7 posts tagged “dog”

'Cause I know you all have been dying to hear more about my house-hunting saga.

It turns out I'm a wheeler and dealer, because I stood by my low offer and didn't budge.  I win at real estate chicken.  Here is the house I am planning to buy, assuming all the inspections and stuff come out okay. This is the view from the south, at the attached garage and breezeway porch.

The good news: I like the house and the neighborhood (it's the same neighborhood I live in now)

The bad news: the house is being sold "as is," so whatever wrong with it, I'll have to fix. (Hence the low offer.)

All of this morning was taken up with inspections: the regular inspector, the termite inspector, the sewer inspector, and the structural engineer consultant.  Among the things to be fixed: a steadily bowing foundation wall on the north side that'll have to be braced with I-beams and possibly a deadman anchor.  Awaiting bids on that little project. Many thousand dollars, which is why I'm paying $25K less than the seller originally asked, which is also $25K less than he bought it for.  (Maybe he didn't get a good inspection beforehand.)

Among the cheaper fixes: termite treatment for a small porch off the kitchen.  Somehow, I feel like it's a bargain, because the termite inspector uses a doggy!!!!  It's true!  This is Crocket, the specially trained termite sniffing dog.

Sadly, this particular pose of Crocket's means there are termites under where she's sitting.  I lof her.  She has beautiful floppy ears and a curly tail and spotty toes.  *kisskiss*  Oh, right, and I'll have to have the termites treated.  Look, people, if you have to have a termite inspection, hire an inspector with a sniffing dog.  It totally takes away the sting of finding out you have termites, because after she told me about the termites, she kissed my hands and let me skritch her soft ears.  Try that with a regular termite inspector.

The house had previously been a rental and one gets the sense that the owner got in over his head and just gave up.  The house has been unrented most of this year and maybe here's why:

Nice new faucet...oh, wait.  Except under the sink, the water lines are still attached to the old faucet.  Huh?

The bathroom also has about three inches of layer underlayment and linoleum, which is particularly interesting since the doorway to the bathroom is all of about 5'8" high.  I can barely go through the door without ducking.  Part of the problem is the layers of flooring, but the door is just short.  Not even 6' tall.  Thankfully, the bathroom is NOT built for gnomes and it's about twice the size of my current bathroom.

Let's see, there also a creepy basement, complete with creepy shower.  Looks like a nice place to scrub up, right? Also, ancient phone wiring still in place.

Oh, right, you probably want to know what I like about the house.  Well, it's got some lovely space, including a huge kitchen with a breezeway porch that connects to the garage and houses the laundry.  Whew!  Would not want to do laundry in that creeptastic basement.

Oh darn.  I was also going to show you the 30+ year-old air conditioner, but that must be on the inspector's camera.  At any rate, it works.  It's huge and ancient and it fired right up and started cooling the house.  Unexpected to say the least.

I knew I shouldn't click on the link.  I knew reading about the woman who had her dog cloned was just going to piss me off, but I did it anyway.

I expected a low-grade contempt, but it turned out to be even worse than that.  Bernann McKinney sold her house to raise the $50,000 to pay for the cloning.  Fine, it's her house, her money, although I'd certainly suggest there are more worthwhile causes to which one could contribute $50,000.  What got me, what pushed me right up to the edge of a full-blown fit of rage is what Ms. McKinney had to say about why she had her dog cloned:

"I had to make sacrifices and I dream of the day, some day when everyone can afford to clone their pet because losing a pet is a terrible, terrible loss to anyone."

Where did this amazing, "indispensable" dog named Booger come from?  McKinney rescued him from a shelter.  So, instead of honoring Booger's memory and his invaluable contribution to her life by going back to the shelter and rescuing another dog, she opted to spend $50,000 to bring five more dogs into the world.  Five.  Five shelter dogs who got gassed in the place Booger.  Imagine how many dogs that $50,000 would have saved.

McKinney's dream sounds like my nightmare.

