Fun With The Puppy and Other Adventures

For those who didn’t know, we recently acquired another dog. Fox was found roaming by Jeff’s friend, Kati, and no one ended up claiming her, so we decided to take her into our house. I mean, seriously, what’s one more animal in the house? Currently we’ve got 4 parakeets, 10 freshwater fish, one Beta, who knows how many saltwater critters, Chris, and now 12 chinchillas, plus 7 we are fostering. What’s one more dog, really?

Apparently, it’s a lot.

Now, a little background: Jen has had pets growing up. She took in the feral cats in the neighborhood and saw oodles of fish and birds in my house. In fact, her first job was a volunteer position feeding baby animals at a nature preserve. However, Chris is her first dog, and we’ve only had him for 2 years. Those that know our adventures with Chris know that he wasn’t (and still isn’t) your garden-variety dog, When we adopted him, we were told he was almost three, but the vet thought he was between 12-18 months, so almost out of the puppy stages.

 

Fox is a different story. Although she is very sweet and extremely smart, she often bores easily and has gotten into the habit of destroying and chewing things. Here is a small example of her habits:

Foxy….

… plus her toy, a clearance-priced toy bought last weekend at Petsmart…

  

… equals a few hours of fun, and 15 minutes of sheer horror!

 

This was one of the many things this pup has gotten into. We have holes in our yard, chew marks on our door frames and several broken leashes and knickknacks to prove this fact. We just have to endure it a little longer, though. Right now she is kept away from Chris and Mason because she was fixed, and we don’t want her popping her stitches, so until Thursday, we’ll have a bored lonely pup on our hands.

Aside from our dog-adventures, everything is going well here. We had a nice Easter. Jen’s folks decided to come over here to check out the new place and visit together. We thought it was going to be hard to “host”. After all, we’ve helped to plan the last few holidays, but this time the two of us pretty much did it all. It was a little tough getting things together (in particular the house being clean!) but it was still a fun day. We didn’t take any pictures, but Jen will have to steal her sisters’ cameras to see if they’ve got any photos to share!

School and work are still insanely crazy. Jeff is doing pretty well in his courses, and his grades are showing it. He did drop one class due to a missed assignment that came up in the middle of the move, but he plans on taking it again this summer. Jeff’s first term should be over by mid-May, so just a few more weeks left! Also, he started his first week at his new store in Los Gatos, not far from one of his previous stores. Jeff had been commuting from Fremont (and then Newark) to Brentwood since September because we had gotten a house in July, but when that fell through and we moved in here, he asked for a transfer. Originally we thought he would have to go to the Gap in Los Gatos (his 2nd store) but we were pleasantly surprised that he could go to the Banana Republic a few storefronts down! Now the commute is almost reasonable!

Jen’s toward the end of her classes, with the finals starting the last week of April. After this she has one more term, and then she’ll have a second bachelor’s! The plan after that is to take off a year from school to work more, build up her resume a little, and then take her GRE this summer and start applying in the fall. All of the programs she is looking at only want fall applicants, and since she might not be done in time to start, we figured this might be the best for everyone. Work is also going crazy for her as well. She is still in charge of an oncology study, but on top of that, she is also helping read over grant applications for her department. The grants are for studies that are meant to focus on child health, and normally they receive about 25 grant applications for this round of funding (roughly $35,000 each grant). This year they received a total of 44 applications, and so Jen, with her team, is having to go through the applications to check for completion, create spreadsheets of the information, and send out packets to reviewers (both online and in paper) to determine recipients. Doing clerical/admin work was never Jen’s intention, but she figured, hey, I’d get some more hours/money, I’m sure I can help out! So this will be bringing in quite a bit extra for the next few months, until she gets another study or another position.

So that’s enough for this update. We have more stuff going on, but we’ll have to bore you with it all later on!

What we’ve accomplished

Hello, world!

We are taking a minor break from unloading boxes to give you an update on us. Who would’ve thought that it’s so much work to pack and unpack??

We have been here for about 3 weeks now, and so far we’re adjusting well. There are still plenty of boxes to unpack, but we’re slowly but surely getting there. Plus some of the new “toys” like the washer and dryer are making opening all the boxes a little more worth it. :-)

So far, the living room is almost decent, and the kitchen has it’s moments of being clean and then not so much. Our bedroom set is up, but we still have plenty of laundry to clean in piles to be washed. Our library/office/guest room has most of the books set up, with a few random boxes in the room. Then the last room, where the pets and their things go, was set up last night. We stayed up until 3 putting things together like cages, an A/C unit, and all sorts of other stuff. Who would’ve thought pets were so difficult?

Speaking of pets, it looks like we are acquiring a new friend! Jeff volunteered us to babysit a friend’s dog, and she has been here ever since. Fox is a white husky who was found out in Bethel Island by Jeff’s friend, Kati. She took Fox in, but couldn’t keep her, so Jeff graciously accepted her into our family. She’s still pretty young, we think maybe 10 months, but is super smart and very playful. Chris and Mason get along with her great, but we are keeping her away from our other critters. She likes to chase birds and squirrels, we found out, and don’t think she would do well if left alone with our chinchillas and parakeets.

