Category Archive: Lola

Run, Lisa, Run!

Posted by Lisa On April 19th, 2010

Alright, blog world, I’ve got an important announcement to make…are you ready? Okay, here it goes…I’m going to run my first half-marathon this year!!! 🙂

Kimberly, a friend who I used to work with at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, and I have decided to train together for the Long Beach Half-Marathon in October (on 10/17 to be exact)! She’s still living in Long Beach so we’re going to be training long-distance together. We’ve already been at it for a few weeks, so I thought it was about time I made the official announcement on here. 🙂

We’re both avid bloggers (one of her other blogs about her adorable sons can be found here) and so we decided to make a blog together about our journey! We’re working on updating it more, so right now it might look a little bare in terms of posts. But hopefully you’ll all become followers over there too!

http://friscobeachblog.blogspot.com

I’ve been running with Lola three days a week and this past Friday I asked Kevin to go along with me and to my surprise he said yes! We went to Golden Gate Park to run along the trail.

I gotta get him in workout clothes more often! 🙂

Two sweaty, happy folks

We decided to reward ourselves with a DELICIOUS lunch at San Francisco Meats & Delicatessen. We’d been there once before and remembered how freaking good their sandwiches are so made the drive from GG Park to Ocean Avenue just to get our hands on a couple of their sammies…and boy were we happy we did!

I got the smoked turkey on Dutch Crunch bread with everything on it…mmm…

Kevin got the hot salami with pickles, lettuce and mayo on a sourdough roll

At least we worked out before eating there, I guess it’s better than us just driving over there without working out all day…right?? 🙂

On Saturday night we were invited to a housewarming party for some new friends of ours. Terri and Scott are friends of Mika and Matt who we met through our friend Cynthia from Long Beach (Phew! That was a mouthful) They recently bought a new home in Concord (just past Walnut Creek) and we had a great time at their shindig. I didn’t take any pictures at the party, but Mika, Kevin and I took a quick trip to Baskin Robbins (Mika’s pregnant, so she was our excuse, haha) and lo-and-behold what do I find….?

Lisa’s Hot Dogs & Burritos shop!

Now that’s an interesting combination…

Anyone interested in trying my house-dog?

Their reviews look pretty good on Yelp, so maybe next time we go visit Terri & Scott we can have lunch at my hot dog shop. 😉

Spring is here!

Posted by Lisa On April 11th, 2010

We have been thoroughly enjoying the delightful spring weather (well, up until yesterday that is!)

Last week we took care of some gardening. The weeds were overgrown and taking over! We showed them who’s boss…

And we even found a cute little critter (we think it was a salamander!)

On Friday 4/9 we made the most of my furlough day and took a trip to Fort Funston, which is basically dog heaven.

Lola enjoying the views off the cliff

Let’s just say we kept our eyes on the sky

The extremely steep climb down the cliff to the beach! It was kind of comical watching the dog walkers trying to walk 5+ dogs on leash down this hill (or back up the hill).

Lola is a huge fan of the water, even the cold SF ocean water!

Lola’s one happy pup!

And then we had to climb back UP the hill…

A very satisfied Lola (she rarely sleeps in the car, so we knew we did a job well done)

On Saturday 4/10 Jessie hosted her first-ever Game Night (right up our alley!)

It was a potluck and we feasted that night!

We brought just a few of our many games–Balderdash, Taboo and Apples to Apples.

Cathy trying to get Team Intuition to guess her word, and Josh ready to “zap” her if she said one of the off-limits words.

Kevin, Jessie P. and Lisa R.

Jessie working hard to get her team to guess her word! And can you tell I loved being the “zapper”? 😉

A reenactment of some fun Taboo moments

Jessie’s game night was a total success! Good games, good food and good company. 🙂

Sunny days in SF!

Posted by Lisa On March 28th, 2010

We have been thoroughly enjoying the past two weeks of sunshine in the city. Some mornings when I get up and the sky is blue and clear of any clouds and the wind is nice and warm, I honestly feel as though I’m back in Long Beach! It’s been so great to be able to spend so many sunny days outdoors (and I’ve regained some of my tan back, woohoo! 🙂 ) Here are some of the fun things we’ve been doing with our beautiful days…

Nothing says “warm weather” quite like a BBQ!

