Mish-Mash

Ginger dog went in for tail removal surgery this past Thursday because she's so excitable that she bangs it against anything and everything and as a result, she damaged her tail.  So, now she has a bloody nub for a tail.  She's having to stay in her kennel except for a few daily walks we're taking her on to allow her bathroom breaks and a little exercise that isn't too strenuous. 

Bailey dog has really missed playing with Ginger dog, and vice versa.  And after seeing how much pain Ginger was in, I don't see how anyone can do that for purely asthetic purposes.

On an almost related note, we looked into the cost to kennel Bailey and Ginger while we're gone in July, and it is outrageously expensive (Like $60 a day for both, which would amount to over $1250), so that isn't an option.  We're hoping to get a neighbor (or combination of neighbors) to let the dogs out each morning, make sure they have food and water out there with them, and let them back in each night, since grandma won't be able to do it.  We probably only need them to do it on weekdays since Jeanette should be here on the weekends to help grandma out.

We cleaned the carpets in the toy room, and as a side result, decided to turn the formal dining room into an office since we've only used it twice since moving in nearly three years ago.  We're moving the formal dining stuff elsewhere in the house (and repurposing the table to be our puzzle table in our bedroom and saving up for a partners peninsula desk.

We are also kicking around the idea of selling the '53 Mercury and buying a working (or at least assembled) classic car for our car restoration project.  If we decide to stick with the '53 Mercury restoration project, it's likely to cost well over two to three times the high end book sale price for that car which is about $9400.  If we do decide to go with a different car, we'll likely try to sell the body and frame for the Mercury soon and put that money towards the new car and/or furniture we need/want.  The issue comes down to whether the emotional attachment to that specific car is high enough to stick with it, or if the spirit of the idea of hot rodding a car in Candice's dad's memory will work instead.  It's totally Candice's decision to make.

We also have prioritized the various furniture items we plan to buy over the next few years.  I think I'm going to start a savings account at our brick and mortar local bank and set up an allotment of pay to go there that we will not touch except for the items in the prioritized list (which may include the classic car mentioned above).

I installed a sprinkler system in Candice's main flower garden that will operate most nights.  In the next few weeks, I hope to also have the other flower garden on the sprinkler system.  On a related note, I now have to re-bury a portion of the sprinkler system in the back yard, since Bailey bad dog dug it up.  Grrrrrr.  >:-(
We've also decided it will be easier to spray weed killer over our vegetable garden to catch up with the massive numbers of thistles that have overtaken it.  We can't keep up right now, and if we can just kill it all off this year, maybe we can resume an actual garden next year.  We might plant some of the plants (like the watermellon, etc) elsewhere for this year (like possibly behind the pine tree) since we do have it anyway.

We still haven't made any more headway on Megi's room in the past few months, but maybe now that we have a plan for most of the rooms, we'll get going on that again soon, too.  We've changed the disign concept of several of our rooms.  the kitchen, which was going to have a Coca Cola motif, will now have a blue motif.  The formal dining room was originally going to have the blue motif, but will now be a Coca Cola designs office space.  The toy room will now be a southwestern decorated parlor/play room (until the kids get older when it'll become just a parlor/formal living room), and the foyer which was going to be southwestern, will house grandma's Chicken collection/designs.  We're still leaning towards the red and green colors of the living room/den, and the sports designs for the loft.
Anyway, that's all I have for this entry.  Thanks for reading!

Megi's Gone Walkabout

So, It's been a couple of months since I provided an update to what's going on in my little world.  We'll start with the main topic I started this blog about:  writing.

I've decided to put a serious effort into writing and publishing using Kindle Direct Publishing.  I'm focusing more on books of short stories than a single novel.  I plan to group them by genre, and will have one horror, one crime/mystery, one sci-fi, and one drama when all is said and done.  I've also got a lot of cool story ideas, including writing a story with a zombie as the protagonist.  Now, I just have to take the time and write the stories.

I also started a Twitter account for my author personna (@TAllanBishop), since apparently that's what people should do.  I think I have two whole tweets so far...

Now on to what has been going on. 

We experienced a quarantine for Whooping cough in our house.  That precipitated Candice and I opening one of our Christmas presents a month early to fill the dead time with the Wii U.

I got to experience an entire day of jury duty for a case involving sexual assault of a minor and 2nd degree kidnapping before finally becoming a peremptory challenge by the defense at 5:30 at night.  I think it would be really neat to sit on a jury, just not a four day trial on that kind of a case.

We got a companion for Ginger:  Bailey.  Bailey is a Basenji/mid-sized terrier mix.  And the day after we rescued him, he cut open his paw pretty bad (he could have bled to death from it had we not gotten him to the doctor right away).  He then proceeded to tear up three cones designed to prevent him from chewing at his bandages and then proceeded to constantly chew his bandages.  We gave up and removed the bandages and he mostly left the stitches alone.

Bailey has been a calming influence on Ginger.  She's less inclined to jump on people and she seems happier now that she has a friend that is around all the time.  We think Bailey had a bad incident with a car, because of a bad scar on his rear leg that he was treated for prior to his adoption and the fact that any moving vehicle scares the bejeezus out of him.  Still ones not so much so.  He's pretty well behaved except that the "fences" we put up to keep him out of or in a room are considered optional by him.  Because he's so well behaved, we think he used to have an owner, but somehow became "homeless" for a while and that's when he had his accident.

We (and the vet) think he cut his paw on the metal edging that separates different landscapings in the back yard.  I'll be taking it out soon to make sure we don't have a repeat performance.

We refinanced the house down from a 4.625% fixed rate to a 3.25% fixed rate and lowered our monthly house payment by about $400 per month.  We refinanced without any cost to us.  Donna's day care bill just got lowered by $10 per week since she's fully potty trained now.  I also plan to switch our cell phones soon to a combined monthly data usage one which will lower our monthly phone bill by about $30 per month.  That's going to help tremendously with living within our budget and getting the bills paid off.

Christmas Eve, Megi began to walk without holding on to anything!  Christmas Day, she actually started doing it as her primary means of getting around, and she rarely crawls anymore.  In fact, she spends hours just walking around because she can and it is fascinating to her.  She's gone walkabout.

Gabe has been home from school for the holidays.  He really copes better when he has school than when he's home for the entire day.  It'll be better for him and Candice when he starts back to school tomorrow.

Donna stumbled in on Santa while he was setting up all the stuff.  He had to disappear in a hurry.  fortunately, he returned later after she went to sleep and finished with everything.

In the next few weeks, I'll be buying the pieces to set up ventillation in the basement to move Candice's glass studio down there.  Once that is done, the next step is to rearrange stuff in the garage so I can park in it again (moving my car out whenever I need to actually "do" stuff in the workshop.

We've finally moved on to painting the next room in the series.  Donna's new room will be green (her favorite color) with a pink highlight wall.  Once we get it painted, we'll move her in and start work on Megi's new room.  When we finish that, we'll start on finishing touches to the rooms and the bathrooms.

Well, that's all for this update.  Thanks for reading.