You won't like me when I'm angry.

This is what happens when you take one dog for a ride in the car and leave the other one at home. (Your reasoning may have been sound - the puppy will get to go later when he goes to the vet, so Booker deserves a ride also; however, the puppy did not see it that way.)

Note the bent crate on the bottom and the right side.



Note the deep wounds on the door.


Note the luck that he didn't get electrocuted.


The bright side:
He didn't shred a 2'x2' section of carpet (as Booker did upon escape one time).
We are no longer renting so he didn't cost us our $700 deposit.
Replacement doors are less than $50.00 and I know how to hang them.
The puppy still had the E-collar on, so the damage was less than it could have been.

He's baaaack.

The Chew came home from the vet's office today at lunch. He is furious that we have to (try to) keep him calm.

All was well with the surgery. He has staples in several spots on his belly (they had to do explorative surgery to find his missing testicle) and staples on both rear ankles from the removal of his 3 dew claws.

We are now in the strugle to keep him from blowing out his stitches in the next 7 days. Good luck to us, since his ankle has already oozed today.

Oh, by the way, the cone is virtually useless. He still manages to get to his belly and feet. Sigh. 

The prisoner wishes to say a word... ... ... FREEEEEEEDOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!

Yesterday morning I dropped the puppy off at the vets office for some surgeries. He is getting neutered, having his 3 rear dew claws removed, and being microchipped.

I do miss him and find myself bolting upright in my recliner thinking, "where's the puppy, what is he stealing, destroying, eating, etc" and realizing that the calm I am experiencing is what it was like before we adopted him. Mr. Booker looks for him a bit, but is also content to sleep on the recliner or couch without being pounced on. Mr. B also got to chew on one of his bones for as long as he wanted without having The Chew boldly walk up and snatch it right out of his mouth.

Mr. Booker is reverting back to the "devil dog" a little now that the "most devious devil dog" is not around for a few days, but who can blame him. He feels the same way I do...

FREEEEEDOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!

Pool of Shame NO LONGER.

I came home from work today sweating and looking forward to floating in my yellow Pool of Shame for a few hours. I released the hounds and went over to the pool to skim the top and HOLY COW! The PoS is almost clear! It had been better since the partial drain and refill, but we've just been swimming in it yellow because my theory was, "it is cleaner than swimming in a fish excrement filled lake".

Perhaps it is the boiling that helped. The temperature outside has been above 90 for the last 3 or 4 days. The pool temp last night was 87 degrees. Today the water is 90 degrees on the nose.

Well, I am off to float in my almost clear pool. Just pool, the shame is gone.

They are NOT spoiled...

Ok, that is a HUGE lie. We tend to raise the most spoiled dogs on the planet. Newt (our beloved, departed dalmation) had his own room with his own bed.

These two beasts think they have their own recliners. These two pictures were taken at the same time - meaning we had to sit at the computer desk or on the couch. Brats.

We had a routine vet trip this weekend for both dogs. The Chew is up to 54 lbs. Mr. Booker is up 4 lbs from last July, weighing in at 74 lbs. No wonder we go thru 50 lbs of dog food a month! Mr. B had shots and nose spray (the new, better way to vaccinate for Rabies) and The Chew was scheduled for his neutering/spaying. You see, he has one testicle which is still MIA so they need to go in surgically and track that baby down. So I say he is having both done. :) He is also having his 3 - yup 3 - rear dew claws removed. The worse thing about this whole surgery (for us at least) will be the no food or drink from 8 pm the night before. He will be furious!

Anywho, just updating the Mommy blog.

The Apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

For most of my life I have been anti-Apple computers. (crApple & Macintrash are what my dad and I referred to them as). With the explosion of the iPod popularity, Craig and I fell prey to the media and each bought an iPod Mini a year and a half ago. We were tickled pink with our new toys for about a year (coincidently until the warranty expired)...

For about the last 9 months, Craig's iPod has had trouble staying on. Finally, his crapped out completely a couple of months ago. I used my iPod a fraction of the amount that he used his, but a month after his died, mine refused to turn on. We tried all their ridiculous trouble shooting, resetting whatnot that the Apple site recommends. Our replacement warranty had expired about a month before. (Conspiracy theorists: planned? I am starting to wonder).

Since our warranty was already up and neither of us were willing to pay close to $100 (each) to send them to Apple for repairs - you can buy a new non-Apple mp3 player for as much. Instead we found a battery replacement site and ordered 2 replacement kits for $9.99 each, thinking probably our batteries had died - a very common flaw of the iPod. Our kits arrived and I excitedly hacked into my pod and replaced the battery. I waited for several hours for the battery to charge. And with great hopes, I tried to reset the pod. NOTHING! I tried again. And again. And again. And every time I walked past it sitting dead on the desk. I opened it up again to make sure I had all the connectors connected. I noticed a little burned section of the motherboard. Nice.

