Giving Thanks

Hello Friends and Family;

We are in Virginia, and things are wonderful, but we wanted to take a second out of the day to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

All of the family has gathered, Jennifer and Tom, Joan and Alister, Graham and Kate, Molly and Laurel, and new friend Tamio.  The turkey is just out of the oven, but all of the 'extras' are heating up in the oven.  Nate and I made Cranberry/Orange dish, Asparagus, and Mashed Potatoes.  Kate and Graham baked pies all night last night!  Everything is looking yummy and exciting.

We spent time yesterday talking about all of the visitors that we've had to Holly Hills over the past few years, and how blessed we are to have them all.  Caroline, and her wit.  Becca and her warmth.  My parents and beautiful sister.  We've loved sharing this place with so many wonderful people, and hope to share it with so many more.

Everyone says hello, and that we are looking forward to all being together this summer.

 Dad's new dog, Luna

 Morning on the way to VA

Had to send this before dinner, because after we'll do nothing but this (YAWN!)

Look out! She's got a Furball!

Hello family and friends!

We missed last weeks update, and we apologize! There has been a lot going on here, and we're trying to get caught back up.

This weekend was Furball, HELP's largest fundraiser of the year. In preparation, I got to do an interview with Fox 59 out of Indianapolis, which was very exciting. You can see that here:

http://www.fox59.com/news/wxin-richmond-men-pose-nude-to-help-110410,0,3396462.story

Turns out that none of the board members are particularly excited to go in front of a crowd or camera, so armed with my high-school drama experience, in I went. The interview was a lot of fun, you can see some of the amazing people and animals that I get to work with every day. Nate is working, as we speak, to make the calendars available online, and you can order one at www.helptheanimalsinc.com! Remember, the nude men calendar makes a great gift for all of your women friends, and a great gag gift to all of your other friends!

I also gave the "State of the Union" speech at Furball, which Nate wrote for me. We were joking on the way over that I couldn't write a speech and he couldn't give one, so it was good that we paired up together. It seems to have gone off well, so that's exciting.

Nate and I are part of a training group that meets on Thursday nights to work with the shelter dogs. We started with obedience, and once the dogs (and us) mastered/got bored with that, we moved on to agility. Our local dog park has two tunnels and one tiny jump, which was enough to get started, but now we need more. We have paired up with local Eagle Scout hopeful Cameron DeLucio who will build us the equipment that we need, but we need to raise the money first. Please visit us at:

http://members.petfinder.com/~IN135/AgilityDrive.html

If you could please send this on to anyone that you think might donate (its tax deductible!), we would really appreciate it. If we don't get this started before the snow comes, we likely won't be able to until next spring. Any help that you could dig up would be wonderful.

So that's my shelter update. Thanks everyone!
-Justine (and silent Nate)

Pitts and Panthers

This past weekend we finally got up to Pittsburgh to visit Anna at college, which we knew was way overdue! Both Nate and I took Friday off and had a nice drive there, during which we listened to Radio Lab – wonderful for the car rides! We end up doing more talking then listening to the audio, but we find it sparks lots of stories and discussion.

We arrived in Pittsburgh around 4:30, and drove around for a little while looking for gas and a pharmacy. We were struck by how much it feels like an east coast area – the roads were on hills, with trees and brush everywhere, and it was all changing colors. Mom and dad arrived, and we went out to dinner with Uncle John. We talked a bit about Penn politics, and how his road signs keep getting stolen, and laughingly made comments about different ways that he could keep them from being removed. It was a nice reunion, and a fun dinner!

After we went to see Anna’s apartment, which is in a great location, full of closet space and well furnished and poster-ed. We all hopped in the car (6 of us in the Honda accord!) and went to a place called ‘the incline.’ Pittsburgh is a city that is split by many rivers and cliffs, and this little trolly-like thing takes its riders from the bottom of a cliff down by the river to the top among all the nice restaurants. It also provided us with a beautiful view, and was great for understanding the general layout of the city. After that we rode down and went to the one place that a family must go to once all of its members are 21 – a bar! We all went to Pitt’s version on the famous German Hofbrauhaus, and toasted each other with liters of beer! Good beer, good company, and a wonderful night!

