I have gotten a lot of nice comments and emails from a lot of you thanking me for rescuing Denny and Michaela. I really appreciate it but I don't think I could have done otherwise. They truly needed me, and it is such a special thing to get to know them. I feel blessed to have the complete love and trust of two such wonderful little dogs. It is funny too, because I know how much they appreciate it. When I come home they are both beside themselves with happiness. I am sitting on the couch now, and there is one of them on each side of me, while the other dogs are off playing or sleeping. Those two are with me all the time. Now it just remains to be seen if I can do the last part of fostering these dogs and let them go to new homes. I really want to keep Denny- I am totally in love with him. Don't say you told me so, please. I know.

I took little Miss Michaela to the vet today, and he said that she was okay. I mean, she is undernourished and has bad skin allergies, but she got basically a clean bill of health. He said not to worry about her not drinking as long as she was still eating. He said she would drink when she is thirsty, but apparently she is getting enough water from her food. She got all of her vaccinations and a shot of a corticosteroid to help her skin, and we will start her on oral steroids tomorrow, which will also help with her thirst and appetite.

Today I took our poor little furry foster child, Michaela, to another volunteer's home to be groomed a little better. She had a grooming table and knew what she was doing more than I did, so she was able to trim off even more of Michaela's tangle of hair. We worked on her for a while, and she really doesn't have much hair left. She had a lot of scratches and sores on her and is so incredibly skinny that all her little bones are sticking out. After I brought her home, we washed her again using a coal tar type shampoo to try to control her dandruff and itchy skin. She kept scratching even after the bath and started really tearing up her skin, so I put her in a set of dog pajamas I had from one of our previous dogs. At least the pajamas will keep her from tearing her skin raw until we can get her to the vet tomorrow. The real concern I have for her is that she is not drinking. At all. We have been keeping her hydrated by mixing her wet food with even more water so that she gets water when she eats, but I am very concerned about it. Andy will be taking her to the vet tomorrow morning, and I hope she isn't seriously ill. So that is how I have spent my Memorial Day holiday, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I know what you are thinking. You're thinking that this blog should have been called "For the Dogs" instead of For the Birds, because I am completely insane and have taken in yet another furbaby. Yes, this now means that there are SIX dogs in the house; my original three, Annabel, the one we adopted in October, Denny, the foster we have had for a month, and now this little girl. This afternoon we met the person surrendering the tiny dog in front of a local pet store. I had the release of liability form for the Poodle Rescue group ready for the man to fill out and we took the poor waif straight home. She is tiny tiny, black and very sweet. She was in the worst condition imaginable, super skinny with long dreadded up and matted fur, sores on her body including one under each eye, and a runny nose. Despite all of this, we can tell she is going to be absolutely adorable once she gets some good veterinary care and some TLC. When we got her home, I couldn't leave her all matted like that for another second, so I started on her with my dog clippers that I normally use for touchups on the dogs between groomings.

I had to shave her down all the way to the skin in some places to remove the massive amounts of matting. There was one giant mat on her back that took up almost half her body. After the mats were removed we gave her a bath and boy was she filthy! She is a mess now, because her fur is all uneven- a dog groomer I am NOT- but she is clean and unmatted so that is a start. I am taking her tomorrow over to the home of one of the other volunteers to be shaved down more evenly, and then I will post more pictures. These pictures are quite obviously "before" pictures with her as a tangled mess. Click on the pictures to enlarge them and see the full extent of her disarray. She is a very sweet girl, but so small she seems like she would break. It is like having a squirrel sitting next to you on the couch.

This morning I got an email from the coordinator of the poodle rescue, that said that there were thirteen poodles that had come into the system in the last two days and that they desperately needed some of the fosters to "double up" on dogs to be able to save all of them. I somehow managed to talk Andy into it, and we emailed back that we could take a small one (as there is already so much dog MASS in here! Well, we are meeting the people surrendering the dog at three o'clock this afternoon at a local pet supply shop to take the dog, which is supposedly a three year old very small female. I know nothing else about her except that she is small, like five pounds or so. Anyway, I will have more info and pictures this afternoon. Wish us luck!

