With the upcoming return to flight of the Space Shuttle, you would think I would have posted more about it. In fact, launch is scheduled for Saturday, so it is looming near. It looks like weather could be a factor, though, because we are back into our pattern of convective thunderstorms every afternoon, and the launch time is set at 3:49.

Anyway, I don't know why I haven't posted about it- it isn't because I haven't been thinking about it, but instead maybe because it is so much a part of my consciousness that I don't even think about mentioning it. Andy has to work Saturday to support the launch since he works at the pad, and I may go out there if it looks like it is really going to go. Please everyone pray for a successful launch so we can get back to the business of human spaceflight with some regularity.

When Denny first came to us as a foster dog, I don't think he even knew what a toy or a ball was. He had never had the opportunity to be a puppy and play with toys. Well there are a ton of dog toys strewn all around our house, so it wasn't long before he was picking them up and flipping them around and tearing them up with the other dogs. There was one canvas chipmunk, however that must have held a special place in his heart because he would get very possesive of it and once he even took it out and buried it in the yard so that the other dogs couldn't get it. I thought it was just a phase so I took the chipmunk away for a few weeks so it wouldn't cause him such distress.

Yesterday, I spotted the chipmunk on the counter and as a reward to Denny I let him play with it again. Well, he became a different dog with that stupid chipmunk and carried it up and down the stairs repeatedly looking frantically for a place to hide it. When we got ready for bed he snapped at any dog that came near him with his chipmunk. He even snarled and snapped at me- he never does this- when I took the chipmunk away, but as soon as I put it down on the dresser where no one could get to it he was back to his sweet precious loving self. Dogs are so weird. The chipmunk is now permanently retired.

Last night just further reinforced our decision to build a new house on a lot more land. Our super inconsiderate neighbors were up until the wee hours of the morning on their back porch drinking and yelling so that we could hear them in our bedroom with all the windows closed. To make things worse, the neighbor behind us who has a lot of land currently has a relative living there in a camper, and they have some sort of hound dog that barks at every sound. Not that I mind the barking, but it causes mine to bark, and the neighbors on the side of us who are making all the noise are the ones who complained about our dogs barking. So, they go out there and make all kinds of noise which causes the hound dog to bark, their dog to bark in reply, and our dogs to want to bark. Meaning anyone wanting to get any sleep before 3 AM is out of luck. And really, I wouldn't even care about the barking, I would just let them run out there and get it out of their systems except that the noisy neighbor bitched about the barking and I am afraid that they will try to kill my dogs. We actually found one of them chewing on a chicken bone once, which can break apart in their stomachs and kill them, and we don't even buy chicken with bones, so go figure.

Anyway, so we are getting closer to coming to an agreement with a builder about the new house. I think we are going to have the plans drawn pretty soon. It is going to have thicker walls, insulated glass, and therefore be much more soundproof. This crap with hearing your neighbors' conversations while you are lying in bed has got to go. And if the dogs want to bark, they can go outside and bark to their hearts content.

So we finally got a preliminary estimate from the builder we met with last week. After discussing a few changes to the plan I believe we can work out a deal that is reasonable and somewhat affordable. We thought of making the garage a little smaller and adding a stand alone workshop to the plan. Andy is all over that idea. He loves woodworking and would be beside himself with happiness if he had his own workshop. I would be beside myself with happiness to not have sawdust all over my Jeep everytime he works on a project and have silence in the house when he is working with power tools. We will be meeting with the builder again this weekend to hash things out and see if we can make this idea a reality.

Today I talked with a lender to find out exactly how much money we could get for this project while also retaining our current house up until the end of construction. I was concerned that we wouldn't be approved for enough to complete the project without selling the house we are in now, which is not an option due to the impossibility of finding temporary housing for us with six dogs and a noisy parrot. Turns out that it will not be an issue. Honestly, lenders will give you way more than they ever should. If you have good credit they are practically throwing money at you. I still have some loan shopping around to do, though.

