Beauty and the Beast

Ahhh peace....

Tranquility....

The promise of another day...

Displayed in a stunning sunrise....

Brought to you by my furry new alarm clock who was kind enough to let me sleep until 7:30 today - just in time to capture the sunrise.

Kona's First Night

Believe it or not, Kona was great last night! I think maybe staying overnight at the vet a day or two (I'm not sure if he was dropped off on Monday or Tuesday for his Tuesday morning surgery) got him a little used to sleeping alone in a crate instead of with his mom and littermates. We went to bed around 11 and he barked and whined for about 10 minutes then fell asleep. I actually got nervous that he calmed down so quickly and snuck back into the kitchen to make sure he was still breathing!! At 12:30, he woke up, barked and whined a bit and fell right back asleep. I woke up at 3:00 and couldn't fall back asleep, so when he started in again around 4:00, I got up with him and let him outside and played with him until about 5:00. Then he went back in the crate and whined on and off until 7:20 when I got up. I was really surprised he did so well, because yesterday afternoon I put him in the crate for 30 minutes to introduce him to it and he whined and barked his ever lovin' daylights out. Combined with Wake Forest losing to VA Tech and UNC beating Clemson easily, it was a great night. Also good, he has had 0 accidents in his crate, which makes me very hopeful about housebreaking going smoothly. Especially since he's been in the crate for up to 5 hours. That's a long time to make it.

So far so good! We're really enjoying having him here. I'll keep updating with details and pictures until you all are bored to tears of dog stories :)

Snoozing on my shoe during the UNC game. He laid there for pretty much the entire game.

Look how big his collar is. Haha...here's hoping he'll grow into it! Right now he despises the thing with the kind of hatred usually reserved for people who have caused you great harm. I thought something was wrong with him yesterday because his back leg didn't look right when he ran. Then I realized it was because he was trying to run and scratch at his collar at the same time. Silly thing.

Meet Kona!

He's here!

Sandra, the lady from the rescue we adopted through, brought Kona to our house today around 2:00, so I've been spending the afternoon playing with him and, of course, cleaning up after him. Hopefully he'll pick up on that housebreaking thing real quick! And so begins our adventures in dog ownership :) Enjoy the pictures!

Being bashful

Extreme freckles close-up

Worn out

He was immediately a big fan of the rope chew toy



We played tug-of-war with this for a long time until he passed out on the kitchen floor.

In case you were wondering, Kona is Hawaiian and it means either south or lady, ironic since he's not in fact a lady. But we picked it because we liked the sound of it and had no idea what it meant. Hopefully we won't meet anyone who speaks fluent Hawaiian anytime soon and wants to know why we named our male dog "lady".

Home Work

We've been getting some stuff done around the house including: new paint in the master bathroom, new nightstands to match our bed and some minor repairs on the full length mirror that was broken when we moved. Yes, it took me until now to fix it. Since July it has been laying on our bedroom floor. I had tried to glue it before with no luck, so today I pulled out the power tools and finally fixed it for good. I'm pretty proud of me :) I'm always impressed with myself when I use power tools successfully.

Here's some pictures of the tables and bathroom:

The master vanity before

From New House Pictures!

And the master bathroom vanity now

From Home Work

(Things to note: bulbs in the light fixture, new paint, new outlet cover, new sink accessories and new handles on the cabinets and drawers)

Jamie still has two new brushed nickel faucets to put on the sink.


The master bathroom tub and shower before

From New House Pictures!

And the master bathroom tub and shower now

From Home Work

(Notice new towels and towel bar, tub decorations, new paint, new trashcan and fuzzy floor mat)

From Home Work

(Notice the new towel rings, fuzzy floor mat and of course, the paint)

We still need to get a new window treatment for above the tub and new faucets to match the ones going in the sink.

