If I didn't invite someone to my home, i.e. a solicitor, am I obligated to open the door if they see me inside? My thinking is, if I didn't invite them that I am not required to go to the door, regardless of whether they know I am home or not. Sometimes I am busy and have the bird out of his cage or am trying to keep Cody out of the other dogs' bowl so that he doesn't spoil his diabetic diet, and answering the door just to get rid of a solicitor isn't in my plans. I think I just need one of those doormats like Boris and Natasha on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show had that says "GO AWAY." What do you think?

This photo that was taken at a high voltage shop at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (just across the river from us) was sent around the space center as part of a safety message to keep doors closed and turn on lights when entering a room. One poor guy was only a few feet away from this monster before he realized what was there. The lights were off and the area was only dimly lit. I bet it was the surprise of his life! Click the photo to enlarge it.

I got an e-mail today from Coastal Poodle Rescue, which is the charity that we got Annabel from. They are in need of volunteers for upcoming fundraising events and are in desperate need of foster homes for poodles. Andy and I are planning to volunteer at some of the events, and I have been trying to talk Andy into fostering. He is not so sure that it is a good idea, because he thinks that I will get too attached to the dog and not be able to let it go. He has said before, "if we ever do this (foster a dog) and we end up with five poodles (we have four now), then you are done." I think I might be able to do it, especially since the foster parents get to choose the home the dog goes to. Andy has agreed to think about it and he said that I am lucky to get him to consider it at all. He loves the dogs just as much as I do, but also knows that I would have ten dogs if I could.

Coastal Poodle Rescue is an amazing charity that saves the lives of these poor dogs. I wish I could help more. I was just looking at the profiles of some of the dogs up for adoption, and there is one poor old girl that has cancer and only about six months to live. I was so sad when I read it that someone could be so heartless as to give up a dog when it is in the twilight of its life. I told Andy about her with tears in my eyes and he said "why do you look at those pages?" I want to take the poor girl home. Andy says somebody has to put on the brakes, because I would want every poodle they have.

If you are looking for a good charity to donate to, consider Coastal Poodle Rescue, where you know that your donation will all go toward saving a poor abandoned dog. The donations are tax deductible and you can click here to donate with PayPal. You can also visit the site to see the dogs up for adoption and some of the fundraising events coming up.

It has now been almost six months since we adopted Annabel from Coastal Poodle Rescue. She is very well integrated into the household now and such a sweet pleasant little dog that we really can't imagine why anyone would have given her up. She is happy all the time and will wag her little tail if you say her name, talk to her, look at her or pay her any attention whatsoever. She is fully housebroken and uses the dog door and loves to play with the other dogs. She cuddles up with us nicely every night to go to sleep. She licks my nose at night while I am sleeping if she has to go pee, so that I will wake up and take her. I mean really, what more could you ask for in a little dog?

My friend Julie has a theory that adopted/rescued dogs make the best pets because they are eternally grateful to you for giving them a good home, especially the ones that came from less than perfect situations. We know that Annabel was cooped up in a crate for a lot of her puppy life and that she was in a condo with a lady that smoked heavily. She didn't get to go outside except on a leash before she came to live with us, and now one of her favorite things is that she can go out whenever she wants through the dog door (into the fenced yard). I think this theory might be right because there is nothing that makes our Belle unhappy. She is just thrilled with life in general. We are so happy to have her here with us and love her greatly. I can't even remember what it was like without her. My pillow would feel empty at night without her little head resting on it.

You know the crazy right of way dispute I have been rambling on about for the last few days? Well Andy got in touch with the county lawyer today and the whole thing should be taken care of inside of about a week. The property in question does not meet the requirements of Quiet Title, and the plaintiff will have to drop the suit, or the county will dismiss it and charge them a fine. Andy talked to the guy's lawyer today, and he said that the man thought he had purchased that road when he bought his property many years ago. I kind of doubt thhat because of the many times he asked the county to vacate the right-of-way. If he asked the county to vacate it, that leads me to believe that he knew it was owned by the county. Anyway the guy is supposedly ancient and on his deathbed and all, so the matter will probably just be dropped. According to his lawyer, he was just worried about the neighbors in the front encroaching on his road and restricting his access. They are encroaching with their fences and such and so is he, and all of the fences will have to be moved back when the road is widened. The county says that it will not be a problem to get the encroachments removed. Victory!