Has anyone seen the newish Burger King commercials for a chicken sandwich lately? They keep repeating in a singing tone what sounds exactly like "Big fucking chicken" over and over. I mean, it can't actually be that but I could swear that is what the song says. I mentioned something about it at lunch today and one of my co-workers knew exactly what I was talking about, so it is not just me. We couldn't figure out what the song could even be saying. Have you seen this? Do you know what they are really singing in the commercial? I am dying to know.

UPDATE: It is actually Big Huckin Chicken, and there is a website at www.huckinchicken.com. Andy saw the web address on the corner of the screen on one of the commercials. It seems that a huck is a type of motocross jump, and the commercial shows the chicken on a bike doing jumps. You KNOW they meant for it to sound like fucking, though.

It appears that the poodle rescue is going to let us keep Denny and Michaela. When I talked to the president of the charity Friday she asked if we still wanted to keep them and I told her we did. She said to think it over, but we are sure. We haven't given the official word yet or started the adoption process, but it is coming soon.

Those two are so funny. Denny spends most of his time stuck to either me or Andy getting as much love as possible to make up for all the neglect and abandonment he has been through. Michaela is so happy to see me when I get home that she jumps up and bites at my clothes to get my attention. We could never let those two go; they are the greatest.

Okay, yes, I am sick in the head, but this morning I noticed that Michaela had pooped an installment of a Stonehenge replica on the back porch. The poop stood upright all on its own, like a monolith. She must have some real talent to make it stand on end like that. I knew that girl was special.

Yesterday Andy and I took Denny to the annual Poodle Rescue Picnic. Everyone gets together and eats and plays with dogs and there is a meeting where important things such as finances are discussed. Can you believe that in the last year, vet bills for the group have amounted to $54,000? And that is at a 50% discount, so the amount of work that has been done on the rescued poodles is really $108,000! At the picnic, we saw Annabel's former foster mom who is also the one that picked up Denny from the Animal shelter down south. She lives about two hours away, so we hadn't seen her since we picked up Annabel. We brought Denny up to her, and we had to re-introduce him to her since he looks so much different and better now that she didn't recognize him. She didn't believe it was him until she looked into his big brown eyes and remembered them. Anyway, the picnic was fun, and surprisingly, Denny was one of the best behaved dogs there. Not that he normally has any problems, but you never know when you bring a dog around that many other dogs and strange people. I love these events because we get to meet a lot of people that we instantly have so much in common with, and it is so much fun to play with all the dogs.

After the picnic, Andy and I went out and did something we haven't done in a very long time. We actually went out to a bar at the port (Port Canaveral) because one of my friends from work is in a band that was playing there. We only stayed for a couple of hours because we had to get back and give Cody his insulin shot, but we saw most of the people I work with there getting a little bit crazy and it was kind of fun. The band was playing at the bar that was the last stop of a "poker run" that was organized by one of my other co-workers to benefit Hospice, so it was for a good cause. It was something different- but my tolerance for a smoky bar has gone down a lot since my younger days. How was your weekend?

You've probably never heard of it. Dermatographism is what it is called, and it is a strange skin thing where you can sort of draw on your skin and the red marks stay for a few minutes. Here is the real, clinical definition. Dermatographism is a condition where lightly scratching the skin raises wheals or welts. Histamine is released at the site, causing the small blood vessels (capillaries) to dilate, producing redness and localized swelling. There are some good photos in Google images that show what it looks like normally. If that isn't weird enough, I don't even have the normal dermatographism, I have the reverse. When I draw lightly on my skin with my fingernail, in a few minutes the skin turns pale white in those areas. It is kind of freaky but also slightly entertaining. It goes away after a few minutes, so sometimes I amuse my co-workers by "writing" on my arm. Neat trick, huh? Just more proof that I am a bonafide freak of nature.

So last week the vet decided to remove the last pin (the one that didn't fall out) of Denny, the foster dog's foot. Unfortunately, he still doesn't feel like walking on it, so I have been massaging the foot and exercising the muscles of his little atrophied leg by bending it back and forth. Sort of a bit of physical therapy. The next step will probably be to hold him up in the pool and have him paddle to gain strenth in the leg.

