What movie quote are YOU?

Well, I guess I'm Shrek, and for once one of these quiz answers makes some sense. My body somewhat resembles his, and the description is pretty apt...


You are... Shrek -
"Well I have to save my ass!"

You walk tough and talk tough, but inside you're just a gooey ball of mush. Your friends are important to you (whether you admit it or not) and you'd do just about anything for them (but you wouldn't like it). Trust is important to you, and so is respect. Looks don't matter to you; it's the gooey ball of mush inside that really counts.


What movie quote are YOU?
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Note: You'll probably have to tweak their HTML if you put the code in your blog; there were a lot of line breaks added in poor places, plus the word "respect" was misspelled. I threw it in here with a blockquote.

Not good words to hear

The plumber and his helper are working on our upstairs bath right now, putting in the drain and getting ready to insert the shower.

I'm hearing the sounds of the reciprocating saw and words like "dang" and "ohhh, mannnnn" and "how bad am I making it down there?".

These words frighten me.

News from Illinois

First off, if you don't know the history between my father and me, or are sadistic and just want to refresh your memory, here's your chance to catch up. Just peruse this entry from June12, 2002, this one from June 17, 2002, and one last one, from June 21, 2002.

Wednesday evening, I saw a call was coming through from my uncle's phone number in Illinois. Fearing it was probably my father again, perhaps just using my uncle's phone, I zapped the call. I was feeling down and just didn't want to deal with my father if it was him starting to call and harass me again. I assumed that someone would call back if it were an emergency. No one did, but it kept bugging me. I wasn't bugged enough to call and see why someone from that number was calling, however. I'm a big chicken, you know.

The next day, there was a message on our voicemail from the head nurse at the facility where my father is living. Evidently, his parkinson's disease has progressed further, plus he'd become despondent to the point of not eating the last couple of weeks. The woman said he's lost a bunch of weight in the last month, and doctors were going to have to insert a feeding tube if he were going to receive any nourishment. Unable to make this decision for himself because he's non-responsive, a doctor would need a family member's permission to insert a tube.

Because his sister finally couldn't take his abuse anymore and went to court to remove herself as his power of attorney, she could not give this permission. His brother was contacted, but did not want to okay or deny this without talking with his sister and with me. So, I was called. I suppose I would have done the same thing had I been in their shoes.It still doesn't make me want to be involved with all this.

It must sound cold-hearted to someone on the outside. The thing is, I've not talked to my father since last June, and I don't have any relationship with him. I tried to, for a time, but he just started abusing what little I was able to offer him so tentatively. But as my aunt (my other one - mom's sister) so eloquently put it, "...even though you and your father are estranged, the ties still pull and hurt". That about sums it up.

I spoke to my uncle's wife last night, and she filled me in on the details. Here was this woman, a stranger to me, yet we were bound by the common tie of my father's mental illness. We've all tried to help him, and he's abused us all in his insatiable, crazy need. It's one of those situations where you find yourself sharing a rueful, mirthless chuckle over the idiocy you've witnessed.

She told me my uncle and aunt both agreed that my father has just become so depressed with his life that he just doesn't want to live anymore. In all honesty, I can sympathize; he has a body that is messed up with a progressive neurological disease, life-long depression, no true friends, and no place to call home other than a crappy nursing home which receives his government check every month. Given the situation, I think I might want to just let go and die, too.

It would be cruel to prolong this. And, really, forced sustinance or not, he's on a decline. He's only approaching his 60th birthday, too. How sad is that?

I'm in the middle of such a dichotomy about this. On the one hand, his situation is pretty pathetic and it's such a shame. But on the other, he's brought so much of this on himself, at least the being alone part. There's only so much friends and family can give. That is a shame, too.

When he finally does die, I don't know if I will journey out there for the funeral or not. I've only seen my aunt a smattering of times before mom and I moved away from Illinois in 1981, and I barely know my uncle. With my father, there are awful memories; with his siblings, there aren't many memories at all. I don't know what the point would be in my going out there.

I think everyone involved will be relieved when he finally goes. I have often wished he would just die rather than keep being so messed up, because at least then I could just say "my father is dead". It's so much simpler. God, that sounds selfish and awful, but that's how I've felt.

