Goose!

Saw this mama in a tree planter at a local mall. I wonder what made her nest there of all places?

And we're 4 months away from moving into our condo! It looks practically finished from the outside, although some balcony railings haven't been put in yet, so they've been fenced off with yellow rails.

Also, looking in from the outside we could tell that much of the interiors were still being worked on. We're going to select appliances on Monday!

Happy birthday, Jamie Johnson blog

20% of the readers of this blog has a birthday today and her name is Jamie Johnson! Happy birthday, Jamie! Although I've never met you, I feel like I know you. (And I think if you, Allison, and Hannah ever got together in the same room one day, the craziness would explode my head.)

So, long time no post. We'd been meaning to! We took pictures and stuff but just never took that final step of adding them to our blog. Why am I admitting this? Why even bring this up? Let's just move on.

Over Easter, Allison and I drove down to Charlottesville, VA to visit her Aunt Linda:

Waterless urinal at a rest stop in Somerset, PA. Think about that for a second: WATER. LESS.

For sale at the tractor supply store in Charlottesville: baby chicks!

... and ducklings! The sign said "For agricultural purposes only."

They're cuter when you can hear them cheeping. :)

Aunt Linda lives on a mountain and regularly has deer in her backyard. We've seen them a few times on past visits. They're becoming quite a herd!

(Sorry, I'm still not used to turning my phone sideways to film. Stupid black bars.)

We were in Charlottesville for four days. On the last day, when we stopped for gas on our way out of Charlottesville, Allison spotted this vehicle nearby:

We considered getting out and doing something crazy in front of the Google Street View camera, but before we could go embarrass ourselves, we realized that the camera probably wasn't on. Oh well.

Condo update:

Five months until we move into our new place! This picture is about a month old so I imagine more of the frontage is done now, but our unit is at the top of the bottom tier (6th floor). Counting down the days!

Chameleon Popcorn Muncher

This is Allison's impression of a popcornivore chameleon:

Snow Day

The biggest snow storm in five years started in Toronto at around 7:00 p.m. last night, carried on right through the day today, and only stopped coming down at 9:30 p.m. tonight. It's headed to Quebec, New England, and the Atlantic now. People had snow days all over the place, including us. By dinner time, Subway and the grocery store near our house had already closed at least three hours early. And since people have been sharing their photos and videos on Facebook all day, here's ours. :)

It's a little hard to tell how much snow there is here but look at where it comes up to relative to the doors and tires. Allison and I had to shovel that!! *flex*

Hazel

This is my rabbit, Hazel. She's a Holland mini lop-ear, although I don't know mini compared to what, because she's pretty big.

Hazel's named after the main character in one of my favorite books, "Watership Down". When we come down to work, she's our Hazel-Rah and the recycling box is her throne. :)

Hazel is five and a half years old, which in human years amounts to about 55 yrs, I guess. She used to bite when startled, so everyone was scared of her, but she's gotten much better now. A couple of months ago, she stopped eating, so Allison and I took her to the vet, where she was found to have a large abscess on the left side of her jaw. The vet put her under and plucked out a loose molar that was sitting on top of the abscess and pop, out came three more teeth and a large pulpy chunk of her jaw. There is now a big gap between the front of her jaw and its left hinge, the part that connects to the rest of her skull so that she can chew properly. She can still eat though -- which I think is amazing -- although the lower part of her jaw is now all wobbly and can't exert much strength anymore. Allison and I have to feed her a goopy mixture of fiber and probiotic bacteria culture every night to supplement her pellets because she no longer eats hay.

You'd think that she'd be in pain and feeling miserable all day, but not so! Ever since the procedure, Allison and I have kept her in our office, letting her hop around loose, stuffing herself into corners, and ripping up pieces of scrap paper. In the photo, you can see one such piece -- a receipt from Subway -- sitting on the floor. A few minutes after we'd taken this picture, she climbed out of the recycling box, hopped straight over to the receipt, and shredded it enthusiastically like it was a redacted CIA file from "Zero Dark Thirty". 

She used to spend most of her time in a big cage in the living room. Ever since we've given her free reign of this room, however, she's become more playful, more affectionate, and more... rabbit-like. She likes to lick Allison's pants whenever Allison sits on the floor with her and will often sit under my chair doing nothing for an hour at a time.