He might be short, but he plays a mean game

So, what do you do when you've had a long day at work? Corgi Ball, of course!

"Mom, can we go outside? Please Mom? Please? Mom? Please? Outside?"












He plays a mean guard:















He tries to steal the ball:















The dog seriously LOVES to play basketball. One of these days I'm going to YouTube his ass actually using his front paws to dribble the basketball. It's pretty hysterical.

The cuteness factor is somewhat outweighed by the fact that he is annoying as crap when anyone has any kind of spherical object out and whatever you give him will inevitably be coated in slimy drool. Ew.

But I'm hoping that when he finally makes the CBA (Corgi Basketball Association), he will be able to buy himself this big fat doghouse he's been eyeing lately. From the website:

"Treat your pet like royalty! This estate house designed and built by Alan Mowrer, can be constructed with countless interior and exterior options. Whether it is cable, running water, electricity, central air or a wireless communication system, Alan can accommodate your wishes. Other architectural styles are also available from fairy tale cottages to rustic cabins or even a miniature replica of your home. Comprehensive interior design services are also available through designer Michelle Pollak who helps clients with a variety of interior details such as window treatments, moldings, paint colors, furnishings, rugs and flooring including wood, marble or Mexican tile. Each house is a custom piece; with Alan and Michelle the possibilities are endless."

For the small sum of $6,050. Yowza. I wonder if it has a stripper pole in it for the bassett hounds he likes so much?

Ahem.

I had a milestone day at work today. The Big Headquarters Project that I finished back in October 2005 finally got it's LEED certification and it ended up going "Silver" after all instead of just plain ol' "Certified".

To tell you a teensy bit about LEED without putting you to sleep, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and it is a program started by the U.S. Green Building Council. The theory is to encourage designers and contractors to build structures that are not only healthier for the environment, but healthier for the building occupants as well. I became a LEED Accredited Professional in 2006 and it's become one of my specialties. Anyhow, you have to accumulate all kinds of documentation of how you meet these design criteria set by the USGBC and it's not a task for the lazy or faint-of-heart. Sometimes, the approval process can take months and months between the initial submission (which requires paperwork from all of the design teams and the contractors which can take some time to wrangle) and all the audits that it goes through.

So to say that today was a great day for me is an understatement. And then to top that off, I heard back on the initial audit on the LEED project at my alma mater and received the nicest compliment from the architect. This guy is a well-known expert in green building design, and he said, "Liz, this is the best contractor submission I have ever seen in my experience doing LEED projects." It was very, very flattering - I still have a few things to tweak, but the vast majority of it all passed with flying colors.

And tonight, I have this to look forward to:

See those lovely pages? Just some of the floor plans I was working on today on the latest job from hell. That is a flooring study, since we are now in our fourth design change to the building and no one has a clue in hell what floors are going where anymore. It took me almost all day just to do four pages, and I have one more to conquer tonight so EPOD can revamp the project schedule tomorrow.

And I need to find something to wear tomorrow that will accentuate the five different highlighter colors on my hands and arms. That should be fun. At least it is distracting everyone from looking at my nose.