Ugh.

Who's your ducky?

The plumber and the contractor doing the basement made their way out of the house yesterday with our old cast-iron tub balanced on a dolly. Until Jamie the plumber hauls it away, it's sitting in our front yard. Last night when Howie got home from work, he rolled the trash bin out to the curb, as usual. While he was out there, he moseyed on over to the tub to take a look at it.

"Is this our rubber ducky?", he asked. When I asked him if it was the yellow one our friend's son left here one time, he said it wasn't. Hmmmmmmmm.....

Yes, someone had placed a rubber ducky in our lawn tub. Oh, the hilarity!

It didn't remain a mystery for long, because someone couldn't keep her glee to herself. Last night, in reply to some pictures I'd e-mailed my siteless buddy Angie, I received the following missive:

when/who/how are you getting rid of it? just think it might be good to check it over before she goes.

Yep, it was her. She'd left our place around 10:30pm last night and gone to Wal-Mart to pick up some pictures. While there, she bought the little rubber ducky and snuck back to our house about 11:00pm. She parked her car down the street and covertly scrambled down the sidewalk in front of our house.

She could see me in the office window, puttering away at my computer. I never had a clue, sneaky thing. I just love her!

This, too, shall pass

Construction continues, and our upstairs bathtub and its surrounding wall are being have been dismantled and removed. The wall behind the tile was pretty well rotten, so it's good timing, all this. We're having a Sterling 60" shower with two seats installed instead of another tub; with Howie's back injury, this will make his life much easier. Though I love baths, I rarely go to the hassle of one when I can shower so quickly.

Well, it's done now, huh?

The downstairs is really looking good! I've not posted pictures lately, but I've been chronicling everything in photos (note to self: do backup!). John's got the bathroom, hallway and laundry room all drywalled...It's just amazing how it's coming together. We'll be sooo glad when it's all done, though. Even though we've pretty much grown used to the various construction noises, it still makes morning sleep restless, and we're looking forward to having a working sink, shower and toilet all in ONE room again (two rooms, if you count the full bath downstairs).

We found a beautiful, quality nylon carpet at Rite Rug yesterday. It's a mix of soft blues in a deep, sculptured plush. Best yet, we were able to buy it in the form of three large carpet remnants rather than off the rack. We'd decided to get a cheap, taupe carpet at Lowe's for $2/square foot, including installation, but it was lousy carpet and the cheapest padding. This way, we're getting premium carpet, along with a nice, thick pad, and only paying a couple hundred more than the cruddy stuff would have cost us at Lowe's. Moral of this story: Check the remnants section at your local carpet store!

RIP Angiepangie.com

Darned girl decided to forego her site, for a while anyway. That's the only reason it's been removed from my sidebar links. I guess that's the impetus for me to offer Pangie updates. Let's see...She's got some resumes floating around right now, and has an interview tomorrow at a local business. Woo! If we can get her to, perhaps she'll pop in Good Soil ever so often and speak for herself.

She doesn't really want me speaking for her, does she? Oh, my, she's brave if so.

Playing with Paper

I worked at the church today and did the Sunday bulletins. The Risograph machine really wasn't bad to use, and it made the copies so fast! I only used the black ink drum today, but I can get creative and use the red or green if the mood strikes me.

It's been so long since I've done papery-foldy types of things, though; there is no folding machine, and my speed left something to be desired when it came to folding and stuffing the bulletins with the two inserts we had this week. I ended up being there a couple hours longer than I though I'd be. Thank goodness there were only 150 bulletins to do.

I've decided I desperately want an 24" Fiskars rotary paper cutter...Oh, yeah, aaalrgrrhhh. The church office has one, and one of the wheels you can put on the thing does perforated lines, which we use for a tear-off registration card for visitors. Way cool, that cutter. It also has a wheel which does a fluted, wavy edge.

I have an unhealthy love for office supplies!

