Thursday, March 31, 2011

Miss Judy Is Hospitalized


Did you hear that my Judge Judy is in the hospital? According to the news, she was rushed there during a taping of her show. She had some tests done and they say she is going to be okay. I really hope so. As you know, I love my Judge Judy.

The count down is underway for our move! A week from today, we do the walk through. Our Pods have been scheduled for delivery for next Saturday, but we may move it up to Friday when we get a definite time for closing. Our couch, our toys our additional beds....they are all coming! Mama has been calling around for trash service. They will pick up the trash at our driveway. Can you imagine? At the old house, we had to put all the trash into the Jeep and drive it down the road. I helped a few times, but I did not like riding with the trash. I do not even like walking by the dumpster here.

Mama may order our cable today or tomorrow. We will have Animal Planet again! I've really missed it. The TV here is not very nice. There are certain channels like HGTV where the TV buzzes when it goes to commercial. It is so annoying. We don't have very many channels here. There's a lot of sports channels, which are very boring. We will have lots of channels in our new home.

Last night, we had Chinese food. It's probably the last time we will have it here. They have the best Won Tons and egg rolls according to Mama. We do not get any of those. They do not put the sauce on the Cashew Chicken, so Scout and I are able to eat the chicken. Yummy! We will miss our Chinese place.

Mama did the laundry for the second to the last time yesterday. No more hanging clothes all over the room to dry after next week! Mama says it cost us $10 each time she does laundry and that's just for two people. She does laundry about every 4 to 5 days. Think of the bones she could be buying for us instead of washing clothes :::sigh:::

We are doing the happy dance here. We can hardly wait until next weekend!

Jack
The Greyhound Who Is Packing His Bags

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Snow Is Gone


Almost all of that nasty snow melted on Sunday. The only snow that is left is what the snowplows piled up. We are happy about that.

It seems that there is a lot of "hurry up and wait" when it comes to moving to our new house. We can't really do much right now, but we are all getting very anxious. The seller wants to change the closing date, but we really don't want to do that. He wants to change it a Monday and that really messes things up for us. Daddy will have to take more time off from work. We have to spend more money for the hotel and storage. We wouldn't have as much help moving, etc. We told him we could change it, but we would need to be reimbursed for our additional costs. We haven't heard his answer yet, but we don't think he will want to give us any additional money.

We are still searching for a bed. The bed we wanted can only be delivered on a Friday. That just doesn't work for us since we are closing on a Friday and we won't have a time until right before. We don't want to sleep on the floor for a week. The folks are going out again this weekend to search again. We could always have it delivered to Grandma's but Daddy said he doesn't want to pay to have it delivered just to have to move it again. Mama's a little stressed, but it will be okay.

The area we are moving is 8 minutes away from tons of fast food and stores. They even have a Papa John's. We fell in love with Papa John's since living here. There is no pizza delivery except maybe Domino's. I guess we can't have everything.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Is Ready To See His Favorite Couch Again!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

This Is Not Funny....Mother Nature!






What's up with all of this? We had 80 degree weather earlier in the week. We had a little snow on Friday and then 5-7" yesterday and more is predicted for later this week. :::sigh::: Mama says at least we are not moving this weekend.

On the bright side, the pizza man came last night. The pizza bones were very good.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Really, Really Hates Snow

Saturday, March 26, 2011

We Have An Announcement!



After 12 days of negotiations, we have bought a house!!!! Sound the trumpets! We had an agreement on price and then we had the inspections and at that point, we thought it was all going to fall through. We didn't get everything we wanted and we are sure the homeowners didn't get everything they wanted, but in the end, I think we are all happy.

Mama is getting very excited about our new home. She already knows where she wants to hang the bird feeders and the hummingbird feeder. She has really missed feeding the birds this past winter. We hope that the raccoons leave us alone at the new house.

Daddy says the house feels right to him. It's 1,248 square feet. Our old house was 2,611 square feet, but since our hotel room is only about 600 square feet, the new house will feel big to us.

I will have a deck to lay on this summer and Scout will have a yard to run laps in. Oh, sure, I will run a little, but I prefer to run in the house. Mama says it's really not big enough to run it, but it there's a hallway, it's big enough.

The best news is that the house will be paid for in cash and we will not have a mortgage! That was our goal and that's why we sold our "dream house" in the first place.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Is Moving In Two Weeks!!!!

Join us on the Blog Hop:

Friday, March 25, 2011

This Is Just Not Right

Yesterday:
Today:


Jack
The Greyhound Who Is Not Happy Today & Sent Scout Out To Pose For Pictures

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Spring Scenes At Our Hotel

We have been having really nice weather here. It's been in the 70's and 80's. The tulips are blooming!