Lola and I spent one afternoon with Jessie and the boys she nannies for (McKinley Square Park)

Brandt showing off his static-y hair

Jess and Colby

Lola is a huge fan of the warm weather and she’s been spending a lot of time outdoors. She’s had her way with her basketball and it’s not much of a ball anymore!

We’ve been frequenting Golden Gate Park lately and have been taking our time exploring Stow Lake and Strawberry Hill and the surrounding areas with all of the great trails.

Kevin, Lola and Stow Lake

A waterfall in the middle of Golden Gate Park

Adventures with Lola

Posted by Lisa On March 12th, 2010

I don’t have much to report but wanted to post something since it’s been a while! Here are some fun photos/videos of our Lola girl…enjoy!

Drunk with happiness!

What’s up, Dad?

She’s one jolly dog!

Here are a couple of videos of her playing with a huge cardboard roll that she’s in love with. She’s intrigued by how our voices are thrown when we talk into it:

Even dogs need a pillow!

Posted by Lisa On February 22nd, 2010

Kevin snapped this awesome shot of Lola today through our kitchen window. He peeked out and lo-and-behold Lola fell asleep on her basketball! What a crackup. That girl never ceases to make us laugh!

Who woulda thought a basketball could actually look like a comfortable pillow? 😉

Lola

Posted by Lisa On February 16th, 2010

Okay, so my plan to update this blog through the present didn’t really happen like I had hoped! I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll all be updated by the end of this weekend (someone help me keep to it, wouldja? 😉 )

Most of you know the ordeal that Kevin and I went through with Lola at the beginning of the year but for posterity’s sake 😉 I’d like to post a rundown of the events:

Day 1, Mon. Jan. 4: Lola was vomitting, had diarrhea, and wouldn’t eat or drink
Day 2, Tues.: $500 worth of tests/x-rays at SPCA, sent home with meds, the problem continued. Called them back, they suggested hospitalizing her for 1 1/2 days (estimated $1,000).
Day 3, Wed.: A co-worker recommended his vet, they also suggested hospitalizing at ER hospital down the street (est. $500). Other option to give fluids intravenously and send her home (which we did). Problem got worse, she woke up with–and I apologize in advance for the graphic details–diarrhea that looked like pure blood. Again they wanted to send her to ER hospital (est. $500) but after seeing the struggle that Kevin and I were going through to see the bill grow by leaps and bounds each day, he gave us an amazing option: though normally they don’t hospitalize pets at their facility because no staff on duty, for $100 Lola could stay at their facility and the doctor said that he would stay at his parent’s house in the city so that he could check in on her during the night…amazing. Took blood sample.
Day 4, Thurs.: Still no improvements, we were afraid we might have to put her down. Blood test results came in: white blood cell count and albumin (a blood protein) levels were dangerously low. Doctor said that if levels didn’t get better, she’d need a plasma transfusion. We never got an estimate but we knew that we could never afford a procedure such as that. Lola was extremely lethargic (barely lifted her head) and still not eating/drinking. Kept her hooked up to fluids/antibiotics another night.
Day 5, Fri.: Doctor retook blood test mid-day (hopeful that after 1 1/2 days of being hooked up we’d see improvements). During our visit she seemed to have improved by leaps and bounds! She actually stood up to greet us and went for a walk outside. Blood test results: white blood cell count almost back to normal, albumin level still extremely low which meant is was still life-threatening. The doctor wanted to keep her through Monday to make sure that Lola’s body was given a chance to recover. She knew that the cost of hospitalizing her for 3 more days/nights would be impossible for us so she offered to keep Lola at the facility, hooked up to fluids/antibiotics until Monday evening without charging us a penny. And on top of that, their office is closed on Sundays but she was going to come into the office to administer Lola’s meds and check in on her. She did this for us even though Lola hadn’t even been a patient of hers for a week. It was in that moment that I was reminded that there are some truly amazing people in the world, and our vet is one of them. My heart was overflowing with appreciation.
Days 6 & 7, Sat. 7 Sun.: Slow improvements in energy level and desire to eat/drink.
Day 8, Mon.: She was finally able to keep food, water and meds down so she came home that evening!
Week 1 of recovery: When she came home she was skin & bones (she lost 6 pounds, and for a 48 pound dog that’s quite a drop in one week) and still had very little energy. But each day Lola regained more and more strength and at our one week checkup with the doctor she was so impressed with her recovery!
Today, six weeks since she first showed signs of illness, Lola is doing FANTASTIC! Other than her “battle wounds” (the shaved areas of her front legs where they had to put the IV’s in) that are still showing, you honestly could not imagine that just 6 weeks ago she was hospitalized and on the verge of death. We have absolutely grown a new appreciation for our little girl Lola and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about how lucky we are. She is absolutely the best thing that has happened to us in our move to SF and we hope to have her as a part of our family for years and years to come!

