Weekend Stuff

This weekend was very busy.  First a picture:

Here's our first completed room of the hardwood (engineered) flooring.  My husband and I laid the floor (having done same at our home when we build it many years ago).  We've had a long respite from laying floor.  This is what it looked like previously!

The engineered hardwood went down beautifully.  There were no 'rejects' in any of the flooring boxes that we used.  I was surprised how uniform the flooring was; how easily it went down; and I how it turned out surpassed my expectations.  Though the floor boxes are supposed to be random lengths, in general, the flooring was either full sized or 1/2 or (with just a smattering of something smaller).  In pawing through 3 boxes, I found not one piece that was less than full size.  So, I surely wish there were more randomization.  With a 9" minimum on adjacent row staggered seams, with only a few variable lengths, it gets a little tough!  Because it locks in place on all 4 sides (except adjacent to walls where there is a cut end on one side of the other), there is no "butting together" like regular hardwood.

All that aside...it was far more easier to lay than the solid stuff.  My fingers hurt from handling the wood. 

After laying flooring (lots of squatting and raising as my thighs are howling sore), I went home to take a nap.  I was tired.  I was doing a mega-leg to help out the Above and Beyond English Setter Rescue...drove to Rocky Mount and then back again to overnight two five month old English Setter/lab mix puppies and a Dachshund.  The Dachshund was sprung from a kill shelter...two more days and he would have been down.

They were coming up from Georgia. By the time that I picked them up, they had already been traveling almost 15 hours...their day starting at 7 a.m.  They were very hungry.  I had no food, but their sensitive noses knew that I had eaten.  Jill (sister of Charlie), licked every surface of my car that might have come in contact with food.  After about 30 minutes they settled down.

My main concern was not staying awake (my nap and a Pepsi helped), but rather the deer.  Rutting season is upon us.  I did not want to have a close encounter of any kind with deer.  Unfortunately, they are very active at night.

We arrived home safely.  Where there are farts, there is fire.  Not very elegant phraseology, but if you drive dogs, you know, at some point, when they have to go....they go.  And as dogs cannot speak, you must pay attention to the odoriferous signals. Dogs are not unlike some people....'to go' requires harmonic convergence of time and space.  If neither is right, then nothing happens.  At some point in time, biological imperative overcomes time and space, and it happens.

Despite my best efforts to orchestrate harmonic convergence (I don't think harmonic convergence is orchestratable), nothing happened at the preferred intersects of time/space.  Rather, the biological imperative happened inside my home during the mad frenzy to investigate new surroundings, sniff out the cat food and the remainder of my dogs' dinner.  They were so eager to eat, I had hard time getting their food to them without being mobbed.  

The gulped their food down.  I was tired.  It was 12:30 a.m.  Time for my winkie land.  I put them in crates with comfy blankets.  One of them did not go down so easily.  I put sheets over 3 sides of the crate of each of them.  That provided some comfort.  Off to bed.

Next a.m. we had brief potty, lite breakfast, another inopportune poop by one, and then a drive to Fredericksburg.  None of these pics is very good, but here they are....

Sunday we finished the second upstairs bedroom.  A very productive weekend.  Replacement windows go in Tuesday.  Everything is starting to really come together.