As people leave the workplace, my load is continuing to grow.  While my resume is getting more and more robust, I'm getting less and less time at work to actually focus, as there seems to be a neverending flood of tickets that are critical that are flowing my way.

We have our fence posts up.  We haven't gotten much further than that.

Doug moved out to Boston last week.  Heather is still here and will be until the house sells and Doug gets a job.

My niece moved to Eerie, Pennsylvanie last week.  We were hoping to see them before they moved.  Now we'll just have to go out and visit them. 

We've finalized our plans for our trip to Spain and England.  That's a load off our backs.

And that's about it.

I worked from home yesterday, since that would be the first full day of having Ella in the house.

She and Quinn did wonderfullly well.  There were many times in the morning when it sounded like we had a herd of horses in our house, but that settled down before too long (I think that Quinn got a bit too tired to chase her around).
She's adjusting very well.  As far as we can tell, she isn't destructive and is well-mannered for a dog that has had no obedience training.  She's still a bit shy around men, but has really warmed up to me.  Unlike Quinn, she will follow me from room to room even when she's not wanting something, just to be close to someone (Quinn's an independent cuss and does his own thing, which I respect).  She's got quite a bit more energy than he does and is an instigator, even though she's submissive.  

My favorite thing so far is when I threw the rope down the hallway and she went tearing after it and then didn't know what to do with it.  So Quinn trots over, picks up the other end of the rope and the two of them trot down the hallway, both of them holding the rope, and bring it back to us.  Too cute for words.

Well, the two get along just fine.  She's got a lot more energy, so they're both pretty active.  Quinn's taken to chasing her around the house, so it occasionally sounds like a herd of horses thundering through the house.  So far, so good.

Not a child, although I think that might have been easier.

There was a dog at a nearby shelter that my wife read about and felt sorry for.  A husky-mix.  she has heartworms and is severely malnourished and would not eat while at the shelter.  And, until she gained weight, the vet would not give her the heartworm treatment.  So my wife wanted to think about fostering/adopting and brought her home to meet Quinn and to visit our vet.  And while she growled at Quinn, that seemed to be the extent of the issues there, so we thought fostering would be fine.  She then came home from the vet with our vet saying she was going to be fine if we could get her weight up.  So we brought her back home and let the shelter know that we were going to foster.  Shortly thereafter, she picked a fight with Quinn and bit him three times.  He was very good and did not bite back, just pinned her to the ground.  I had to separate them.  We have been keeping them mostly separate since then, especially as she lunged at him one other time.  She is very good with people (when I was separating the two of them, she never once tried to bite me, but really does not like Quinn.  He is doing fine (the bites were, luckily, not very deep), but is very puzzled about the whole thing, as he was sure that he was getting a playmate.  Since she is eating quite a bit with us (about four cups a day, at least, we are continuing to foster her for now, but will be passing her back to the shelter as soon as they find someone else to foster or by the end of the week.  So if you know of anyone without pets who would like to foster a dog near Indianapolis, let us know.

Between that, Tacey's dad visiting, me being on-call, and other issues, it has been a full weekend.

Book meme that everybody is doing...so, I'll jump off the bridge as well.
What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Here's the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read 'em for school in the first place.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Didn't really like this very much in the end.  Started off wonderfully, though.
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion * - If you read this as a history book, it really is quite enjoyable and fascinating.
Life of Pi : a novel * - It was good, if a bit surreal.  Leaves you with a number of questions.
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote* - Rather brilliant, but not for everyone.  I intend to read it again one of these days.
Moby Dick - Painful to read.  Just barely was able to finish it.
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey* - One of my great inspirations
Pride and Prejudice - Hated it.
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace 
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius 
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West - Was very disappointed in the transition to the end.
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World - While not a favorite, very influential to my perception of the world.
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum - One of the few books that I have never finished.  I could not get past Eco's ego.
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo*
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys 
The Once and Future King*
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984*
Angels & Demons 
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise) - When I was in 3rd grade, read it with my mother, as I decided it was too influential not to know.
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Really amazing story.  Painful, though, and rather heart-rending.
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels - I'd like to read again just to get the social commentary, as I don't remember it as a child.
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time* 
Dune*
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present 
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter - Hated it.  Never understood why it was required reading in schools.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down*
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers* - Another one of my inspirations, although a more juvenile one.
 

My brother is still looking for a job, so keep him in your prayers.  Been a rough year for him.

We finally have the master bathroom remodeled.  It's looking very nice.  It'll be a week before we start using it, as we want to give everything plenty of time to finish settling.  Our contractor, Russ Frame of Handyman Connection, did a really good job, improvising when there were odd issues (re-doing the plumbing so that our cabinet could fit perfectly, as the plumbing pipes would have caused one of our drawers not to work, as well as moving a light switch that we didn't take into account when we changed the height).  It feels like we have an adult bathroom now, with everything a bit taller.  Yeah!!!

Now the next project is the fence.  We still haven't gotten the estimate back from them.  I might have to call tomorrow.

Things at work are getting more stressful.  The attrition rate in our department has grown.  As of Friday, I will be the senior member of the team.  And I've only been here a little over a year.  Hopefully, things will smooth out soon or other opportunities will present themselves.

On Friday, my wife picked up an exercise bike from the fitness store.  In the process of moving it into the house, I pulled my back.  Irony.  Got to love it.

Saturday, we went down to Columbus and picked up all of the books.  The apartment is getting more and more empty.  Got to see Dave, too.  He's got a new job starting today, so that's good.  We then went to visit Uncle Sonny.  

While he is having some difficulties (he cannot do a few cognitive tests), he certainly still knew who we were and did not seem do be doing any worse than usual mentally.  Physically, he's lost a lot of weight and is obviously not as strong as he was.

Sunday we sold the books, did a few errands and sent out all of the birthday/anniversary/wedding cards that we were late on.  Hopefully, we will be back on track.  I have no idea how my mother managed to keep everything straight all these years...

My back is feeling better, my office is almost looking neat and tidy, and life is going rather well in general.