Final Inspection

The final inspection for the front rooms of the renovation was today, and both the structure and electric inspectors signed off. Tomorrow, John will start doing the raised floor for the hall and bathroom. Yippee! It sounds like the plumber may take up to 1 1/2 weeks to do his part, though. So, it doesn't appear we're going to meet our June 1 completion date. My MIL has not sold her trailer yet, either, so we're not in a huge hurry. We just want it done!

Clumsy Swarms

The termites from the colony in the remnant of the sycamore stump out back swarmed today. Yuck. They are clumsy flyers and only make it a few yards before falling to the ground. Their wings fall off at that point - serves 'em right, little pests.

The swarmers, or aletes, are the winged reproductives in a termite colony; it's their job to go out and create new colonies. The critters have underground nests, usually away from structures, and journey to wood structures just to load up on yummy wood pulp to take back to the nest. Seeing swarmers does not mean your home is infested.

I learned about termites when we were in the process of buying our home. The inspection showed there was a minor termite infestation under the back door. Leave it to a termite to find the one tiny bit of wood in our brick house -- the thin wood strip between the masonry block from the foundation and the brick wall above. The seller had to pay for an exterminator to come and treat our house. Actually, we are probably due for another treatment, or at least an inspection, since all that was back in 1999.

Back to the swarmers. Our small fishpond sits near the stump, and this afternoon its surface was littered with the bodies of their fallen comrades. I haven't bought a fishnet yet, so didn't have a way to skim them all off the surface. They're likely to have the pond water really fouled. Yuck again. The tiny feeder goldfish we put in the pond are in no way up to the task presented.

For more than you ever thought you'd want to know about termites, check out the University of Toronto's link here and Ohio State University's great Ohioline page.

A farewell to charms: The pissquiggler's exodus

You can tell it's warm in our office, for the dogs are stretched out unbecomingly in their crate. When it's cool, they morph into furry doggie-balls, snuggled closely. They share one big crate, our three, and love it. Whether in the crate or on the furniture, they tend to sleep in great piles of legs and paws. It always makes us smile.

There's good news to report, dog-wise. Angie's brotherDennis is going to give Buddy a home! Yep, da brudder's family has a female beagle, anyway, and wanted to get a companion for her. She's an outside dog...And he's buiding a kennel for them! It is a very specific answer to prayer, let me tell ya.

Ironically, Buddy's new home will be a couple of states away, in Illinois. Buddy will be quite the seasoned traveler by the time he gets there, bless his heart. Fortunately, our vet's prescribed tranquilizers for him since he gets nervous and carsick riding in vehicles. He'll pretty much zonk out and wake up in a new home. I hope he does really, really well there - he's such a sweet little guy, just stubbornly refuses to be housebroken.

It's a weird feeling, planning to find a dog a new home. But, just when we again felt ambivalent about it, Buddy graced us with another piece of abstract pissquiggle art all over the office floor. Howie's no longer waffling on the issue, and neither am I. Emma's sure going to miss him, though, and that makes us sad. They're such good friends, those two. I hope and pray Buddy gets along with his new little girlie beagle. Good thing Emma has Sarah (and us) to snuggle up to in Buddy's absence!

This is the dawning of the age of aquarium

We're shopping for an aquarium, probably a 55gal, though we'd really prefer a 75gal since we'd like to have goldfish again. The bigger the tank, the easier it is to maintain, and since goldfish produce a lot of waste we want to have a big tank. (Plus bigger tank means bigger fish, or more smaller ones). We thought about doing tropicals again, but goldfish - especially the fancy varieties like these guys - have so much personality and they're relaxing to watch. Tropicals dart all over the place, but goldfish just mosey around.

They're more our speed.

I have a wrought-iron stand I bought with an old aquarium at a yard sale last year. The tank was a real oldie by Metaframe (how's that for irony - before we used the term for internet stuff!). It was a weird size and impossible to find a hood for...Just more trouble than it was worth to make our own hood. We donated the tank to Goodwill during our Great Basement Cleanout of 2003; someone will be thrilled to get it for reptiles or other non-aquatic uses.

Anyway, the stand and filters I got with it were worth the $20 I paid. Thing is, the stand is an odd size: 48" long x 13" deep. We may be limited in what larger tanks would safely fit on it. We saw a 75gal setup advertised in the Jack's Aquarium and Petsonline sales flyer. It's an All-Glass Aquariums brand and is $139, including the hood and light. It measures 48"long, 18"deep x 20" high.

