January 28, 2008:  The puppies are here, the puppies are here, all 13 of them!!! 

January 27, 2008:  Good afternoon everyone, hope you are having a nice weekend.  I'm having a weekend of doing mostly nothing, well, almost nothing I guess.  Our week was good, mostly just work work and more work.  We worked three nights, two of them in downtown Seattle until about 5am.  Tuesday we made it to Eric and Isabela's house for dinner and to visit the dogs.  Lottie is huge, she looked so uncomfortable too, poor girl.  She's so big that I would guess she'll end up like Pooh going through the dog door real soon!  Lisa sat on the floor with her and she sluggishly laid down on her side and put her head in Lisa's lap, just wanting her belly to be rubbed, it was so tight it must hurt like mad.  She is so big that they are expecting a litter of at least eight but more likely 10 to 12 puppies.  The are due to arrive this Wednesday but they both think that she may go a day or two early.  Lisa really wants to watch but has to work the day she's due.  She's hoping for them to arrive a day early because she's off on Tuesday and may get to watch after all.  We're going to try to get over there as often as possible through the next two months to help socialize the puppies and help out where we can, especially if there are more than eight in the litter.  The rest of the week was really just work for both of us so not much to talk about there.  Lisa worked this weekend so I decided to get a few puppy proofing projects out of the way.  I had to install another speaker jack in the living room to eliminate a long run of wire across the floor right in front of the windows that we're sure the puppy will want to look out all the time.  This way she'll have one less thing around that looks like it would be fun to chew on.  I also had to move the subwoofer in the living room to the back corner of the room so we could put one of her crates in the corner.  I ended up adding another wire to the speaker panel behind the TV and running it to the one behind the couch through the crawlspace.  It actually looks better with that big black cube hidden in the corner where you can't see it and it's awesome that I didn't have to try and hide the cable under the carpet or behind the base trim.  It looks very clean this way and that's how I roll.  After that mess was finished I took all the pictures I've been putting off for months and did a huge update on the 'House Projects' page.  I marked each page that had some pictures updated, check them out when you can, I even got the new living room and dining room done too.  Well, that's about it for me, time to get some dinner going, have a great week! 

January 20, 2008:  Hey again, hope you all had a great weekend, we had lots of fun.  The week was really just more of the same for both of us, lots of messed up hours at work.  The couch came in for the living room and I was able to get out there to pick it up while the weather was dry.  I haven't had time to get the pictures updated but I promise I will soon.  This weekend we went to a big dog show in Oregon and got to see 41 Ridgebacks compete including three from our breeder's last litter.  The coolest part is that one of them even won "Best of Breed" for the day.  It was fun to see all the different breeds and we were even able to check out some of the agility course competition, which was awesome.  All those Ridgebacks just got us even more psyched for the puppies to arrive next week.  Hopefully we'll be able to stop by and play with them a bunch before we take one home at the end of March.  We're actually going over to their house for dinner on Tuesday and we'll be able able to see Lottie before the puppies are born, they say she looks like a sausage!  Anyway, I guess I'm out for now, it's going to be another crazy week at work, at least three night projects to do.  Have a great week everyone. 

January 12, 2008:  Good evening everyone, how have you all been?  As always it was a crazy week for me at work, different crazy this week though.  It's been no secret that the company hasn't been doing all that well since the big relationship with Sprint fell through a few months ago but this week everyone started to really feel it.  They let 140 people go across the country and a large number of them were here in Seattle.  They're saying that we're all good for now but one person from my team was one of the 140 so things are going to get even more crazy for the rest of us over the next few months.  The projects keep piling up and our team keeps shrinking.  Since they fired our boss a person from the team has been doing his job and is formally applying for it now.  If he gets it that means our team will be just me and one other guy, insane.  Other than that the week has been quiet around the homestead.  Last night some friends hooked me up with a ticket to their Microsoft new year party at the same place we went for NYE, the EMP in downtown Seattle.  It was cool, great food, open bar and Modest Mouse played on the main stage, they're actually from Issaquah which is just one town over from where we live.  It was fun, I mostly hung out by myself, had a couple beers and watched the show while they smoozed with bosses and co-workers spouses.  Today I went out and picked up the tree for the living room and a few plants for the rest of the house.  I'll update the pictures for the last couple projects as soon as the couch shows up, which should be any day now.  Other than picking up a bunch of branches and pine needles in the yard that fell in the last wind storm and cleaning the hot tub the rest of my day has consisted of me sitting on the couch and doing nothing.  So until I have something more interesting to talk about I'm going to call it a day. 

January 6, 2008:  Hey again, not a whole lot to talk about but as always I'm sure I'll come up with enough to fill a page or two.  The work that I had to do Thursday night went well and Lisa actually got to sleep in on Friday and catch up on some of the sleep she's been missing after working all those crazy hours in a row.  We were able to run a few errands on Saturday and pick up the few things we needed for our first ski trip today.  We also went to 1/2 Price Pots and found a perfect pot for the tree we're putting in the big living room.  The pot looks great in the room and we'll be picking up the tree sometime toward the end of the week, depending on my night work schedule.  I'll be sure to grab some pictures when we get it all together, it should help fill in the room a bit.  As for skiing, it was really awesome.  It's weird to leave the neighborhood with super green lawns and pouring rain, drive a little under 2 hours and be driving on a road covered by slush with 8 foot snow banks beside it.  We went to Steven's Pass and they currently have a 90" base, that's almost 8 feet, and it snowed the whole time we were there!!!  This picture might look like a trick but that snow bank is just as it fell, they plow it the other direction!!.  So other than all that excitement there isn't much going on, we'll talk again soon though, have a great week. 

January 2, 2008:  We're back again and just recovering from a long few weeks around here.  Work for both Lisa and I has been really busy since about Thanksgiving.  Lisa got the summer holidays off but had to work the fall and winter ones so she's had some long weeks at the Pharmacy lately.  She's at work right now and after tomorrow will have worked 9 days in a row, this weekend off is well deserved.  So since we've spoken last we finished the third bedroom paint, found a couch we like and ordered it and even found the tree we want to put in the big living room.  The couch will be in before the end of January and the nursery is having a huge house plant sale starting on the 11th so we will be going back then to find the exact tree we like and take it home.  We didn't do much for Christmas eve other than bake our first two batches of cookies EVER!  We ran around during the day and picked up the few things we need to actually do some baking, pans, cooling racks, and even a mixer.  We made these insane peanut butter and chocolate sandwhich cookies and the standard Christmas issue sugar cookies.  They came out pretty good for our first time so we brought them with us to Kyle and Naomi's house for Christmas day.  Later in the week Alice and Jesse arrived from New York and we were able to spend a lot of time checking out different areas they might want to live around town and even get a little shopping done too.  Jesse ended up spending an overnight camping at Mt. Ranier and had a great time from the stories he told, next time I want to go with him for sure!  For NYE we went to the same party downtown that we did last year, it was a good time and I had a little too much to drink just like last year, maybe we'll do something a little more low keyed next time.  Other than all that we really didn't do all that much in the last couple weeks.  The mountains have been getting snow by the feet so we're hoping to get in our first day of skiing this weekend, maybe we'll get a few pictures if we do.  My leg still hurts now and then but it's not going to stop me from enjoying all that new snow, at least I hope it won't.  I also plan to get some pictures of the work we've finished and update the 'Projects' section.  Have a great week and we'll talk again soon.