A dog in the lap is worth two on the floor...

Pix is up here in the chair with me. She is beyond sleepy. We took the kids to the dog park up in Broadripple this morning, and they loved it. They met about 30  new doggie friends and ran their little hearts out. Yogi especially--we've never actually seen him run before. He can go fast, and he's quite impressive when he does it. Pixie... eh, she got slobbered on a lot. We brought a frisbee in hopes that she would embrace that part of her DNA that says she should be good at agility and fetching. But she's relatively graceless, and hasn't figured out the "bring it back" part of fetch yet. 

Went to Home Depot today and spent some time and money. In order to get our home insurance, we have to make some repairs. 

• Eric is about 3/4 finished with the back steps. Our kitchen door is about 3 feet up off the ground. However, the steps down from the back door are about 6 feet away from the door itself. Weird, no? We assume there must've been a deck attached to the house at some point, and they just didn't bother to take the steps away. Unfortunately, the steps are made of poured concrete, and are totally immovable. It's going to take a jackhammer to get rid of them, at the very least. 
  
• According to our insurance people, we have to have a railing on staircases with more than three steps. UGH! So we have to make a stairwell for the front, which isn't going to look good. We picked components that match our front as best as we could find. 
  
• We picked up a palm sander so we could get the crappy peely paint off the front fence, and then repaint it. I got about 3 minutes into the sanding this afternoon (which was perfect for dong anything outside), and then the sander quit. So, I guess we're making another trip up to Home Depot tomorrow. 
  
• I trimmed out the master bath with primer. That was all I could handle. I hate priming. 
  
• We picked a color for the living room, which I really like and I can't wait to get it up on the walls. It's called "Melted Butter" and is obvs a muted yellow. It'll look good. 

We also finally broke down and bought a television, though we don't have cable or an antenna so we can't watch actual television. It's a nice little 19 inch flat screen, and it has a DVD player built in, which is very cool. So we're sitting here watching Stripes (big toe!!!) and I'm feeling nostalgic, because believe it or not, no other movie reminds me of my childhood more than Stripes. 

Pix is running in her sleep right now. She helped me paint this evening--help consisted of sitting under the ladder and giving my legs little licks every once in a while. 

Leaving on Tuesday for 3 days/nights in San Diego for a SHEEO conference. Should be a great conference, and I'm very excited to go, though will be missing my little family something fierce.