And then there is the other foster poodle, Michaela. She went in to be spayed, microchipped and have her teeth cleaned yesterday. She came home with a whole list of instructions. Her outer incision was glued closed with surgical glue and the innner part was stiched with dissolving stitches. One of the instructions was that we were supposed tocheck her incision every day and make sure it wasn't oozing or anything. Well this afternoon when I got home and was sitting on the couch watching TV, I decided to check her incision, and found that it had popped open. I made a quick call to the vet and we raced over there where they stapled her closed this time, so she is sure not to open up again.

One of the nice things about poodles is that they do not shed. In fact, their fur is more like hair, in that it grows long and needs to be cut. I used to groom them myself, but they really don't behave very well for me and the little bits of cut hair make my nose itch like crazy. I have found that professional dog groomers can get their fur to be so nice and even, where I never could. So anyway the thing I hate about taking the dogs to the groomer is that no matter when you make the appointment for, they always seem to keep the dog there FOREVER. With my very old dog and the diabetic dog, I do not want them sitting at the groomer all day. What happens is the groomers usually wait until a bunch of dogs get there and then work on them assembly line style. So they don't finish working on any of the dogs until the end of the day.

A couple of months ago, I decided to try a mobile groomer that works out of a truck and comes to the house. It is a neat concept- they take one dog at a time out to the truck and in about 45 minutes they bring it back and grab the next one. It makes life easier when we are getting a lot of dogs groomed because we don't have to transport them either.

The first time I tried the mobile service, they were TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATE. Can you believe it? I called and asked if they were still coming after the first hour they were late, and when would they be there, and the guy asked what time it was. I didn't think much of it, maybe they were just busy and hadn't noticed the time. They did a good job on the dogs and I thought that maybe they had gotten behind schedule since our appointment was late in the day, and the next time we made an appointment for the first opening of the day, at ten thirty in the morning. That was this morning. I was at work, but I called Andy and they were over an hour late, and Andy was concerned that they wouldn't be done in time for him to get ready for work and get there on time. He asked the guy when he got there if he could have all of the dogs done by one 'oclock, and the guy asked "What time is it now?" WTF? This is a business that works by scheduled appointments, and they had no clock, watch or timekeeping device anywhere with them or didn't care to look at it? I mean really, why even bother setting up appointments if you have no idea what time it is? They should just say that they will be there some time that day. Needless to say we will be trying a different mobile grooming service next time.

I got another snail mail letter from my pen pal in Finland today. Of course I wrote back right away and put together a little package to mail tomorrow. In the first letter I included some Ron Jon Surf Shop stickers (it is right down the road from here) and some Space Shuttle mission stickers. I am starting to be at a loss as to what to send next that represents this area that she would enjoy. It is hard to remember what things are unique to the area because i see them all the time. So, what about you? If you were going to make up a package for a friend overseas to represent your area, what kind of things would you send? What kind of things are unique to your home and make the place you live special?

I went to the allergist on Friday for my hives and itching, and though there wasn't much that could be done about the hives other than adding some more histamine blocking drugs to my daily routine for a few weeks, I did get a prescription for the nasty eczema on my ankles. I have problems using any kind of steriod cream or ointment because I will invariably get some on my hands and then transfer it somehow to my face where it causes another rash. Instead of an ointment or a cream, I use something called Cordran tape, which is essentially a clear vinyl like tape that has the medicine (corticosteroid) impregnated into the sticky side of it. I put in on the nasty areas and change it every twelve hours. It actually works pretty well. My allergist figured out how many of the large rolls of this tape I would need changing it every twelve hours based on how many inches it would take to cover the eczema ravaged areas and wrote a prescription for four rolls, and three refills of the four rolls each time. I went to get the scrip filled today, and of course our insurance company automatically rejected it and we will have to try for an override tomorrow when they are in the office. I got one of the four rolls and the rest are on order anyway. Can you believe that tape costs $80 a roll? That means my entire prescription including the refills would cost over twelve hundred bucks! For tape! Thank God we have insurance, though they will probably try to put up a fight. I love the way they have the bean counters at the insurance company determining what drugs I should or shouldn't get. I thought that was the doctor's job.