This is one of my favorite pictures of Lola, I had it up in our house while she was hospitalized to help keep me thinking positive and remind me of how she looked when she was healthy and full of energy!

Christmas & New Year’s in Long Beach

Posted by Lisa On January 28th, 2010

Kevin and I were fortunate enough to be able to spend a nice chunk of time in Long Beach visiting with family and friends for the holidays. Kevin was out of school early so flew down a week before Christmas. Lola and I held down the fort at home while he was gone and with Jessie drove down at around 2am on Saturday 12/19. That morning we had a delicious breakfast with Kevin at Nick’s Burritos in Seal Beach (haven’t had Nick’s yet? You must!!) And that afternoon we were lucky enough to be in town to celebrate Sophie’s 3rd birthday!

Little miss Fancy Nancy in all her glory!

Me and the birthday girl

After most of the party people left, we decided to introduce Lola to Kevin’s parent’s neighbor’s dogs Tango and Cash, two cute Boxer puppies.

The majority of our time in LB we stayed at my mom’s house. We were a little worried about how Lola and Luke (my family dog) would get along. The first day we took extra precautions when introducing the two of them because we know how territorial Luke can be so we introduced them in the front yard. They immediately were interested in each other and when we took them in the backyard they were sniffing around and sniffing each other and just getting a feel for each other. Luckily, they ended up getting along just fine! They were quite the duo–Luke the small, old fart and Lola the big, rambunctious bundle of energy–but they quickly became close “cousins”. 🙂

The week leading up to Christmas was full of catching up with folks we hadn’t seen in a while. My mom hosted a holiday party on Sun. 12/20 which was a lot of fun. On the 22nd we went out to dinner with our good friends Heather and Gabriel (Heather and I met each other working for the OC Girl Scouts) and we had a delicious meal at Outback Steakhouse and it was even more enjoyable because of the great company we had! My brother Derek and his friend Emily also joined us for some shenanigans that night. 🙂 On the 23rd my mom took me, Jessie and Kevin out for our Christmas gifts…Chinese massages! It was such a nice treat and I wasn’t in quite as much pain afterwards as I was last time we got them! We definitely need to find a place like that here in SF. Christmas Eve we spent with my family–my mom, Jessie, Derek and my Aunt Tina–and we had a really great time making homemade pizzas and sharing gifts. That night intead of staying at my mom’s which we had been doing we stayed the night at Kevin’s parent’s house to be ready for the festivities in the morning!

Christmas Eve (I think I was being forced to watch some weird Japanese movie with Kevin and Thomas, haha…go look it up “Big Man Japan” and you’ll know what I’m talking about)

On Christmas morning Thomas and I drove out to Riverside to go pick up Sophie to celebrate Christmas with the family. It was so great seeing the little munchkin after almost 6 months of not seeing her! The morning and afternoon we spent at Dorothy & George’s house, hanging out, opening gifts, and snacking on holiday treats.

