Friday, January 23, 2009

Poor swolly rolly polly Zoey

We just got back from a visit to the vet with Zoey. Actually it was our second visit of the day. After we got home the first time, we noticed that her eye looked a little red and puffy. So we called them back and they told us to bring her back in. By the time we made it back there, her whole face was swollen up like a balloon. Apparently she had an allergic reaction to one of her vaccines. They gave her a couple more shots and sent us home. It doesn't seem to bother her too much, but she sure looks funny.

Before:


After:


Her lips feel like a chicken fillet.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Just an update - not much to say

Dad here. Just to let you know we're all still alive down here. Mom and Kimberly have gone up to Orem this weekend to do some shopping for Kimberly to get ready for her mission. She's only 2 1/2 weeks away from the MTC! They're staying with Taylor and Daniel and will be back Monday some time. We managed to talk Grandma into coming out for Kimberly's farewell (it wasn't too hard). Grandma flew into Salt Lake this weekend and will ride back down here with Pam and Kimberly on Monday. So that will be fun to have her here for a little while. Don't know yet how she's getting home - we'll wing it when the time comes. I hope I get to drive her home - I could use a few days in California. Jennifer didn't go with them because she had a cheerleader commitment on Friday night and a paper to get written for school that she knew wouldn't get done if she went on the road trip. I'm pretty much doing the same old thing. Couple of grooming trips up on the mountain each week and holding down the fort here at the park. Life is good. I sure enjoy reading about how all of you are doing and keeping up with you through this blog. It's fun. Keep up the good work and take care of yourselves. I'll add a picture I got of the moonrise up on Cedar Mountain last week. Love, Dad

Update

So, I thought I would try to give everyone an update on our lives. First, the happy stuff. Rachelle and I have decided that we are going to hold the wedding in Winston Salem, NC in a nice little bed and breakfast. The date is going to be Saturday night, October 3, 2009. We should be able to accommodate anyone several days before that, so we can all have a nice time. We will of course let everyone know as soon as we find out more information and all that good stuff. Here is a link to the bed and breakfast: http://www.shaffnerhouse.com/

In other news, Rachelle has been working on a project that is centered around the Sundance Film Festival. The project is called Deconstructing Sundance (www.deconstructingsundance.com) and the idea is that they use advanced algorithms and other technilogical wizardry to predict the winners of the festival. Anyhoo, Rachelle has gotten a lot of press for it and the New York Times even blogged about it. Check it out. http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/the-bagger-at-sundance-weaponized-spam-analytics/

Life is still a little crummy right now, what with the problems we have been having in our apartment. When the leak first happened, I never thought we would be living in the living room for as long as we have. They found mold in the ceiling after ripping up the walls and the carpet, so they had an abatement crew complete with suits and masks in here to clean everything up. When everything is said and done, we will have been living on the living room floor for over a month. On the bright side, it has been kinda fun goofing around on the floor with Rachelle, kinda like a really long slumber party. She is supposed to paint my finger nails tonight ;) We are trying to keep our heads high and remember that this too, will pass.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Ramblitudes about nothingness

Well today is the last day of my 3 weeks of vacation. It feels a little strange. Obviously I don't really want to go back to work, but it will be nice to fall back into a regular routine. I don't think Zoey is going to like spending that much time alone, but she'll just have to learn how to deal with it. I hope everybody's week will start out better than last week did.

Since no post is complete without some kind of picture, here's a photo of Dena and I at the NC State basketball game that we went to while we were in NC for Christmas. They have the center court section of the original Reynolds Coliseum floor on display at the RBC center where they play now. It's neat.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Can I contribute?

Since the theme of our family's blogs for today seems to be one of how generally crummy our Monday has been, I thought I'd share ours. Well, Aaron's. The other day he was flossing his teeth and a big chunk came flying out of his mouth. No, not food- tooth! Well, at least it looked like tooth. Couldn't really tell if it was tooth or tooth-colored filling, but anyway it left a pretty good sized hole in his molar. Of course, with it being a holiday week, not one of the dozen dentists he called were open for him to get have it checked out. Luckily it wasn't super painful (though he did have to use a leftover Vicadin that first night) and he was able to make it through the weekend.

Since the pain was tolerable he was starting to think that maybe it wouldn't be a big deal. Today he got lucky and found a great dentist near his work who had a cancellation and could see him right away. Well, turns out it was kind of a big deal. What fell out had been part tooth, part filling, which had been covering a rather large cavity that either hadn't been fully cleared out before being filled in, or had developed a crack which allowed the cavity to grow while being nicely protected. Whatever the case, he ended up having a surprise root canal and spent about 3 hours in the dentist's chair today. He has to go back again later to have a crown put on.

Oh, and in the middle of this, while he's sitting there with metal and crap in his mouth, his boss kept calling him (he had to go to the dentist in the middle of the day) so he finally answered his cell only to learn that a MAJOR situation had developed with a product for their BIGGEST client. He had to go back to work after the dentist to try and sort things out so they wouldn't lose this customer (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say what company it is, but you've all shopped there, and probably still do on a regular basis. MAJOR company.) He's still not sure what's going to happen with the work thing- it's kind of out of his hands now. But I'm glad he was at least able to get his tooth worked on. Is it okay to be thankful my husband got a root canal?

As for me, I'm bummed because my camera died and I hate not being able to take pictures. :'(

Long Day

Around 3am last night, Rachelle and I woke up to the sound of rushing water over our heads. At some point during the night, a poorly installed pipe finally gave way and water from the bathroom in the apartment upstairs flooded down into our bedroom. The water was pouring down from the smoke detector and a patch of ceiling that had already experienced some previous water damage. First of all, I hope none of you ever have to wake up to this because it is not one of those things you expect when you go to bed and it sucks. Looking back on it, I'm sure the whole scene was pretty comical, us running around looking for something to hold the water, tripping over Molly, freezing from the water falling everywhere. Anyway, I don't know how much water actually got in on us, but between the two holes in the ceiling, the water running down the walls (that I painted not 24 hours before this little fiasco) and the water flowing around the electrical outlets, it ended up being quite a bit. We filled a 47 liter Rubbermaid bin in less than 8 min. from one of the holes in the ceiling. So now we will be sleeping in the living room with all of our belongings for the next 5 days so the carpet can be ripped up and the floors dried out. If this all sounds like a rant just to get people to feel sorry for me, that is exactly what it is. Bring it on!
Other than all that crap, things are going well and we are trying to remember that the whole thing could have happened while we were gone or something much worse like that. All in all, it is more of an inconvenience than anything else. Just remember to mind your pipes boys and girls.