The next day, the Kahler parents and baby Bells set off on their own and headed for the Strip district. This place is down on the wharf, right next to the river, and features rows and rows of old warehouses that have been converted into tiny shops that sell anything you can think of! Meat and seafood, Steelers apparel, tacos, one of the buildings was labeled ‘Acme Banana Company.’ We ate breakfast at famous (due to Obama eating there) Pamela’s Diner, then wandered about looking for Christmas presents and promised items for people back home.

Next was the game. The Pitt Panthers play in the same arena as the Pittsburgh Steelers (locally pronounced ‘Stillers’) and it was really neat to see a college game played in a professional arena. The Panthers played Rutgers, and ended up trouncing them even though Rutgers had a better record than the Panthers so far this year. Two really interesting and fun things – the stadium is the Heinz stadium, and when the Panthers got within 20 yards of the goal its called the Red Zone, and the huge ketchup bottles perched on either side of the scoreboard tip and spill ketchup, turning the scoreboard red. Check out this video – how cool is that? Second most fun thing was for the third quarter cheer, they played Sweet Caroline with ‘Lets Go Pit!’ instead of ‘Dah-dah-dah.’ It was really fun, and now that I know the correct version of the song I can’t get it out of my head; I’m cleaning the house and yelling Go Pitt, Go Pitt, Go Pitt!

After the game, we took a tour of the University of Pittsburg and saw all the places that Anna loves. We went to the top of the Cathedral of Learning and looked out over the university, and Chris and Anna pointed out all of the places that were important to them; the science building, the places where they were each doing their research, different places that they had lived, and landmarks around where the college was. Next trip we hope to see many more of the things that were pointed out to us.

After that, we went out to dinner and ate more than I think we’ve both eaten in a long time. We had dinner at the Union Grill (rock bottom drink prices!), where we split a cup of the lobster bisque and then both had sea food over ceaser salad (crab cakes and salmon – yum!). Then we went to Dozen, which makes and sells only cupcakes (which made a good breakfast the next day), and finally to a frozen yogurt place called RazziFresh. There, you get a bowl, put in as much of as many flavors of frozen yogurt in it as you like, then cover it with as many toppings as you want from the topping bar, and pay by weight. It was wonderful and dangerous all at the same time – tummy’s full!

We bid Anna and Chris goodnight and headed back to John and Judy’s. We got up late the next morning and headed for home – tired but so happy!

A day in the life....

We were talking about what to send to you all, and we noticed that it is normal for us to talk about large things that happen, but we've never really addressed the day-to-day. So here it is, folks! A young married Bell couple Sunday.


We woke up this morning at around 10:45am. This is the only day of the week that we get to sleep in (Justine works Saturdays and Nate works Mondays), so we like to take advantage of it. We are caring for three parvo puppies, so we got into our haz-mat suits and went right in to treat them. Half an hour and our first shower of the day later, we were dressed and ready.

Our first stop was the shelter, to drop off Juno for a dental and two of our youngest, a puppy named Kiora and a half grown kitten named Rain, to be spayed. To the left is Kiora, the little baby Aussie that is living with us until we can find her a suitable owner. Then lunch at Chilis, which was in order because we went to the theater last night (to see Deathtrap) and Nate elbowed me in the forehead trying to put his arm around me in the dark (curse my gangly arms! -Nate). It was almost romantic, but ended up being a tragedy. So I got to go out for lunch.

Next we bought some quilting needles and painting tape, came home and started our Sunday work (the work we've been putting off all week). Nate put a second coat on the stairs, while I tidied up a bit around the house and cleaned various animal enclosures. After that, we went off to pick up the surgery patients, stopped at the store and headed home. We picked all the remaining tomatoes in the garden and used them to make Roasted Tomato Basil Soup for dinner. Nate had never had no-bake cookies before, so we got the ingredients for that too, and worked on both. We also looked up how to make bananas foster which we're planning on having tomorrow after a New Orleans shrimp recipe we love.



While waiting for the soup to be ready, we went out back and harvested our first born pumpkin! In past years we have purchased so many pumpkins that we decided that we should try growing our own to save money, and we grew three full sized and one mini-pumpkin, which isn't enough that we won't buy any more, but will reduce the overall pumpkin costs considerably. Yay! So we carved our first little one today and roasted the seeds. Dinner and snacks from our own garden! Here we are kissing our first baby pumpkin goodbye.