We opened up Craig's pod to see if he had the same problem. Nope, his looked fine, probably just needed a new battery. We replaced the battery and... Still a dead pod. So after having these things for less than 2 years, they both died beyond repair. My sister has gone thru 2 or 3 iPods within the last 4 years. I now vow never to purchase another Apple product as long as I live. I am so disgusted, I can't even put it into words.

That said, we saved up and went a-hunting for new mp3 players. Our criteria:
Not an iPod of any kind.
No moving parts, i.e. a flash drive rather than a conventional hard drive.
Close to the same "size" as our iPods; 4 GB of storage.

Off to Best Buy we head. We ask the very helpful guy (really, I know, unheard of) in the department what his thoughts were on what we could get with our criteria. He explained several options which looked good. We browse for a bit longer. Home we go without purchasing so Craig can look up reviews on Cnet.com. I nap for several hours while he reads reviews. Back to Best Buy we go.

To make this long post end soon, I choose an iriver clix and Craig choose a Sandisk Sansa as our new music to go players. Read the reviews on Cnet, they both rate 8.0 out of 10 or above. The only drawback is that they are 2 GB only rather than the 4 GB we had; however, I never filled my whole 4 GB up anyway.

Here is a picture of mine. It measures 2.7" by 1.8" (more than 1/2 as big as my crApple iPod), weighs 2.5 ounces, plays flash games, displays pictures, plays small videos, has an optional cradle to use for line-in recording (great for digitizing our tapes and childhood vinyl), has a voice recorder, and FM tuner (!), and much more.

I am pleased, so very pleased. Now I can mow the lawn again - couldn't do it without my music, then it was just a chore.

Woo hoo!

Commence to drain.

I've decided to drain the pool of shame and try to start over with the water. After 5 shock treatments and 1 mineral removal treatment we still have orange/yellow water. Not brown any longer, but still nothing I want to swim in. Supposedly - according to the bottles of crap we've been putting into the water - if you add the mineral removal stuff before the shock treatment you won't have the discoloration. We'll see.

Now we run into the "what do you do with 4,000 gallons of water" issue. If you just let loose the filter and drain holes, all 4K drains into the neighbor's yard. Not acceptable.

So I once again McGuyver'd a solution. I looked around in the garage for something to direct the water and found 3 pieces of gutter up in the rafters. Not quite long enough. I also locate the hose and extensions from the shop vac. Oh, yeay, there is Craig's didgeridoo, that's about the right diameter. Yes, I said didgeridoo. (In reality it is a piece of pvc pipe with one end melted and twisted. He made it at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts open house this spring.)

So. I taped the end of the didgeridoo to one of the filter hoses (the filter holes are about 4x the diameter of the actual pool drain, thus releasing more water and emptying the pool of shame faster), the didgeridoo to the shop vac hose, set the shop vac hose on the gutter (slightly elevated to promote the downward flow) and let loose the water.

The water now flows down our driveway and onto the road. I am still going to wait until dark to open the flow and empty the whole pool. I don't want the neighbors wondering where all that chlorine smelling water is coming from...

Another day, another shock treatment

Perhaps it is how the sun is hitting the brown water today, but after a third shock treatment, a bottle of iron "remover", and several days of heavy filtering the pool looks a little less brown.

It is supposed to be 85 degrees and sunny this coming Saturday. What are the chances we'll be able to swim? Yeah, slim to none is what my guess is also. 

More pool drama...

So.

We went to the store yesterday and picked up some stuff that is supposed to cling to the iron in the water and make the stuff drop to the floor of the pool. I added it immediately upon arrival home and "stirred my cauldron" (Thanks, Craig). Now the waiting game again. Filter has to run for at least 8 hours. My Fourth marred by a lack of swimming in my pool, I grumpily sat at the computer all evening playing Runescape.

This morning we had a sick puppy (up every two hours vomiting, then diarrhea) so I didn't even remember to look at the pool. We came home at 11:15 to eat lunch and check on the puppy (still diarrhea, no more vomiting - taking puppy to the vet now at 2:45) and I still forgot to look to see if the iron had dropped out or decreased.

Came home at 2:00 to get the puppy (he is feeling a bit better, no more diarrhea now) and still forgot to look at the pool. The vet suspects the puppy has a virus and we just have to ride it out. He is much better now, demanding food (which is being limited to about 2 tbsp per half hour) and wanting to play.

NOW, I went out to check on the pool. Still brown. Sigh. I added a little more shock treatment and stirred the cauldron. I changed the filter - which was FILTHY with sediment. I skimmed the bugs out of the brown water. I am leaving the filter on overnight again, I'll change it again before I go to bed and when I get up in the morning.

