Room For One More?

Sully graduated obedience school and got to wear this snazzy cap. How awesome is that? He did really good at all his commands and didn't try to eat any of the other dogs until after he passed all his tests. After that he was kind of an embarrassment but oh well, dogs will be dogs. The next day our little graduate amused himself by yanking the DSL box off the back of the house by the phone line wires. Way to go, kid.

Thankfully our internet subscription covers those kinds of things. We had to call the repair man back for the next two days as well. Once because I shot a staple through the internet cable while securing it to the house, and again the next day when I cut through the buried part with a shovel planting a bush. But this post isn't about me.

We've been thinking that we aren't meeting Sully's intellectual needs. He does have a diploma and everything. Even though we walk him every day, he still seems really bored and lonely. I can't spend more time with him outside, and he isn't allowed to come inside (by virtue of the sacred pact I made with Valli when I got him, except in the laundry room when it's stormy).
Recently we were laying in bed talking about what to do about our dog when Valli gave the most best suggestion ever- Get another dog!

So after thinking about it over for a little while we came to these conclusions-

Another dog would double our dog expenses and create a 100% increase in the production of poop.

Another dog would possibly curb Sully's boredom induced destruction sprees.

Another dog would possibly double the amount of destruction sprees.

Sully is fun. Two dogs = Twice the fun!

By the end of the conversation we were agreed that we wanted to find another dog. A grown dog that someone else has already trained, vaccinated, fixed, etc. The next day we found a listing on petfinder.com for Sam.
Meet Sam! Sam is a one-year-old 75 lb German Shepherd Dog. When his daddy deployed, Sam decided that he was the boss of the house and everyone in it. His Mommy decided that to bring peace back into the house, Sam would have to go. I found him listed as free to a good home.
We went to his house the next morning. It was just a couple minutes from our our place. He was nervous and timid and fearful when we first went into the house. We learned that his owner had hired trainers and professionals to help her get Sam under control but she couldn't handle him. She had to keep her other extremely submissive dog separated from him at all times or he would bully her constantly. We decided to give him a trial run and she brought him to our place. Sully was so happy to have company I thought he would explode. Once Sam was out of his comfort zone he became submissive and relaxed almost immediately.

The only problem was Sully. He just wanted to roughhouse with Sam non-stop. We had to separate them for periods so Sam could take a break from getting beat up on. That was when we realized that Sully didn't just like other dogs, he was a bit unstable with other dogs. Even so, we went on ahead and kept Sam. If after a few days they were not getting along well, Sam had a second offer on adoption from the county sheriffs office. But we needn't have worried. By nighttime the two were best buddies. In the week or so we've had Sam, both dogs have had pretty big transformations. Sam is much more docile and easy-going. Sully barks less, tears up stuff less, and never pulls on walks to get at other dogs anymore. I run them in the morning on the same leash and they are well-behaved. So well behaved in fact they've gotten compliments on not only their handsome looks but also on how great they do while leashed together. Then they spend the rest of the day sleeping, stealing each others toys, and beating up on each other. They are two happy dogs, and we don't feel guilty that Sully isn't getting stimulated enough.

What's Cookin?

Gosh. Is it April already?

I have so much stuff to blog about! The biggest news is that Valli is pregnant. And what is even better is that it's mine! We are at about 15 weeks now. For all of you who don't know what that means (like me), we don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet. We find out in week 20. It had better be a boy, that's all I'm saying. From what Valli has tried to explain, it seems our baby is a 4 inch long turd-shaped, wriggling, thumb-sucking, meat-wad with a discernible neck.

Valli is doing great. She wasn't ever super-ill so we are grateful for that. In case you wanted to know, I handled the first trimester like a champ. I was never sick and the energy levels were through the roof. I think I even lost a couple pounds.

Meat-wad's suspected birthday going to be some time in early October. These are some of the things I want our baby to have for its birthday: a Nintendo Wii, a Remington 300 Ultra Magnum, the 3rd season of My Name Is Earl, and numchucks. Valli wouldn't ask for anything unless it was life and death. Not even for her first baby. But you can trust me that she agrees with everything I've written

Deuces, y'all.

Daddy's Home!!

I'M BACK! And I love America. It's the best. I haven't sat down to write a blog because I've been to busy having fun, and I forgot all about it. Valli is at a lathe class so instead of pinning I'll write a blog about being home.

I got back to Ft Campbell around 8pm on the 23rd of December. Happy Birthday Joseph Smith, Lindsay Firth, and a bunch of other people not listed att. After 4 hours of time-wasting bullcrap I got to go home. The Army sucks. Literally, who on Earth wants to listen to the crappy band, sing the crappy Army Song, and be speached at about 'How great it is to have us back, now don't kill yourself or get sent to jail the first night back' for four hours, after sitting in airplane and airfields for 30 hours while our families are waiting in bleachers. Army: you suck for that. Suck. Anyway, after that mess I had seven days of repatriation/paperwork/dont-kill-anyone-including-yourself-beat-your-wife-drink-and-drive-drink-and-anything speaches.

I told you I was busy having fun. Now that that worthless crapfest is over with I have finally started my vacation. I have 30 days of Army-free bliss to spend doing all the things I've been waiting for. It's been awesome. Valli posted the bike pictures already- which is uber-cool, but not the best thing. The BEST thing is being with Valli, and includes a billion smaller reasons rolled up together.

Other best things about being home are:

Peace and Quiet. I could go on and on about the one. But I'll just say that Afghanistan was a very noisy place.

The House. Valli has done so much work on the house that I hardly recognise it. The bathroom is awesome and the eternal hot water is awesome and the new kitchen counters and cabinets and no more crappy carpet and crappy panelling is awesome too.

