Update 7/23/11

I know I haven't been posting. I am a very bad blogger.
So, some things that have been happening:
I am still delivering the morning paper, I currently deliver 3 out of 4 of the papers that are delivered in my area. The 4th paper is now available, if I want to deliver it as well. It would add 189 papers to my 130-150 papers, 92 of the new papers would be to addresses I don't already deliver to. I am still going back and forth on this.
I am currently on Plurk and Ravelry as Jarista.
I reached out to an old friend after finding her own blog, but I have yet to hear anything back from her.
In May we went down to Idaho Falls, ID and visited with my family. The main reason we went was to see my older sister 'MM' graduate from ISU with a Doctor or Pharmacy degree, which was super exciting. I got to visit with far flung family members, my older brother 'MH' and his wife and 5 kids came down from Douglas, WY, my sister MM came up from Reno, my younger brother 'DJ' came from Georgia. DJ is stationed with the Air Force in Georgia with his wife, who also came. DJ just got back from being deployed to Afghanistan so it was REALLY good to see him and to meet his wife. My mom and her husband TC were there, as were my dad and his wife KH. We last saw family last June when hubby, the new puppy(oops, guess I haven't mentioned her yet), and I went to McCall, ID for the 'C' family reunion. Mom begged me to come down since it wasn't that far away, (the trip down took twice as long because of construction, but oh well) and because TC's family drives her crazy after a few days of close proximity.
We recently switched internet providers, Clear Wire was super slow, and glitchy. We've signed up with Time Warner Cable, while the sign up process was a bit horrific, now that it's installed (finally) we are able to actually watch Netflix Instant Watch! We hadn't been watching Netfix online because out internet was so slow. One afternoon I was downloading something and it was crawling along at 5 kbs/s. Bleck!
I have signed up for Audible, and even though it costs a whole lot, I've been enjoying listening to audiobooks on my paper route. I am currently listening to Voyager by Diana Gabaldon, next up is Oath of Fealty by Elizabeth Moon.
Earlier this year I participated in the garage sale at the Beasley Collisium, while I didn't make very much money (I had way to much furniture I think) I did SPEND money. I bought two smaller flat screen monitors/TVs. Which was fortuitous later as our main living room TV bit the dust. The remote sensor had died some time ago, and things that were supposed to be white were looking a little pink. In an attempt to fix the color by playing with the menu buttons at the bottom of the TV, hubby managed to get the TV off the 00 channel needed to watch things from the VHS/DVD player. Turns out the only way to get to the 00 channel is by the remote, which doesn't work. Also the only way to adjust the setting was from the remote. We decided to go TV shopping. It was a holiday weekend, everything TV shop wise was closed. We ended up at Walmart. We have a massive entertainment center which was bought to house the decent sized TV hubbys' parents bought. The EC is full of 'stuff', along with devices. There is a dual cassette player, a record player, a receiver, 2 VHS tape holders. YOu get the idea. So we're at Walmart, we measured the space we had for a TV before we left, and all TV's are now the wide screen things. Using our measurements, the only ones that would fit are the 28" or below sized ones. I didn't want one so small, hubby's having sticker shock and fighting with me in his own special PA way, so I was thinking we could get a new EC as well, that way we could get a bigger TV. He thinks we can't fit 1/10th of the stuff currently on our current EC into a new one. More fighting, we end up leaving with nothing. Once we get back home I end up setting up one of the small Monitor/TVs I got at the garage sale, and that is what we have been using ever since. I also managed to clean my desk and get the other (not as high quality) monitor installed as my computer monitor.
While in Idaho Falls my dad talked us into getting some baby chicks. If you don't know we previously got some chickens from my dad before he moved to Maui. The local CalRanch store had baby chicks for sale for a good price. They were 2 weeks old, so the mortality rate was cut way down. We brought home 5 baby chicks in a tote with food and water. We also took our dog down to Idaho Falls so she could meet the family, she was fascinated with the chicks, and would sniff them whenever we let her. 4 of the baby chicks have survived, and are currently in a giant metal feeding tub on the back porch. I also ordered some baby chicks online, the minimum I could order, without massively expensive shipping charges, was 15. So I ordered 15, they arrived this morning and are so cute and fluffy! 16 arrived, but I'm not going to dispute it. This way, we can eventually replace the current chickens we have with some newer, tamer chickens. Since I grew up on a farm and am not squeamish about it, the older chickens will get butchered and put in the freezer.
Now, about he puppy. Hubby wanted a dog, he wanted a dog like our friend JC's dog Shadow. So, since Shadow wasn't fixed JC bred her 1/2 Black Lab 1/2 Blue Heeler, to a co-workers pure bred Black Lab. A few months later Shadow gave birth to 9 puppies!


Hubby wanted a girl puppy, and there was only 1 girl puppy in the litter. 8 weeks later, after much visiting and holding, and holding a sleeping puppy on us, we brought home Sassy. In a litter of 9 she was the only girl, and she was 'in charge' and would beat up on her brothers. JC kept 1 of the boys, named him Blaze, and still has Shadow. We love having a dog, she is sweet, funny, hyper, goofy, and currently sleeping under my computer chair. She's 14 months, but as a friend says Black Labs are puppies until they are 3 years old. Sassy and the cat, Moonstone, play and fight and tolerate each other. It's hard to feel bad for the cat after seeing the cat go up to the dog, who is minding her own business chewing on a raw hide, bat the dog without claws and run off. When the dog ignores her, the cat looks all disappointed and comes back, extends claws and takes another swipe to get the dogs attention and to get her to chase her and play.


We also had a human new arrival, but since this is getting rather tl:dr I'll save that for another day.
Best wishes!