Scout is more impressed in the flowers than I am or maybe she is impressed with the spot on the concrete.

The trees are budding out.
Mama's allergies are acting up. No photo of that.

Scout thinks it's already too hot to walk and it is doing her impression of a train caboose. We have to pull her along.

Here we are back at our room. The magnet says "Pets Inside", which means, enter at your own risk. LOL

Yes, it was a very short walk. What can I say, we took this walk right before Judge Judy came on and we didn't want to miss a second of her.

Jack
The Greyhound Who May Have A Second Career As A Hotel Tour Guide

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Wordless Wednesday - Another Photo From The Past

Jack & Scout
The Greyhounds Who Like To Visit Missouri State Parks
(Photo is from Johnson Shut-Ins State Park)

Monday, March 21, 2011

I Want To Be A Bed Tester

(Scout who is an expert bed tester.)

Yesterday, Mama and Daddy went bed shopping. We thought we should be able to test out the beds since we spend most of the day sleeping on it, but they said no. They tried out a Sleep Number. Mama thinks Scout would be a 30 and I would probably be a 55. They don't think they are going to buy one though because the salesperson said it would take at least three weeks to get it and we have a little less than that time and Mama doesn't want to take the chance of it not arriving on time and then we would all be sleeping on the floor. The sales woman may have just said that so that they would order yesterday, but it kind of backfired on her. They found a couple of beds that they like and they will make a decision next weekend and order it then.

Daddy is busy scheduling inspections today. We are going to have two to three inspections done. We hope to get them done this week so that we know for sure that we are buying the house. Our closing date is scheduled for April 8th.

The pizza man doesn't come to the new house. It's not in the boonies, but it's just far enough from town that no one will deliver. It's only 2.5 miles from a major highway but there are no pizza places around. There is a Burger King, so we will get our fill of Junior Whoppers. We are going to miss the pizza man. Mama says we will have the pizza man and the Chinese food man both come one more time before we leave.

The two Italian Greyhounds left on Saturday. There were six more dogs that came in on Saturday. We think they have all left already. The hotel always has the carpet cleaners come in after pets leave the room, so it should be a busy day for them today.

We are having very nice weather. Mama wore a t-shirt on our walk this morning - no jacket. We have our air conditioning running and it's only 8 a.m. The trees are budding out. Robins are every where. Bunnies are teasing us. It's spring time!

Have you seen the Eagle cam? It's very interesting. It shows three baby eaglets being cared for by their Mom and Dad. We've been watching it since Friday and we have Grandma hooked on it too. It's pretty neat when either the Mom or Dad brings in a fish or other food for the "kids" to eat.
Eagle Cam

Jack
The Greyhound Who Is Happy That Spring Is Here....Finally!

Sunday, March 20, 2011

We Are Under Contract!

We signed the paperwork last night for our new house. It's the house that has the slanted floor. Weeeee! I'm going to do some sliding on that floor. Mama told me that the new house doesn't have a super wide hallway like the old house so I need to be careful because I crashed into the wall at the old house and broke it and it was much wider. Well, I got so excited about the new house that I started doing donuts in the room and I crashed into the wall and yep, I broke it. I broke a little piece of the wall off. Daddy will have to try an fix it. Oops! I guess it's a good thing that we may be leaving soon.

I can't show you pictures yet because we don't own it. We are just under contract. We have to do an inspection and if all goes well, we will be moving in three weeks!

Mama and Daddy drove us by the house today. It looks fine to us. It's pretty plain, but we think we will be happy there. We then drove a long way to a state park that we used camp at and we walked around there for a while. It was a good day.

Jack
The Greyhound Who May Be Turning In His Hotel Keys Soon

Friday, March 18, 2011

More Hotel Adventures


We have new neighbors here at the hotel. Two Italian Greyhounds from California are living in the room across from us. I guess they don't realize that they are on "our property". We met their Dad and he seems really nice. He told us to enjoy our retirement and that we are lucky to be done working. It drives us crazy when we see the Italian Greyhounds trying to claim our property as their own, so we have to immediately go out and trump them. Yep, that's what we did yesterday and this morning. We don't know how long they are staying, but they won't win.