Speaking of expensive drugs, my allergist was telling me of a new drug that is for asthmatics that is injected every two to three weeks. There are some indications that it may help people with "difficult" hives like myself, but it is currently not approved for that use. He said the drug costs $20,000 a year, and it takes as much as six months before it even starts working. So you could potentially pay out $10,000 and never even see any improvement. Maybe one day it will be proven effective on hives and the insurance company will pay for it. I can only hope.

This afternoon we met with a custom home builder that is the cousin of an engineer I know at work. He doesn't advertise, other than word of mouth, and I was pretty impressed. We went to his house to meet so he could show us some of what he could do on our house. His house was pretty incredible, though it was a different style from what ours would be. I can't wait to see what he comes up with for an estimate for the plan we have chosen. I do know that his prices are nowhere near as ridiculously high as what we have been quoted. I think there is real potential here.

My biggest challenge is convincing Andy. Originally, we were always going to use a general contractor to build our house. After receiving some super high quotes, we started thinking about other options, such as signing on as owner builders and using the help of a guy Andy works with who recently got his general contractors license to help us. I was never very comfortable with this plan, but ever the optimist, Andy had really sunk his teeth into the idea, and I am having to drag him back to reality and the fact that we do not stand to save very much money by doing things the hard way. After today's little meeting, I think I have him pretty much convinced. It is just that I do not want to go through all of the stress of trying to do things ourselves and all for only a small savings. The builder we talked with today does not mark up the building supplies, gets many items at just above cost, and can pass on a lot of savings to us while still making a decent (but not exorbitant) amount for himself. It sounds like just what we had been looking for. We should have our estimate in about a week.

Denny loves to lay around the yard, sometimes even in the landscaping. This picture shows where he was hanging out while I was swimming. He is one of those unique dogs that will actually stay put while I go get my camera to take his picture when he is doing something cute.

I was finally forced to make an appointment with my allergist due to all of the hives I have been experiencing lately. I'm not sure it is going to do any good, but at least I will find out tomorrow. At least my allergist is sympathetic to itching. He says severe itching is as bad as severe nausea, and that it is horrible, but that a lot of doctors don't take it seriously because it is not life threatening. I think he is right. Severe itching has to be one of the worst things ever, and there is hardly even any research being done on ways to alleviate itching because it isn't seen as being important. I went all the way to Shands Hospital in Gainesville once to meet with an allergy specialist there, and all he said was for me not to scratch. Like I have a choice. He may as well have told me not to breathe or blink. What a waste. I think it is one of those things that can't be understod by anyone but the patient. Sucks for me.

I took Denny, the foster poodle, to the vet today to have his foot evaluated for having the pins removed from it. They brought him back in after his x-rays and asked me if one of the pins in his foot had fallen out. I had thought one was missing last week, but Andy convinced me that I had been seeing things, and that only one pin had been sticking out, not two. What had happened apparently was that when he looked at the foot, he only saw one pin, and when I looked at it later, the other pin had backed out a little and was visible. The next time I looked at the foot, the second pin was not there because it had fallen out. Anyway, the good news is that it seems to be healing properly even without the second pin. The vet is going to show the x-rays to the other vet that did the surgery for him to decide if it is time to remove the other pin. We should find out tomorrow.

There was a weird thing that happened when we were on our way to the vet this afternoon. We had just gone over the bridge from Merritt Island onto the mainland and traffic had slowed to a stop. It started moving again slowly, and the car in front of me drove straight into the van in front of it- BAM! It hit pretty hard, and I saw the driver fly back in their seat and the van in front stopped and the guy got out. He took a quick look at the back of his van and must have decided that it wasn't worth bothering with. The air head that had hit him never got out of their car and never even got off their cell phone. They both just drove off. Apparently a traffic accident is no longer enough to even give us pause from our more important priorities like talking on the phone.

