All Things Q

Q went to the vet Saturday morning. He had a split toenail and a "growth" thing growing out the bottom. Alan took him. They ended up having to cut the nail way high up into the foot. The Vet said Q was the oldest mastiff she had seen in awhile. He is just over 8 years old. The Vet said she suspects cancer - but they are not doing a biopsy (why charge us money - he is so old). If the growth comes back then it is probably cancer - they see a lot of toe cancers in old dogs. Alan and I have suspected cancer for awhile in his right leg/shoulder. But he is comfortable - and until that changes we'll keep him comfortable and alive. To be serious I don't think we could put him to sleep unless he was suffering. Just having cancer doesn't mean he is suffering. So, I have the Flu - and every time I fall asleep I have nightmares from the fever. I have had nightmares about Q since last night. It sucks to have an old dog. Alan took his bandage off this morning and he is doing okay - hopefully the nightmares will stay away!

So last month after we moved to the new house, I got a linksys router (it was the only brand available) at Wal-mart. Well our neighborhood is full of linksys routers and on the list there were 2 or 3 named "linksys". I was pretty sure i had picked our router and went about setting the security settings. I asked Alan what he wanted it named and he said name it after the wonder-dog Q. So I did. Well we had issues and then I could not get back into the router. So I reset it to factory settings and there, on the network list in the neighborhood appeared the router with Q's name. Now the guilt set in. New neighbors and I mess up their router - that and I had no way of knowing which neighbor it was. I suspected that since they never renamed it or set security settings, they may be unfamiliar with how to do it. We have an open concept back yard and I can see 5 houses from my living room. So we unplugged everything and sure enough the next morning it was still there. It took about 2 weeks for it to disappear from the neighborhood list. I told Alan not to open the back door and yell for the dog until we get to know our neighbors a little better so we can make the appropriate apologies. We plan to throw a summer barbeque. We renamed our router completely differently. I think I want the new Apple router. I may get one. They are much pricier than the other models, but after the basement is finished, I see many new things on the horizon for us.

Speaking of basement finishing, I am excited about getting the basement done. We will not do the Owens-Corning system. It is a lovely system, easy to install, with a R11 rating. They do the electricity, the drop ceiling and 14 lamps. The price to do 500 square feet left us gasping - $35,900 and that did not include the flooring. So we meet with a builder Wednesday. I think I want radiant heating in the floor. He estimated around $15,000 so we will see after he actually looks at the house. I had sent him pictures so he isn't totally unrealistic. It is amazing at the costs to do walls, ceilings and flooring. Once we commence the project I will post updates and pictures on the blog. We have the movers finally coming 2/23 to move the rest of our stuff to East Troy. Yeah! We'll leave a skeleton house in Illinois until we sell it or rent it. If my friend doesn't post her baby feet picture I may ask her if I can - it is wonderful. Congrats Christy and Nick on your new baby boy - Ben!