Who knew you could have tornadoes in mid-state New York? Not me, at least not until this Monday afternoon. There were two touch-downs and no deaths.
In unrelated news, the dinner with Chad's summer students scheduled for Tuesday was postponed a week.
We still had houseguests this weekend—my mother, who is a saint, brought my grandmother up Saturday afternoon, on the way down to see my uncle in Pennsylvania—so a large quantity of the week was spent getting the place in shape. Housekeeping tip: even if no-one ever uses a toilet, it can still become remarkably disgusting, against all expectations.
Saturday day we went to an adoption clinic run by a local dog rescue group. There was one dog that we really liked, but since we couldn't take her home until Tuesday (what with company and needing to dog-proof the house and all), the group wouldn't hold her for us. We left with much reluctance, and called them when we got home, because their web page indicated that you didn't have to take a dog home immediately from a clinic, that they would hold them for a reasonable period of time. So we wanted to offer to pay the boarding fees if that was the reason why they wouldn't hold her for us. As soon as I said what dog we were interested in, the woman said, "She's being adopted right now." Then a short while later, she called back and said that the people had changed their minds at the last minute. They wouldn't hold her because too many people said they would pick up a dog and never did, so we should call on Monday to see what happened.
'Twas a bit of an emotional roller-coaster. And then today Chad looked at the group's web site and found that the dog was listed as being on a trial placement pending adoption. Damnit.
The infatuation having worn off a bit, I'm disappointed but no longer heartbroken; however, we are both somewhat annoyed at the misleading web page. I completely understand the no-holds policy, but if that is the policy, we should have known that up-front and not gotten our hopes up. (Plus it feels like our efforts in rudimentary lead-training and dog-calming were then used against us, curses, foiled again.) But now we know and we'll find a good dog soon enough, and then a cat, too.
The dog clinic did spur Chad to put up shelves in our mudroom off the kitchen. (It's been on the list for a while.) If we get a dog, we'll probably need more storage space in there, since the dog's crate will go in that room and probably will displace the kitchen island currently being used to store various stuff. He got nearly all of it done today—strip, patch, prime, paint, drill, and screw—which is pretty impressive. (Even if it did require me to go on A Quest for a 5/8" drill bit and #10 1/2" wood screws, neither of which are easy to find—and, of course, when I did find the drill bit, it didn't fit our drill and he ended up just using a 1/2".) They look great. I was pretty wiped from an insomnia-ridden week and company, but I did get a bit more done on the bookshelf refinishing project, and also made tiramisu for tomorrow's company.
[ In other food news, here's the recipe for the chocolate chip cookies declared "best cookies ever" by one of Chad's students (original, now dead, link); and here's a link to three recipes from a Good Eats episode that was on this morning (quick summary: the higher the ratios of shortening-to-butter and brown sugar-to-granulated sugar, the softer/puffier the cookie). ]
In work news, I'm helping with a new project to improve our institutional knowledge, which I've been interested in for a while and am quite excited about. I'd say more about work except I smell like the tiramisu I was making and I find myself hungry.