Josh & Sophie showing off their hats

Even Lola got some gifts (thank you Judith, Luke, Joshua and Katelyn)!

Christmas night we went over to our good friend Judy Rotty’s house to celebrate with her and her daughter Lisa. We had a delicious dinner and had a great time playing the Wii.

Sophie distracting Aunt Sarah while playing Rockband

Cowgirl Sophie!

Kevin playing Sophie’s favorite game: Toss up! (though it was more like a workout for Kevin than a game!)

Check out that hair!

One of the best parts of the day was that the Sophienator spent the night at the Edmonds’ house and we did too! It was great being able to see her in her pj’s playing fort with Thomas before bedtime.

The week after Christmas we went to lunch with our good friend Susan (Susan and I also used to work together at the OC Girl Scouts) to Open Sesame in Long Beach. That week we were also reunited with Shige, a student from Japan who lived at my mom’s house a couple of years ago while he was studying English at CSULB. It was SO great to see him after such a long time away! One of the things we had to do while he was in town was make a visit to Island’s Burgers which, when he first came to visit, he called his burger “The #1 burger of my life”. And they sure didn’t disappoint!

Kevin, me, Shige and my mom at Island’s!

Mmmm…burgers…

For New Year’s we took Shige along with us to hang out with friends at JJ’s Karaoke in Tustin! We spent 4 hours singing the night away with Alison, Seth, Brianne, Brian and Allison. After karaoke we went to Allison’s new apartment in Costa Mesa for the countdown!

Creating an awesome music list takes lots of concentration!

Alison and Shige

Alison & me singing our signature song “Proud Mary” by Tina Turner! (We were “rollin’ down the river” at this point in the song!)

About two minutes after the countdown we rushed home to catch a few hours of sleep before our looooong drive back up to SF the next morning (we left the house at 6am!) Overall it was a GREAT trip to Southern California!!

A thank you to our visitors, anxious puppies, and Golden Gate Park

Posted by Lisa On November 21st, 2009

Howdy folks!

I just had the best surprise a few minutes ago and that prompted me to get my butt on here and write another post…a few weeks ago I added a map to my blog to show where people are logging into our blog (you can see it on the right column) and lo and behold we’ve had quite a few hits from all over the world! Of course, Southern California has the most hits but I believe I can make a shout out to a few people outside of CA that I think have been visiting: Erin in Illinois, Sneha in NYC and our farthest visitor ever…Shige in Japan!! It’s so amazing to know that people are actually interested in what we’re up to and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for continuing to read our blog! Also, there’s someone who logged in from it looks to be Nebraska or Kansas though I’m not sure who it is…so post a comment if it’s you so we’ll know who you are and can thank you properly! 🙂

I’ll update about Thanksgiving in another post later this week but a few things that we’ve been up to since my last post…

Lola’s been acting up a lot lately and it started to really get to me and put a damper on things. Kevin leaves for school between 2-3pm every afternoon and I get home between 5-6pm so Lola is left outside for a few hours a day. Each night when I’d get home, I could expect to be greeted by an excited Lola but also a nice pile of crap that she tore up while she was alone. I’ve come home to a bag of charcoal torn up and strewn across the yard, the hose pulled off the stand with a few holes added to it, her water and food bowls torn up to shreds, and the best yet…her doggy bed torn up and the stuffing all over the yard. It was getting extremely difficult being happy with her in the evenings after having to clean up her crap and knowing that money was just being chewed up and spit out each day.

So one night last week when I came home to a bag of wood chips torn up I decided to Google the issue and see if I could find any solutions. Come to find out…she has anxiety problems! (Go figure…) Each time we would leave her, she’d get separation anxiety and would act out as a result. The most eye-opening part of my research was that us humans were the ones causing the problem in the first place. Something I found extremely interesting and also quite sad is that separation anxiety is the #2 reason why dogs are put up for adoption and euthanized…the dogs seem unruly and just plain ol’ “bad” and so are given up…but in reality the humans are the ones that need to be trained to fix this behavior. I found two great articles on this topic (links here and here) and Kevin and I have been working really hard this past week to help Lola with her anxiety problems. It really seems to be working…she’s getting more used to being by herself even when we’re home (so that when we do leave it’s not such a shock to her) and she’s starting to calm down before and after we leave so that our leaving is not such a big deal anymore. Tonight we were actually gone from 1-7:30pm and when we got home not a thing was torn up! 🙂 So far, so good!

