• not easily destroyed
• durable: very long lasting

Our dog Molly has numerous toys that claim they are indestructible however fail to meet either of the definitions above.  She has managed to pull appendages off stuffed ducks, squirrels, and most recently the nose off a hedgehog she has had for no more than two weeks.

Her ability to destroy the indestructible is not limited to those toys that represent animals.  Kate and I purchased her a set of toys for indoor/outdoor use.  Waterproof, floating, and indestructible.  After about three days she had pulled the rope on a tugging toy completely apart and I was forced to cut the rope off as it became a choking hazard.  She has since, in the past week, removed the entire assembly where the rope connects as well as a corner of the toy.

My dog is a gentle player, not a biter and probably one of the worst dog wrestlers I have ever seen.  She’s managed to lose a wrestling match to a friends dog who is blind!  So I am not convinced the destruction of these toys is because of my dogs unique behavior and more the poor use of the word indestructible by the toy manufacturers.

I am putting forth the following change to the definition for these reasons.  Indestructible will now be defined as,

May or may not easily be destroyed

If any dog-toy manufacturer reads this and has some serious desire to “quality” test their products, Molly would be a great beta tester!

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An average day for me starts with many tasks and has more added on throughout the day.  These tasks must be prioritized, remembered and most importantly completed on-time.  On a day like today I have already completed 45 tasks.

The site I finally settled on is http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ .  I chose this site for numerous reasons.

1. It provides a very simple user interface which I as a minimalist at heart appreciate
2. It has a pretty decent companion iPhone app for adding tasks when you actually remember them; not when you get back to a computer and can remember what you thought about while in line at the store
3. It is platform independent.  I get the same UI on my work computer as on my home computer
4. Amazingly *knock on wood* it is not yet blocked by my corporates “Big Brother” proxy

This website has helped me organize my professional and my personal life.  I can easily create a “list” to tackle a specific large project (like our kitchen renovation) or use one of the numerous smaller lists I’ve created; like one for each of my accounts at work and one entitled “Pets” that reminds me to get cat or dog food, clean the litter box etc etc.

For anybody looking to get on top of things and to reduce what I found to be a good deal of stress give RTM a shot.  It’s even FREE!

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Kate purchased an expensive gift for a family member from Buy.com.  The item was received with some flaws.  She tried to find a number to call them and discuss this and learned that they do not provide you a number; but instead a call back service.

We were ready for bed but wanted this taken care of so she selected for them to call her at that moment; which was actually an option.  Nearly 20 minutes later and after we’d turned the light off for bed thinking they were’t going to call they did!  20 minutes of argument and the requirement for a supervisor and they agreed to allow us to ship the product back, when they had confirmation of shipping they’d overnight a new one.

Needless to say that is not what they ended up doing.  Another “please call me” request was put in.  This time they said they couldn’t do what they promised before, they wouldn’t get us a new product in time and even tried to lie to Kate and tell her no manager works there and there is nobody else we can speak to.

We demanded cancellation of the order and I still wait to see that it was fully cancelled and I don’t receive more billings from them.

However, I will say that Amazon.com saved the day with the product and a competitive price and overnight shipping for a product ordered on the weekend.  Product was delivered and all seems good!

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Molly is a joy 95% of the time  She has a very gentle and easy going personality.  While she is still hyper at times and can go crazy for attention and play time she also quickly calms down and responds to more commands than I’ve been known to understand.

She will now sit, give paw (paw), stay where she is (stay), Go to the door for bathroom time (Outside) and goes back upstairs (upstairs) without any fight.  She knows sit, paw and stay by both oral and visual commands.

Currently I am working on crate with her to get her into her crate all on her own.  She doesn’t seem to be so willing on this one as she knows that means it’s time for bed or we’re going to leave her for some time.  I am certain she understands and just chooses to ignore our requests.

Good friend JF and I put her in-ground invisible fence in about a month ago.  We mapped it out and Kate and I felt it wasn’t large enough so we traveled out to the Home Depot and got more wire to extend her running area.  It’s now a very large area in our backyard that she really enjoys running and playing in.  Unfortunately it’s a huge area for us to do find her waste in.

Krispy is still not terribly font of her and will purposely sit in her way knowing she’ll cry and not try to get past him.  They’ve gotten into it a few times with Kate getting the worst of it the most recent time.

Dexter on the other hand seems to recognize that she is not the most evil thing in the world.  He’s not certain he likes her, but he doesn’t dislike her.  I personally think he is trying to figure out how to harness her mass and strength into doing things he wants … like liberating large amounts of food for his consumption.  She has licked him on the face or back multiple times and that is just funny to watch.

Molly has taken a long road trip to CT to visit the in-laws and behaved so well there that MIL actually allowed her free roam of the house.  She was super well behaved and has been invited back … so she will be joining us for Christmas (leaving on Tuesday and returning the following Monday).

I have been very lazy about taking worthwhile pictures.  The only snapshots I’ve taken have been with my iPhone and they’re less than satisfactory as they don’t catch enough of her facial details to show how cute she is.  Pictures will come in time.

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I’ll post some pictures later, all I have are the garbage ones from my iPhone.

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I made this decision because I learned that if I just simply modify a configuration file stored on the phone I can have different vibration patterns for different events.  No longer am I unsure if I have received a text message or an email while the phone is turned to silent mode and in my pocket.

Of course, as I’ve already taken the steps to do the jailbreak I have been exploring the other nice features out there.  I’ve modified my phone ever so slightly to give me a more accurate battery meter and add video recording as well as to allow me to more quickly enable or disable features like WIFI and GPS.