There was this thing on the news yesterday, designed to inflame viewers against the atrocities of Homeowners Insurance companies. Now I will be the first to say that insurance companies are evil evil evil, but I didn't agree with the story at all. The newscast discussed how some insurance companies were conducting "surprise inspections" on th homes they insure. They show one lady whose house had been inspected and the insurance company found that the roof was worn out, the gutters were damaged and falling off the house, and the whole exterior of the house was covered in mildew. The woman had to rectify the problems within 90 days of the insurance company would not cover her. She was outraged, and all of the viewers were supposed to be too.

I saw a lot of this in the past two years with the four hurricanes that have graced this area in that time. We were never really hit that hard here, but houses with roofs that were in bad repair, fences that were nearly falling down and the like were damaged. We had a new roof (that we paid for) and kept up our property well, and we had no damage through four hurricanes other than some plants and one window screen that was torn. We saw many people in the area receive large checks (large enough even to more than cover their repairs plus their deductables) from their insurance companies to get brand new roofs when their roofs were old and in need of replacement before the storms came. Some of them would brag about their good fortune and buy plasma TVs or jet skis with the "proceeds" after their repairs were done. Then we saw our premiums skyrocket due to the fact that the companies need to make up for all of the claims. I feel like we paid for our neighbors to get new roofs and remodel and so I am actually on the side of the insurance companies on the inspections. I'm tired of doing the right thing just to see everyone around me mooch off the system. What do you think? Would you be outraged if your insurance company told you that you had to replace your worn out roof or they wouldn't cover you?

I would really love to post something impressive and insightful, but I am finding it darn near impossible to post anything of any length right now as every time I try to type a very cute dog (Denny) shoves his nose under my hand forcing me to pet him. He knocks my hand right off the keys of my laptop. He is pretty persistent, so I'll have to leave this post short and if you don't stop by over the holiday weekend, have a great one. I will be posting as usual.

Andy took our foster dog, Denny, to the vet this morning to have his splint removed, and his broken toes evaluated for healing. He was found as a stray with all of the toes on his back right foot broken, so that was the first thing taken care of when we took him in. His surgery was almost four weeks ago now, but the vet said that the healing hadn't progressed very far. Denny has pins in his toes, and they have to stay in for a while yet. It is the first time we have seen the actual work that was done on him, because his foot has been all bandaged and splinted. He is free of all that now, but you can see the pins where they stick out of his foot, and his foot is pretty swollen. It is a little bit gross looking, but not too bad. Andy asked the vet if he could give Denny a bath, since he hasn't had one since just before the surgery, and the vet said it was fine. It is a good thing too, as Andy said that Denny's foot kind of stunk from being all wrapped up for so long. He smells all nice like green apple dog shampoo which is nice since he sleeps in our bed right next to me. He is back to hopping around now, and we just have to watch to make sure he doesn't chew or excessively lick the surgical site.

I am drawing a complete blank as to what to write about today, but I will leave you with this: Have you ever noticed that you will receive more phone calls than ever from people who want to talk for a while when you have got a bowl of ice cream out? They want to go on and on and all you can think of is how your wonderful ice cream is turning into a creamy soup.

I was talking on the phone this afternoon with the guy from the environmental permitting solution company that we are workng with on the wetland permit that will allow us to build our house on our new property. He is a true environmentalist and was out in the woods with his machete (and cell phone) as I was talking to him today. We discussed the plans for the placement of our new home and the mitigation that will have to occur in order for us to build. If you are not aware, mitigation is when you "make up for" the wetland impacts from building by improving existing wetlands or setting aside other wetlands for perpetuity.

Anyway, I was asking him if he had a list of wetland plants that we could plant out there, and he said that he didn't think we would need to do any planting for our mitigation, that it would be enough just to set aside land as a conservation easement and remove invasive species (like Brazilian peppers). I told him that we would still like to know of some wetland and other native plants because we WANT to use wetland plants around the house in order to keep it cohesive. My plan is that we will use native grasses and plants around the house for several reasons. Native plants are more drought and pest resistant (they actually EVOLVED to fit this environment), and the amount of time and money that we currently waste on irrigation and pest control (and mowing) could be much better spent. I want a nearly maintenance free yard with no irrigation system, no pest control; one that just looks nice and wild and free, rather than perfectly green and manicured. I want the yard to blend well with the surroundings. We have even planned a pool with a black interior surrounded by rocks and reeds so that it will look similar to the natural pond on our property.