UPDATE: Now it comes out that Ms. Dog-Cloner is also Ms. Mormon-Missionary-Raper.  Charged in 1977 for stalking, kidnapping, and sexually assaulting a Mormon missionary.  She jumped bail and disappeared into obscurity...until now.

On my walk to work this week I've seen this same item that the trash guys declined to pick up:

Some sort of treadmill, I thought, approaching it from the south side.  As I passed, however, I noted this little pronouncement:
And on the backside, we achieve brand identification:

Yes, my people, that's a treadmill for dogs.  A treadmill for dogs.  A treadmill for dogs.  A treadmill for dogs?

Or more accurately, a treadmill for the dogs of people who are too lazy to take their dogs out for a real walk.

Revolutionary?  Sure, if your idea of a revolution is having your dog chew your favorite slippers, crap on your rug, and maul you while you're sleeping.  Gee...I wonder why the Jog A Dog is sitting out at the curb.

Thank you to Spucko for giving voice to the existential crisis this device would surely produce in a dog accustomed to being walked in the park: "How am I supposed to take a crap on this thing?"

Clearly, this doggie from C.O. is related to me.  Check out the totally hopeless hair-mess. I would like to hide in the bed covers today, too.

Although we had a fun week, with a house full of cats and big dog to take for walks, I think we're all relieved that my sister's cats and my folks' dog have gone home.  The girls, of course, are the happiest of all.  They just keep walking about the house, rubbing their scent sacs on things to reestablish ownership.  This includes hubby and me.

The problem with this is that hubby is suffering from some serious poison ivy.  He went on a running group expedition through the woods and brought home this:

Notice not just the scabbiness, bu the fact that one leg is dramatically bigger than the other.  Eeek.  Now he's in a bit of quarantine, to avoid getting any of the oil on the cats or me. 

How can summer almost be over?  I feel like such a fool, because I haven't had a real summer supper since summer started.  It's the traditional supper of my childhood, with all the contents of the garden: fried potatoes, sliced tomatoes, corn on the cob and what my grandmother called "fresh pickle" (sliced cucumber in vinegar, salt, sugar.)  Yummies.  It's so refreshing and you don't have to heat the kitchen up much to fix it

In this case, it's all the contents of someone else's garden--I went to the farmer's market.

As I mentioned before, Hubzilla got a crazy amazing bargain on a 17" Mac Powerbook.  The only problem is that his old bookbag is too small to hold the new Mondo Laptop.  That's what eBay is for.  Hubzilla goes out and finds the perfect bag: 

It's that big, I guess.  At any rate, the only thing not quite right about the Dreadful Embarrassment is that it doesn't have a clutch grip on the top.  So, emergency transplant from the old, dilapidated bookbag (that should have been thrown out years ago.  My people, I used the bookbag in grad school 15 years ago.)  So here you have the donor bag, the donor organ and the transplant in progress.
And here we have the new bookbag with transplanted handle.  Very little blood lost.
Oh, and as for the rest of my weekend.  Mostly restful, now that the Frightful Tailless Black Monster has arrived.  The dog's presence adds a distinctly new element to the interaction between the boys and girls.  The girls know her, because they lived with her for two months.  They're not friendly, but there is mutual sniffing.  The boys hate and fear her.  As for Nobi, she just loves cats.  She'd like to kiss and cuddle with everyone, and so tends to poke her unnaturally long nose into all the cats' business.

Wow, so this is what everyone has been talking about, huh?  I guess I'll just lounge around, do something fun, eat a little, rest?  Is that the idea?  I could get used to this.

First I went off to the farmers market with some friends, and then we all came back to the house for some cheese toast for breakfast.  Yum.  Careful not to drool on your keyboard.  It's simple to make.  Two slices of cheddar or American cheese (preferably organic.)  A baguette, sliced top and bottom.  Put the cheese in, slather the outside of the bread with melted butter, pop it on the griddle.  (You can used a heavy frying pan to press it, if you want that authentic Cuban flatness.)