Vintage Lulu

So I decided to be a complete cheeseball and play around with posing Lulu for a portrait. Then I made it look vintage and printed a giant canvas print for $6.99 (Mother's Day special!). I am so putting this up on the wall. In my sisters' apartment. Heehee.

Notes for next time: widen the depth of field and go for sharpness all around. I'm over this fuzzy bit.

New Toy: Canon 5D Mark II

So I finally bit the bullet and plunged head first in a dslr purchase. I've always had interest in photography but have always been too intimidated to use anything more complicated than a point & shoot. The BF gave me a Leica DLUX-4 for Christmas 2 years ago and though it's a great camera, it doesn't reward you unless you know what you are doing.

So for the past month I've been toying with the idea of getting a dslr. Working at a creative agency, I am surrounded by photographers so within a couple of days I heard enough opinions to narrow my sights on a Canon 5D. The question now was do I buy a used 5D or splurge on a new 5D Mark II? Then I started getting worried -- what if I spend all of that money on a camera and I learn that I am no good? Do I start with a 50D instead, which is half the price? The Samy's Camera Presidents' Day no-tax sale made my decision for me. Not only did I splurge and get the 5DM2, but I bought it with a kit so it came with a 24-105mm f/4L IS USM AF lens.

After taking my first test shot with the camera, I'm instantly happy with my purchase. The picture of Lulu below was taken on program mode (I don't know what I'm doing, remember? :P) in the low lighting of my media room and I was immediately impressed with how much warmth and rich color it captured. I'm excited to see how else I can incorporate photography into my day-to-day life, as both a way to capture memories and to add dimension to the mundane.

Crazy little pups think they're so cute.

Oh, puppy shenanigans.

Spent the morning with the pups today. And by morning, I mean 5:30AM to 7:30AM. Who knew that I could be up and about in the wee hours of the morning? I haven't slept in since... well, since we got Cora.

Lulu is definitely warming up to Cora now. She lets Cora snuggle up next to her and is pretty tolerant when Cora climbs on her to chew on her ear. Also they playbite for a good 30 minutes straight in the mornings. I've even caught her wagging her tail a couple of times! It's interesting to see that Lulu uses a soft bite when playing with Cora -- I put my hand in between the "my mouth is bigger than yours" biting exchange once and noticed that Lulu is very gentle whereas Cora's bites are super sharp.

Please let me sleep!

I can't believe it's been about 3 weeks with the new puppy and I haven't had the chance to write a single thing about her! Exactly 3 weeks ago we went to Sandra's co-worker's house in Lawndale to look at her 7-week-old puppies. There were 10 total but only 6 survived.

Max immediately fell in love with the runt of the litter, who they called Pookie. She was the smallest of the group but had the cutest face. Jo-Anne met with us and picked up the largest of the group, Tiger.



We weren't fully prepared for a puppy so our first stop was Centinela Pet Feed. We named her "Cora" in the car -- short for Coraline. Her skinny body and long tail reminds me of the rats in the movie. She knocked out in the car and didn't do much. She looked so frail for a 7-week old puppy. I remembered Lulu as meatier and more playful at this age but I thought maybe it's because she was the runt and was malnourished.



Jo-Anne called her puppy Lady and the next week was puppy week at Rapp. We took turns watching the pups while we both worked/had meetings but most of the time they played or slept in my cube. Lady seemed to be twice Cora's size. They were very feisty when they played together. After that first week, Lady stayed with us for the next 10 days while Jo-Anne was on vacation. Luckily, I also had quite a few days off between my summer flex days and 4th of July holiday.



We always had to keep a close eye on Lady because she would steal Lulu and Cora's food when we were not watching. She was always so hungry! She seemed to be about a week ahead in development and did things like bark, jump, run up and down the stairs a full week ahead of Cora. She was also more playful and rambunctious.

After two weeks of puppy terror Lady went back home with Jo-Anne and Cora was stuck with Lulu. Lulu is a lot more tolerant of Cora without Lady around and even lets her play with her face in the mornings. The other day I completely stepped on Cora's leg and she cried for about 30 seconds during which Lulu came quickly to see what was the matter. I'm hoping these two get to become best buds so they can keep each other company while we're at work.





So the biggest difference in my life so far is that I have not had a good solid 6 hours of sleep in 3 weeks! Cora wakes up every morning at 4-4:30AM to ask to go outside, and then wakes up again at 6am to play. No matter how much we try to tire her out in the evening, she always wakes up at the same time. At first I was worried that she was unable to hold "it" longer than 4 hours but during the day she's shown that she can. Not sure why she seems to have an internal alarm clock that likes waking me at the crack of dawn.

Another Warehouse Classic

Once upon a time I went on a trip (I can't remember where) and Yona documented "A Day in the Life" of the doggies as they went to work to temp for me during my vacation.

Here is Lulu in a meeting with Moley.


Elaine the slave-driver must have cracked the whip and forced these two to do inventory.


And of course, following in my footsteps, Lulu ends the day with some shopping, as she tries on various things in front of my favorite white mirror.


circa 2006

Scooting around with Lulu

I was just telling Max about this yesterday... I'm so glad Yona captured this in her blog. =)

When Jimmy got his fake version of the Segway, I was determined to get either Moley or Lulu to ride with me around the warehouse. Moley was so scared he kept peeing all over the scooter and carpet around it so that was no good. Lulu was a better candidate for co-captain.



After a few attempts, I got her to ride with me up and down the hallways. Of course it wasn't without "trapping" her between my legs to make her feel safe.





After a while she warmed up to the idea of scooting around with me. That is, until I took a turn too fast and got in a scooter "accident". We hit the wall and Lulu jumped off, never wanting to get near the scooter again.

circa 2006

Venza Dog Days

We all went to a Toyota Venza dog event in Pasadena today. I've been working on the Venza launch campaign for months now... I think we started when Elaine was still here last year. Anyways, I was looking forward to checking out both the dog event and the Venza since I'd never been in one.

They had a small set-up in the parking lot but it had a lot of things going on: free donuts and coffee, dog treats, training packets, Toyota dog gear as well as two dog-equipped Venza's for owners and doggies alike to jump in and explore. They took doggie shots and also had a station set up to make your own screensaver of your dog licking cheese or peanut butter on plexiglass. We had a hard time getting Lulu interested in licking.

After checking out the Venza-related stuff, we headed into the park to let the dogs run around. Lulu was more excited than usual to run around in this park. (Must have been the cleaner Pasadena air)

Some action shots of Lulu...









Finally taking a rest...

Daily Lulu

Thinking of starting a blog called Daily Lulu where I can post a cute picture of Lulu everyday. So hypothetically, if this were the blog called Daily Lulu, this is where I would describe the picture above:

Lulu hearts pillows. Here is Lulu knocked out, perfectly balanced on top of a pillow, after a quick run around the country club.

Lulu's Naked Dog Haircut

Ok! Go! Eat!

We've been having problems getting Lulu to eat for the last couple of months. I think it's a mixture of two things: she doesn't like the taste of her new Wellness CORE food and she has gotten in the habit of making eating a game, waiting for one of us to give her a cue to start eating.

She often stands right next to the bowl for minutes at a time, with her nose just inches from her food, waiting. The weird thing is that when we play this game with her with treats, she usually goes for the food when I say "Ok!" but when she does this with her food, she almost always ignores all of the cue words.

Weirdo.