Saturday morning at around 11am, the Russian met his new best friend, Roscoe (however, this name is still up in the air, we are very open to suggestions!). Roscoe is a 6-7 month old rottweiler, who was dumped in the Sangamon County Animal Control building area sometime around June 9th. He doesn't seem much worse for the wear, however, and he and Alice got along well at their speed dating match. She's looking forward to tearing about town with a younger man. We're still missing Ralf, but the Russian thought that we should save another puppy from the pound, and we're hoping that he fits right in.
Oh, and I got a Wii Fit yesterday! Our local Target got 4 in stock, so we showed up around 15 minutes before they opened (very lucky, I heard that some stores had 40 people in line by then), were first in line, snagged 2. Carl is going to sell his on eBay to see how much it will go for. I have mixed emotions about this, I hate it when people hoard stuff just to sell it, and we did take effectively 50% of their stock. Maybe we'll just donate the money somewhere.
Anyway, we both played with it yesterday. Let it be known that I have terrible balance, this thing confirmed it. It's amazing I can walk upright, apparently. So far it's a lot of fun, tho :)
Picking up a new laptop today!
10 years ago today, we brought Ralfie home to live with us. He was a skinny 2 year old rottweiler/black lab mix on his last day at the pound before he'd be put to sleep, and I remember on the way home I stopped at McDonald's to get him a cheeseburger, and then at the Cozy Dog for some ice cream. We were living in Laketown at the time, and we had to finish fencing in the back yard so he could be outside during the day. I think that lasted a month before I heard about a dog fighting ring in the area, and that dogs were being stolen right out of their yards, so he didn't stay outside by himself much more after that. When we moved to "the country", he had to be outside while we had the HVAC system upgraded, so Mama K came over to watch over everything, and she saw him bite the garbage man's pantleg (oops....the man was running through our back yard for some reason, and ran right into the path of a giant barking dog, by this point he had fattened up quite a bit! No blood shed, however, and the garbage man doesn't run through our back yard anymore). Other than that one incident, I don't think he ever snapped at anyone again.
We were going to name him Two, after the cage he came out of at the pound, but my Dad changed all that when the two of them met, and his name was Ralf after that.
Saturday morning I woke up to hear Ralfie panting really fast. Carl had to go meet someone, and I had plans to go to the farmer's market, but we'd been up really late the night before, so I decided to stay home. I took a shower, and when I got out Ralfie was lying on his bed, still panting. I sat down beside him and petted him a few times and got Carl on his cell phone, and Ralfie's heart stopped. And then mine broke.
We buried him out back, next to Lucy (underneath the bird feeders, natch). I know he's "just a dog", but you'd really have to know him to know that Ralfie was always more than that. He was a sweet puppy, always underfoot, never had a bad day, never held a grudge, always wanting to go along with whatever we were doing and I truly believe he never forgot that we saved him from certain death. He got to spend 2 weeks with his grandma this spring at "camp" while he had some melanomas taken off of his face. She was completely won over while he stayed with her, and also gave him the title "best dog ever". I don't know what was wrong with him other than those cancer spots, Friday he was his usually happy go lucky self, chasing Alice around the house and going to visit his other grandma.
He had a great life, 10 years longer than it might have been, but it still feels like his time with us was cut short. He went to geocaching events with us, the dog park, made many, many trips with us to visit my Mom and the goats, and enjoyed his life more than some people do. We used to laugh that there's nothing happier than a black dog warming himself in the sun on a perfect weather day. Ralf was the embodiment of loving life to the fullest.
Alice is doing ok, although she seems depressed, which I'm sure is perfectly natural. Our lives won't be the same for awhile, and some of our family routines probably won't ever be the same. However, our family has truly been blessed by having Ralf in it for as long as we got him.
Rest easy, bucko.
I can't help it.
Y'know how sometimes you can hear a song and it slams you into a memory? I've been listening to last year's lineup and that's been happening a lot.
I remember standing pretty close to the stage, listening to Daft Punk, we were already deaf from listening to pants-vibrating-loud-music all day, and finally on the way back to our hotel room, the Russian got spanked by some teenager on the field. It took us what seemed like a half hour just to get THROUGH the crowd back to the field, and the first thing he said when we could hear each other talk again was "some girl spanked me!"
Anyway, this all makes me wonder what kind of fun we'll have this year. The tickets should be showing up in the mail any day now, we've got the schedule, the earplugs, the sunscreen and the hotel and train tickets. How will I make it to August? Every time I look at the schedule I get more excited!
I should just stick my head in the sand until then.
So we sat down last night to discuss exactly how much garage space we need. Counting the number of vehicles at our house hasn't been something that we've done recently, mostly because I'm disgusted at the amount of room they take up, and the amount of $ we pay to State Farm every year (not to mention the state of Illinois). So here it is. We need to downsize.