Well, the environmental guy was floored and really happy. He said "you guys are so cool" and told me that normally he has to spend a lot of time figuring out how to get the perfect manicured green lawn in the middle of the wetlands and woods for most of their customers. He said that we were asking questions that nobody asks, and he vowed to get back to me on it. Chalk it up to our love of nature and animals, and our desire to have the house look as though it "belongs" in the landscape. I think it will be truly beautiful.

This morning Andy and I went out to the property to do some measuring from some surveyed points on our property to determine where the house is going to be. With over seven and a half acres, it should be easy, right? Well, due to our wetlands issues we have to be very creative on the house placement in order to minimize wetland impact. We think we ave found a really good spot that should work out well for us, but it is very different from where we were looking at building the house before now. It was actually an idea conceived by a guy from our environmental firm who is negotiating the home site for us. It is way back deep into the property, and our driveway would be about 500 feet long, but we plan to use a very inexpensive material for the driveway, so it should be okay.
The project is moving very slowly, but it IS moving, so that is something. The photos here show approximately the area where the house will be. They are old pictures from earlier this year, but you get the idea. It is so very quiet back there it is unbelievable. We have been experiencing record drought here lately, so when we went to look at the pond, which is probably about a sixth of an acre, the water was down around four feet from where it should be, but there was still a good amount of water in it. Once it starts raining again it will look a lot better, and we have plans to aerate the water and stock it with more fish- there are some already there. We didn't see the alligator this time.
We also sort of resolved another concern of ours out there, and it is one that pertains to the road to the house that we have to improve to county standards in order to get our building permit. Right where our road joins the main street it comes off of, there is a large canal or ditch running parallel to the street. Our road goes over a land bridge to get across the canal, and we were concerned that it was not wide enough to meet the county standard of being 22 feet wide. We took our tape measure out there today, and the land bridge measured about 22 feet, 8 inches wide, so that means we shouldn't have to face the extra expense of widening it, which is definitely good news.

Last night Andy had to work really late because of the shuttle rollout to the launch pad, as in he didn't get home until four in the morning. I snapped this cute shot of him with the dogs sleeping this morning.

He is back at work already again, on overtime, but hopefully he won't be working quite so late tonight.

You may have already seen my photos of yesterday's space shuttle rollout, but Andy took the good camera to work last night at the launch pad and got some more. Andy is the one on the right in the first picture.

Today was another milestone for us at work, as the space shuttle made it's way very very slowly from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad B (where Andy works). A couple of co-workers and I went up there to check it out this afternoon.

Here is the building that it rolled out of; you can see the opening where the stack came out, which is remarkably small compared to the massive building.

...of being a dog. I wrote a few days ago about how our extremely self-centered (and noisy) neighbors had complained about her barking, and that I ordered a citronella collar for her. The collar came today, and I charged it up with the aerosol citronella and sent her on her way. I never saw her even go out there and bark, but she must have, and she must have figured out pretty quickly that when she barked that a mist of citronella would spray out of the collar. It is totally harmless to a dog, but they don't like it, and it surprises them enough that they stop barking to investigate. It seems to have worked already, because she doesn't even want to go out there and bark anymore, and it is one of her favorite things to do. I feel like a bad mom for taking that away from her. Dogs will be dogs, and dogs bark, including the complaining neighbors dog, which is what sets Anna off most of the time. It is just what they do. I hope my crappy neighbors are happy.