If you didn't know or have forgotten, Jamie made our bed when we got married. It's beautiful and ridiculously heavy and one of the coolest gifts I've gotten ever. However, it did make it difficult to have other matching bedroom furniture. So over the past 6 months or so Jamie's been working on nightstands to match. We finally got them done enough to use this weekend (though still not completely complete; that would be against our nature). Here's what the bedroom looks like now:

From Home Work

And here's a close-up of the table top

From Home Work

Snazzy, huh? We still need to tile the top of the one on Jamie's side and grout the one on my side and they both are getting drawers (right now they're actually backwards so the drawer openings face the window; once we build the drawers and put them in we'll turn them around).

Another thing worth noting: if you remember, Mom, Shannon and Haley, we bought a set of four white shelves for the guest bathroom when we went to Bed Bath and Beyond in September. Those things were the shelves from Hades. I hung one then got so frustrated on the second I called Jamie in to help. He helped me get that one up and then we both got so frustrated trying to hang the third that we quit. There have been screw holes decorating the wall above two white shelves since. But on Friday, I conquered the Hades shelves!! It may not sound like much, but if you knew how IMPOSSIBLE those things were to hang, you'd be singing songs of praise to me right now.

Well now you know what I've been up to since getting laid-off. I'm still (sorta) looking for another job, but I'm looking forward to spending the next few days totally devoted to puppy training! Our puppy should be coming home tonight if he's recovered enough from being neutered earlier today, though it might be tomorrow if the vet decides to keep him over night. There will be pictures as soon as he's home and I get a break long enough to blog!

Sad Day

This morning I found out that Gate Cottage had a horrible fire last night. I don't have a ton of information, but they said it was a total loss. I was really sad to hear that news. We have a lot of good memories there.

Here's a link to the news story and more photos: http://www.independentmail.com/news/2009/jan/12/fire-destroys-historic-gate-cottage/

Home Again

On Saturday, I woke up in Cocoa Beach. It was sunny, it was 70-some degrees outside, and I spent a bit of time on the beach before heading back to Orlando. It was sunny there, too. And warm. Around 7:30 pm I got in the car and started driving. It was warm then too.

On Sunday, I woke up in Buford. It was raining. It was 40-some degrees outside. I spent the whole day in my pajamas on the couch. In mourning.

I just hate the end of vacation.

But on a positive note: I have a new camera. And we spent a whole lot of time getting to know each other last week. So when my internet decides to cooperate long enough to upload some photos, I should have a nice, long slideshow for all of you to watch!

Interesting* Stuff About ACL Surgery

Jamie started his physical therapy last night and we learned two fascinating things about ACL surgery. He had what they call an autograft where the tissue to repair the ACL is taken from his own body (the other option would be tissue from a cadaver). But the physical therapist told us the tissue they take is not ligament but tendon. So right after the surgery, the new ligament is actually stronger than the original from-the-factory ACL because it's not a ligament at all. Then the tendon has to learn how to function as a ligament and it actually loses strength. Over the next few weeks as Jamie heals, he'll be losing a little bit of stability in that knee until his grafted tendon learns its new job.

The second interesting fact involves the quad muscle. Jamie had noticed that his leg felt weak and looked a whole lot smaller than his other thigh. I didn't really understand this because he really hasn't rested the leg much. It's not like he was in a cast for 8 weeks. The PT said the atrophy of the muscle has to do with the sack of fluid that surrounds the knee joint. According to the PT, when the surgeons work on that joint, they first pump it full of saline to expand it and give them more room to work. This swelling trips out all the receptors in the lining of the fluid sack which then tell the brain not to use that quad muscle. And that's what makes it shrivel up and what causes that leg to be so weak following surgery. Jamie asked about going on the 60 mile Orlando to the Coast Thanksgiving bike ride again this year. The PT said his knee would be absolutely fine and handle the bike ride no problem. But there's a good chance his quad will get tired out and he'll have to stop. Of course, he's Jamie and if he said he is riding, he's riding. Guess I'll be driving the chase car.

*Please note the word "interesting" in the title means only interesting to me, not necessarily to anyone else on this planet. But it's my blog, so deal with it. I meant that in a nice way.