My big concern is that, even with a board bringing the top of our stand out to the tank's width, it would be topheavy. Those 75 gallons of water, at 8 pounds a gallon, would weigh in at 600 pounds! For that matter, I wonder if our floor will be okay under all that weight. It would be along our living room wall.

Am I just paranoid? Would any aquarists and/or physicists (even rocket scientists if you're so inclined) care to comment?

Annoying Celebs

I have to pipe up - Jim Carrey is incredibly annoying on talk shows. He's good at the type of slapstick, over-the-top humor he does, but he is a scene-stealing pest of a guest on talk shows.

Howie and I saw him on Jay Leno last night and just cringed at his behavior, especially when he kept drawing attention to himself when it was Amanda Bynes' turn to be interviewed. I'd never seen this actress before, but I felt badly for her time with Jay being sabotaged by that ham. She seemed annoyed, despite saying she was a fan of his (we noticed she said "was" and snickered that it might indeed be past tense after this guest appearance by his side).

We half expected Carrey to walk out on the stage while Tim McGraw was singing. It's hard to say whether Jay was amused or embarassed by Carrey. We're both just so turned off by Carrey; he strikes us as an immature, attention-starved brat when we see him in interviews. When he did a couple of more toned-down bits on the show, he was pretty funny. It's just that big humor that really turns us off.

Second-hand smoke produces a prodigy?

Howie and I saw one of the recent anti-smoking ads on TV last night. It's an ad depicting a dad sitting in a chair watching TV while his son plays on the floor nearby. Dad's puffing away on a ciggy and the room is hazy with smoke. On the floor next to him, his baby is playing with alphabet blocks.

As the voiceover recites the many dangers of second-hand smoke to children, the babe spells out these words with his blocks: bronchitis, asthma, sudden infant death syndrome.

I said to Howie, "So.....Is this saying second hand smoke makes your children really intelligent?"

Howie said, "If I were the kid, I'd just crawl out of the room."

"Yeah," I said, "if that baby has the manual dexterity to find those letters and spell out those words, surely he can crawl out there!"

Sometimes those ads are only moderately effective, you know? Guess you can't win 'em all.

To be fair, the other anti-smoking ad airing around here is good: The droplet-spattered windshield and the intermittent swipes of the windshield wipers tell us it's raining; mommy's got the minivan windows shut due to the weather. She's smoking as she drives, and the van is filled with smoke. Baby baby sits strapped in a carseat behind her, crying. She continues crying as the voiceover ensues. Toward the end, the screen goes dark and some text comes up. We hear the baby cry some more, then cough.

We always comment on that ad's effectiveness when we see it.

That reminds me...I see parents who conscientiously only smoke outside so they don't expose their kids to smoke. I even know mothers who quit smoking, cold-turkey mind you, while pregnant. That's no easy feat! Once they'd given birth and finished breastfeeding, though, they picked those cigarettes right back up.

They did so because they wanted to, because they like smoking, not because they couldn't help themselves. They admit it.

I think it admirable that these folks want to protect their kids from the harmful effects of nicotine. But, second-hand smoke arguments aside, I have to ask: Do you think they'll be any better off with you dying young from lung cancer?

You'd do anything to feed your kids if they were hungry or needed medical care, right? Well, this is every bit as important, folks.

Get help. Just do it.

You're next...

I've heard this before, in a much longer and ineffective version. When I received it today in my e-mail, I knew I had to share:

When I was younger, I hated going to weddings. After the
wedding and during the reception, my aunts and the
grandmotherly types would come up to me and poke me in the
ribs, cackling, "You're next."

Finally they stopped, when I started doing the same to
them at funerals!

Where there's smoke

...There's an underground coal fire. This is one of the strangest things I've heard, and it's happening right here in Ohio. I quote from today's WCLT radio's news briefs:

Underground Coal Fire In Perry County
Threatening Wayne National Forest

An underground coal fire that was started almost 120 years ago in New Straitsville is slowly working its way under Wayne National Forest.U-S Forest Service archaeologist Ann Cramer says smoke started coming up through cracks in the floor of the 233,000 acre forest last summer. She says it smelled like burning tar.