In other news, we met another one of those special dogs. You know, a dog that doesn't have to wear a leash and doesn't have to have his poop picked up. He tried to get at us and Mama reached for her mace only to discover that it wasn't in her coat pocket. She only had a roll of poop bags. She didn't think that would do much good unless the dog would be startled by it since he's probably never seen a roll of poop bags before. The owner called him back and he started to go, but then he started coming at us again and Mama screamed "GET BACK!". The owner called him again and he got in his truck. The owner said "I apologize." We just gave him stink eyes and walked away. It was scary. Mama makes sure she has her mace with her now, just in case we have to defend ourselves. We hope Mama has good aim.

The electric company has been here trimming trees out of the electric lines. Mama pointed them out to Scout and Scout didn't care. However, as Mama was throwing a poop bag in the dumpster, one of the guys in the basket crane flew right over our heads. Scout flipped out. I mean, she totally flipped. She was trying to get away and Mama was holding her leash. She caused me to flip out and it was just a mess. Mama said "STOP", well that caused all the workers to stop and look at us. It was embarrassing. We made it back to our room unharmed, but we were still scared. Scout says that men shouldn't fly in a basket. It's just not normal. They were here yesterday, too, but we avoided them.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Has To Stay Alert Living In The City

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Wishing You A.......

Jack
The Greyhound Who Just Learned He Has Some Irish Blood Running Through His Veins!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Almost Wordless Wednesday -

This is from 07/09/2007. What are we interested in?


Jack and Scout
The Greyhounds Who Miss Seeing Deer

Monday, March 14, 2011

What The Heck?

It's snowing! What is up with that? It was 65 on Saturday. Mama woke us up this morning to go outside and we were shocked to see the snow and it's still coming down. Yes, she woke us up. This time change has us very tired. We have no pictures to share with you because it's still dark and well, we are too tired to take pictures.

We may be making an offer on the house soon. We have to learn two more things today which will help with our decision. Daddy is not as concerned about the wall as he was, but something new came up yesterday that we need answers on. Grandma and Grandpa drove by it yesterday and said they liked it. There are more things that we like about it than we don't like. However, we are not sure we are going to be able to reach an agreement on price with the seller. It is definitely overpriced, but he may not be able to come down on price. We will just have to see what happens.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Thinks Snow Is For The Birds

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Offer?

Mama said we may be putting in an offer on a house. She and Daddy are going for a second showing of it today. They looked at it yesterday morning and then drove past it again last night. Mama says the outside doesn't have curb appeal at all. It's basically a rectangle. She said it reminds her of the house that she grew up in. Daddy said we can put new siding on it and it will look better, but putting a covered porch on it would be tough. The backyard is already fenced and Mama says it is HUGE! However, the deck has a ton of steps and she said that she knows I would jump the steps and fall, so she will have to walk us around to the backyard until they put steps on another section of the deck that is closer to the ground or they fence the front yard. The kitchen is big and recently remodeled. It only has one bath. They wanted two, but it's been remodeled and looks nice. They said they might enlarge the master bedroom by knocking a wall down from another bedroom.

The inside of the house is pretty nice, but the owners seem to have a problem with finishing projects. Three of the rooms do not have closet doors. There is also trim missing. They painted and took it down and I guess they never put it back up. They also took down outlet covers and haven't put those back up. Why would you list your house before doing those things? The agent said that maybe they ran out of money. Well, outlet covers don't cost much and it's not really safe for kids not having covers on the outlets. The front porch really needs to be painted. We know the people love to paint because they painted the living room orange and the bedrooms are a dark purple, so we are not sure why they didn't paint the porch. Maybe it's good that they didn't. LOL

There is one big concern about the house and Daddy said he will hire an engineer and an inspector to come out. It appears that when the basement was poured 38 years ago that there was a problem and one of the walls isn't square. I guess that's the way you say it. Then, he poured the basement windows crooked. The floors upstairs slant. They used to say that on the show Mad About You. Do you remember that? Mama said I will probably be sliding into the walls if I run too fast in the house. Daddy said the walls are not cracked at all, so it may be okay, but we need to have an engineer check it out before we buy it.

The house is not in a subdivision, so no dues. It's located on a old highway, so there isn't much traffic. It's in the country and we will have chickens living next to us. Mama said the rooster was crowing when they were there. It's close to Grandma and Grandpa, so that's neat, but it's also close to one of Mama's relatives that she wants nothing to do with, so that's not so good. Mama is kind of torn about living there for that reason.

