Got home from work today and Jed was still in the yard! I stressed out all day thinking he would dig himself out and run away, but he didnt.

My boss, his wife and two kids, an older woman colleague and my friend/colleague came over for tea and coffee this afternoon, and so that my boss's wife and my other work colleague could see the house. (My boss has already seen it, and so had my friend/work colleague - but she was just there for moral support lol)

Spent 50c on a can of coke today at work. Another work colleague *may* have swine flu, but i think it's a long shot - i think she just wants some days off, and some attention (she's THAT type of person).

I have been so busy (doing what, I don't know) that I haven't even noticed I have been doing once-a-week grocery shopping. Usually I have had to run into the store atleast twice during the week to get something I need, but lately, not!

Last night I had a grand plan to make Baked Romani Gnocchi - but it all fell through after everyone left at 5pm and I couldn't find the recipe, so we had toasted sandwhiches for dinner instead, hehe. The bread was fresh baked today, does that count? (Never mind the baked beans I had, or the tinned spaghetti DF had). It's our one plunge into bad food that we have, along with takeaway pizza every couple of weeks. Normally I make everything from scratch out of fresh ingredients - but my guilty pleasure is toasted sandwhiches and baked beans. Combine the two and whala! Terrible eating habits! LOL. DF prefers the spaghetti in the can. We probably use half a can each in a night and then he uses the rest for his breakfasts.

Tonight I am making a Lamb Ragout for DF in the slow cooker. I might make some mexcian beans and have that with rice tonight instead.

I have to buy a small birthday gift for a friends 28th birthday. She is the wife of a guy, B, who worked with DF's friend, R. B got sacked at the start of all the GEC nonsense, but found a job he is much happier with. DF's friends are all a very tightly knit group who have been friends with each other since primary school and high school, but somehow B managed to wrestle his way in this past year and is well liked by everyone, along with his wife M. They are just very friendly and easy to get along with people. (They were the ones that bought us that lovely bottle of wine for our housewarming - I don't even drink red wine and I drank it, it was that nice!)

So you can see my dilemma, I don't know them very well, but seeing as they bought us a gift for our housewarming I feel obliged to get atleast a small present for M's birthday. Our problem is that we haven't spent enough time with her to know what she likes. DF wanted to screenprint something for her - but the problem there is that unless you know a girl fairly well, you can't get a shirt for her (the issue with sizing - what if you get it too big? you'll hurt her feelings. what if you get it too small? you'll also hurt her feelings and she won't ever wear it!). Then we thought about a blank bag that we could screenprint something on, but there's the problem of not knowing her very well - so what if we printed something she didn't like?

So I suggested some body stuff. Girly things like lotion, scrubs, foot soakers etc always go down well don't they? I could get a gift pack from the Body Shop, and it probably wouldn't be any more than $30 and still seem slightly fancy...?

Anyway, I am sure we will figure it out.

DF is going to make a kennel for Jed. We were joking that we could make it weatherboard to match our house, hehe. That would be so cute!

DF bought him some toys yesterday. He seems to favour a bone made out of rawhide (?). He's been chewing on it a lot and it's hardly made a dent, so I am thinking that's a very good buy!

One thing happened yesterday: we were on the balcony and Jed was below it (could see him through the cracks in the deck). DF looked down and goes 'What the HELL!' and said he saw Jed ON the downstairs table. I said it was probably just his eyes, but we went downstairs and there were paw prints on it! Now, not only is it bad for him to be jumping on a table, that is not our main worry (a few taps on the nose and he will realise he is not allowed to do that). No, our main concern is that the table height is the same as the fence DF put up!!! Which basically means at any time if he wanted to, Jed could jump the fence and stroll away. So here we were being worried that he would DIG himself out, and he can just jump it!!! It's not a surprise that a dog can jump, of course, but he is a fairly bulky boy - he does not seem like he could jump very high. The pictures show him to be normal sized, but I think his previous carers had over fed him a lot.

Which leads me to thinking, why hasn't he run off yet? He was alone all day yesterday but didn't leave. So he must like it here. I am thankful he is obedient in that sense, that he stays with you, even when DF was building the fence. I guess it means he has adopted us as his owners now, as we have adopted him as our pet.