At work we are getting a lot closer to actually launching again. The orbiter was just mated to the external tank and solid rocket boosters a couple of days ago, and the whole stack is almost ready to roll out to the launch pad, which is where Andy works, so he will be working a lot of overtime coming up. He is back on second shift so I am here by myself at night, but at least there is someone home with the dogs most of the time. Here are some incredible photos of the stacking process, where the orbiter is mated to the rest of the stack. These are not photos that I took, but they were emailed to me. There is only a very minimum of people allowed in the Vehicle Assembly Building during the procedure, because in a worst case scenario a booster could light off and suck every bit of oxygen out of the building and kill everyone in a split second. It is quite a dangerous operation. I hope you enjoy the photos of a delicate operation that the public rarely gets to see.

Neat, huh?

My poor furry kids. Almost all of them are ailing in some way right now. Louie, the black one has been acting all pitiful and has no appetite. Annabel has been doing this sort of snorting thing- she got the snorting instead of a cough with her cold. Cody is still coughing a little bit and he wheezes horribly. Denny is okay except for his healing leg, and Ollie has been okay so far aside from the seizure he had on Friday. Go figure that the ancient dog that is over eighteen years old would be the only one not to get sick. I guess he has so many antibodies built up over his lifetime that he was immune. Andy is back on second shift and he took these pictures of the sweet little beasts resting today. Aren't they just pathetic? Can you believe how many freaking dogs we have?

How long has it been since you've sat down and actually wrote a letter? I mean a real letter, not just a quick card or an email. For me it has been years, close to ten, I suspect. But I wrote one today, and it was fun. You see, one of my internet friends who lives on the other side of the world had a thought that she would like to start writing to each other by snail mail, and I was game so we've started. I got my first letter from her today, and it was neat. I used to write letters like you wouldn't believe when I was a kid, mostly to friends I only saw at summer camp. I also wrote to a couple of my friends in high school who went away to Australia and France as exchange students and to my friends at home when I went to live in the Virgin Islands. I have boxes of letters I got back from my friends and it is so nice to be able to read back through them and remember what was going on at that time in my life, almost like a journal. We were extremely creative with our letters, too- they were extravagantly decorated and full of small drawings and other items. I really treasure the letters and think it was a great idea to start writing again.

I've been tagged by Bonanza, and here is how it goes:

Go to Wikipedia and put in your birthdate (not the year) and then list 3 events, 2 birthdays and 1 death.

I've decided to put a little spin on this because there so many results making it hard to choose. I am choosing only results that pertain to Italy, because I am half Italian, after all. Oh, and the picture above is of me and two of my cousins in Venice. I'm the one in the middle.

Events:

1852 - Count Camillo Benso di Cavour became the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expanded to become Italy.

1918 - World War I: Austria-Hungary surrenders to Italy.

1966 - Two-thirds of Florence, Italy is submerged as the Arno and Po rivers flood; 113 people die, 30,000 are rendered homeless, and countless Renaissance artworks and books are destroyed.

Births:

1448 - King Alphonso II of Naples (d. 1495)

1575 - Guido Reni, Italian painter (d. 1642)

Death:

1584 - Saint Charles Borromeo, Italian cardinal (b. 1538)

And here's a little bit extra that I found; my birthday is celebrated in Italy for all of the following reasons:

Roman festivals - start of the Ludi Plebeii
Roman Catholic Saints - Feast day of the following Roman Catholic saints:
Saint Charles Borromeo
St. Birrstan
St. Clarus
St. Emeric
St. Joannicus
St. Modesta
St. Nicander and Hermas
St. Philologus and Patrobas
St. Pierius
St. Vitalis
Celebration of victory in World War I, the date of the Armed Forces

I am not tagging anyone, but feel free to try this if you like.

