Recently we got a new foster Ace, a 6 month old puppy with heart problems. Ace went to Purdue this week for surgery to repair the defects in his heart, and sadly he did not make it thru the surgery. When they opened up the valve that was blocked, his heart went into severe arrhythmias that they could not stop. Ace was a very sweet, special little boy who was far to young to have such a major issue, and we will miss him very much. We'll see you at the bridge buddy.
Adam is in St. Louis taking care of his mom, but he uploaded this before he left so I thought I'd post it. Here's hoping I did it right. It seems really slow to load, I'm sorry. I'll have hime fix whatever I did wrong when he gets back.
After the first :30 you may want to skip ahead to 1:40 and then to 2:25. Thanks to camera person Damion for making the second half so much better.
Back in August, Adam posted this letter to Rod Blagovich from the people of Illinois. I offer it again with my edits.
Official Letter of Reprimand to Rod Blagojevich
Re: Failure to Perform Duties set forth by your employer - The People of the State of Illinois
Dear Rod,
This is to inform you that your actions as Governor of the State of Illinois are unacceptable. The duties expected of your position have not been fulfilled. We, the people of the State of Illinois and your Employer, wish to notify you that your Resignation needs to be filed within the next 30 days.
List of Greivances:
You have squandered your budget and spend money not authorized to you
You have enabled criminals to continue their actions, therefor not protecting the citizens
You have refused to live in your appointed housing
You have billed us for unauthorized travel expenses
You refuse to work in the office appointed to you. We have not authorized Telecommuting.
You have threatened to block access to public lands. We, the people of Illinois, own these lands, not you.
You have blatantly lied on your statement of applications. Promises made have not been fulfilled. As is standard with applications for employment, falsifying statements can result in termination.
When hired, you were expected to work well with others hired by us. You have failed to do so, up to and including open fighting with your co-workers.
You have eliminated or reduced vital services that we wish to provide.
You have billed us for unauthorized personal grooming expenses.
You have been implicated in connections with Known Convicted Criminals. Your employer (us) can not risk an employee tarnishing the public opinion of the general population.
Again, I restate, the People of the State of Illinois and your Employer, hereby notify you that your job performance is unacceptable. We expect your resignation letter shortly. We want to end this employment relationship as amiably as possible. No hard feelings, and we hope you find employment elsewhere and in a position that fits your skills and desires.
Sincerly,
Your Employer, The People of the State of Illinois
Edit: December 12, 2008
You have not only continued the actions listed in the grievances above, you have brought the utmost emparassment to the State of Illinois. You may have done irrepreprable damage to the office of the Governer of Illinois. We cannot stress the importance of your resignation at this time. We anticipate the reciept of your letter of resignation within the next week.
This is our last offer to end this relationship amiably. If you refuse our offer this time, we reserve the right to proceed with impeachment and incompetency hearings. We will no longer be represented by a man of your calibar.
Yesterday, Adam came home from hunting in the morning and found that Cleo had puked in several places in the house. He let her out, and she couldn't pee. We took her to the vet and it turned out she has Bladder stones, one of which was blocking the urethra. She needed surgery to remove them, they were too big to pass!
Cleo had her surgery this morning and came through it very well. We will be going to see her later this morning, but the vet says that everything looks great. They removed 12 stones from her bladder, the largest one about the size of a dime.
Thank you to all our friends who have offered emotional support over the last 2 days. Those who know us know that Cleo is our baby.
And it's all Adam's fault. Let me explain. For my birthday, Adam bought me 2 Scrapbook layout materials. But Nicole, you don't scrapbook. Well that's true I don't, yet. You see a friend of mine from college is a Stampin Up dealer, and Jess and I went to a stamp party she was having. I got so excited about the idea of stamping and scrapbooking after that, but I couldn't bring myself to spend the money on yet another hobby that I wasn't going to really follow thru on. So what did Adam do, he spent the money for me. Now I'm all excited about starting scrapbooking, and what does he go do? He buys me all the stuff I need to make hand stamped Christmas cards for our anniversary! The man is fueling the fire!
I've already planned the layout completly for one of the pages he bought me for my birthday. and the second one is in the works, I just have to hunker down and pick pictures. But why do I have this sinking suspicion that he just wants me to have another hobby so he can spend more time on his hobbies without getting crap from me....oh I hope I haven't caught MHS from him!!!