We also got our chinchillas back this weekend! After 6 months, they are finally back under our roof, and we are ecstatic over it all. It is a little bittersweet, as Brian was not able to come home with everyone else, but he will forever be home in our hearts. So far they have all made the adjustment well, although it’s clear that Scout, Brian’s son, does appear to be missing his daddy and cage mate, so we may have to find someone for him to hang out with. Our other boys are either already in pairs or they are too ornery to be with others.

School is slowly plugging away for us all. Jen should be done by the end of next month and Jeff will be finishing this semester around mid May. In the meantime, we are both looking at volunteer opportunities. This week, Jen is volunteering at a speech-language pathology clinic for a few weeks and then doing an observation at Lucille Packard, and both of us are looking into volunteering at the hospital in the summer.

Jeff is also looking for more job opportunities closer to home. Although he loves his work now, commuting to Brentwood is difficult in terms of time, energy, and car wear and tear. So far he has been offered a similar position at the Banana Republic in Los Gatos, and is waiting to hear on some other positions as well.

We hope you are all well, and hope to have you over as soon as our house is more habitable!

So Much Information, So Little Time…

So, it is kind of late at night (around midnight) on a Sunday. I’ve got a late day at work, and Jeff’s off, so we thought we’d toss out all that has been going on.

First off, we have been plugging away at school. This term we have managed to keep up with the homework and assignments, and now Jen has to add observation hours to one of her classes. She is trying to see if anyone at Stanford would be willing to let her help out and let her sit in, and she is waiting to hear back from some people she has met at Packard.

February was a pretty nice month for us. For Valentine’s Day (well, the day before) we took our three nieces and Jen’s older sister, Myra, to the San Francisco Creamery (which, oddly enough, is actually in Walnut Creek). Before that, though, the 6 of us went to the movies to see (surprise) Valentine’s Day, which turned out to be a pretty funny movie. After the movie, we raided the creamery and ordered a sundae known as The Kitchen Sink. We saw this sundae on the TV show, Man Vs. Food, a favorite of Jen’s, and thought we would attempt it!

This thing is a lot bigger in real life than this picture shows. It consists of 8 types of ice cream, 8 toppings, whipped cream, and cherries. Ours had a ton of toppings, including gummy bears, M&Ms, and, much to Sarah’s delight, a cookie. We only managed to get about 2/3 of the thing eaten, and yes, we’ve still got some in the fridge!

That Monday we did some volunteer work with the rescue that is currently housing our chinchillas. So we headed to Adobe Animal Hospital in Los Altos, CA to help them out for the day. In addition to getting out little pals taken care of, we helped check in and answered questions for the families. Although we had the most at 12, there were many who had multiple chinchillas, and the rescue even brought in 8 of their own, and their partners brought in another 2 dozen! Overall, we ended up having the doctors see approximately 135 chinchillas in an 8-hour day, of which only one had been slightly ill (but treatable) and our guys came out with a clean bill of health: great teeth, good weight, no heart murmurs and NO SURPRISE PREGNANCIES THIS YEAR!!

The next big thing: both of us are looking at moving up in our jobs. Jen’s assignment with CHRP technically ends this week, but they have not said one way or another if they plan on keeping her on. They have made more accommodations for her, like giving  her a real desk and talking about her taking on more studies, but nothing official has been said by her team or her temp agency, so she interviewed with two more research teams at Stanford, both in cardiovascular departments, but for two different teams. If none of these positions pan out, the temp agency has stated they will find her another temp position, but of course we are hoping for a more permanent spot.

Jeff is also looking at new positions. The commute to Brentwood has been hard on both of us, Jeff’s school work and our cars, so Jeff is considering a transfer in the company. He has applied to both GAP and Banana Republic stores closer to Newark, and has had a few phone interviews so far, so again, we are very hopeful. It doesn’t hurt that the GAP manager that he is going through is the same one he had when he was working in Los Gatos!

You’re probably wondering why we keep talking about being closer to “home”. Well, after a long hunt, we FINALLY found a home!

We are moving… down the street in Newark!

We tried our hardest to buy or rent a home in Tracy, but nothing panned out. We were outbid, someone else rented the house before us, some people drove through the garage (that was the house we almost bought!) and so we thought we’d try again to see if something panned out in Newark, and with one try, success! It is a cute little 3-bedroom home with a nice yard and everything is pretty much new (the rugs, windows, paint, etc) so little to nothing has to be fixed. We have to put in an air conditioner for the chinchillas, but aside from that nothing! It is not too far from the lake – cross the street and we are there – so that’s a definite perk for Chris. We got the keys on Friday and are slowly moving in our stuff, so hopefully by next week we should be pretty well moved in.

So that’s the latest from us. Hopefully as we start packing we’ll snap pics (I know, promises promises!!) and we will keep you posted.

And if you never hear from us again, it’s because we’re buried under boxes, DVDs and chinchillas!