The lawsuit that the other property owner has against our road is called a quiet title. Basically they took it to court hoping that no one would notice and that they would be granted the property even though it does not fit the definition of property that could be aquired through the "quiet title" method. The county lawyers did catch it and are working the issue, but they have said it could drag out for a year or more, even though there is no basis to the lawsuit. Just another wrench in the works. We will crush them!

You may recall last week when I wrote about the road to the property where we are going to build our new house, and how we are going to have to improve the road in order to get building permits. Well there was an interesting development today. It seems that the people that own the property right across from ours is suing the county in order to try to gain the fifty foot wide right of way that the road is on for their own personal property. The property (ours, theirs, and those surrounding) was platted in 1969, and at that time the road right of way was dedicated to the county for public use forever. It was put there to access mainly our property and the one across from it, but over the years two other properties built homes and now this road is their only access. There is a large canal that the road crosses, so without the use of this road, the people would not be able to get to their homes without building expensive bridges.

The people that are suing the county to take the right of way have absolutely no claim to it. There is no reason whatsoever that they should have it when it was intended for use by all, but they are being exceptionally greedy for some reason. They don't even live on the property, they only keep their horses and cows there, and they want to gate off the entire road and block access for two families to their own homes, and effectively landlock our property and another huge property at the end of the road. Well, we pretty much know that they won't get away with it, but until their lawsuit is settled we cannot start our road project, so this could potentially be a major problem. We have contacted our county commisioner and hope to talk to him tomorrow to get help with this. We have been told that we may be able to get the court case thrown out on the basis of it being a frivolous lawsuit because there is no way that a judge is going to grant the right of way to these people that don't even live there and have no grounds for the suit, when four other property owners would be unable to access their property. We are confident that the matter will be taken care of, we just hope that it doesn't drag out for a long time and get very messy.

It was 89 degrees here today on what was supposed to be the first day of spring. Not very spring-like if you ask me, but I'll take that any day over all of the snowstorms and tornados going on around other parts of the country.

I have a couple of interesting things to write about, but they are not exactly blog friendly, so you'll have to comment to ask for the rest of the post today. Oooohhh, secret!

It seems that I have been a little bit of a blog slacker this week, resorting to posting a lot of photos, and not keeping up with the blogs I read regularly. It has been a busy week. I was out of my comfort zone at work; doing a "special project" about five miles away from where I normally work, and Andy and I had a lot on our minds with the house building project coming up.

On Wednesday, Andy and I met with another builder to discuss the house we want to build and get an estimate. We really like this builder and hope he comes back with an estimate that we can work with. We are not building a very extravagant house, but there a few upgrades we want. We may have to start making some cuts if the estimate comes back too high. We have gotten a few other estimates already and the prices vary, but this is the first builder that seems like he is really taking all of our choices into consideration.

Today we purchased a new dining room set plus three counterstools for the new house (and this one too). There was a sale that we had been waiting for started yesterday and the new table will fit the new house nicely. This is our first real dining table as we have been using a hand-me-down one that my sister gave us for the past five years.

We also went out and bought fancy leather three ring binders, dividers, page protectors and all kinds of other office supplies so that I could make up a nice book of all of the stuff I need to get things done for the new house. Actually there are two books, a slim half inch binder that holds all of the paperwork I am currently working with, and then a big two inch binder to keep at home that will hold all of the paperwork after I no longer need to carry it around. Now everything is organized and tidy, instead of being just thrown into a single folder with no semblance of order. My mind feels less cluttered already, and this will make it that much easier to get things done.

Since I am all organized now, I should have more time to keep up with all of your blogs, and start commenting again. I'm off!

Here are the tops of a couple of Solid Rocket Boosters sitting in the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building. That is all I have for today as I am exhausted from my project this week.

