true love is...

... letting him take your dog away.

this is nizhoni. (ni-show-nee) her name means beautiful in Navajo. she is so named because she was the ugliest dog we'd ever seen back when sister drove her across the country to leave her at my apartment. we were going for irony.


we were also stuck with nizhoni because our Navajo translator informed us (in a rather annoyed tone) that there is no Navajo word for sloth. its not my fault she looked a lot like this when she first came into our lives.

this is Sid the Sloth, from Ice Age, for those of you without kids or a love of disney/pixar animation

she is also affectionately known as nizhoni-pony, short-round, and chunky-monkey. what can i say, she has put on a bit of weight since her Sid the Sloth days. she is by far the friendliest dog i have ever known, though she can be a bit pushy at times. she is also currently in a bad mood because i trapped her in the bathroom and forced her to take a bath, but most of the time she's a pretty sweet dog.

she's my sweet dog but since mr. z is moving to Texas all by himself on Thursday, i'm letting him take her along for company. it will be the first time since i got nizhoni that the two dogs will be separated for anything longer than a few days, and we're not really sure how the dogs are going to react.

she leads a very difficult and tiring life, clearly

so why are mr. z and nizhoni leaving us? well, for those that don't know us personally, mr. z just took a job at Texas Tech but i have a year of pharmacy school to finish up. Fortunately my last year is all rotations so i can do them anywhere i want. Unfortunately, we did not know where mr. z was going to get a job last fall when i had to submit my rotation requests so i won't be doing them in Lubbock. Instead i will be moving around the country staying with friends and family. after the wedding in october, when I officially move out of ohio, mr. z will keep both dogs and i will rejoin the gang in Lubbock next June.

this also means that we are currently in the middle of sorting everything in our apartment into "things i can't live without and must keep here with me," "things that will be more easily moved by professionals than by me and a very small hatchback car and that must therefore go to Texas now," and "crap that we want to get rid of but that will suffice as my furniture for the next two and a half months." needless to say its been quite the pain in the ass. its also been very distracting, and hence i haven't gotten around to any meaningful blog updates, but i promise there will be some eventually.