We got the engineering drawings in the mail yesterday for the improvement of our road that we have to do to in order to build our new house. All I can say is that the project looks, well, expensive. We have to take the plans to the utility company tomorrow to find out if we have to move the four utility poles that run next to the road. If we do, the cost could be staggering so we are hoping and praying that they can stay in place.

We are getting really close to completing the wetland permitting process as well. We have created the "dedicated conservation easement" and it has a new survey and legal description, and is in the process of aving a separate title insurance policy written for it. We should be only a couple of weeks away from final wetland approval, so things are looking up. We WILL get there. It is just a matter of time.

Ick. Even after just having a few fleas when the Frontline stoped working, two of the dogs apparently have tapeworms. I found the YUCKY dried "segments" around their butts and they got their first doses of worm treatment this morning. The tapeworms are aquired when fleas that carry the tapeworm eggs are ingested by the dog. Fun fun fun.

I don't know what was different this year. For the past six years which is as long as we have lived in this area, fleas have been non-existant. I always treated the dogs with Frontline flea treatment just as a precaution, but I could go a long time between treatments and still there were never any fleas.

Then this spring from out of nowhere, FLEAS. They haven't been terrible as I have been regularly treating the dogs with the Frontline stuff, but still I have been finding more than I would like to. And poor Denny must be particularly sensitive to them because he has been knawing at himself like crazy, so I set out for a solution this morning, even braving the stormy weather.

I had read that sometimes the Frontline can lose its effectiveness over time, so I went to the vet where they recommended I try Advantage for a while. They said that they have some clients that switch back and forth every few months between the Frontline and Advantage products and report good results. And then some who do the same and say they still have fleas. We'll hope for the best. At least Denny isn't scratching any more for the moment.

We had the whole day to laze around doing essentially nothing due to Tropical Storm Ernesto. The space center was closed for the day and Andy and i have been hanging out on the couch with the dogs watching the rain. The storm is now a tropical depression and we haven't seen mush in the way of wind yet, but the center of rotation hasn't gotten here yet. I think it has pretty much fizzled out, so I guess I will be back to work in the morning. It sure was nice to have the day off, though.

So after a day at work watching NASA waffle back and forth about what to do with Ernesto approaching, I was happy to head home. You may have seen it in the news: They started rolling the shuttle back to the safety of the Vehicle Assembly Building to ride out the storm, then changed their minds mid way and started rolling back to the launch pad, after they had alreeady undone a lot of the good work towards the launch that Andy and the other Pad workers had been working their asses off doing.

On the way home, the drawbridge was open for what seemed like an eternity while I was stuck on thhe wrong side of it. I think everyone and their brother was trying to move their boats to a safer location for he impending tropical storm and it just happened to co-incide with shift change at Kennedy Space Center making for a big traffic backup.

The in-laws were here at the house when I got home, but everything was okay. We cooked and ate dinner and hung out a little bit but they left at around eight tonight and they are setting out for home in the morning, since it is going to be all yucky here, weatherwise. They don't want to be stuck driving in the windy and rainy conditions and I don't blame them. The visit wasn't as bad as I thought, I always anticipate the worst, but it was all fine. I still don't relate to his mom at all, really. Whenever I tell her almost anything that has happened, she says "weren't you scared?" Like I showed her the beautiful photo I took of the waterspout last month, and that was her response. I am glad I don't live in constant fear like that.

Andy called me at work this afternoon to tell me that he had caught little Annabel peeing on the area rug in the living room. He said he yelled "no" but that she just looked at him like "what?" and kept peeing.

I just can't believe that could be true about my Bella. Just look at her beautiful little face. She couldn't have done it, could she? I refuse to believe it is true.

The whole new house/road project is moving right along. The road plans have been engineered and are submitted to the county for approval, and several other side items are going on as well, such as our water main extension project, the property wetland permitting is still in limbo, and so on, each item costing us lots of money to move forward, of course. It is just one thing after another, as you can imagine.

This evening, I went upstairs to Andy's office to get an envelope, and saw a stack of papers sitting in the fax machine. I started looking through them and got a nice surprise. The fax was from the engineers doing our road project and said that after looking over the plans they had determined that we needed to apply for ANOTHER permit from the St. Johns Water Management District and that they needed the stack of papers all signed and returned to them ASAP and oh, by the way the application fee for that is $1000. They almost just mentioned it in passing as if we are made of money or something. Can we just get a break here?

