Days 49-75: We make this house our own which involves a whole lot of trips to Home Depot. They love me there.

It took us awhile to get the internet tubes hooked up at our house, which meant walking down to the wifi cafe with the spotty connection should one wish to check one's email, and I had my hands full yanking out carpet and padding in the upstairs which led to pulling out carpet staples one at a time which led to stripping off old carpet pad adhesive in a seven step process with smelly, smelly chemicals, which led to painting the floors a beautiful dark brown which led to me being a very happy camper!  Because, dude.  That carpet was nasty.

Not having internets at home made blogging and job searching a little difficult, so both kind of had to wait a bit.  The job search is now in full swing and so blogging was, of course, my next priority!  Except that now I've pulled off all the hideous vinyl wallpaper in the dining room so now its time to sand and paint!  Joy!  Home Depot here I come!  Again!

There is also Ms. Punk to consider, of course.  And despite being a wee bit prissy about the wet grass (not at all new), she seems to be loving it here.  It doesn't hurt that one of us is mostly around all the time.  Nope, that doesn't hurt at all.  We've been going to the local dog park every other day or so, and she's also thoroughly enjoying lots and lots of naps in her chair.  John decided that she should have a chair in our front room that she's allowed to get up on and see out the window to watch the neighborhood goings on.  My mom gave us a big armchair that fits the bill and this has been a pretty big hit with her.  

She also now has the opportunity to freak out at a mail carrier once a day, something she was not able to do in our old apartment.  She may be enjoying that part a little too much, but it is nice to have a mail alarm of sorts.

Last weekend we had Bob and Tasha, friends from Chicago, here in town with us which was serious fun.  The weather obliged us being completely Pacific Northwest-y with the intermittent (and sometimes not so intermittent) rain.  This did not even remotely stop us from going out to the spectacular Columbia Gorge area and looking at really beautiful waterfalls, and doing some exploration of the city.  Seeing familiar faces made me super happy an it was fun to share some of the things we're loving here, like our local farmer's market and the fact that apple trees and blackberry canes are all over the place and the yummy all night doughnut place with weird doughnuts and the clean and mercifully quiet public transit system and on and on.

So I'm continuing to look for jobs, and John is currently doing a four month contract position with Intel,  and we're doing pretty darn good.  We're all signed up with a car sharing service now which means we'll be going hiking very soon, so hopefully I'll have more photos of a happy mountain dog to show you very soon.