Sooner or later, all somewhat popular bloggers get comment trolls, those lovely individuals that feel it necessary to make rude, name calling type comments on our blogs. I must have finally reached that level, because several trolls have found me. Oooooh, I have never been called a name before. Ooooh, I have never seen those cuss words before. Are you picking up on the sarcasm here? I mean come on, really. No one is going to hurt me by posting that fucking garbage on here. Get a fucking life, already. You know, it is actually flattering, the fact that by just posting things here on my blog that I have the ability to infuriate people I don't even even know that are from as far away as say, in or around Wexford, Pennsylvania, wherever the hell that is. That is some serious power, let me tell you. I had no idea how powerful I was. It is really amusing to me actually. I get a good laugh at these poor people who let their blood pressure rise and get angry at someone they don't even know, about situations that they don't even know are real to the point that they will post comments here, using a fake email address, but are then too stupid to realize that they have left the ultimate calling card, their IP address. Hooray for stupid trolls!

Honestly by putting this stuff out here on the internet, I never expected everyone that comes across this blog to like me. In fact, it would be fucked up because I probably wouldn't like some of them. Trust me, it is no skin off my ass. The world is full of shitty people and I would expect a few of them to stop by here now and then. The part that escapes me is, if someone doesn't like me or my blog or my writing, why don't they just move on? I mean, it is really easy to do- I do it all the time. Just keep surfing. The fact that the same trolls keep coming back for more says to me that they are getting something out of visiting this blog. Otherwise, why the hell would they bother?

It was a really slow weekend here around these parts. Andy had to work Friday night until three thirty in the morning and then go back to work again Saturday afternoon at three and work just as late that night. He finally had the day off today, which was a good thing since I hardly get to see him when he is working second shift.

So I spent most of the weekend alone. At least as alone as you can be with six dogs and a bird in the house. They didn't disappoint either. We went swimming and they ran around and played in the yard. I floated around the pool in my floating lounge chair and looked at a magazine while they waded in the shallow "beach" part of the pool or rested under the umbrella or porch. Denny found himself a new favorite place to hang out- the lounge chair on the porch. We cooked, did some laundry and just hung out. Dogs really do make good company.

On that note, I sent an email to the president of the poodle rescue about how we would really like to keep Denny and Michaela. She didn't say no- so it is a possibility. I am definitely praying about it. Those two are really special.

Have you noticed that with the high price of gas that it seems to change our whole perception of the cost of things? I mean like sometimes I think about something being expensive, and then I think, "Well it is really only five tanks of gas." I got a new pair of shoes today for about half a tank of gas, so that is a pretty good bargain. Am I the only one who thinks this way?

I was talking to Andy on the phone tonight, as is our custom when we are on different shifts. We talk on the phone twice a day- once when I call him during my lunchtime at work, and again when he calls me during his lunchtime at night on second shift. I was bugging him again about wanting to keep our foster dog, Denny, who has now been with us for almost six weeks. In the process of telling me that we couldn't, he revealed that he wanted to keep our other foster dog, Michaela. It seems that she reminds him a lot of another dog we had to put to sleep four years ago, and he really loves her. I do too, but I am a little more attached to Denny because we have had him longer, but that is it. I love Michaela too. I think we both want to keep them both, and my suggestion was that we do what we can to keep them, and then not foster any more dogs, as it seems that we are not cut out for letting go. I don't know if we will be allowed to keep them, but I really want to. Aren't we just horrible?

I am officially boring. It seems like lately there just isn't much interesting stuff going on to write about. The neighborhood drama has subsided since we have relinquished our positions on the Homeowners Association, so that whole big stressor is gone. Work, at least for me, has been fairly slow as the part that we do towards the mission is completed way before the actual launch. We have already completed all we need to do for several more launches, unless there are any in-flight anomalies. We have just been working on one last vehicle, Endeavour, and keeping up with our ground support equipment. Not much to write home about. Andy is really busy at work because he works at the launch pad and this is their time to spring to action. He is working a lot of overtime.

There is always the new house/road project, but even that is pretty boring right now. We are still waiting on the wetland permit and are getting all of the surveying, engineering, and testing done for the road project. It is moving along slowly, but at least it is moving.

So, I am sorry, but I am leading a boring life right now. I mean besides the part where we have SIX dogs living with us, but you've already heard about that. The most interesting part of my day today was when I turned onto the road in front of where I work this morning, there was a mother and three young otters in the ditch right in front of our building, and they were running around and playing. It is so neat to be able to see stuff like that- our building is out in the woods and we get to see some interesting wildlife sometimes, but it is rare to see otters.