I know, it’s been awhile.  Since my last post, we’ve been to BC for the better part of 3 weeks, including two trips through Washington and Idaho.  Total blast.  We’ve also moved J’s 92-year-old aunt to a new building, moved J to a new building, and moved all his stuff out of storage and into the new place from 6 hours away.  Yeah, it’s been busy. Oh, and did I mention that my home computer’s dead?  It had its power supply unit power-failured into the great beyond about a week before we left.  Yeah, like that.

Stuff has happened on the home front (aside from the inevitable recovery from deterioration around the holidays).

In semi-chronological order, the following has occurred:

• Dismembered a huge branch (i.e. half a tree) that had fallen on my van during a storm while we were away. No damage to the van, thank gawd.
• Took all three dogs (individually) to the downtown Farmers’ Market to aid in socialization and manners training (former in the grrrlz, latter in Lord Stanley).  All did amazingly well, but Sounder was the most impressive of the lot, having had nearly zilch in the way of socializing.  She went from a pretty constant state of OMG at the beginning of the morning to having taught herself to heel so well, after 2 circuits, that I had to keep checking the leash to make sure she was still at the other end.
• Tackled the newly-invaded weed bed that I euphemistically call my front yard. (All credit to J who did the work on this one.)
• RoundUpped both front and back again (I can not believe how quickly the weeds are burgeoning in this weather).
• Cleaned out two 10-gallon tanks that used to hold deer mice (both colonies were merged into a single tank right before the trip for ease of movement to the mouseysitter’s).
• Sorted through and recycled a huge backlog of mail, magazines, and analog spam from the area beside the front door.
• Took a load to the storage unit.
• Half-filled a bin, then collected kitchen stuff to be dusted off and included in said bin.
• Trimmed a tree by the house.
• Filled in some doggy diggage along the north fence (I suspect the neighbours are also happy to see that done).
• Trained Stan not to bark like a mad thing when I leave the house or when there’s someone on the far side of the fence.
• Started teaching Stan to celebrate people’s arrival by dancing rather than jumping up. There are signs of success on this front, too.

Most of what’s happened in the house has been limited to what can be done in front of a fan due to the heat and humidity of the last couple of months. Hopefully things will settle down a bit in the near future, now that J’s moved, his aunt’s moved, and the temperature is down to more rational numbers. We can get back to a more routine existence, I hope.  Please.