Puppy Adventure, Pt. 2

A couple days, a successful surgery and a healthy chunk of change later, our little patient is home and doing fine! She gets her bandages taken off on Friday. Then her sutures get removed in 10-14 days and she'll be good to go. She's supposed to have "restricted activity" for 8 weeks but if today is any indication, she may have other ideas. Oh well, at the very least we're keeping her from doing any jumping.

Oh, and she also successfully went #1 and #2 outside today!

The Puppy Adventure

Apparently discontent with the already high number of changes in our lives recently, Denise and I took the plunge and decided to get a puppy that we both fell in love with yesterday. She's a 10-week-old American Eskimo/Papillon mix named (Captain) Morgan.

Oh, but that's just the start of the adventure! After only owning her for a mere 2 or 3 hours, Denise came back downstairs with her after showing her to her parents. As she was bending over to put Morgan down, she suddenly kicked away and fell awkwardly onto the berber carpet downstairs. She immediately started to yelp loudly and her front paw seemed to dangle oddly.

So... off to the vet we went. We learned that she had a clean break of the two bones in her lower limb and she'll need to have surgery tomorrow. As you can probably imagine, that won't be cheap!

It's now 11:30pm and we're home... puppy-less. She's staying overnight at the vet and probably tomorrow as well. Denise is obviously a little broken up over the whole matter and she feels a little guilty for "breaking our puppy". But hopefully in a week or so, she'll be good as new. Both of them. :)

Building in Blaine

For those that didn't know yet, Denise and I are building a house up in Blaine. We were fortunate enough to stumble into a really good situation and we're really excited about it! We have a tentative closing date of November 26th or sooner (obviously we're really keeping our fingers crossed for the "sooner"). They should be able to give us a firmer date in a couple weeks when it all gets framed in.

So far, we have the beginnings of a foundation complete with basement walls. They just backfilled it a few days ago.

Officially Homeless

After a series of delays for various paperwork-related reasons on the buyer's end, we finally closed on the condo and moved out yesterday. We've now officially taken up residence (temporarily) with the in-laws in Cottage Grove. We expect to get some good news from the bank within the next couple days on the short sale we're pursuing up in Blaine. So hopefully we'll be living here a month at the most!

For some post-move pictures of the condo, click here.

Goodbye Condo

About a week and a half ago, we completed a task that we began over a year ago when we undertook a whole series of home improvements... we finally put our condo on the market. Quite shockingly, we got an awesome offer on it a mere 3 days later! And just like that, a 12-year chapter of my life will come to an overdue close when we move next Thursday, 7/10.

Making the transition somewhat difficult is the fact that we may not be able to move into the house we fell in love with last week up in Blaine until the middle of August, although that could possibly change (knock on wood). So the tentative plan is to have the movers store our stuff while we shack up with Denise's parents which is, unfortunately, way down in Cottage Grove!

Chocolate Rain!

I experienced a definite highpoint in my life tonight. The wedding? Not even close. I actually got to meet Chocolate Rain guy (Tay Zonday), perpetrator of one of the most viral videos of the last couple years! We were at Leeann Chin and he just happened to walk in. So, much to the embarrassment of Denise and my mom, I went and asked if I could get a picture with him...

For the uninitiated...

Back Home

It's good to be back but at the same time, it kinda sucks that it's over. Here are some stats from the road:

• Total distance driven: 4,365 miles.
• Number of states driven through: 17, not including the District of Columbia (MN, IA, MO, IL, KY, TN, GA, FL, SC, NC, VA, MD, PA, NJ, OH, IN and WI).
• State capitols driven through: 7, once again not including D.C. (Des Moines, IA; Nashville, TN; Atlanta, GA; Richmond, VA; Harrisburg, PA; Madison, WI and St. Paul, MN).
• Most expensive gas seen: $4.19 somewhere in PA.
• Number of Wal-Mart trucks seen: 51.
• State with most dangerously conservative drivers: Iowa.
• State with most dangerously insane drivers: Florida.
• Money spent on tolls: somewhere in the $30-40 range... stupid northeast.
• Philly cheesesteaks consumed by yours truly: 2.
• Number of viscious sea gull attacks resulting in loss of pizza: 1.

Our full approximate route can be seen here.

Pictures can be seen here.