During dinner we started watching David Attenborough's new documentary, Life. Episode one was wonderful, which isn't surprising, (it just isn't a wildlife documentary if it isn't narrated by a cheerful British gent), and we're excited about the rest of them. Then, a potential adopter whom we were supposed to meet at the shelter called to say that she was about ten minutes away, and so we hopped in the car and headed over to HELP. Luckily, the husband (who had not met the dog before, the wife had visited earlier in the week) loved the dog and there was a joyous adoption! Then we went to the gym to work out, and then came home.

One of the puppies was well enough to come out of isolation (he kept trying to bite the IV's that I was giving to the sicker puppies, so we triple bathed him and moved him downstairs. Now he is tormenting the other dogs, which just shows what a healthy puppy he has returned to being. And we sat down to write this, and will head to bed soon. Tired!

And that was a day in our lives! Love to all of you!

Whirlwind Weekend

A few weekends ago we got a call from our friend Pete up in Michigan - we had been talking all summer about replacing the porch out in front of our house, but just hadn't set a date yet. Pete called on a Tuesday, and said 'how about this weekend?' He and Dave came down Saturday, we tore up the old (super) gross porch, bought a bunch of treated lumber and hardware and set to work. On Sunday Josh (left) chipped in to help wrap things up.

Tadah!

Big changes

Hey all,

We just made it a goal to update this blog at least once a week, which we hopefully will keep to, and then you all will know more about what is going on! Luckily, we've got some exciting news that is backlogged from the last few months, so that gives us a nice springboard from which to start.

Nate and I traveled to Torch Lake to visit my family in August, and we knew that we were going to be gone for at least a week, so we worked things out with the guy that does our flooring to have him come in an replace the floor in our kitchen while we were gone. This meant pulling EVERYTHING out in the meanwhile, so we were up late the night before we left pulling out all of the cabinets and moving the refrigerator into the dining room! As always, the short-cuts taken by the families that lived in our home before us prevented us from getting the demolition done in the time we were expecting. Here is an example where the board is attached with a few bent nails and some staples. Gross.

Luckily the shoddy construction means we got the chance to beat the living heck out of the old cabinets with a couple of hammers. Hard work and messy, but a cathartic experience after dealing with these sub-par cabinets for so long. Here is Nate, working working working to get everything done.

And here is the kitchen mid demo:

Luckily we were able to get everything done and out, and the new floor looks amazing. We also got some gently used cabinets that our friends, the Neale's, were replacing. With those installed everything is looking (and working) SO much better!

Success!

Love, Nate and Justine

Sometimes, its the small things

Well hello readership!

We will be doing an anniversary post coming up (thanks to everyone for their well wishes!), but in the meanwhile this post has been brewing about in my brain and it's time to get it out to all of you!

Sometimes the smallest things seem to make the most difference. Here are a few "for instances" from our busy lives I wanted to share.

This, for lack of a better name (because we didn't want to name her) is our squirrel friend. This is a reference to good friend Kyla calling all of her girl friends her squirrel friends instead, and it just sort of stuck for this little girl. She crawled out underneath the shelter director's car, and Joyce (our licensed wildlife rehab-er) added us to her permit so that we could nurse this little one. She started out small and more friendly and as she grew she got more and more wild. We tried to handle her as little as possible, and by the time we took her to Tony (another rehab-er who takes them once they are done nursing, she was exactly the right amount of not people friendly. Score one for the good guys! Also notice her milk mustache.


This is our new knife holder!!! It mounts on the wall and holds the knives magnetically. This is such a small changed but so absolutely wonderful for a few reasons: 1. The original knife holder took up a lot of what small counter space that we had, and was consistently getting wet. 2. This sits right next to the stove and is handy for just grabbing what you need when you need it. 3. If someone tries to break into the house and the dogs aren't a sufficient deterrent, we can hide in the kitchen and throw knives at them. Personal safety; always first and foremost!




Last (but certainly not least) the weather has remained hot enough this week to justify putting in our air conditioners. They make coming back into the house after working in the garden so much more bearable. Central air would be nice, but then we'd miss out on the team building exercise of putting one of these suckers in a window! Such a pain to store and move, but so worth it when you can feel a little less sticky and gross.




That's all for now! We'll be back soon with more.

Love to all,
Justine and Nate

Spring Fever

Hey all!