I am starting to think we will have to drain the 4000+ gallons and refill the pool. I don't want to spend another $100 on water that I may or may not be able to swim in. Sigh. "Easy setup", "swim in a day". Hmmph.

On a side note...Happy Birthday, Bama Mammy!!

Not quite right...

So, we recently got a 16' x 42" pool for our summer enjoyment. I've been whining about getting one since April and we've been saving up for it. (On sale last week at Home Depot! Woo Hoo!)

We head out to (the) Home Depot after work and pick up our pool. We squeeze it into the back seat of our car (Saturn Ion) and head for home. Excitement rising in anticipation, we get home around 7 pm and start right in on the "easy" assembly.

Thursday, Step 1: Open the box (don't use a knife!) and pull out all the parts. Spread the ground cover out and heave the pool over. Open up the pool and find the tiny valve to blow up the top ring.

Step 2: Blow up the top ring. We find the electric air pump in the garage - well, parts of it. Missing the attachment to blow up the air ring at the top of the pool. We attempt to use a hand volleyball pump, yeah right. Then we attempt to "MacGyver" the hand pump to the electric pump, still no noticeable inflation. Sigh. I call my friend down the street to see if we can borrow theirs. Not home. At 8:30, we head back to Home Depot to get a slightly more powerful air pump (that has all the needed attachments). Back home at 9:00. Technically, we should charge the new pump (it is a rechargeable battery backup/air compressor - also handy during power outages), but I decide to sit outside until 9:30 until the factory charge runs out.

Friday, Step 2 continued: I get up and start inflating the pool ring again around 8:30 am. In the mean time, the pool area isn't fenced off yet and the puppy runs to the middle of the vinyl pool, grabs a mouth-full and begins to worry the pool. I scream in horror and rush to get him off the pool. After quite a chase, I corral the dogs and put them inside. I look for damage and don’t notice any.

Friday, Step 3, 9:30 am: After the ring is inflated, set up the filter. I get out the instructions. Blah, blah, blah, o-ring, petroleum jelly. WHAT! Nowhere on the box did it say you needed Vaseline! I look in vain for some, knowing that we don’t have any. I email Craig and request that he pick some up on his way home for lunch. I go inside and wait.
Friday, Step 3, 11:45 am: Armed with petroleum jelly, I head back out to set up the pump. Reasonably easy task.

Friday, Step 4, 1:00 pm: Begin to fill the pool. Hmm, all the water seems to be heading to one end of the pool. I rush into the garage to drag out our shop-vac and our wagon, which are filled with sand – another story. I push back part of the pool and dump the sand and try – in vain – to level the ground. Sigh. I turn off the water and look around the yard. The spot chosen was decided upon because it could be easily fenced to keep the dogs out and was also surrounded by some trees and the house (yet still sunny) to give some semblance of privacy. Anywhere else in the yard would be exposed to the street and neighbors – in which case I would not be caught dead in a bathing suit… I look around again… where can we put it? My gaze stops on the driveway. That is flat; it’s even paved and smooth. Is it wide enough? I go look for the measuring tape. The pool would fit.

Friday, Step 4 continued, 2:00: I go back to the pool and see if I can move it to the driveway. I cannot even make it budge. I go back inside and wait for 5:30 to roll around so Craig can help me lift it.

Friday, Step 4 continued, 6:00 pm: After much discussion of pro’s and con’s of location, we drain the little bit of water I had put into the pool and heave-ho it over to the driveway. We lay it all out again and !SHOCK! I notice tears in the bottom of the pool. Out comes the patch kit while I grumble my fury at the puppy and vow never to let him near my pool again.

Friday, Step 4 continued, 7:30 pm: Holes (many, many tiny tooth holes) patched, I begin filling the pool again. At 9:30 we have about 1/5 full. I retire for the night.

Saturday, Step 4 continued, 8:30 am: Turn on the hose and continue filling. 11:00, turn off hose, go see Superman. 4:30, return home and turn on the hose. 8:30 pm, pool is filled! In the mean time, Craig has put the ladder together. We bring the ladder over to the pool, change into our suits and take a VERY CHILLY pseudo dip – neither of us can go fully in.

Sunday: Raining all day. Applied pH down (our water is off the chart).

Monday 1:00 pm: Applied “Shock treatment” as directed.

Monday 2:30 pm: I glance out of the window in anticipation of seeing a clear pool, ready for swimming. What I see is pictured. It appears that the shock treatment caused the iron in our water to come out of solution. Supposedly, all we have to do is wait for a while with the filter off and all the suspended brown will drop to the bottom to be vacuumed up. I guess that is ok, since rain and cooler weather is predicted for the next 5 days.

Such drama just for a little summer fun in the sun. I grew up swiming in my granparents pool (they put it in the year I was born) so I know it will be worth it.