Oh Mooooooley :'(

The poor baby.

I picked him up last night after his castration and dental cleaning. The poor kid has blue balls. Literally.

He was very excited to see me, he even peed on me twice. (Oh no! So the problem didn't go away?) And then after he settled he rested his head on my feet and looked up at me. Awww :( I brought Lulu back to the vet too- she had a nasty red thing on her tummy which turned out to be a broken stinger. It was removed by the vet and she's healing now.

Anyhow since Moley could walk a little, at home I parked and carried Lulu and walked Moley on the leash. About 15 steps later, Moley sat down and refused to walk. After 2 minutes of unsuccessful coaxing, I had no choice but to pick him up and carry the both of them upstairs. I must have looked silly... a huge bag, carrying a tiny pup and an overgrown pup with bleeding balls. Awww poor kids.

When we got home Moley tried to find a comfortable place to sleep but I think it hurts him to lie down. Sometimes he just sat up with his head hanging down and his eyes closed and you could see his body whimpering. And also he kept getting near me to cuddle up on my lap. Finally I couldn't take seeing him in so much pain so I gave him one of his pain killer pills early, and let him sleep in my lap. In about 20 minutes he was knocked out so I replaced my legs with pillows and he slept like that on the floor for a while.

This morning he woke up with more energy but I can tell it still hurts him when he tries to jump on the bed. He got about 10 minutes of play with Lulu and now I'm preparing to take him to the vet for a quick check-up.

I'm starting to feel the weight of this responsibility. I woke up entirely exhausted today (Lulu had another 5am potty break, then refused to go back to sleep). I have a million things to do including studying for finals, prepping for graduation (buying the cap & gown, etc) and cleaning the house.

I just hope I can survive until my graduation next weekend.

Picture of the Day... (Yes- she is actually sleeping!)

I am officially satisfied enough with my results at Sunset Tanning to recommend them. I go to their new West LA location:

1856 S. SEPULVEDA
ACROSS FROM SPORTS CLUB/L.A.
TEL: (310) 268 8262

I bought a combination package of the S-Class and Sunboard bed.

Spray Tan: I haven't tried the Mystic Tan but I have tried another Sunless Tanning Spray at a different tanning salon. The spray I used sprays your body vertically once on each side and has an instant bronzer in it. I hated it. It's no different than applying a self-tanner. The instant bronze was a weird color and it dripped all over my body, leaving streaks the first day. Then the actual self-tanner that was supposed to develop in 3 hours wasn't dark at all, so I felt it was a waste. I hear the Mystic Tan is supposed to be much better: you stand on a magnetic field that attracts the solution to your body evenly. Catherine did this a couple of days ago and her results were much better than mine. She got good, even color with minimal streaking.

Sunboard Tanning Bed: Very intensive on the upper body. It is supposed to be a high pressure system that distributes the UV rays throughout the entire bed but I felt like it was only on my face/shoulders. It was VERY hot and uncomfortable, good thing I turned up the music to distract myself. It was cool that it didn't close though, so I did not feel clausterphobic. I was on the bed for 10 minutes and did not get any redness afterwards. I did feel that I got darker on my upper body but did not notice a difference on my legs. One of the technicians told me afterwards that this type of bed is best used after the other bed. One of them was UVA Ray intensive and the other was UVB but I forgot which is which.

S-Class Tanning Bed: So far my favorite. This bed is airconditioned and built in aromatherapy and water mister. All very fun to play with while you are bored in the bed. Also another cool features is that both the body portion and the facial portion have 5 different levels of intensity that you can adjust. That way, I was able to adjust how much I wanted to expose my face. I usually turned the facial portion to a level 2 and left the body at a Level 5. The first time I did this bed I stayed for 9 minutes. The second time, I stayed for 11 minutes. I got more color instantly but my back was itchy/red for a day. Not any worse than a sunburn though.

So anyways I've been 3 times and I'm pretty happy with my color so far. My skin is a little bit dry though. Here are my recommendations for first-timers.

- A week before you begin tanning, get into the habit of exfoliating yourself in the shower. MOR makes a great Green Tea Sugar body polish that does the trick. Exfoliate once every few days to get your skin used to the cell renewing process.

- Always moisturize. After the shower, before bed, the more you moisturize, the better your color will turn out.

- Start off with a spray tan. This will give you a color boost and get yourself used to having a little color. (Since you will probably have to change the make-up you use, etc.) Also, do a session on a tanning bed the same day. Start off with the S-Class for at least 3 sessions then move on to the Sunboard. From there to maintain, switch back and forth between the two machines. There is a technical reason behind doing this that the lady explained to me but I forgot what.

- Buy a package. Individual tanning sessions can get very expensive and you don't get any results from just going one time. A package will give you a good deal and usually they throw in a couple of free sessions if you are a new customer.

- Buy an accelerator. I use the silver/green bottle of the CFX (I think that's what it's called) because there is also a little bit of self-bronzer in there.

- Just as you would soothe red skin after sun exposure, treat your skin after your tanning sessions too. Moisturize, use cooling lotion, whatever it takes.

- For the first couple of sessions, go every 3 days. No matter what the person says, I don't think you need to go everyday. Give your skin some time to settle down, moisturize, and repair itself before going back.

Lulu is getting naughtier by the hour! She is fighting with Moley a lot. Moley gets really annoyed when she bites, i.e. his ears or my feet. He growls at her then she throws a hissy fit. She definitely has a lot of energy. Anyways, enough about her! I have done too much thinking and talking about her since I’ve gotten her so it’s time to move on to other things…

Moley is getting neutered tomorrow! I’m so worried. I hope everything goes okay.

Okay, okay. No more about dogs. How about a little bit about food? I am SO FULL! I ate dinner at Kagaya, a shabu-shabu restaurant in Little Tokyo. This place wasn’t like the usual Shabu-Shabu places we go to… their specialty is the Kobe beef dish… $98 a plate! … and I ate probably 3 plates to myself! Okay, let’s say I ate 2 plates. I ate King crab legs, raw oysters, sashimi, beef tongue, and who knows what else. It was a BIG meal. Oh and I had a yummy banana dessert. There were about 18 of us- we ate with Anton+ Jen, and Lia’s family who was visiting from Indonesia. The tab must have run up to about $5 grand! I think we just paid for the restaurant’s rent for the month. But the savory melt-in-your-mouth beef was delish. Just the right amount of plumpness and fat =) The raw oysters were pretty good too, rather than the traditional horseradish/cocktail sauce/lemon, these were served with ponzu sauce, daikon radish and green onions. And just for Yona's reading pleasure: In case you forget, Kobe beef is Japanese, where they take the cows and feed it lots of Sake and massage them so that they become fat and lazy... and juicy to eat =) But enough about food...

I saw Harry Potter sometime over the weekend. We saw it in the IMAX theater at the Bridge. I’m glad that theater has assigned seating so we don’t have to wait in line for 40 minutes before the movie like AMC Century City. It has been such a while since I’ve read the 3rd Harry Potter book that I didn’t remember too many details. The movie was okay~ I thought it was a bit confusing and I actually read the book. For people who haven’t read the book, it might be too confusing. Richard fell asleep and I had a tough time explaining the movie to him. Also, I didn’t really like the style of this new European director. I thought the movie was a little dry, and lacked the creativity and cinematography of the first two.

Well, since I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a while, I better get to bed early. Wait, it’s already 1am? That’s not early. Let’s just hope Lulu doesn’t decide to go poop at 3am again.

Here she is again bothering her big brother... and since he wouldn't wake up, she fell asleep on his arm! Augh. How cuuuute.