An estimated 200-square miles of underground mineral deposits have burned since the fire began in 1884. The coal seam is up to 14 feet thick and there's about 600,000 acres of coal and abandoned mine shafts surrounding New Straitsville, which is about 49 miles southeast of Columbus.

The town's official history says the fire was set in October 1884 by anti-union workers. They soaked railroad cars that were loaded with timber with oil, ignited them, and rolled them into mine openings.

I didn't know a fire could burn that long, and no doubt the protesters didn't either. I guess I never thought about it, but the fire has its two needed sources: fuel and oxygen. But for something to burn like that for over 100 years....Wow. I know the earth spews lava from volcanoes, but this just sounds so weird. I hope some of those idiots got their hands burned.

If you'd like to read more about the fire's history, pick up a copy of Ohio Oddities: A Guide to the Curious Attractions of the Buckeye State. Lucky for you, though, the story is excerpted at the publisher's site.

The Wayne National Forest is beautiful, one of our favorite places to visit. We love going to the clean little lake down in that area - Lake Hope. No gasoline-powered boats are allowed on that lake, and it's so clear you can see your toes when standing shoulder-deep in the swim area. It would be a real shame if this underground fire ignites the forest.

I want one of these!

Remember my glowing review of the Anti-Pull Harness? Well, Joe Sporn, president and founder of the company (and recent visitor to gw.com!), has a website with other great pet products. I would *love* to get one of these Sporn Pet Lockers to hang by our back door. What a neat product, complete with a spindle for "Bags of Duty" (what a euphemism).

No More Aggitation

Well, we found a solution to our washing machine's aggitator problem, and this is it.

My MIL and I have each always wanted a front loading machine, and we kind of ganged up on Howie. It didn't take much convincing, though, because he could see the money savings in the more expensive machine, too.

This washer will wash sleeping bags, pillows and comforters, items we have had to take to the laundromat. We figured, taking those large items to the laundromat cost us at least $20 a visit in quarters, and we took them 2 or 3 times a year (if none of the animals urped on them - then we took them more).

It's a Frigidaire Tumble Care Front Load Washer, model FWT645RH. Epinions has reviews of one of the step down models from this, the FWT449. Frigidaire must have made some changes, for I can't find anything at their site (other than archived PDF's of our washer's documentation) except the GWT series now.

This washer holds a huge amount of laundry AND uses only 1/3 the water of a standard top load washer. We had an extra-capacity top load washer, so this uses less than a 1/3 of what we used to use per load. In a nutshell, we're able to do TWICE the laundry per load as before, and use less than a 1/3 of the water we used to use for ONE load before. That's less detergent, less bleach, and less fabric softener. We're talking savings here, folks. It's also so very quiet!

It also has this nifty dispenser. You can watch the clothes tumble, too, which Howie and I did on its maiden voyage (of course).

I'd seen the commercials for the Maytag's Neptune and Whirlpool's Duet washers and drooled over them in the stores. After all, their marketing is top-notch and the products look more like luxury cars than appliances. But I could never justify spending over $1000 for a washer, not when the Frigidaire was $597 with free delivery to boot.

The things I've read said this washer performs every bit as good as the beautiful, pricey ones. It doesn't have to recoup the cost of major ad campaigns, for one. Sure, it doesn't have their digital displays and touchpad buttons. But I don't want to program my washer, I just want to wash my clothes. I'm quite happy to just turn a few dials like this one and that one rather than tap in my choices and navigate menus.

It might have a smidgen less capacity of those Cadillacs of washers, but it doesn't have the Cadillac price, either. As it is, the new Frigidaire's washloads almost maxes out our dryer's capacity, so I wouldn't want to do more; I'd have a backlog of stuff to dry and that would negate any benefit to me.