We are not doing too well lately, at least those of us with fur are not. Cody is very sick with a cold/flu type thing, and Louie has a touch of it too. Ollie had a seizure yesterday while we were gone and couldn't stand up for most of the day but he is better now. Louie started coughing a few days ago, but I didn't realize he was sick; I thought he had just irritated his throat or something, being the filthy animal he is. But then yesterday Cody started coughing, and it was really bad. His breathing was labored and he has a deep nasty cough. I took him to the vet first thing this morning, and we had to stand outside the building until a room was ready becuase he is contagious. When the doctor examined him, he had a fever of 103 and his lungs had a lot of congestion. The vet put cody and Louie on a strong antibiotic, Baytril, and gave us a prescription for some cough syrup with codeine. He asked if the dogs had been groomed lately, and I told him no, but that we had a foster dog in the house, and he said that is where it came from. Denny didn't have symptoms except sneezing when we got him, but I thought maybe that was due to being under anesthesia when he had his surgery. Denny was on some heavy antibiotics from his surgery, so maybe that is why he didn't come down with the illness like the other two. Cody's diabetes causes him to have a weakened immune system, so that is probably why he was the worst off. I just hope Ollie and Annabel don't get it too. I guess it is fairly easy for dogs to catch strains of illnesses like this from shelters, and Denny was in one for a few days. The medicines in the photo above are some of the ones I have been administering to various dogs lately. The diabetes insulin and supplies are not included in this pile of medication; this is all of the other stuff.

We only have neighbors living on one side of us right now; the house on the other side has been vacant since last summer. The people who live next door to us on the west side are okay, but they are the type of people that think that the whole world revolves around them. Even though their house is on the same size lot as ours, theirs is one story and is situated strangely on the lot leaving them almost no back yard, and just a small strip of side yard towards our house. We have a six foot wood privacy fence, but their "lanai" or glorified screened porch is on the back corner of their house that is next to our house. They are out on that porch CONSTANTLY and they always talk loudly, cackle, and their very large dog barks, all of which drive my little dogs nuts, so they love to go over to the fence and bark at them. It is not very excessive, and the dogs on both sides of the fence seem to enjoy it, so sometimes we let them bark for a while before reining them back in the house. I don't mind the barking, from our dogs or their dog, but since I know they DO mind, I have to keep mine quiet, while theirs is not. Our dogs have a dog door, so they are used to going out there whenever they want. Our latest adopted dog, little Annabel, has a rather annoying bark; I will admit straight up. And her favorite thing in the world is to run outside and bark at those people. We yell for her to get back in the house periodically, and she comes in, because she knows she'll get a treat, but she runs right back out usually, unless we close off the dog door.

Yesterday at around five PM, the neighbor came over and asked Andy if we could let the dog in the house, as if we had locked her out there or something. He told the guy that she could come in whenever she wants, she wasn't locked out there, but we brought her in and closed off the dog door anyway. Now I am spending $60 to purchase a citronella spray anti-bark collar for her to try to break the habit, because I am a good neighbor, but this guy should be the last guy ever to complain about our little dog barking during daytime "legal" hours, when he is the same one that locked his dog in the house all night with all the windows open while they went out partying and the dog barked every ten seconds until five in the morning keeping us awake all night. These are also the noisiest neighbors in the entire world, screeching and yelling while they drink heavily on their back porch late at night. Our dogs are all in the house by seven PM, while these people whoop and holler until two in the morning on a semi-regular basis. I have been laying in bed in the middle of the night with all of the windows closed only to be awakened by them or their drunk friends singing, talking, whatever. I could actually hear every word they were saying. Here is a picture of their "lanai" taken from our master bedroom window (upstairs). You can see how there is a direct line of sight from there, and I guess that is why the noise from there carries so well too. The picture is horrible because it was taken through my window, but you get the idea. The roof you see below me is the roof over our huge back porch. Our house doesn't sit way back on the lot like theirs does- we have a nice big back yard. And yes, their house is purple.

So, I think that our neighbor should be ashamed of himself to complain about our dog when she wouldn't bark if they would just SHUT UP out there for a change. And I don't think it is fair that my dogs have to be trained not to bark, when their dog is allowed to bark and egg them on. Whatever. When we move to our new property, those dogs will be able to bark themselves silly.

One of my favorite plants out around the pool is finally blooming. Well, I say "blooming" but actually the "flowers" aren't flowers but colored bracts, but you get the idea. The plant is called Lobster claw heliconia, for obvious reasons and it is really impressive. It is a tropical plant which we are lucky to be able to grow down here in Florida. The claw shaped bracts look almost as if they are made of plastic, but they are actually kind of fuzzy to the touch.