First on the chopping block is a Chevy 1-ton pickup. It's old, it's a stick, and I think someone t-boned the side of it. It's definitely not something you'd want for an every day car, but it does great for those trips to Lowes when you just realized that the amount of stuff you just bought won't fit in the tiny Toyota you're driving. If you know someone who's interested let me know. We'll wheel and deal.
Hey, it's a start!
Finishing up the "special project" quilt top. Hopefully I can get it done this weekend and start the quilting. I'm going to do it off-frame with the Juki. I need to SITD, and the frame really doesn't allow for that, plus, it's easy and I can do it in the studio instead of being locked away in the quilting room downstairs. Part of the house remodel I'm envisioning will allow me to have all of my sewing paraphernalia in one room. Woot! It also calls for a room's worth of walk-in closet. I need storage!
Actually, my stash is pretty manageable right now. I'm no longer storing fabric under the bed posing as shoes. It's all either in the quilting room or the studio closet.
Mama K's last tests came back fine, so she's in the clear for another 2 months or so. Yay!
I think the Lolla schedule is now complete. Depends on whether or not there are more last minute additions. Still holding out a little hope for the Chemical Brothers (but not seriously...my luck they'd go up against Girl Talk or something).
So, we need an architect. If you're local and know of a good one, lemme know.
We've been house hunting for a long time...probably for 5 years, off and on. It helps that Mama K is a realtor, but I've seen the insides of more houses than I ever wanted to, and still haven't found the one that's for us. Actually, I found one a couple of weeks ago that would be great, except it's in Rochester and is too far away from everything we do. I like my 10 minute commute. I don't want to live in Rochester, or Sherman, Chatham, or Auburn, let alone New Berlin or Athens (I refuse to live in any town that doesn't know how to pronounce its name...I did my share of time in Eldorado). So this still leaves us one option:
I think we're going to tackle a whole house remodel. This should include jacking the entire house up at least 3 feet, adding a second story, taking out the fireplaces, creating a master suite on the first floor, and a massive sewing studio on the second (along with 2 other bedrooms on that floor). I can picture it all in my head, but the Russian says we need somebody to make up some plans and tell us whether or not everything can fit.
Of course, this plan requires us to move into one of the rentals while this is going on. I have a feeling we'll end up back in the house we lived in before we got married. That would be kind of crazy...I still have dreams about that house sometimes.
The good news about all of this is that I'll HAVE to go through a major purging, and can hopefully get all of our junk down to a manageable size. Right? And maybe, just maybe, we can downsize our car collection (shhhhh). Wish me luck!
SCHED: Lollapalooza 2008: happyalice's schedule
So, my only real heartbreak conflict is Broken Social Scene vs. Battles on Saturday. Everything else, I can deal with...some things will just be non-negotiable when it comes down to it. But BSS...I may have to catch an after show or something. Actually, I'd probably be better off at Battles' after show, I think that one would be more fun, for some reason. But supposedly Battles live is a life altering experience. Anyway, much happier than with last year's schedule, there's actually a decent chance we'll get to hear most of the bands on our list. (my list. The Russian couldn't care less, he just to see what Kanye will say...I want to see if Rage fans will riot.)
My cats are driving me batty for fresh catnip. I'm driving myself batty with a sewing project...the fabric choices are about to get to me. I smell another trip to the quilt shop in my future. Calico Heart is going out of business (well, to sell online, but whatev), I should take advantage of sales, right?
In other news, I think I have poison ivy.
So, I have this HP graphing calculator that I bought in high school. Yep, in the fall of 1989. I use it pretty much every day, and it's served me well. This morning when I went to look up an equation it started moving very slow and gave a bunch of memory errors. I panicked for all of 30 seconds and then realized how old the poor thing is, and decided that if it was time for it to go this might be a good time to think about upgrading. As a last ditch effort I googled HP 48GX slow and lo and behold, HP was thinking of me when they created their knowledge base. One 'mem' command later, I had my baby back to normal and was feeling a little embarrassed about my willingness to move on so quickly. I'm not going to examine my deeper emotions towards my calculator or anything, but I might celebrate with a little Poisson graph. And never fear, 50g, someday you shall be mine.
Still finding snakes in the yard. I've had 2.5 get away, which probably means 3 got away, right? I'm pretty sure you have to take off more than half of their body in order to kill them. The other two times they escaped I didn't have my shovel handy. This will no longer be the case because I have shovels everywhere outside now, just waiting. Did I mention how much I hate snakes?
Still working on the state quilt. I started on the Idaho block last night. I'm disappointed that it's taking me two nights to do each block outside of New Jersey, which took 5 (and I will never make that block again). However, I did watch 2 episodes of The Office and that probably slowed me down some.
My other special project is coming along. Last night I soaked plain blocks in Bubble Jet Set and let them dry. Tonight, I print! If you have any tricks for making this work better, please let me know.
So, we're sort of house shopping. It's not an obsession (yet) and I'm still thinking on whether or not I really want to move, but Mama K is a realtor and it's summer and to her thinking, house shopping is what you do in the summer.