Last weekend on Saturday we decided to take a trip to Golden Gate Park and have a picnic lunch. We went to a part of the park that’s pretty quiet and off-the-beaten-path (on this map, we were near number 25 in the key) and spent a great few hours in the sunshine, enjoying our sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies, and playing fetch with Lola. We’re trying to take advantage of the sunny days because we won’t see many of those for a while come December!

Lola anxiously awaiting Kevin to throw the ball for her

A very tired and happy Lola

Hanging out with mom

Our pretty little girl (who thinks she’s a model with that pose, haha)

Updates

Posted by Lisa On November 15th, 2009

This past week has been pretty stressful for me at work because it was our university’s time for review by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Luckily they’re allowing us to continue to run a teacher credential program (thank bajeezus!) though we have a few things we need to improve on, luckily nothing in my role is affected by that. I also came down with a bit of bronchitis (fun!) though luckily it wasn’t as bad as I’ve had it before and thank goodness it wasn’t the dreaded swine flu!

Lately we’ve been laying low over the weekends and just hanging out at home with Lola. On Saturday we had Jessie and the LOST fan group come over to our place for our mini-marathon (four episodes). Then that night we decided to take the BART downtown to walk around Union Square. Last week they put the large Christmas tree up and also the ice skating rink so we went to check those out and then got some yummy ice cream (even though it was pretty chilly last night!)

Kevin and I both have really enjoyed moving up to SF where living green is not only a part of the general public’s consciousness already but it’s also integrated into the law (where plastic shopping bags are forbidden to be used in major grocery chains and composting was just made the law for residents and businesses in October). Every year Green Festival s are hosted in major cities across the U.S. and this year’s SF Green Fest was this weekend so Kevin and I spent a few hours there today. There were tons of booths with different organizations and companies that are committed to sustainable living and they had great free samples and handouts. There were food booths and demonstrations and speakers and a lot of great information was being shared. Our favorite part was learning about the home composting system called the Worm Factory which seemed like the easiest and quickest way to home compost we’d ever heard of before.

When we got back to our neighborhood we decided to stop off for a late lunch to one of our new favorite spots called Cali Pho Nia. They have got some of the best bun (vermicelli noodles with veggies, a choice of meat, and fish sauce) I’ve ever had (bun [pronounced ‘boon’] is my favorite Vietnamese noodle dish ever and their grilled beef is the absolute best we’ve ever had!)

Not much else is going on in our little world…next weekend we’re going to visit our friends Stacey, Jay, Isabella and Tasi (see previous blog post about visiting them here) and we’re looking forward to having some visitors during Thanksgiving which is going to be a lot of fun. So we might not have much to blog about for a bit but don’t fret I’ll be sure to update again when there’s something worth updating you all about!

Hope all is well with you!!

Here are some cute photos of Lola to bring a smile to your face! 🙂

Sunny Sunday at Crissy Field

Posted by Lisa On September 20th, 2009

Today was a beautiful, hot sunny day in San Francisco so what better way to spend the afternoon than at Crissy Field with Kevin, Jessie and Lola? Crissy Field is in the Presidio and is a great dog beach right near the Golden Gate bridge. Though Lola had experienced the water at Granite Creek where we went camping in August, she hadn’t fully immersed herself in the water because it was so cold there. So this was the first time that Lola went all in and she absolutely loved it! It took her a little while and some prompting from Kevin to go deep into the water where she couldn’t touch the ground, but once she did there wasn’t any stopping her! She had a blast playing fetch and stomping and splashing around and I know that we’ll be back many more times!

Doesn’t look like much of a sunny day, eh?? The fog started coming in pretty strong by the time we got out there, but luckily it was still warm out.