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We brought Dalla home from the pound last night.  It has been an interesting seventeen-plus hours.  She is very needy at this point.  She has to know where everyone is at all times and, naturally, she prefers everyone to remain in the same room so she can keep an eye on both of us.  She made herself a nest behind our recliner last night while I sat in the recliner and Sarah was lying on the sofa.  Dalla doesn’t understand the stereo yet.  We were playing some Dinah Washington last night and she spent ten minutes trying to find the third person in the house who was singing.  She doesn’t walk on a leash very well at all.  We’re working on that, but it will be a struggle.  We put her crate in our bedroom last night, complete with her dog mat and dog towel in it.  She responded by taking the dog towel out of the crate (she doesn’t like the crate).  Then, we wouldn’t let her up on the bed, so she spent part of the night constructing a nest out of a few dirty clothes that we had on the floor.  At first, she wouldn’t go down the stairs to the basement for hell or high-water.  Now she seems to enjoy going down in the basement.  We bought some cheap dog treats at Wal-Mart (the first ingrediants are wheat flour and wheat-something-else).  She responded by taking any of those treats she is given and hiding them somewhere else in the house (under curtains, in baskets, behind furniture, etc.) uneaten.  This morning, Sarah took her out first thing in the morning for a bathroom break and she helpfully grabbed a newspaper and brought it back to the house, unprompted.  Of course, when I took her for a walk this morning, she attempted to bring every newspaper we encountered home and I had to keep reminding her, "No, only ours, Dalla.  Only ours."  To punish me for leaving her alone for two minutes while I went to the bathroom right before I left for work (Sarah was already gone to a job interview), she took my newest pair of biking sunglasses off the bed and helpfully put teethmarks in the lenses.  Like I said above, it has been an interesting seventeen-plus hours.

It is obvious from the tactics and forces deployed, that the US had absolutely no intention of taking Saddam Hussein’s sons alive.  You don’t attempt to catpure people with the 101st Airborne, Apache helicopters, TOW missiles, and A-10 Warthogs.  You use special forces, stealth, and surprise.  Apparently, the Bush administration would rather just kill opponents than put then on trial.

An open letter to the woman driving the white Monte Carlo:

Thank you for stepping on the brakes at the last second this morning as you attempted to leave the TDS Metrocom parking lot on Univ. Ave. without first looking to your left. It would have been a major bummer to start my day with broken bones, bleeding, and other miscellaneous injuries.

Unfortunately, your response to this incident was a bit difficult to fathom. My helpful reminder to look both ways before pulling out into traffic seemed not to penetrate past the air of hostility you were projecting. Is it my fault that I was riding a bicycle, in a bike lane, with traffic? Your response, profanity and gesticulation including obscene gestures, seemed to indicate that was the case.

It was also intriguing to note that you were in a hurry when you almost ran me down, but then your continued harassment at 15-19 mph for a 1/4 mile or more made me question exactly what happened to that initial burst of haste.

Some suggestions that you may want to ponder while you rage uselessly at the next red light that holds you hostage to the automobile society:

1. Your inventory of profanity is notably limited. Profanity loses it edge very quickly in modern society, so it is often necessary to combine profane and non-profane words and phrases in new and interesting ways to grab the listener’s attention. Might I suggest a trip to the either Boston or New York City where the use of profanity is an art and curse words are used as rapiers and not clubs.
2. Consider my helpful suggestion to look both ways before crossing the street.  Sure, I weigh 173 pounds. With all of my gear and my bike I probably weigh somewhere between 210-230 pounds.  If I side-swiped you because you pulled out in front of me, chances are that I would sustain major damage and you would need a new front quarter panel or door.  However, imagine if I had been a dump-truck driver, driving in the same oblivious manner as yourself, with a full load of gravel or sand and you pulled the same stunt.  Firefighters would need the Jaws of Life just to recover your nicotine-stained teeth so that your remains could be identified by your dental records.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

David

Sarah and I had another very busy weekend.  We’re on the home stretch to get our wedding invitations out the door.  We also spent numerous hours fixing things around the house, unpacking, and the like.

We’ve been debating the best way to fix the completely non-functional windows that currently inhabit the holes in the walls we would like to see inhabited by functional windows.  We’ve gone back and forth several times about whether or not vinyl replacement windows (installed by us) would do the job.  However, this afternoon I finally stripped the trim off a window in our office and discovered that the job is likely far beyond the time and energy that I am willing to invest in the job.  My guess is that each window would require about eighteen hours of labor to install.  The problem is that our current windows don’t actually sit in the center of the framed window hole.  They actually sit one-half inch off center. Also, all the trim is (inconveniently) nailed together while, because of the way the windows were installed, all of the trim has to be removed to make enough space for the vinyl window.  Ugh. So, to do the job correctly would involve removing all the old trim, and the old window components.  After that (or during that, if you had a large enough crew), new trim would have to be fabricated to correct for the goofy one-half inch off center previous glass, wood, and metal tenant.  The new window could then be installed and insulated, followed by the now correct trim.  As you might imagine, replacing even one window would be a nightmare.  Replacing ten is looking like a nightmare on the order of a Republican president and Congress.