My mom actually got to visit for a few hours yesterday while she was on her way back home from South Florida. She was down there for a few days to go to my cousin's baby shower and visit my grandma. I took her to see the new property and the actual site on the acreage where the new house will be. We got to hang out a little and she met the three newest dogs in the household, Annabel, Michaela, and Denny.

The little girls just loved her and were licking her like crazy and trying to get her attention, but Denny wasn't pleased. He even got a little nippy with her, which was shocking to me, because he has never done anything like that. He was conflicted too, because he wanted her to pet him, but then he also wanted to bite her a little. There was no real harm done; no skin broken or anything, but I was upset that Denny would act that way. The only thing we could think of was that he might have been freaked out because my mom had a splint on her hand from having joint surgery, and maybe that scared or threatened him. Maybe he was abused in the past by someone with a cast on their arm? It is so unlike him to behave that way- I can do anything to him and he would never even think about biting. Even after his surgery when I had to remove the bandages that were painfully stuck to his skin and rubbing raw, he would just bear the pain and never lunge for me. He sleeps with my arms wrapped around him at night and is just a cuddly little doll.

Anyway, Andy's parents are supposed to be coming down for a visit this weekend- that is a whole other post- and we will have to watch Denny closely to see that he minds his manners. On the other hand, maybe he is the perfect dog to have to keep houseguests away :) Just kidding.

Due to the fact that I get up for work in the wee hours of the morning, I get to see things like this beautiful sky that I photographed last week.

I have temporarily turned on comment moderation not because of malicious comments, but because I am being spammed up to my eyeballs. I will look into a captcha or word verification soon.

My new iMac came Friday and I have been setting things up on it all weekend between cooking and cleaning and hanging out with Andy. It is pretty sweet; the screen is HUGE and the mouse and keyboard are wireless. It has a built in iSight camera so Denny and I posed and took our picture.

In other dog news, little Cody just got me in trouble. We were sitting here in my "office" and Denny heard something and barked. Cody vaulted off the couch that is right next to me where I was supervising him. He has to be watched carefully as the regular non-diabetic dog food is down for the other dogs to eat. Cody had already had his carefully measured portion of his prescription diet and I have to watch him like a hawk to make sure he doesn't get into the other dogs' food as it makes his blood sugar go haywire. Anyway he ran off toward the food bowl, using the commotion as a distraction so that he could get away with it, but I was right on his heels. He darted into the dining room to try to throw me off course, but I dove after him. And that is when my shoulder hit a shelf on the wall that holds a wooden helicopter model of Andy's. It was total loss, and I had to call Andy at work and tell him what we had done; that we had smashed his poor helicopter to bits. Bad Cody!

Andy has been working some insane hours lately in order to get ready for the upcoming launch of Atlantis scheduled for August 27th. Last week he worked 72 hours but when you count all the time commuting and everything, I am sure the total would be well over 80 hours. Of course it sucks for me too, not having him here; thankfully I have the dogs and bird to keep me company. He generally rolls in at about 3:30 to 4:00 in the morning, takes a shower gets in bed, and then my alarm clock goes off at 4:30 for me to get up for work.

Yesterday he actually had the day off to sit and do nothing. Little Michaela, the latest dog that we adopted, and I went to the Mall to volunteer our time to help the other poodles in the rescue. Macy's is having a nationwide Charity event on September 16th and is allowing our poodle rescue to sell tickets/coupons to the event where people can save an extra 20% off almost everything in the store. The five dollars they pay for a "ticket" is all donated to our group. So Michaela and I had a little table at the mall entrance to Macy's and she managed to sell 31 tickets in a little less than three hours, and we got another $35 or so in just straight donations. I say that Michaela sold the tickets, because really she did. I mean, I collected the money and all, but it was her sweet endearing little dog personality that made people want to contribute. She was kissing babies and everything. I brought with me the "before" picture of Micheala from when her former owner surrendered her to the rescue when she was in horrible shape. You might remember those pictures; I posted them here as well back at the end of May.

