David's stuff

Yesterday we threw a small party for Lily to celebrate the two year anniversary of her adoption! Lily got a number of very generous presents and fun was had by all.

Lily had her operation yesterday, and everything went well! The tooth was removed and she recovered last night at home. She was pretty disoriented from the pain medicine and the anesthesia when we brought her home last night, and even this morning she was a bit under the weather. However, this evening she's bouncing around and back to her old self!

Thanks to everyone for their support, and to grandma and grandpa Keenan for their wonderful card!

The Mozilla Foundation and its volunteers have been hard at work! They've just released Firefox 1.0 preview release, their fast, secure, and featureful browser which I've used since version 0.5 and Thunderbird 0.8 the email client. I would recommend both products to anyone who's ever been nailed with spyware, or viruses by using Internet Explorer or Outlook (or Express).

In particular, I cannot sing the praises of the browser enough. For browsing it offers quick navigation, tabs, integrated search box, and type-ahead find (just start typing and it searches in the web page). For web developers, the DOM Inspector is indispensable.

Today I woke up around 8:30 and let Lillian outside. The wind whipped through the door and blanketed my face and arms with cool air. It couldn't have been more than 50 degrees out and it felt glorious! I went back to bed for a bit, but not before opening the windows to enjoy the beautiful weather.

We started by taking Lily for a long walk around the neighborhood. We walked down our street, did the largest possible route in another subdivision, and walked back enjoying the beautiful weather the whole way. Next, we went to Panera for lunch, and ate outside with Lily and Coty (I really don't like this spelling). We returned home after recording the number of what looks like a doggie day care being built in our adjacent shopping center.

With the beautiful temperatures, we spent most of the afternoon working on the yard. We mowed, dethatched, pulled up tons of crab grass, over/reseeded, and finally dug a drainage ditch down one side. Hopefully all of these things will help us have a beautiful lawn come spring. We've already been able to see major results from the fertilizer. We had beautiful green growth before we gave it a buzz cut in preparation for the seeding.

We dined this evening at Camille's Sidewalk Cafe and honestly weren't terribly impressed. We paid more than $8 each for our dinners which were small portions and Libby said her panini was most similar to grilled cheese, but worse. My grilled wrap was miniscule. Here's to say we won't be returning for a while to try anything new.

Libby, Lily, Coty, and I went for a second walk of the day around the neighborhood trying to get Coty some exercise to help trim his figure.

I've put up pictures of some of the celebrations for Lily yesterday. Libby baked muffins for the puppies and Lily was generous enough to share them at the dog park for the Dachshund Meetup.

Today is Lily's Second Adoption Day! The picture on the left is from last year, so we'll post pictures of this year a bit later! Libby is baking Lillian some cookies, and she's having a party next weekend for everyone to celebrate.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank Intrex for making good on a hard drive we purchased from the in February that went bad and came up as a "Far East" drive when attempting to exchange it via the manufacturer. They were very responsive and ended up exchanging the drive out for us with a minimum of hassle. I would recommend them for your technology needs in the North Carolina area. You'll find them a bit more expensive than the comparable parts online, but nothing beats the "in-person" experience.

I've setup a weblog for Richard (Libby's father) to provide us with his frequent family updates!

Well, we were slated to get four (4) dogs from the puppymill that brought us Andy and Cody, but the woman (who is likely found at http://www.calabel.net) has apparently decided to give them away to people in the community. In any case, we aren't getting these 4 dogs this weekend. Instead, we're still getting another who's being surrendered by his owner of 13 years, and there's a 10 year old coming from somewhere between here and Greenville.

Finally, Libby got a call today about a dog with a rear leg problem at the Durham shelter. She went and picked him up, took him to the vet, and learned that he had a dislocated hip. They are going to try and relocate it tomorrow, but in the event that too much time has elapsed they'll be doing a procedure where they remove the ball of the "ball and socket" joint which forms the hip. Supposedly he'll recover quickly and nearly unscathed. I wouldn't welcome such an operation on myself as it soulds really uncomfortable. However, I suppose this is one of the advantages of being a quadruped.

We took Lily to the vet today and found that her tooth is cracked. Actually, the vet told us this before we went to Connecticut, but when she went in for her physical last week they couldn't find the crack, so today they confirmed that they see it and will have surgery to have it removed next Tuesday! We're worried about her, but this is the same vet which removed her mast-cell tumor and we're very confident in their abilities.

Otherwise, I've been doing a bit of work on the DRNA website (very minor stuff, but taking a while to get going on the codebase; it's ASP, yuck).

As always, our weekend was much too short. We spent most of it running around doing various and sundry things. On Friday, we enjoyed a nice dinner out at Red Robin, and I was exhausted from getting up early to try an finish the project I'm on at work. This resulted in heading to bed early.

Both Andy and Teddy went up north to their forever homes as Libby woke to drive them on a transport. She drove them up to South Hill, VA where the person she net was 1 hour and 15 minutes late, which entirely screws up the schedule for such a transport.

We went to Anjum's apartment for dinner where her mother had whipped up a feast fit for kings. We enjoyed many dishes, kabobs, and topped it off with a dessert cake from Maggie Moo's!

Sunday we got to sleep in a bit later. Libby cleaned out her car, and I pulled a bunch of crab grass from our back yard. It's amazing how little real grass we have once all the crab grass is pulled up. The plan is to reseed and hopefully have some better grass next year.

We lunched at Salsaritas, and Libby spent the afternoon cleaning up inside and folding clothes, while I gutted and cleaned the garage. Both are now spotless. That was the exciting weekend here on Cedar Grove Drive.

My laptop has been sent off to Dallas for some repairs including a keyboard problem.

In other news, Teddy got an extended stay here while his foster parents were stuck in Florida after Hurricane Frances caused the cancellation of their flight and subsequent overbookings. Teddy and Andy will likely be going to their new home soon (with the same family!) Midas gets neutered tomorrow and Lily gets a yearly checkup and probably a few vaccinations.

Found some old pictures from a trip Libby and I took to New York in February 2002.

Libby and I woke this morning and drove to Greensboro, where we dropped off Chester at his new adoptive home, We drove 3 dogs, plus Cody all on their way north. Cody has found his home with a DRNA member in Pennsylvania.

This afternoon, we went to Lowes and got a bunch of needed items. We bought fertilizer, grass seed, a spreader, a ceiling fan for the bedroom, and sealant for our fence. Libby spent 2 hours applying the seal to the fence! We have the length on the rear of the property left to seal, but the rest looks like it's all protected from the elements! I spread some fertilizer and helped keep Libby's sprayer full of sealant.

This evening, we're headed out to dinner with Mina at our favorite Mongolian Barbeque.

Today our choice for the position accepted and will begin work Tuesday! Can't wait to have him on board!