I'm thrilled! I've completely caught up on all the laundry now - I'm so excited! The washer will wash - and wash well - a heaping laundry basket of clothes. I'm talking heaping, like all our towels and washcloths. Or five pair of dress pants and five shirts, plus other stuff. I can do laundry in a fraction of the time it used to take.
I must be getting older, because I am way too excited over this machine. But then again, I am all for things that make sense, and the design of these front loading machines just works.

Love/Hate Relationship

I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to computers, digital photography and imaging, desktop publishing and printing. I love the artistic process. I adore writing, designing, embelishing; most of the time, the hours I'm in front of a computer just fly by.

Tonight the hours have flown by, but not by choice. I am so tired right now, I could just lean back in my office chair and be gone, out like a light. But I can't sleep, because I still have the second side of 100 wedding programs to print. At this rate, I'll be lucky to have them all done by the time the father of the bride picks them up here at 8:30am. This has turned into one of those marathon jobs from the very pits of...Well, maybe not that bad, but right now I'm not in the best of humor.

The creative process was a blast and I'm pleased with the final product, but I've had problems with my Epson Stylus Photo 820 printer all night long. It's just not made for jobs like this - so many pages at a time for so long a time.

I've figured out I can only safely load 5 pages of this Gartner's program card stock in at a time, and I must be right there to make sure it doesn't misfeed. For, when it does misfeed, I end up having to run the nozzle cleaner on the printer several times before I can get prints that are crisp and not goobered up somehow (like that technical term?).

Even running the printer in high-speed mode (where it prints on both the forward and return passes across the paper), I've been printing since about 10:00pm, so almost six hours. And there's still side B to print on the backs of these originals. I've printed extras. Thank God he bought many extra pages!

I would KILL for a Kinko's or other all-night printshop. At this point, I'd pay them to run copies onto the program stock for me. Alas, our one such all-night business closed a couple years ago. Some day, if I really want to do desktop publishing on a legitimate scale, I will have to get a decent printer. It's too expensive to outsource that kind of work, and our home printers - even the good ones - are never up to the task. It just ends up being frustrating and crazy-making.

*Yawn*

So...Here I sit, babysitting the printer and mindful that I don't have to work tomorrow. I'm very thankful for that! It's not that I resent doing the job -- not at all. I really am happy to do things like this for people because it's my thing, you know? I enjoy having an outlet for it and get really pumped when people are pleased with something I've done just for them.

I just hate computer and printer problems. And this is far less stressful than the night before a morning wedding. I'm very happy in my shoes, thank you. :)

To her credit, Pangie stayed here and played games online with me, humoring me and keeping me sane. Brave girl! Actually, we found a funny game over at PopCap - PsychoBabble. You know those magnetic words you can buy to put on your fridge? This game has people arranging the same groups of words into sentences, then the participants vote on the funniest uses of the words. It's a riot!

But even Pangie flagged; she finally had to go home and snuff out her eye candles for a few hours before her nephew's ball game later this morning. Thanks, Pangie - I appreciate your hanging around as long as you did, and thanks for the backrub!

Free to Good Home

We're trying to find Buddy a good home around here. We've done everything we can, accruing big vet bills in the process of elimination (no pun intended), but he just doesn't seem housetraineable. It's not fair to him to be crated for hours upon hours, but we also can't subject our neighbors (or the whole south end of town, for that matter) to his beagle baroooo all hours of the day and night by putting him outside. He needs a new home.

I'm taking him to the vet for his follow-up chest x-ray today and hoping it shows no enlargement of his heart. If it is enlarged, a simple and inexpensive medication will be needed for him, but he'll remain a healthy doggie even so. I'm putting this flyer up at the vet's office and a few other places in town, and we're going to carefully screen anyone wanting to take him. I listed the URL to the flyer so people can acess it easily online, too.

** Later **

His heart is fine, the vet said. Yay! The vet also said that any dog that can hold it for nine hours in his crate, yet pees all over the office floor when he's just been outside an hour earlier wants to pee inside. He said beagles are notoriously difficult to housebreak, and that he had to find a new home for his own beagle for the same reason. His was a female, and she just would not be housetrained.

Harnessing the Hurricane

Hubby and I were browsing the pet aisle at our local Super Wal-Mart when I spied the package way at the bottom of the display.

