Some pics of our house...

Following up on my previous post of outdoor pictures, here are a few indoor ones I've taken. These are several days old; since then, much progress has been made on the renovations. We're still a week or so away from having a functional bathroom, and the kitchen will take 6 weeks or so. But we're getting there...


Here is the floor of the kitchen as it stands-- you can see the 'coils' of the radiant in-floor heating system. Our cork floor will eventually go on top of this. The in-floor heating is actually already hooked up and operating, which probably explains why Raz often sits down on this floor on her way out to or back from the yard (normally the dogs aren't allowed into the construction zones).



Here you can see the new windows which will eventually be over the sink. They will make our kitchen much lighter than it was... on the side is the hole for the "appliance garage," a roll-out drawer thingy which will house our various small appliances.



Most of the house is covered with this kind of stuff to keep the floors from getting mucked up. It's rather ugly and occasionally annoying. Especially on the stairs, where it sometimes clumps up and impedes one's step...



A cool ice formation outside of the window... did lots of dripping today, when the temperature was an unseasonable 35 degrees or so. Tomorrow it's back to zero for a low.



We are very happy with how lovely the hardwood floors look after being refinished. Of course most of them are not visible given the various runners, not to mention boxes. But i found one decent sized patch to take a picture of.



Now on to the bathroom. Here is where Daniela's soaking tub will be.



And here you can see the new skylight which will provide some natural lighting for the tub and bathroom.



This is the shower stall, which has an amazing tile pattern of a mountain. It's going to look really cool....



Here you can see both the tub area and the shower, from the walk-in closet.



I also took a few pictures in the basement. This is our amazing new tankless hot water heater. Note the beer bottle on top, for scale...



And our lovely new furnace-- a huge improvement over the old relic it replaced...



This is our current bathroom-- the only source of running water in the house at the moment!

St Paul Pics from Phone

Some pictures from our outdoor adventures in St. Paul...

Moose having fun in the snow. He adores the snow, often sticking his muzzle all the way into it. He never seems to get cold, even if I do....



One day Daniela joined Moose and me and we took all 3 dogs to the park. Raz was carried in the doggie pocket with Daniela's coat zipped up around her.... Raz quite approved of the arrangement, I think.



Here are a couple of scenery pictures of the park we walk to-- it's a 5-10 minute walk from our house and overlooks the Mississippi River and downtown St. Paul. Very cool. Today Moose and I found a new path which went to a nice overlook and we saw a bald eagle flying by! Amazing...



It's called Indian Mounds Park, and these are 2 of the eponymous burial mounds...

Catching up...

In all the moving mania (and associated Internet gaps), some blog-worthy pictures slipped through the cracks. I hope our readers (both of you) will allow me to disregard chronological sequence and just throw them up here before I continue with the current blogging.

So, in no particular order:

Daniela and her brother Roberto beneath a sculpture their father created at the Natural History Museum here in the Twin Cities (photo from Thanksgiving!):


Raz guards the Christmas gifts at my parents' house

And pays particular attention to the most important gift of all (yes, the gift of beer)...


Some scenes from the 900-mile (each way) holiday car trip to Connecticut, featuring 3 doggies, two humans, and lots of luggage, all in 1 Honda Civic Hybrid. The dogs were in rather close quarters and all got along just fine. In fact, we witnessed some unusual closeness between the Big White Dog and the pugs. Here, Moose's paw is intertwined with Raz's.


And later with Lucy's...


Raz and Lucy soak up the sunshine one last time in Bloomington (not as much sun here in St. Paul...).


And one more shot of Raz amongst the packing paper. She hasn't yet found any piles of paper in the unpacking stage which are sufficiently large for her to 'nest' on...


I think that takes care of the backlog. Now on to the new pictures from St. Paul!

Moving moving moving

Yes, we're moving the Menagerie. To Saint Paul, Minnesota, aka Pigs Eye Landing.

Of course, the dogs have done their best to "help," whether by sitting on top of boxes,


or among piles of wrapping paper...(Raz must climb to the 'top' of any object and be queen of the mountain. This was tough in this particular case, since the top of the pile didn't stay the top once she was sitting on it...)


So this will be our last post for a little while (our internet connection here in Indiana is going to be turned off in a few minutes, and who knows when we'll be sufficiently unpacked in Minnesota to get it going again). We'll be on the road on Monday and Tuesday, and then unpacking for the rest of our lives, or at least a few days.

December wrap-up

It's been a while since our last post here at the Menagerie... you know-- holidays, getting ready for our big move, etc.

But here are a few recent photos to keep you up to date.

Lucy saw the recent post about Raz reading the NY Times and wanted it known that she prefers to get her news online...


Speaking of Lucy, she has discovered a new taste treat: packing peanuts. Some peanuts nowadays are made of potato starch (they dissolve in water-- very cool) and she has decided that they taste good. She seeks them out and recently chewed through the cardboard box my latest shipment of coffee came in so she could get the peanuts inside...


The dogs reacquainted themselves with their Connecticut family over the holidays. Raz enjoyed some lap time with her grandma...


And our niece Anna put both pugs on their leashes and walked them around the house (sometimes it was more like dragging, but the dogs didn't mind)....


Lucy got a brand new bag for Christmas (she was probably disappointed that there were no packing peanuts inside)...


Our niece Millie also enjoyed playing with the dogs, though her attempt to play ball with Raz shows that she doesn't yet understand that Raz doesn't consider herself a dog (and therefore is utterly uninterested in toys)...


Anna was quite proud of her skills as a dog handler and gladly posed with both pugs:


(actually, she spent quite a bit of time 'shadowing' Lucy, following her around the house step by step, crawling with her under tables and onto furniture, etc.)


We include this picture of Millie falling asleep on her grandfather's hand just because it's too cute not to...


And finally, a new Menagerie member: we saw this Great Horned Owl at a raptor rescue center in Connecticut. She/he hooted at us very regularly and seemed to do it on demand ("Talk, Bubo," Anna would call; "Hoo-hoo-hoo," Bubo would respond).


We move in 1 week-- stay tuned!