The final modification I’ve made was purely visual.  I added my background, but slightly muted, behind the icons, removed the dock’s background and made the dock icons reflective.  Overall I think it’s made my phone look very sharp and personalized to me without making it look lame and childish like most of the themes I’ve found posted around on the internet.

Now, the only bars that are jailing me are those of AT&T’s limited network.

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After we lost the house as mentioned in the previous post Kate and I went back to a house we had looked at and placed an offer on previously.  When we initially placed an order they countered us with a number that was above what we wanted to pay and knowing the work we needed to put into the home we were scared off.  We went back and fell in love with the house again.  It has a very nice layout, beautiful property, all the modern and luxury features you want and really great bones to be made what we want in a home.  Unfortunately the kitchen was terribly small and we knew that in time we’d be forced to get involved in a major renovation project to build a new kitchen.

We were willing on doing this and made another offer which was accepted.  While moving forwards with the process we learned that the house would require flood insurance due to its location.  When we investigated flood insurance we learned it was in excess of $5,600 a year.  Due to this ridiculous cost we opted to walk away from this house.  Again we were saddened but we knew we were doing the right thing.

On July 8th we placed an offer on another home.  After 7 weeks we have learned that indeed, third time’s the charm!  Of course nothing is final yet as we haven’t closed yet but for the first time in this entire ordeal I feel confident enough to now share some of the story with the public.  The events were very dramatic for us as it was a lot of time where we just had no idea or control of the situation.

We found this home, which is a lovely four bedroom ranch house with 2.5 bathrooms, a full walkout basement and sits on 1.15 acres of beautiful land.  The house is much larger than we expected to be able to afford and comes with a lot more land than we ever thought we could own.  We’re very excited and know this house has the bones to make an amazing home.  The layout is great, the rooms are large, the kitchen is large enough and with some TLC everything will be amazing.  The house was built in 1966 and unfortunately that shows in some areas such as horrible wood paneling that needs to be torn down and an outdated kitchen that we’ll need to upgrade to meet our style and usage.

We put an offer in on the house and the sellers came back pretty quickly with a very fair counter-offer we were willing on accepting.  We quickly moved into Attorney Review and things seemed to be moving along nicely.  Of course as soon as I feel something is moving nicely, going well or just perfect we must find bumps in the road.  Sometimes, like in this case, they turned out to be hurdles.

We scheduled our home inspection and were expecting pretty smooth sailing as I had looked the house up and down and tried to identify issues myself but found nothing.  This is probably because I have no idea about construction, plumbing, electrical or really any skilled craft.  The home inspector was great and very detailed making certain to find everything he could that could pose a problem in the future for Kate and I.  Boy did he find some problems.

The home inspection showed multiple major issues and a few minor issues.  We made up a list of all the issues we had discovered and sent it off to our lawyer who made it all nice and legal like and sent it to them.  I think it was well over a week before we heard anything back.  Thankfully they had addressed some issues; but the major issues they just stated were still pending review.

After five plus weeks of continuing in this fashion we are now satisfied with the work done except for one moderately large concern of ours that they have however granted us a cash amount at closing so that we may address it on our own. Now we’re very excited to be moving into the new house and trying to get ourselves ready for the adventure ahead of us.

We’re nowhere near ready to move however and closing in just a bit over two weeks time!  We don’t own a single packing box and unfortunately have still not sold our condo; which is a very sore subject for us.  We’ve had a couple of offers that were too low for us to accept and both buyers have shied away from the purchase rather than accepting reasonable counter offers.  We’re seeing a good amount of traffic but no bites.  It’s nerve racking to say the least.

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I started to remember the road trips to Cedar Point in Grandma and Grandpa Rossi’s motor home.  I remembered all the times Grandma and I had driven to see various family members in Michigan and Ohio when I was little.  Then I saw the Michigan border and everything became familiar.  I remembered the trips from the airport to Grandpa J’s house to deliver his favorite cheesecakes from a restaurant we loved in Rhode Island.  I started to realize how much I missed this place and my family who today is only with us in spirit.  Not only did I miss them, but I missed their homes and their neighborhoods and all the things that filled my family memories.

So, I asked Mom and Dad if we could stop by their old neighborhoods.  I hoped it wouldn’t be too painful to go back to the houses their parents lived in for 40 years, and just say “hello.”  They smiled and agreed and, I shed a few tears just thinking about it.  We all agreed to stop at both houses on the way home from the wedding.  The morning of our return trip, we were up at 6am and on the road for Allen Park, Michigan.

Rossi home, once upon a time

The Rossi house looked as I remembered it, with a new fence and some nice new landscaping.  The Jablonowski house also looked great.  As we sat in the street, staring at the house, the owner walked out toward her car and I couldn’t help but feel compelled to explain our gawking.  I told mom that we needed to say hello before she called the police.

Mom rolled down her window and explained that her dad built the house and passed away in it 40 years later.  The woman was so wonderfully understanding and told us that her parents had purchased the home from my Grandpa and she had assumed it from them.  She said it was a great house and they had even made an addition on the back.  Mom got choked up and I was grateful knowing that my family’s homes, where I had so many memories, were so well taken care of.  I felt like it was okay to continue the journey home knowing that our little piece of Michigan was in good hands.

Jablonowski home, once upon a time

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This blog is 100% public.  Anybody and everybody can read it and thus we try to keep it’s content very censored and controlled.  If you’d like to tap into the more personal occurrences in our lives please join our friends networks on Facebook.  With the “Privacy Controls” on Facebook we feel more comfortable posting our weekend plans, what awesome things we’re doing, how stressful our days are and even some awesome pictures of me eating huge sandwiches

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