If you want to help little Denny, who racked up some extensive vet bills with his surgery, there is now a page for him on Petfinder. You can view it and donate via PayPal here. The main Coastal Poodle Rescue Page is here.

It has been a very busy day, so I am just going to give a quick update before I go to sleep. I took Denny, the foster pooch in to the vet today for stitch removal/post surgery checkup. His bones in his foot are healing nicely, and everything looked really good. Except the skin was a little raw where the splint was rubbing his leg while he has been running around. So they applied some cream, resplinted the leg, and put him back on antibiotics so that the raw area doesn't get infected. It looks like he is going to be just fine. I am so relieved that he didn't dislodge or break the pins in his foot. One of the other dogs in rescue with our group broke the pins they put in her leg four times and they finally had to amputate her little leg. So sad.

I took a vacation day from work today, and you would think that would mean I got a lot of stuff done, but on the contrary, I slept late- till eight o'clock- and spent a large part of the day sitting on the couch with the foster dog, Denny, draped over my lap, stuck to me like glue. He already loves me and Andy sooooo much that he wants to be with us all the time. He gets pretty upset when we leave to go to work, but as of next week Andy will be on second shift again and Denny will have someone home with him almost all of the time.

While I was lazing around the house I finally crossed over to the dark side and joined MySpace. I thought maybe it would be nice if I was able to find some old friends from high school and summer camp and such, but the jury is still out on that one. I was able to hook myself up with some "friends" almost instantly thanks to my blogging buddies, so at least I don't have to look like a major loser with administrator "Tom" as my only friend.

Wednesday night was our annual Homeowners Association meeting, you know, the one where Andy and I relinquished (happily) our positions as president and secretary/treasurer. I already posted about this, but the meeting was sort of interesting, so I will clue you in on some of the funny things that happened.

When we first got there and were setting up chairs, this asshole was there wanting to pay his dues and leave. He wanted to like shake our hands and meet and be all cordial and shit, perhaps forgetting that he totally bitched me out over the phone last year. I didn't forget, that is for sure.

When the meeting started, Andy was reading over the minutes of last year's meeting, where we had talked about having a no parking sign installed in front of the first house on the street. The house is on the corner of our street and a semi-busy road. The guy in the house has people park in front of his house, right in front of the stop sign, so that other cars have to drive around them. It is a fairly narrow street, and when someone is turning onto our street while someone else is trying to navigate around one of these poorly placed vehicles, the potential exists for a head on collision.

The guy that lives in this house and parks his cars all over the place was at the meeting this year, and spoke up, trying to make us feel sorry for him because he doesn't have enough parking. He said without parking in front of the stop sign, all he has left is his garage and driveway. I was thinking "so what" when he said it becuase his garage is full of crap and usually his driveway is empty when he has cars parked in front of the stop sign, or even worse, cars parked all over his front lawn giving our nieghborhood the appearance of a trailer park and killing the grass. If he were to use his garage and driveway, there is enough room for atleast four, possibly five vehicles, The houses in this neighborhood are to be used as single family residences only, so one would think that parking for five vehicles would be enough, right? Keep in mind that this is the nutty guy who painted his house ORANGE as well, as I mentioned here and here. Anyway, I am at a loss as to what to do with this guy, but thankfully it is not my problem anymore.

Then we had the lady who is the wife of one of the Dennises, the pot smoking one who yells obscenities at night when she is drunk. I wrote about her and her husband that live in the Pepto Bismol pink house here. She was all upset becuase she got a letter that said she had to remove the magnetic advertising signs on her car when it is parked in the driveway, and wanted to know why other people were able to get away with having ugly lawns, etc. She is just a bitch.

Then it came time to elect new officers, and we had one volunteer for the secretary/treasurer position, but that was it. We were prepared to sit there all night if we had to in order to get new officers. One of the newer homeowners finally was cajoled by his wife to get invloved, and he spoke up and told us his name and Andy said "Nice to meet you." The rude ass guy said "whatever, we'll get into that later" and instantly made me hate him for being such a rude dick head, but the ultimate revenge is that he will be stuck with this God-forsaken association from now on!