Handily enough, my Mom is looking for a house up here, so I've been able to deflect some of the "you must upgrade!" mantra I hear from my darling MIL. However, a couple of weeks ago we weren't so lucky and visited 4 local area homes, one of which could possibly take any sort of "cat person-a" out of me altogether. I wasn't going to write about this, but I'm bored and apparently some people find it very amusing.
The first house was really wonderful, everything *I* could've asked for in a home, except the location was horrid. Good-bye running-home-for-lunch dates, hello $800/month fuel bill. Otherwise, it was perfect. 2-story living room complete with wall of windows, huge bedrooms, fabulous studio space, 5 acres of nothing but sloping trees, and almost enough garage space. Just. Too. Far.
House #2 was kind of boring after we'd seen #1. It was closer to the Russian's workplace, though, and had lots of nice landscaping (which says to me "work! I'm so much work you'll never have time to sew or develop again!"). The garage there was lacking, and while the floor plan was ok, this house was in a neighborhood, and we really would like some more room between us and other people.
The last house was along the lines of number 2, really close to our house, 5 acres, no trees tho, but kind of boring. Didn't really have enough space for us, and we would again be adding at least a 5 or 6 car garage. Couple that with the fact that this property backs up to farmland that we know will someday be commercial, we marked it off the list.
House #3 was the doozy. I was excited because it was listed as having almost 19 acres, and it had a barn, which would come in handy for my "someday sheep". The owners were on-site and offered to show us around. I noticed right away that there seemed to be a lot of animals, which isn't necessarily a problem, but should have been a warning. 7 horses on the premises, and I grew up with horse-type friends and know what they should (and shouldn't) smell like. This barn fell more into the "shouldn't" smell like category. However, one of the owners was mucking stalls so I marked it up to that and we went on our merry way. Since I was wearing sandals we weren't able to walk the entire property line, but they were able to show us fence lines and the like until we had the gist of it. I think it was at this point that I realized that the majority of the acreage was actually a ravine (well, as close as we come to a ravine here in flatsville) and would not have been usable except for pasture. Not necessarily a huge problem, but I was already not that crazy about the home's architecture and this really dimmed my hopes of building our dream home in the side of a hill.
Right around now, I noticed that there were several cats running around outside, and I said something to the owner about our 2 kitties at home. She says "Well, we actually have 22 cats but only 4 live outside". Seriously. 22 cats. 18 of them inside. I like cats, I really do...but not more than 2 at a time, please. We started inside the house, and were assaulted by the stench of 18 cats with not nearly enough litter boxes. Words can't express just how awful the smell was...this went beyond odor. In fact, it wasn't until the next day that I could even recall that the house was full of junk and food on counters, dirty clothes everywhere, and just general funk. As if that's not bad enough, they have a "sun porch" with a hot tub. This happens to be the room where they're keeping all of the cats while we're looking around. Carl stepped out to that room for all of 5 or 6 seconds and then came back in and said to me (you should picture him as a villain at this point) "hey, stick your nose out there". I KNEW better! I really am smarter than that, but I did it anyway. I opened the door about an inch and stuck my nose out long enough to get one whiff of something that should be used in prisons during riots to make the tenants pass out. I could not get out of that house fast enough. Mama K says she's never seen anything like it in all of her years as a realtor.
So the next time you see a listing that says something about the property being a nice place to build your dream home, don't even go into the house. You can thank me later.
Our little nest of robins has moved on. I think we may have expedited their move, unfortunately. I was letting Alice out over the weekend and we were right underneath the nest for a second, when one of the little fledglings seemingly fell out of the nest. He flapped pretty hard for the few seconds during his free fall, but still landed on the ground (upright, tho!).
Later that night I noticed that all 3 of the little ones were missing, but I could see them hopping around the yard with dad not far away. Now there's no sign of them. I guess it's safe to take their nest down now. They grew really fast, and for something that started out so ugly they sure did turn out to be cute!
I think I'm coming down with something. Supposedly one of my coworkers has strep throat. I woke up unable to swallow this morning. Bummer. And Cepacol is nasty. Blech.
I finished up the Arkansas block last night on the black quilt. I think I'm taking a quick break from that project for a month or so while we work on cool ties and a special quilt project. If I think of it I'll take photos of the blocks I've already completed, they're turning out ok. Not a normal project for me, but it's growing on me. I think I'm about 1/3 finished with the blocks. Of course, one of the packets of fabric is missing the pattern, so I guess I get to see how much material there is and try to guess which state it was supposed to be. Should be fun. :)
Anyway...cool ties! My Mom is coming up this weekend to help work on those. I don't have a target for this year, but I'm hoping we can get at least 500 done within the next month or so. Barring any unforeseen machine problems that should be doable.
DCFS licensing agent comes back Wednesday. Hoping it's not much longer for the first kidlet to arrive! :)