Friday night after work, we found ourselves visiting the Dane County Humane Society.  A quick perusal of their website during the day told me that we wanted to stop by and check out the dogs awaiting adoption because they seemed to have a larger number than in the past.  We walked up and down the aisles and found several dogs that looked interesting.  However, one dog in particular really caught our eye.  She was a ten-month old Norwegian Elkhound/Labrador Retriever mix that was surrendered to the pound a little over a week ago.  We arranged to meet the dog in one of the humane society’s little meeting rooms.  The humane society was closing very shortly, so we put the dog on hold to think about whether or not we wanted to get a dog right now, and if we wanted to get that dog in particular.  Well, we thought about it, and went back on Saturday with the intention of meeting a couple of other dogs before making a decision.  However, all of the other dogs we wanted to meet were already on hold, and after meeting the Elkhound/Lab mix again, the decision was easy.  We decided to bring her home and make her part of our family.  Fortunately, we’d been anticipating adding a dog to our family for a while so we already had some things like a tie out stake, a leash, a dish, and the like.  Today, we bought her a crate, some dog treats, a collar, a brush, some shampoo, and one or two other canine-care necessities.  The humane society requires prospective owners to make appointments to bring an animal home, so we’re going back on Thursday evening to pick up the newest member of the family.  Now we just have to decide on a name.  Ira doesn’t know it yet but he just got a canine sister.

If you haven’t seen Pirates of the Caribbean:   The Curse of the Black Pearl yet, I recommend going to see it if you’re in the mood for light, escapist fare.  As much as I generally disapprove of Disney the corporate entity, this is a reasonably good movie.

We went to the video store on Saturday night and rented a movie.  When we got home and pulled the movie out of the case, we had a completely different movie.  Suffice it to say that we did not watch the movie we had.  It was a night for a pair of good books, instead.

Well, we’re somewhat established in our new house, but the work seems never ending, at this point. We finally got all of our stuff out of the house we were renting last weekend.  I rented a U-Haul, and with the help of a co-worker, we got our furniture moved from one place to another.  This week we’ve been busy trying to figure out where all that furniture is going to end up in our house.  Sarah has been systematically washing all the window blinds in the backyard during the day.  We installed new towel rods and rings in the bathroom two nights ago.  Last night, we went to a clinic at Home Depot to see if we want to take a stab at installing vinyl replacement windows ourselves.  At this point, we might pay to have the windows replaced. Many of the windows are poorly installed and/or cracked.  This means that we tend to get more than our fair share of nocturnal visitors from the insect kingdom.  We’ve also got drainage issues to fight at some point, as well as some repairs that need to be done to various other parts of the house.  Even though it has been a headache so far to own a house, I’m sure the long-term benefits will far outweigh this relatively brief struggle.

Hopefully, we’ll get the wedding invitations out this weekend.  That somewhat depends on getting our laser printer back in action to tackle the address labels.  The invitations themselves are completed at the printers.

I put up some bird feeders in the back yard, but none of them have been big hits with the aviary crowd. One blue jay, a few sparrows, and a persistent squirrel have been my biggest customers so far.

Ira seems to enjoy our new house.  He’s been helping out with the weeds that grow between paving stones on our back patio.  He also likes to wander the yard and discover all the tortoise hiding places that the landscaping offers.

Why is it that gasoline gauges in cars and trucks are so inaccurate.  Is there a gasoline gauge made that reads "F" when the tank is full and "E" when the tank is actually empty?  Every gas gauge ever I’ve ever seen reads more than "F" when the tank is full and the tank is never empty when the needle reaches "E".  Auto manufacturers even acknowledge the completely worthless nature of the gas gauge.  Years ago they started installing indicator lights to tell the driver when he or she has less than two or five or seven gallons of gasoline remaining.  If the gauge was accurate to begin with, indicator lights wouldn’t be necessary.  If the indicator lights are accurate, then why can’t the gas gauge be made to read accurately, as well?  If the indicator light is no more accurate than the gas gauge, what good is the indicator light? 

My sister Amy flew in to Madison last night.  We’re planning on putting her to work helping us with our new house and our wedding preparations.  Last weekend we installed a new toilet in the bathroom, put in our tomato plants and a few peppers, stripped more of the wall paper from the kitchen, installed new electrical fixtures in the kitchen, new doorstops throughout the house, and various other tasks.  Today, Amy and Sarah taped up the dining room, so we will probably prime the dining room walls tonight.  My parents are coming to town on Friday afternoon to help with the Habitat for Sarah and David project.  Sarah’s parents are coming to town Friday evening to help with the same.  Hopefully, we can get a majority of the painting done this weekend.  That would leave us with some cleaning for next week before our move.  We are also working on getting a roofer and an electrician to come over in the next week or so.  The roof desperately needs to be replaced.  At the same time, we are going to have some skylights installed.  The main electrical panel needs to be replaced, and some work to increase the power capacity in the room we are going to use as a office also needs to be done.  Once the skylights are installed, we’ll have to have new electrical fixtures installed in the kitchen and dining room, as well as having the skylights framed in and some drywall and painting work done.  We are also getting the carpets cleaned next week.  As you might guess, we are busy, busy, busy.