respect the rules in OUR house, just like I was made to during that wonderful summer, but I was wrong.  I bit my tongue, lest I get branded with ruining Father's day by exerting control over my dog and ending the fun and preventing Gimli's further regression.

After everyone left, we cleaned up and I went to bed.  I didn't say a word, I didn't even speak to Gimli, the rage was literally streaming out of my ears like in the cartoons!

Today, I found a training class that we're going to sign up for.  The first class is this Saturday.  I will do my damnedest to break him of this behavior and to make him focus on me and nothing else.

Failing that, I'll give him commands in only German, maybe that will help...

I love my new frisbee!

A couple weeks ago, we made our monthly trip to the local pet store to pick up more food, cookies and poopy bags.  Gimli was a whirling dervish as usual so Mike had him close to the chair and kept giving him cookies whenever he behaved and corrections whenever he wanted to jump on people.

We ended up purchasing a 60lb bag of dog food, 2 bags of cookies, multi-colored poopy bags and some toys.  Don't ask me why there are multi-colored poopy bags, I suppose if you need to color coordinate with your dog or perhaps your dog's poo, those would be for you.  We bought them because they were the only ones left and our scented ones were all out.

I'm crazy about buying new toys for Gimli so we settled on these two:

Gimli doesn't really care for the little pink one, I think he doesn't quite like the holes and how it feels in his mouth.  He will play with it, but he holds it in his mouth very gently, almost like a Retriever.

The frisbee though, you be the judge...

Pre-Rockville

Starting last week and continuing into this week, we have had the landscapers working on our front and backyards.  Gimli is not pleased because he's been unable to play in either area for a week.  He can't even go out in the back for his daily lunchtime bask in the sun, poor thing I know!

Here are some before pictures and I'll have some during pictures up over the next day or so.

Any one else think Gimli looks like a stuffed animal?

Sadly the best and thickest grass is close to the house, which will be covered in concrete, boo!

Someday this will be concrete along with 2 or 3 slabs for stairs.

Beautiful Dreamer

A while ago, Laurie from The Daily Corgi sent out a request for pictures of sleeping corgis.  As expected, she received a deluge of emails of these sleeping cuties and had to separate them into about 5 or 6 postings.

Gimli made the second posting, see it here: Sleeping Corgis Part Two.

Because every corgi got one picture, I'm adding more pictures of my little corgi bear.  I have yet to videotape him dreaming.  I always hear his little whimpers from afar, but of course once you move, he's wide awake. Someday...

Without further ado, here's my sleeping bear!  There are plenty more sleeping pictures but I'll add more later on.

Gimli, the day we brought him home, sleeping in his crate.

 

I found him snoozing away here one day.

 

He has a thing for shoes, what can I say?

One of the few times Gimli will sleep with me.  I treasure these times! 

 

Gimli pretending to be a worm, sleeping.

Lazy

Argh, I have a great many posts to do and I'm not in the least bit motivated to do so, instead I'm going to go play some Dragon Age 2:

• Post about Gimli's appearance on The Daily Corgi's sleeping corgis!
• Update my 2011 list for June
• Post about the letter that arrived in the mailbox with a post mark of Buckingham Palace (I know !!!)
• Post some in progress pictures of the landscaping taking place in our front and back yards
• Post about Woofstock, where we were today
• Post about Gimli's recent visit to the groomers

*sigh* Its going to be a busy week for me...

Wordless Wednesday - Surveying his domain

Siren Song

As I wrote about in my Things to do for 2011 posts, one of the items was to stop playing "that soul sucking" game.  Well, I have.  I canceled my account before we went on vacation in April and I haven't looked back.

Although, while listening to my Rammstein playlist on You Tube today, this happened on two different occasions. Notice the little ad for the Free Trial.  Yeah, its taunting me, but that's ok, I'm over it.  (Btw, it was sheer luck the first screenshot was of Christoph, so of course I had to make sure the 2nd one was too.)

A couple years ago, Mike and I started playing World of Warcraft, WOW.  I know, I know, among some purists you aren't supposed to make it known that you play this game, but whatever.  My blog, I'm going to say what I want.  If you object, you can send your make believe orcs after me.

In any event, it started out innocent enough, Mike and I played the game and we enjoyed playing together.  We're both big into video games on consoles, the computer and handheld - the DS. (Yes, I do have the Nintendogs featuring the Pembroke Welsh Corgi.  That was my first corgi!).

We were also playing with some friends of ours, both of which have a huge amount of free time on their hands.  One was unemployed at the time and the other worked shifts where he had 3 or 4 days at a stretch off of work.

If you've ever played WOW or perhaps any other MMO, (Massively Multi-player Online), you realize quite quickly that there is no end to the gameplay.  There's always something coming down the pipe to help extend your playing time.  For example, by my last count, the highest level you could attain was 85.  When we started, the highest level you could attain was 60.  Then, you bought an expansion pack and the highest was 70, then you bought another pack and the highest jumped to 80.  I remember starting out and being a lowly level 10 and seeing people's high level characters with crazy fancy armor, weapons and mounts and feeling a bit overwhelmed.  These people had what they call, "End game", items, which means they waste hours each day play a great deal and brought down some crazy boss in an equally crazy dungeon to win those items.  Except, there truly are no "End game" items because by the time you get them, there's a new expansion out with fancier "End game" items.  Its basically the online version of "Keeping up with the Joneses".