We're being reminded that its been way too long since our last blog post, and I feel like once we get most things caught up it will be easier to do more impromptu updates more often.

I am all wrapped up right now in two things. The first is work; spring is the busiest time of the year for us because we have to juggle so many things. First, we run a spay/neuter clinic and now is the time when all small animals go into heat. This means that our Trap-Neuter-Release program is working overtime to try to get as many female cats spayed before 'kitten season.' Also, everyone who hasn't gotten their cat or dog fixed yet is panicking because they are also going into heat, and we have about a 100 person waiting list for our clinic right now. I both run the TNR program and do all of the spay/neuter scheduling.

Spring also brings a pick-up in both adoptions and people wanting to surrender their animals to us. We're trying to handle adoption applications as quickly as possible to free space up for new animals coming in, but as always we're not keeping up with demand. I dream of the day that we're able to pull from other, more desperate shelters to free up space for them.

My other time sink right now is Richmond Civic Theater's rendition of A Chorus Line, which practices 15 hours a week. I am having a lot of fun, and the show is going to be exciting, can't wait for opening night. Its also opened the door to meeting a lot of new friends and learning a lot about a new group of people, which is always a fun adventure.

http://www.richmondcivictheatre.org/

In the meantime, while I'm not home, Nate and friend Ben O'Brien have started seriously working on a video game. They are making 3D models of ships and are starting to put them into a program that allows them to move around. Its all slow going, but very exciting when they make some new headway. I am sure that Nate can fill you in on more.

Hey folks, Nate here.

Let me start out by saying I'm really proud of all the hard work Justine has been doing. I know I'm biased, but she's been a force to be reckoned with in the animal world, and yet she still finds the energy to make it through 3 hours of play practice 5 nights a week. That said, we're both looking forward to when she has more free time!

My days have been busy at work where the website is still going strong. My latest big project at work was getting our phone server upgraded. We use a hand-built and hand configured VoIP PBX that I put together as one of my first projects when I was hired. It served us well, but the software is years out of date, would be hard to upgrade and we're still using analog telephone lines that introduce nasty echo. We've been talking about upgrading for years and switching to digital lines, but I've never had the time. It's also our production phone server, meaning if it doesn't work, we don't have phones so I can only work on it outside of business hours.

Recently my boss and I had been spit balling the logistics of upgrading the phone server verses buying/renting a hosted solution from a company and just washing our hands of it. We were planning on meeting to get a quote for the hosted PBX that Monday but we were both curious how hard doing it ourselves would be. So that weekend, while Justine was working at the shelter or practicing for her play, I went into work and started building a new phone system. I attached some extra hard drives we had lying around to our old phone system, and just disconnected the server's old hard drives. That way I could set up the new system on the new drives, and when I was done for the night I just switched a couple cables around, rebooted and the server would go back to using the old phone system.

About 8 hours later I had a new phone system that did 95% of the stuff we needed and was ready for digital lines. That Monday I got to surprise my boss with the new system and that also gave us a much better comparison for the quotes we'd get later that day. When we got the quotes for the hosted solution they were much more expensive than having me build and maintain the server, so we ended up just using our own solution and buying digital lines. The next day I switched us over to the new system, and a couple weeks later I switched us to digital lines. All in all the operation went off smoother than I expected and no one has had any problems with the switch!

It's neat that I did essentially the same project five years apart so I got to see how much my abilities have improved since then. I'm more confident, faster, less likely to get stuck, more likely to unstick myself when I do, and ended up building a more robust system the second time round.

That's entirely too much tech talk for now, but it was a fun accomplishment.

Okay, a little more tech talk; Justine mentioned a friend and I are working on a game. We're still at the very early staging of putting it together, but we've been learning to build 3D models in a free (but very powerful) program called Blender. Here are two untextured models I've worked on:

Once we have some objects, we put them into another free (and also very powerful) program called Unity. Unity is a game engine and it's what you use to breath life into your world. Once in Unity we can define what each object does, how they will interact and how the player influences them. It starts as a blank slate with a vast array of tools, so I've been spending a lot of time learning how they work and slowly shaping what we have, into when we've envisioned. A neat feature of Unity is that it allows us to build our game for the web, so once we have something to show, I'll send out a link and you guys can play around with our creation.

That's all for now!

- The Busy Busy Bells