Anyway, when people saw the positive changes in her, it really made them want to donate. And it should. Her whole life was turned around by being rescued and getting good veterinary care and TLC. She was requested back on the day of the sale to sell more tickets since she did such a good job, so we will go back on the 16th for a two hour shift.

Andy and I went out to eat last night at Carrabas, which has great Italian food and we talked about our poor Ollie at dinner. I think I am going to think of it like Wendy, one of the ladies that works at our vet's office, said. She said she thinks that sometimes pets try to spare us having to make a difficult choice for them; that they know that things are going to get worse and that their time has come. I don't know about Ollie knowing that, but I think fundamentally she was right, that maybe it was God's way. God knew that we wouldn't be able to go through with having to put him to sleep after how difficult it was for us with Daisy four years ago. And I am thankful that God made it happen while Andy was there, who was better equipped to deal with the situation than I was. Maybe that is why the alarm on his collar didn't go off that time, it was his time, and God's way. At least that is how I choose to think of it.

After using my Apple iBook since last December, I finally decided that I am done with Windows PCs, at least at home. I had a fairly fancy laptop that was just sitting gathering dust, so I decided to sell it and some other gadgets I had that were not being used to their full potential and use the money to feed my new Apple habit. I wanted to get a new Apple desktop machine, a twenty inch iMac, but I wanted the latest version that still had the Power PC chip rather than the Intel chip because I have no desire to run Windows on my Apple. It is kind of sacreligious, if you ask me.

Anyway, I set out to sell the stuff on eBay with some trepidation as it has been plagued by scammers and such lately, but I actually had a very pleasant experience. I sold all my stuff to really very nice people who were very nice and easy to deal with and I made enough money to start shopping for the iMac. I started emailing back and forth with one seller, and eventually we negotiated back and forth and both arrived at a price we were happy with and he set up a Buy it Now price for me and we made a deal. I discovered that the seller is a blogger too, and we both checked out each other's blogs- he has a really cute little boy and an interesting life- by the way. Anyway I am so pleased; the iMac is scheduled to be here Saturday. The seller expedited the shipping for me and it was refreshing to deal with someone so nice. Hopefully Saturday I will be posting from my new setup!

I was reading a post over at Kim's Notebook, about how she felt that she was having a quarter life crisis, or isn't sure if she is an adult or a kid still. I can relate somewhat; it is weird at the age of thirty one that I still feel like I did iwhen I was younger, but I am pretty sure I am a real bonafide adult now. One of the defining realizations I had a while back that really cemented this is that I found myself paying thousands and thousands of dollars for dirt and rocks. As a kid, if you had told me that I would ever be paying that kind of money for dirt and rocks, I'd have thought you were nuts.

And there have been other changes as well. I am all responsible now and try to take good care of myself, going to bed early, eating healthy and all that rot. And I even bought another supplemental life and accidental death/dismemberment insurance poilcy this year. I am wearing sunscreen when I go in the sun- the kind that blocks both UVA and UVB rays, and saving lots of money for retirement. How the hell did this happen to me? Just a few short years ago I was a wild child with hardly any responsibility, and now look at me. I guess everyone has to grow up sooner or later. It sure snuck up on me, but I haven't really fought it either. I do, however, still watch MTV.

Thank you to everyone for all the nice comments about my poor Ollie and the lovely things you said. I really do appreciate it. I hope he is in a better place. I have faith that dogs go to heaven, otherwise it would not be somewhere I would want to go.

I have been concentrating on my work and keeping all of the other animals well taken care of, so I don't have as much time to think about my loss. I know it will get easier with time. I do pretty well during the day when I am at work, but at night when it is time for bed is when I really get to missing him the most. Hopefully I will feel up to regular blogging again soon. My mind is too occupied with Ollie still to write about anything else.

Dogs are amazingly good at distracting you from your sorrows. They keep me busy so that I don't have too much time to sit around and dwell on Ollie's loss. I noticed a little bald patch on Louie's arm on Saturday so I had to take him to the vet this afternoon to get it checked out. The doctor said it was dermatitis and gave us some ointment and treated and wrapped the arm up. He looks pretty funny because he is pretty furry right now and has this little skinny stick leg done up in teal Vet Wrap and then his little black foot poofs out at the end. I can always count on Louie to rack up my monthly vet bills.