The new officers are supposed to come over here at one o'clock tomorrow, to get all the stuff and for us to show them how things work. We'll see how that goes.

I don't know if you have seen it on the news or anything, but central Florida has been plagued by a rash of gigantic brush fires after experiencing some severe drought this year. There have been massive fires covering many acres, and big enough to jump over major interstates and roads, but fortunately even though many homes in the area have been threatened, I don't think any have been lost yet. The major impact to the area has been the smoke, especially at night and in the early morning when it settles lower in the atmosphere, and creates blinding or whiteout conditions on roadways causing multicar pileups and road closings. There have been a couple of days this week that the smoke has been pretty thick on the way to work, but nothing like what it is from those coming to our county from Orlando. I am just thankful that we live on an island, Merritt Island. Even though the fires can jump a highway or interstae, there is no way that they will jump a bridge, so beside the smoke danger, we are going to be okay here.

So, as of last night, Andy and I are no longer officers of our stupid Homeowners Association, thank God. There was very poor turnout at the meeting last night, but Andy and I were prepared to make everyone sit there until someone volunteered, if we had to sit there all night. Fortunately we got three volunteers for the positions of president, vice-president, and secretary/treasurer, so we are out! I don't even care who took over our positions or what they do, just that we don't have to do it anymore.

Denny, our foster dog, is doing just fine but seems to be suffering a bt from separation anxiety when we leave to go to work. He does okay, but he cries and it breaks my heart to hear him cry when I leave. I think he will get better about it as days go by and he sees that we always come back when we leave. Poor darling. He is so cuddly at night, too- he is great to sleep next to because he is warm and fuzzy, and doesn't get fussy at night.

At work today we had two astronauts visit and talk to us. One of them was Barbara Morgan, who was selected as NASA's back up candidate for the "Teacher in Space" program in 1985 behind Christa McAuliffe. She is looking forward to her first mission in around a year on STS-118. She and the other astronaut toured our facility, talked to us and answered questions, and we all took a group picture. I think it is nice when they find the time to visit the people who hold their lives in their hands when on a mission. You would think they would do so more often, really.

Remember the ordeal with our house building project, where we have to improve the road in order to get a building permit? Remember that a crazy neighbor had filed a lawsuit to try to claim the right of way and how the lawsuit was found to be unfounded and the guy's lawyer was going to have it dropped or he would be fined by the county? Well, here we are nearly six weeks later, and the suit has not yet been dropped. Apparently the crazy guy had a heart attack, but his lawyer will not return our calls or the county lawyers calls. We are probably going to have to nail him with some hefty fines. What a pain in the ass.

Tomorrow night is our annual Homeowners Association Meeting, and the last one we will ever attend. We will be relinquishing our thankless positions, Andy as president and myself as secretary/ treasurer of the horrid HOA after three years, and I couldn't be happier about it. You may remember me announcing my resignation of this position a few months ago here, but there was no way to get someone else to take over it at that time, so I begrudgingly have done the bare minimum of work on it since then, just to get through to tomorrow night.

I didn't get to send the resignation letter that I wanted to send, saying basically "screw you all" but instead just left it as a simple statement in the meeting announcement that we would be stepping down due to us leaving the neighborhood shortly (when our new house is done).

I don't have much tonight as I am exhausted, but Denny did very well on his first day at home while we were at work. He had a nice large pen to stretch out in and lounge in while we were gone, as well as a shirt of mine to snuggle with (because it smelled like me- comforting to a dog) and music to listen to. He did beautifully in the pen and was laying happily in his bed when we got home, wagging his tail. We have to confine him during the day so that he does not re-injure his foot where it has been pinned during surgery.

It is going to be tough to find him a home as my standards are so high. I want him to have as good of a home as he has with us, and it seems we are not the norm. Hopefully God will send along the right family for him when he heals from his surgery so that we can help another poodle. Thanks for all of your prayers to save his poor foot as things are looking good right now.

Check out the super cute picture of Denny with my poor little diabetic Cody above. I guess you could say that Denny is good with other dogs, huh?