These are some pics I took today at the VAB. You can see the very tops of the solid rocket boosters in the middle two pictures, and the last one is the top of the External Tank, or ET as we call it. We were WAY higher up than it looks in the pictures. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

At work this week I am working on a special project. Actually it is a mundane piece of shit project that I don't really want to get into here, but I am working in a different area about five miles down the road from where I am normally. I am working in the VAB, or Vehicle Assembly Building. We sometimes call it the BAB, or Big Ass Building, because that is what is is. The building covers over seven acres of land and when it was completed in 1966, it was the largest such structure in the world. It is 525 feet tall with something like 52 stories. In the early days the elevators in the VAB were the fastest in the world, and now, even though they have been slowed down, they are still fast enough to make your heart leap up into your throat when going down, or your ears pop when going up. There are a couple of glass sided elevators and those are cool because you can see exactly how fast you are going. For many years it has been impossible to visit floors above 19 without a special key for thhe elevator, but where we (me and a couple of co-workers) are working is above that so we went up to the 34th floor (the highest we had access to) and when we got ready to ride the elevator down, we pushed the button and everyone jumped at the same time. You can be weightless for a few seconds, so it is kind of fun.

On the 34th floor, when you look down, you can just barely see the tops of one set of solid rocket boosters. I am fine looking down, but if I try to look up from there it makes me a bit dizzy. I will have to take my camera tomorrow and take some pictures so that you can see what I am writing about.

This afternoon Andy and I went to meet with a man from the county Land Development office to find out what we have to do to the road to the property we are going to build on. The current road is a very rustic access road built in 1969, but it has to be improved to the county dirt road standards in order for them to issue building permits to us. So we are going to fix the road. It will cost a lot of money and all, but we knew about it before we bought, and the property was still a bargain even with the extra cost factored in.

While we were there at the county offices we visited several other departments, such as zoning and address assignments to get info. Our property is zoned agricultural/residential and we got a list of all of the cool stuff we can do there based on the zoning. At the address assignment department we found out that if we could get concurrence from the neighbors we could rename the road if we want to, but it might be more trouble than it is worth. So now our next task is to get estimates for the road work that has to be done. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can get it done more cheaply than what we have planned for.

It has been getting warmer and warmer outside lately, and yesterday I decided to turn the pool heater on. This morning, the pool was a comfortable 86 degrees, and after we finished the yard work, we went swimming for the first time since October, and Louie got to play his favorite game. Louie loves for us to throw his squeaky ball into the water and then he runs in to retrieve it. He is smart enough to know that when he gets hot, he should go in the water to cool off. He runs over to the pool's beach area and gets in the water, then kind of squats down so the water covers his back. We will have to build a pool with a beach entry or a sunbench at the new house too, just so he can wade. I would hate to deprive him.

I had a doctor's appointment today, with the rheumatologist I see for Fibromyalgia. He is very thorough, so I always end up waiting quite a while, but whatever. The nurse that came in before asked me a bunch of questions as always about any changes in medications, allergies, etc. I told her that I think I have become allergic to nuts, and said how weird it was, because I never was before, but now I get itchy rashes if I eat them. She said no, that it wasn't that weird, that the body's chemistry changes every seven years or so, and you can be allergic to something, then not be, then back again. I told her that I can't wait for this particular seven year span to be up, because it sucks. What about you? Do you have allergies that come and go? Is this totally crazy?

There has been a lot of intense stuff going on at work lately, mostly the kind of stuff I can't divulge here, but suffice it to say that everyone is a bit on edge there. Consequently, I have been having a lot of weird dreams, such as last night, among other times when I dreamed of a space shuttle launch that went badly. I know why I am dreaming that kind of stuff, duh, it is work stress, but there are some other recurring weird aspects to my dreams. I keep dreaming that I get into strange predicaments, or emergencies and can't dial the phone to get help. I will repeatedly misdial the numbers on the phone or dial them correctly and they turn out wrong anyway and I can't call for help. Anybody know what this means?