At work this morning I was talking to a co-worker and she was talking about how much she loved her dog, yet in the same breath said how she hadn't taken her to the vet since she was a puppy three years ago and that she didn't give her any heartworm preventative medication. I chastised her, but there's nothing I can do about it. I told her how I go to our vet at least twice a month for one thing or another, and that I had been there as many as eleven times in two weeks before. I guess it is just a whole different mentality.

It has been two days now since Ollie left us, and it really hasn't gotten any easier. He was with me since I was thirteen years old, so it is hard to imagine that I will never see him again. He was not a very smart dog, and he couldn't really do any tricks or anything, but he was Ollie and I loved him just for being himself. Andy says we will fix up the little area of the new property where he is buried. He says we will put a little fence around the area and I want to plant blackberries in the surrounding area to give me an excuse to go back there all the time. Tomorrow I will be going to work, so hopefully that will occupy my mind and keep me from dwelling on it so much. I just miss the poor little bear so badly, and all his things are still laying all around the house and Charley our parrot still calls out for him and asks "where's Ollie?" I don't know when the world will seem right again.

Everything is different without him here. I am so used to carrying him up thhe stairs at night at bedtime, and setting up my extra pillow behind his little bed as an extra bumper for him. His bed is right next to my side of the bed so that I could keep an eye on him all night, and I even have a little night light there so I could check on him. He liked to sleep in his own little bed for the past several years, but I still kept him as close to me as possible. I would have done anything for him. I hope he knew that.

After the death of my poor dog Ollie yesterday, it is with a heavy heart that I post today, but the show will go on. Blog Food Expo was something that I thought up a couple of weeks ago for bloggers to share their favorite recipes, all on the same day, and they will all be linked here, or to my co-conspirator Melanie's blog, Plaid Toaster. She is the co-host and did the nifty little graphics. She is also one of my favorite people on the internet and has the most beautiful children I have ever seen, so definitely go over there and pay her a visit.

So, if you would like to participate, post your favorite recipe or one that you would like to share and link to the recipe post in the little linky thing below so everyone can visit your blog.

Here's my recipe, which is not as good as it should be- I don't have the step by step pictures like I did in my chili post- but given the circumstances is all I can muster right now.

Andy and I are always looking for healthy "good carb" type substitutions for our favorite foods and we started making little pizzas on whole grain pita bread a while back. We use no sugar added tomato sauce and part skim cheese, and even turkey pepperoni, which is quite good. Not too long ago I found that they had started carrying super tiny little whole wheat pitas at our grocery, and I had to try something with them. The brand is Toufayan, but other companies may make these tiny pitas as well. They are only about two inches in diameter. Here is what I came up with:

Pizza Monsters

First I take the tiny pitas and split them open with a knife. I take turkey pepperoni and chop it into little bits, mix it with shredded mozzarella and crushed red pepper flakes and stuff each pita with the mixture. Then I pop a cookie sheet of the stuffed pitas into a 400 degree oven for about five minutes, or until the cheese is nice and melty. The result is these funny looking pizza tasting "monsters"- at least that is what they look like to me. The split pita looks like a head with an open mouth so that is why I named them that. They are great dipped in tomato sauce or garlic butter as well, but good plain too.

Here's where you post the link to your blog if you have a recipe to share. I hope to see some good ones!

My oldest dog, Ollie, died today and I miss him so much. He was eighteen and a half years old, and Andy was home with him but had turned around to do something and wasn't paying attention. Ollie was outside wandering around. Andy went to look for him and found that he had fallen in the pool. He couldn't believe it, because Ollie always stayed away from the pool and he was wearing an alarm on his collar that would go off as soon as it touched water. The alarm was extremely touchy, going off several times lately when Ollie was even out walking in wet grass, but for some reason, this time, the one crucial time when it could have saved his life, the alarm did not work. Why, I have no idea.

I don't blame Andy at all, the same thing could have happened to me. Ollie had always stayed away from the pool- he was scared of it- so the alarm on his collar was just a precaution as he was the only dog we had that could not swim anymore; he was too old. I feel absolutely horrible and my grief about losing him is not something I cannot even explain just yet. I lived with Ollie since he was a puppy, back in 1988 when I was in eighth grade. We grew up together and I loved him dearly. We were together for more than half my life. How do you say goodbye to such a sweet, faithful companion?