Of course, I had to remove the harness from the package to see if it would fit. So, while Howie stood rolling his eyes and shaking his head at me, I held the contraption out before me something like this (dramatization courtesy of Angie).

Just then, an unsuspecting Wal-Mart employee came walking around the endcap and saw me. The poor girl's face morphed into three expressions almost simultaneously: first boredom, then surprise, finally confusion. She then averted her eyes.

Would you blame her? That thing looks more like something you'd find at Fredericks of Hollywood product than an innocuous dog harness in a local megamart's humble pet aisle.

Considering Emma's 42-pound heft and propensity for dislocating our shoulders with her pulling, we decided to give it a try. I'm happy to report the harness works great. Here's Emma sporting her new Yuppie Puppy Anti-Pull Harness (sidenote: we're about as far from yuppies as a couple of folks can get, except maybe for our unhealthy love of tech gadgets and coffee shops).

When we pull on the leash, it causes the padded straps running beneath her front legs to pull tight, thereby stopping her in her tracks. She can still pull, but she doesn't seem to want to. When she's pulling her hardest, I can still control her now. We rue the fact we weren't consistent with her early training and allowed her to get this bad.

Ah well, we can't change the past. We're back on the right track now and I've been giving her verbal cues as well as a tug on the harness. It seems to be helping, though she still has trouble when there's a squirrel or bird zipping by nearby, or when she sees grandma and wants to say hi. Still, I think she'll catch on again.

I have the DG's

That's what I get when I can't get to Dave's Garden; they're like the DT's, only much worse. Something's happened and DG has been down since yesterday morning. E-mails from fellow DG addicts are cramming my inbox: Do you know what's happened? Is it my computer? Is my ISP okay?

I'm as clueless as anyone, and I know that if I am angst-ridden about not getting my daily DG fix, he must really be in a pickle. I wish you and the DG juggernaut well - hope it all comes back online for you soon!

Thanks To Our Washer

I bid our humble 10+ year-old Whirlpool washing machine a thank you for its floundering agitator. Had it not ceased doing its job, I never would have found fixitnow.com.

Where else can you go to read a great blog and see step-by-step photos of appliance repair? Sounds like one of the combo deals Paul Reiser writes about in Couplehood, actually...It's a blog and an appliance repair site!

But I digress. The self-proclaimed "oracle of appliance enlightenment" tackles our aggitator problem and so much more. And it's all written in a decidedly tongue-in-cheek fashion that makes me want to read about appliances we don't even own. He also has a Beer Fund (have your volume turned up) and an amazing money-making opportunity that's hard to beat.

So surf on over there! Just don't forget where you came from; I'll leave the light on for ya. Maybe I'll even put up a donation link for a Whirlpool Duet Washer (droooool.....).

Construction: Day Three

Work's progressing nicely. The former garage door opening is now a wall with two windows, a door, and vertical vinyl siding. The latter was the idea of Contractor John; he thought vertical would be better than horizontal, and it really does give the illusion of the wall being taller. The raised subfloors in the front room and bedroom are down, as well as some floor extending outside the bedroom into the laundry/storage area of the basement.

Because the height of the doorway is shorter than standard, we had three choices: getting a custom door, getting a smaller door only 32" wide, or getting a standard 36" door and cutting some off the bottom. The custom door would have been too pricey. The smaller door was, well, just too small (imagine moving furniture in through a 32" wide door). So, let's make a deal...We chose door #3.

I'm still getting used to it being cut off short. Because it's a steel door with panels, it's obvious the door's been cut off at the bottom. I've been fiddling with Photoshop, though, and notice it is not so noticeable if we paint the door dark green and the frame of the little lemon wedge window white. That draws the eye up from the lower portion of the door. There will also be a screen door which, alas, must be cut down to fit, also. I'm crossing my fingers that it will look a little more normal.

I know, I know...A picture's worth a thousand words. I have more pictures, but I've been busy today and just haven't gotten them into an album and uploaded just yet. Right now, I have homemade stuffed peppers baking in the oven, a hungry tummy, a hubby with a hungry tummy, and a videotape of tonight's Survivor.

Priorities, you know.