Re: Failure to Perform Duties set forth by your employer - The People of the State of Illinois
Dear Rod,
This is to inform you that your actions as Governor of the State of Illinois are unacceptable. The duties expected of your position have not been fulfilled. We, the people of the State of Illinois and your Employer, wish to notify you that your Resignation needs to be filed within the next 30 days.
List of Greivances:
You have squandered your budget and spend money not authorized to you
You have enabled criminals to continue their actions, therefor not protecting the citizens
You have refused to live in your appointed housing
You have billed us for unauthorized travel expenses
You refuse to work in the office appointed to you. We have not authorized Telecommuting.
You have threatened to block access to public lands. We, the people of Illinois, own these lands, not you.
You have blatantly lied on your statement of applications. Promises made have not been fulfilled. As is standard with applications for employment, falsifying statements can result in termination.
When hired, you were expected to work well with others hired by us. You have failed to do so, up to and including open fighting with your co-workers.
You have eliminated or reduced vital services that we wish to provide.
You have billed us for unauthorized personal grooming expenses.
You have been implicated in connections with Known Convicted Criminals. Your employer (us) can not risk an employee tarnishing the public opinion of the general population.
Again, I restate, the People of the State of Illinois and your Employer, hereby notify you that your job performance is unacceptable. We expect your resignation letter shortly. We want to end this employment relationship as amiably as possible. No hard feelings, and we hope you find employment elsewhere and in a position that fits your skills and desires.
Sincerly,
Your Employer, The People of the State of Illinois
I finally did it. Last night I went out and attacked some of the weeds in the garden. Adam had taken the string trimmer to the section of the garden that was growing nothing but weeds on Sunday, but hadn't gotten to any of the purposely planted areas. Last night after work, I tackled the area around the tomato and pepper plants. Now I have to admit that it wasn't my intention when I headed out to the garden to attack the weeds, but rather to save the tomato plants. You see we didn't get cages around all of them when they were planted, and now about half of them were FAR too big to hold up their own weight. Adam had tried to tie them up, but even that wasn't holding. So after a trip to Wally World and Fleet Farm I was out there armed with bamboo stakes and old tiki torches trying to support these poor plants. However, in order to figure out where the base of the tomato plants were to stake them up properly, I had to get rid of the weeds too. SO be it. Now the tomatoes are completely weeded, and I'm motivated to do the zucchini and acorn squash next. Maybe
Something totally wierd happened today. After work I went out to pull some weeds from and take a look at our finally blossoming garden. Adam and I have a very large garden in our backyard, and although we only planted about half of it purposefully this year (the other half planted itself) it's coming alone quite nicely. We've got several tomato plants, peppers, zucchini, acorn squash, eggplant, cucumbers, snow peas and green beans all coming up. Some stuff is doing better than others, the zucchini and acorn squash are trying to take over, and weve gotten some decent snow peas, but much to my dismay the cucumbers have not really done well. Last year the cucumbers that I planted from seed never came up at all, so this year I bought 3 starter plants. I put the in mounds at the beginning of the season, at the same time I planted the zucchini from seed, and hoped things would be better this year. Today when I went out to weed, I noticed that we had cucumber plants finally, but some really big thistles had appeared in the middle of them. I went and got my gloves and pulled out the biggest one to discover that it wasn't a weed at all, but a TURNIP! in the middle of the cucumber plant!!! We didn't plant any turnips!!! How it got there I am clueless, but there were some in each of the hills. I pulled 6 or 7 in total ranging in size from like a large radish to bigger than Adam's fist! Talk about wierd!
Well Adam and I made it back from Washington state safe and sound, and oh my goodness what a crazy week that was! For those of you who don't know, last week Adam and I traveled to Deer Lake in Washington (near Spokane) for a Shake family reunion. This was a big deal for 2 reasons. 1. Adam has not seen most of his Dad's extended family since 1984, and anyone for at least 10 years and 2. Since Adam has not seen anyone for at least 10 years, I had never met any of his extended family! We had a really good time with all of them, ate FAR too much, and laughed so hard we cried many a time. I am so glad we made the trip, it was definitly a priceless experience.
I'm sure Adam will have lots more to say, but I felt we needed to get something up. I will be working on pictures tonight and tomorrow, and I promise captions, however realize that posting pictures with captions will take longer.
Official Letter of Reprimand to Rod Blagojevich