We laid him to rest this afternoon, out at our new property where we will be building the new house. I want to have him close to me forever, so we found a nice spot way in the back and buried him there, so that when we move out there he will be waiting for us. It is so serene and peaceful out there too, and a much more fitting final resting place than this crowded, noisy neighborhood. We love you, Ollie, and we will never forget you.

I first heard of this over at Margaritaville, and I thought it sounded like a great idea, so I signed up. 2996 is a tribute project to the victims of September 11th, that will take place on the fifth anniversary of the tragedy. At 2996, you can sign up to do a tribute post on 9/11 and they will assign you a victim. You look up information about your person and post about them on that day. They are hoping to have enough bloggers to assign all the victims so that each is recognized. I signed up and instantly started reading about the victim that I was assigned and I think it is a great way to keep these people's memory alive. I liked reading the touching comments that friends had left on various online guest books discussing the victim's life and all the fun times they remembered.

Anyway, if you have not already signed up for this, there are still a lot of victims out there that need to be assigned, so think about it. You might learn something about a person you never would have known about. That HAS to be a good thing.

I will admit to feeling a little ass whipped lately, as it pertains to life on the internet. People always seem to have to ruin a good thing. Two of my favorite things online, blogging and eBay have been nearly ruined by spammers and scammers. Lately it seems that it takes SO much effort to rid my blog of junk comments and spam. I have tried several approaches to this, but I haven't found a solution yet that doesn't also hinder people that I WANT to comment. I don't want to have to force commenters to type in a little gibberish word or script, because a lot of them won't bother. I hate that word verification crap; it is annoying. So instead I am forced to constantly clean up junk off my blog and to block IP addresses from some of the worst offenders. What a pain.

And then there is eBay. I first wrote about the Nigerian Ebay scams over a year ago- here and here- and they are still running rampant. These assholes bid up your auction to ridiculous amounts and then send you fake PayPal notifications that the item has been paid for and want you to ship it to Nigeria immediately, even when you said in the auction that you would only ship to U.S. Addresses. These scammers have nearly ruined eBay. I have had to list items multiple times because they have bid my item up and then do not ever pay. There is now a feature that allows you to block bidders from countries that you do not ship to, but these scammers register as U.S. buyers and then make up some story as to why they need you to ship to their son or daughter or whoever in Nigeria. I swear, that entire country must be filled with degenerates, because I have never seen anything but scams and fraud come out of that place.

Why do people have to go and ruin a good thing? I an only imagine the things they could accomplish if these people put as much energy towards doing something productive as they do scamming people.

This afternoon at work, I was fortunate enough to receive an award for good performance on a specific project, and with it was a check for $200. Cool. Then I got home and discovered that Andy hadn't left for work, because his truck's battery cable had fallen apart and the terminal had fallen into the battery which was also leaking acid. Guess how much the new parts cost? It was $202 and change. Go figure. He'll be spending the rest of the evening routing the new battery cable in the blistering heat outside. Sounds like fun, huh?

Earlier this evening while I was in the shower, the house grew suddenly dark. The power had gone out and the house was filled with the beeping of the uninterruptible power supplies. After only about a half hour, the power supplies were depleted as well, and the house was quiet. It was about 95 degrees outside, so the house got warm quickly. I think Stacey jinxed me or something.

Anyway, I got lucky, because the power was only out for about two and a half hours, and then a worker showed up at the transformer right outside our house and had it back up and running within about five minutes from when he got there. Thank GOD!

I am such a pansy! I got my little radio with ther hand crank out tyo make some noise and was playing DVDs on my laptop to try to pass the time after the power supply fueling the router and the modem went down and I coudn't get on the internet anymore. I guess I am a real tech junkie, but it was horrible for me to be without my connection. I don't think I could ever go back to not having an internet connection now; it would kill me, I think.

Good grief! With gas prices here just a smidge under three bucks a gallon, I am sure a lot of people are wishing they had other options. Working at a government installation such as the space center, our on-site gas station has lots of options, but most of them are limited in use to properly equipped vehicles and are STILL expensive. Almost all of thhe government cars that we drive while on base are equipped with some means of using alternative fuel.