The huge truck Valli bought.

Christmas Holidays and rad gifts like friggin-awesome fuzzy slippers, REI gift certificates, and a monster gas grill. Also, Jenny- your gift is almost done, I swear I'll have it sent by February. And Ed, sorry man, not this year either.

Cooking my beautiful cow. He is so delicious.

Not working. There are no words.

Not being in Afghanistan. Way too many words.

The. Bike. Is. AWESOME!!! In case you also want one now, it's a Yamaha RoadStar Warrior 1700, and it has a ton of power! Who knew? Apparently not the insurance company because the premiums are so cheap! About a quarter of what they were for the last one. It is so sexy and loud and fast and shiny and cold to ride on in January but I DON'T CARE! I just bundle up and suffer because it so much fun!

The list has to end somewhere and I guess this will work, but I could go on and on. Being home is wonderful, and Valli and I are doing great, and if I haven't got around to calling you yet you are not alone because I've hardly called anyone. But I love you guys and hope you are having at least as good a time as I am, if not better.

We Are Adopting!

Before Valli and I got married we talked about dogs. We both like dogs. We talked briefly about having a dog of our own someday. It went something like this, I think.

Hey Valli, one day I’d like a dog. Like a German Shepherd. That would be awesome, right?

Ok Honey.

Maybe a year later we got married and I decided to bring it up again. That conversation went a lot differently than I had planned. Turns out Valli and I were polar opposites on nearly every aspect on dog ownership. I said when I get back from Afghanistan, she was thinking more like three or five years down the road. I was thinking keep the dog inside, she wants it outside. She wanted fixed, I wanted all natural. I wanted a purebred pup, she wanted an inexpensive or free/rescued full-grown dog that was already trained. I was thinking companion and family member, she was thinking security system. We were as far from the same page as we could imagine. We have never disagreed on anything as much as we have over the hypothetical dog.

But after discussing the subject again and again, after reading all the books, after digging up every concern, after lots of compromises (mostly on the part of my saintly wife of whom I am completely undeserving) and a firm understanding that I owe her big time! -we have reached a consensus.

And here it is.




This little guy, or one of his brothers, will be coming home with us in January. He's a German Shepherd. Mom and Dad are both 85 pound working dogs. The plan also entails that I will ensure he is trained to be prefectly behaved on his own and around children by the time I leave for the next (and last) deployment in about 2 years. Bonus points if he will "maul-slash-scare-the-urine-out-of" people when Valli decides they are threatening, bothersome, or especially annoying. He will be a full-time outside dog except for very special occasions. I will handle all fencing (before the wee one gets here), housing, and waste disposal issues. A Valli has been doing great at finding deals on the internet for pet crates, buried fences, and other neat dog items. There are still other details to iron out but on the whole we have reached a settlement. We are both looking forward to bringing him home.

Valli's thought's: "Looking forward to bringing Dave home soon."

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

There have been lots of goings on at the Harrell home. In the last 24 hours we have taken that incredible List and all the goals and plans we constructed over a year- and figuratively burned them to the ground and danced in the ashes. This is a good thing.

Valli got back from her 6 month stay in Alaska and immediately went to work cleaning, repairing and improving our home. We wanted to sell it around the new year and get into a larger better home with a big yard and room to do all the great stuff we’ve been dreaming of since we got married. We had injected a lot of stress into her life with so many things going on at once. I’ve been doing what I can to help; calling our bank and getting pre-approved for a loan, searching for real estate online, but Valli was doing almost all the work. And with things moving forward so quickly, I really got caught up in buying a new home. We even narrowed down our choices to one place that we both really liked.

Then we got to the task of figuring out how to pay for it all. Valli has retired from the engineering realm for a while. We haven’t finished remodeling our current house yet. We might not be able to even sell our place once it once it’s ready. The home we were thinking of buying will be wonderful (and finished) and huge, but will not leave much room in our budget for unexpected surprises. And as luck would have it- we received an unexpected surprise three days ago.

The transmission on our 1982 Benz 300D tanked. No one in 100 miles wants to touch it, so we will have to buy a new (read= rebuilt. Like we could really find a new one) tranny. Luckily a guy in town bought one a while ago from a company in Arizona. So we won’t have to find one ourselves. We are prepared to deal with things like this. But once we jump into a new house we won’t be. That experience really made me think about some things that Valli has been trying to tell for the last week. Mainly- are we sure we are doing the right thing? Once I really thought about it, the answer was a clear and resounding “NO!”

Enter the paradigm shift. We are still going to get the goals we want. But we decided that the plans we had made was the wrong way for us to get there. So, instead of buying a house with a big yard, we are keeping our house and just buying a yard. You read right. Once the house is finished we are going to start looking at land for sale. No one wants to develop now with the current state of things so it’s just sitting there, depreciating. That will be our big yard for keeping bees, raising pigs, planting a big garden, making bonfires, playing paintball, shooting things, whatever.

Instead of paying of the last of our debt with the money we’d make from selling our home, we are using the down-payment we’ve saved for to do that. Instead of buying a house with a big basement and storage space, we are going to excavate under our own house. Eventually.

And instead of buying a motorcycle we are buying a transmission. It was my idea. Valli wouldn’t ever ask me to give up a motorcycle after all the pathetic behavior and drooling and waiting. But it’s for the best. Since we are not moving 20 miles further from the post, we can easily afford me driving my big awesome truck to and from work until I figure that bike situation. Since we won’t be stretched to the breaking point, we will have plenty of dough at the end of the month for savings, dating, heaven willing my motorcycle fund, and anything else that breaks on the old car.