When I was a kid one of my favorite books was Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel. The book is made up of seven stories, and the gist of one of them is as follows. It is about a mouse that sets off on a journey and wears out his boots, and then at the side of the road is a man selling roller skates, and then when the roller skates wear out there is a man selling sneakers, then when the sneakers wear out he is down to his bare feet. He walks and walks until his feet hurt so much that he can't continue. And there, at the side of the road is a man selling feet, so he buys a new pair and finishes his journey. Or something like that. I don't remember the order of the shoes and boots and all, but the feet were last, I know that. It is a great book, by the way for any of you that have kids.

I have always wished to find that man by the side of the road selling feet. I could really use a new pair of feet. My feet are horrible and achy and I have had two surgeries on one of them. I still have bunions on the foot that hasn't been operated on and I have a neuroma in the foot that has. My toenails always want to ingrow, and my worst bouts of eczema are on my ankles. I hate my damn itchy ankles. If only I could find the man selling feet, I would certainly buy a new pair.

At work at the space center, many contracts for services are held by the blind or groups representing the blind. It is the government way to help these kind of groups, and that is all well and good. In fact there are little "cafeterias" scattered around in different buildings that are known as "blind men." It is not uncommon to hear a statement such as "I'm going to the blind man to get something to eat." In my area, the vending machines are filled by an older couple, of whom the wife is legally blind (the husband drives the truck, thank God).

The couple is really nice and all but I find it rather baffling the way they choose to fill the machines. They have a bunch of stops around the space center, and they drive a big box truck around with all of the merchandise. At each stop, they unload a GIANT breadrack sort of think on wheels that is very unwieldy and awkward and roll it into the building where the vending machines are. Then they pull out the few items they need to restock the machines, and then push the whole big rack back and use a lift gate to load it on the truck.

Maybe it is none of my business, but I find myself wondering why they don't individually pack up the stuff they might need at each stop in a much more manageable small container where they could easily maneuver it in to the buliding. They could pack up the stuff they might need separately for each stop instead of dragging everything they have into every building. Maybe I am stupid, but after doing the job their way once, I would be working on finding an easier way to do things. I guess I find it frustrating to watch someone strugglng with something when there must be a better way.

We get these goofy postcards in the mail all the time from various Realtors in the area, I guess it is to get their name out there or something. A lot of times they have a recipe or something like that printed on one side and the usual Realtor propaganda on the other. We got one in the mail today from the Realtors that live three houses down from us featuring a recipe for "Homemade Fish Fingers." The blurb on the reverse of the postcard read "Try these mouth-watering morsels! You'll never want imitation seafood again!" I found this very amusing because I have NEVER in my life wanted imitation seafood, and I am not even quite sure what it is. What about you? Do you crave imitation seafood? Am I totally nuts?

My friend at work and I were discussing how amazing it is that you can just dig a hole in the ground, wait a while, and then you have an alligator. Okay, so it isn't exactly like that, but almost. Consider the property we just bought. Aerial photos reveal that there was no pond on the property in 2002, but in the photos from 2003, the pond appears. There happens to be a decent sized alligator in theat pond now. So, someone dug a hole, and in a matter of only a few years, an alligator appeared. It is pretty neat, if you ask me.

Speaking of alligators, I entered a contest on MobilitySite.com. The contest was to take a photo of one of your gadgets in a place that is interesting. I took a photo of my iPod down at "Gator Lake" at work, in front of a giant gator, and on the screen of the iPod you can see that the song playing is "Alligator" by the Grateful Dead. I thought it was kind of clever, but so far I haven't got many votes yet. You can check out the contest gallery here, and vote for your favorite. You may have to join the site to vote; I am not sure.

I don't have much of a post today. Suffice it to say that we finally closed on the land for our new house, and everything went fine. Now it is ours, everything should fall into place, and in a year to a year and a half, we should be moving to a new house. I know it won't be easy, but we are up to the challenge.

Now with the new property we have close to ten acres in various locations; the new lot is 7.59 acres, there is the 1.7 acres we have in North Carolina, and then the dinky quarter acre that we live on now. My friends at work have taken to calling me a land baron. I just smile and say "that's Baroness to you!"