In addition to regular unleaded gas, we have bio-diesel available, for the vehicles equipped to use it. It is made from used cooking oil and runs in certain diesel engines only. There is actually a pump at the gas station at work that dispenses commercial bio-dieselI know of several people who have converted their own diesel vehicles into bio-diesel cars, and they pick up used cooking oil directly from restaurants and then filter it and use it at no cost, but the extra time it takes to collect and strain it. The exhaust smells like garbage. It is kind of strange.

Then we also have compressed natural gas. Most oof the cars that use this have dual fuel tanks, so you can fill up with regular gas or CNG. The fittings on the hose to fill up the natural gas are totally dirrent because it is actually in gaseous form, not liquid. CNG is kind of a pain to fill up with.

Then we have E85 Ethanol available at the pump also. It is just highly distilled alcohol, basically and I think the commercial stuff is usually made from corn, but you can make it from almost anything you can ferment. It uses the regular gas hose type thing, but you are only supposed to run it in vehicles designed for use with "flexible fuels," though my boss runs it in regular cars anyway. It makes some erroneous engine lights come on, but he doesn't care. He is actually planning to build a still in his yard to distill his own ethanol from molasses. He said it will cost about ninety cents a gallon to produce, but it sounds like a heck of a lot of work to me.

That is all the weird forms of gas we have at work now, but back when I worked on airplanes there was yet one more. Whenever we would defuel an aircraft to work on something inside the wings- the wings were the fuel tanks- there was a certain amount of fuel that could not be sucked out by the pump. We would open sump drains on the underside of the wings and drip out the remaining jet fuel into five gallon buckets. We would get around 20 gallons or so from each plane. Well, if you know anything about jet fuel, you will know that jet fuel is just essentially highly filtered kerosene, which is basically the same thing as diesel fuel. So several people I worked with bought diesel vehicles and would use funnels to dump the jet fuel into their gas tanks. A messy and smelly process- have you ever smelled jet fuel?- but it made for free gas.

So, is this complete insanity or are you already going to great lengths for cheap gas?

Our big event today at work was a retirement. We got to see off a wonderful friend and co-worker who, amazingly, has worked on the Space Program for FORTY YEARS! Yes, you read that right. This guy has worked out there for nine more years than I have even been alive, starting back during the days of the Apollo Program.

We had a celebration at work for him followed by one at a restaurant's outdoor gazebo. The presentation of several plaques and things at work was really nice, and there was all kinds of joking and laughter, because the manager that was presenting was only forty-one years old and was still in diapers when the retiree started working there. He told a great story about the first time he went out to the space center for an interview, in 1965, and his car was broken down, so he walked out there. This is a big deal because we are talking about over fifteen miles each way, and then they didn't even hire him! He was finally hired six months later as a janitor, and has worked there ever since. It is very inspirational. He talked to us about how early on he got discouraged nand wanted to quit, and one of his co-workers taught him to see through the "rose colored glasses" and persevere.

So congratulations to my co-worker for finally making it through to retirement, and at an age where he still enjoys good health. I wish him the best.

It has been a really long time now since I first posted about the seven and a half acres we bought where we are going to be building our new house. I found the property on January first of this year, and it has taken us this long and still there have been no physical changes to the property. Still, a lot of progress has been made.

The first big obstacle in building on our site, the wetland impact issue, is nearly gone; we have been granted a wetland permit by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection as long as we comply with their Conservation Easement requirements, which we are working on. We are nearly through the process with the Army Corps of Engineers to get approval for our wetland impacts as well.

If you are a regular reader here you will remeber that we also have issues with the road to the property, and that we have to improve the road up to the county's dirt road standards. The topographical survey of the road has been completed, and the project is currently in the hands of our civil engineer to design what is required, and then our whole package complete with soil boring samples and nonsense will have to be presented to the county. We should be only a few weeks away from this process, I hope.

And we are just about to sign the contract to have our house plans drawn up. This is a pretty important step.

So even though we have not moved a single stick on the property, we have cut through MILES of red tape and are well on our way. Woo-hoo.