It was also a huge nuisance when you have someone like me who enjoys the journey, clashing with one of our friends who likes to hurry up and get there, because why would you want to take it slow, its a race, come on!  Its a race to see who can have the most pretend money, the best pretend weapons, the nicest and strongest pretend armor and who can ride around on a fantastic pretend mount.

During this time, it was our dark period because Mike wasn't working and I was shouldering the financial responsibilities.  If you've ever experienced this, its a huge pile of stress.  And, when you work a moderate-high stress job, its not pretty.  Thus, Mike started hanging out online with his two friends mainly due to boredom, while I was at work.  We continued to play our characters together, but as we neared the highest level at the time, 70, things started to change.

We were in a cry-baby drama soaked grouping of whiny boys guild that held these weekly raids.  Except, it wasn't as simple as everyone gets together, goes into the dungeon and a couple hours later the dungeon is complete.  It went something like this:

7.30 pm - Everyone that wants to be in the raid assembles online to get ready to start at 8.00 pm.
8.00 pm - Not ready to start, still waiting for people.
8.30 pm - Some people join up, still waiting for others.
9.00 pm - Finally everyone's assembled, we go into the dungeon, fight a few enemies and bring down a minor boss.
9.45 pm - We are stalled because someone has to use the washroom, someone wants food or a drink.
10.10 pm - We start up again.
10.20 pm - We arrive at another boss.  The leader tells everyone what tasks they are going to do... ie Tanks go to the boss, Healers stay back - Mike was a healer, DPS' - which was my character - stay back and use whatever spell rotation makes you happy, watch the aggro so you don't pull the boss onto you.
10.25 pm - Ready to attack the boss.
10.26 pm - Someone missed the instructions, repeat.
10.28 pm - Something else has happened and we are waiting again. (Candy starting to yawn and swear at the computer at this point).
10.40 pm - Now everyone's back and can start the boss.
10.41 pm - Need to repeat the instructions....and on and on and on...

The one and only raid I was in went down like that.  We stayed on til nearly 1 am.  Needless to say I was not in the best mood the day after.  I'm grumpy enough when I do sleep, far less when I don't.  I told Mike that I was not doing that ever again.  And I didn't.  Except Mike continued to, because really what else could he have been doing at 11pm?

By this time, a little ball of fluff joined our home, Oct. 2008.  Naturally, when one is faced with a choice of a corgi puppy and a computer game, you must go to the puppy!  So, for a couple months, I didn't logon.  Why should I, when I have Gimli to play with and train and cuddle?

Between that time and April, when I finally killed the account, my playing was sporadic at best.  During that wonderful summer of 2009, Mike and I played a great deal mainly because I needed to escape, to vent my frustration and if I could do it legally by killing monsters, then so be it.  But, it started to wane a little bit again.  Even after the latest expansion pack, Cataclysm, my interest wasn't in it anymore.  Even though I created a character named, 'Corgwyn', my excitement for the game was gone.

It seemed from level 1-20, it was exciting and the leveling was fast.  Then, from 20-85, you began the slow, tedious grind.  As you gained more levels, there was more loot to be had, of course, but that required you to go into dungeons and work to figure out how to bring down the Boss.  Some people would go onto YouTube and post videos of how they made it through a dungeon, other people would somehow have enough fodder to fill multiple blog posts.  (I have enough trouble writing about my dog!).  The dungeons required time and they required the right set of people with the right set of skills to bring you through.  All of this sounded like work to me.  I had just spent the better part of 8 hours pouring over log files, reproductions and grumpy customers, why would I then want to spend more time taxing my brain to figure out how to get past this dungeon so I can maybe get an item?  I was paying a subscription twice a year so I could then sit and work???  All those months where I paid the subscription and I chose to live my life away from a computer was wasted money.  I should have just withdrawn the cash and burnt it.

By the time March 2011 rolled around, I was toying with the idea.  Then, the final nail in the coffin as it were, came when a new cool game came out and we all had to switch to this new game so we can get more pretend crap because it was better than WOW in some respects.  There was no way I was going to play two MMOs.  Instead I canceled my account.

I remember completing an "exit interview" of sorts.  You had to provide reasons why you were canceling, purely for Blizzard's analytics, so they could come up with better ways to combat their loss of customers.  But, for every reason I gave, they gave a counter-reason for why I should stay.  Finally I completed the interview and I was told that I could come back at any time and resurrect my account and characters.

I'm done, I'll only play games where its on my terms, not on anyone else's.  Like Dragon Age and Rock Band... I miss those two.

Flat fluff!

Gimli has this strange need to flatten himself almost totally.  He does it inside and outside and to me he looks like a big fat Anaconda lying in wait to pounce on an unsuspecting cookie or toy.

 

In the above picture, this was before he started rolling around on something stinky and came in smelling like pee pee.  I'm so glad he's going to the groomers on Friday!

My what big teeth you have!

And a cute black nose and a bubble tongue.

I wonder if he's discreetly asking for bubble tea?

I like fluffy butts and I cannot lie

Well I do.  Hey you would too if you saw this butt.  There's something about a corgi's bunny butt that is just the cutest thing ever.  Almost as cute as the corgi smile, but not quite.  Its even cuter than the Girl Scout that comes to your door hocking cookies.  What would you rather have a cute butt or a fat butt from eating too many cookies?


(And no, that's not poo on his butt in this picture, I checked.)

Wordless Wednesday - I like to run!