It's a lot to think about and none of us got much sleep last night. Mama's been having migraines for the past week because she's been stressed about finding a house. She told me this morning that she's really having her doubts about this house. She thinks the owners will not accept our offer on it. They've been trying to sell it for over a year, but they take if off the market after a month or two and change agents, so they seem to be impatient. We don't think they are going to like our offer at all and maybe that's a good thing. I guess we will know in a day or two and then we will have to see how the inspections go if we get that far.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Is Confused

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Almost Wordless Wednesday - Elephant Rocks State Park

These are pictures taken in 2007 - pre-Scout days. We visited Elephant Rocks State Park with the family. As you can see, there is a lot of climbing that you can do or you can just walk on the trail like us.





Jack
The Greyhound Who Likes Hiking With His Dad

Sunday, March 6, 2011

The Hunt Continues

(Scout having sweet dreams in 2007.)

Mama and Daddy stalk the real estate site on the computer. Mama looks at Realtor several times each day to see if any new listings have shown up. She gets emails showing new listings, but those are usually a day after she has already found the new ones. Yesterday, a new listing showed up and Mama got very excited. She said it had everything we wanted and it was in her old hometown which is not far from Grandma & Grandpa. She contacted the agent and he said he would meet Mama and Daddy there. They came home disappointed, again. Mama said the house needs about $70,000 in work. It needs a new roof, gutters, paint on the inside and out as well as new carpet. The kitchen needs to be updated. Those things are not unexpected. The worse part was the basement. It's covered in mildew and Mama said it was hard for her to breathe while in the house. The garage floor also needs to be jacked up because part of it has sunk about 3". Yes, the house needs work. It's a foreclosure. If the bank would clean up the basement and fix that, we would be interested. Mama said the upstairs really wasn't in that bad of shape. They talked to a neighbor who said that they tried to sell the house on the court house steps but no one wanted it.

They are going out today to an open house. It looks to be move-in ready from the pictures on the Internet. It's further away then they would like to be from family, but it's a nice area. It has a fenced yard, so that's a good sign.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Wonders If He Will Ever Have A Yard Again

Friday, March 4, 2011

We Are Definitely Not In Two Greyhound Town Anymore

We used to live in the country. It was a very rural area. There were 2,900 people that lived in our town, which I guess isn't the smallest, but it was a quiet area. We lived on a gravel road for goodness sakes. We had one neighbor that loved to burn things. You can't do that just anywhere. We are now living in the city. It's an "upscale area", but we are finding some surprising things are going on around us. Our hotel is in an office complex. We walk around the office complex every day. The surprising thing is that we find evidence of people having S.E.X. in the parking lots. Yes, you read that correctly. We are thinking it must be teens because we also have found beer bottles laying around. It could be people having affairs. We don't know. Mama was shocked when we first moved here since this area is very nice. Well, today, we were completely shocked. We don't know what we found, but Mama covered our eyes. All I know is that we were walking in a nice grassy area between our hotel and an office parking lot. We saw a box laying on the grass. We walked over to it. The next thing I knew was that my eyes were covered and Mama said "Oh, gross!" Mama walked us away quickly, but she made the comment that she will now be looking at all the male hotel guests and wonder who it belongs to. I looked quick as we were walking away and I saw that the box had a picture of a naked man on it. I don't know what it was all about, but Mama made us get out of there quickly.

Sorry, no pictures today. LOL

Jack
The Greyhound Who Appears To Be Living In A Seedy Area

Thursday, March 3, 2011

I Found A Sunbeam

Yesterday was the first time that I have found a sunbeam since we left our house on December 23rd. Yes, I am keeping track of the days.

It only lasted about 15 minutes, but I soaked it in as much as possible. Awwww!

Not much new on the house hunting front. We went out Tuesday afternoon and drove by a house and we liked it. However, it was taken off the market after only being on for a day. We think they must have changed their minds about selling it. Daddy called the listing agent about the log home. He had permission from our agent to do so. Anyway, the listing agent says the house is under contract, but it's still showing available on all the sites. Daddy thinks the deal, if there is one, will fall through if they do an inspection. We do have another house that we may see this weekend. They are having an open house. It has everything we want, but a basement. Daddy thinks it might have a storm shelter, so that might work.

The hotel has been very crowded this week. There are at least four dogs staying here besides us. Oh, last night, we were out walking and all at once this dog came upon us and scared us half to death. No, he was not on a leash. About 30 seconds later his Mom showed up and said "sorrrrry". I guess her dog is special and doesn't need to be on a leash. They are not hotel guests. They must just live around here. Luckily, the dog didn't try to attack us. He just scared us.

Jack
The Greyhound Who Thinks He Is Special, But Still Wears His Leash

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Home Again - Part 3

 Well, we just realized that we didn't finish telling you about the rest of our trip home.  I don't know if we even remember the res...