JoyUnspeakable

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Sunday, June 22nd, 2003, Marie began team training with her service dog, Showbo.

Did you know that Showbo was Canine Partners for Life’s:

• first female standard poodle service dog?
• first dog to complete the prison puppy program out of the Maryland Correctional Institute of Women?
• first service dog to have a dual purpose of being both a service dog and a guide dog?

Showbo is nearly eleven-years old now. She has been by Marie’s side for nearly nine years. Over those nine years, Showbo has been all over the USA – from Maine to Florida, Nevada, Indiana, and even Hawaii. She has been to numerous Phillies games, and hundreds and hundreds of bathrooms.

Showbo has been a huge help for Marie. Some of the things she helps Marie with are retrieval of items by name, including sock, diaper, bag, hanger, shoe, sneaker. She picks up anything Marie drops, and can even pick up a dime off the floor! Showbo assists Marie with the laundry by taking clothes out of the dryer, and pulling the laundry basket across the room.

Showbo’s assistance isn’t always perfect. Occasionally, she does something she wasn’t supposed to do. The one that tops them all is the time she attempted to push the automatic door button at Shippensburg University’s homecoming. Instead of hitting the button, she pulled the fire alarm! They had to evacuate the building. I’m not sure the fireman believed me when I said “the dog did it!”

Showbo’s assistance has really helped Dave out, too, especially with her guide work and memory. When at a restaurant, Dave only has to take Marie to the bathroom. He doesn’t need to wait for her – Showbo knows how to find her way back to the table. And, if (when) Marie needs to go again, Showbo knows how to take her there without Dave’s help.

Unfortunately, with Showbo now being nearly eleven-years old now, she’s showing signs of her age, and she’s beginning to have difficulty performing some of her responsibilities. With that in mind, we have decided that it’s time to retire Showbo. Don’t worry – she will remain a part of our family.

Today was Showbo’s retirement party. We had it at Rooney’s Dog Park in West Chester. About 30 people showed up to celebrate. I had the event catered by Rino’s Italian Restaurant in Exton. Their box lunch sandwiches came on croissants, and they were delicious!

During the party, Marie had us play some silly game. We divided up into four teams, and each team had to pass a ball put under their chin from one person to the next – no hands – and back. Many reluctantly participated, but I think everybody had fun doing it.

Marie then took Showbo out of harness for the last time. Marie was very emotional. I think Showbo’s retirement will be harder for Marie than Showbo. But when Domino took Showbo over to the dog park, Showbo ran a little, but spent more time looking around for Marie (who stayed at the dining tables instead of going into the dog park). I wonder how Showbo will take to retirement. I’m sure that the girls and I will need to give Showbo a lot of love to make her happy.

After some time at the dog park, we put up a piñata for the kids, who enjoyed pulling the strings and having the treats and toys fall out.

At the end, we gave each of the dogs who came some frozen doggie ice cream.

All in all, the weather was perfect a perfect 70 degrees with a cool breeze. The party went fairly smooth, and I think everybody had a good time.

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Yesterday, an insane storm came through. It took me nearly two hours to get home because of all of the traffic. Traffic lights were out, roads were closed, flooding, trees down, power lines down, all that stuff. I didn’t have to drive in the storm – that only lasted a short while. But the aftermath was quite the mess.

Marie had called me to tell me that even though the windows in the house were closed, there was water on the floor in the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, and in the kid’s room. I guess the wind found a way to push the water through cracks in the windows or something. Sounds like I need new windows on the house.

When I finally got home, I found that the two pine trees by my front door have had their tops broken off. They had fallen on my walkway to my door. I had to walk around them and come up the hill on the other side in order to get in my house. On my deck, my table with umbrella had been blown over. There didn’t appear to be any other damage to the house.

Several other trees had fallen in my section. I don’t believe any houses were hit by the trees. However, there were at least three chimneys that had been blown off of people’s houses! Obviously, some roof damage came with that.

So, these two trees of mine provided some privacy for us, but not much shade, because of the way the house faces. I’m told the trees will have to come down. Fortunately, I don’t have to do any of that work – the homeowner’s association takes care of that. I wonder what they’ll put in their place?

Today, I received an SMS message from Zynga, the makers of the Live Poker iPhone app. The message read:

dgarozzo, did you know you can earn free chips by playing other Zynga games? Todays featured game is Word Scramble! http://budurl.com/wordscramble2

Now that I have upgraded to the 3G iPhone, I am limited to 200 text messages. I didn’t give Zynga permission to text me. There’s no preferences in the app to give them permission to text me. How is this legal?

Just days after purchasing my lifetime subscription to XM, they announced that they could be going bankrupt. Fortunately, today, Liberty Media bailed them out. Here I was worried about not being able to transfer my service from my built-in XM radio in my car to any other XM radio,. What I should have been worried about is my car outlasting Sirius XM itself.

I recently received an email from XM saying that if I renew now, then I’ll get to keep my online listening account for free. I like to listen to XM online, especially now that Rogue Amoeba created Pulsar so I can broadcast XM in my house (with Airfoil) and record XM on my Mac (with Audio Hijack Pro), so I clicked on the link. When I got to the promotional page, I saw options for one, two, and three-year plans. I like to save money, so I usually buy in bulk. When I got my Honda Odyssey almost 4 years ago, I bought the 5-year XM subscription plan. I think it was around $6 a month. Today, they don’t have a 5-year plan, just a 1, 2, or 3-year plan. (3 years for $349). Curious, I decided to go to XM’s website and see when exactly will my XM subscription run out. While looking, I found the renewal options page. To my surprise, they were promoting a lifetime subscription plan for only $399. That’s only $50 more than the 3-year plan, but the lifetime plan didn’t mention anything about lifetime online listening. Just to be sure, I decided to call XM up on the phone. Sure enough, the lifetime plan does include the online service. That’s great! However, since the radio that I have is built into my Honda Odyssey, they said that the lifetime service needs to stay with the car, and is not transferrable. That sucks! Working the numbers out, as long as I keep this car for 4 years or more, getting the lifetime service is the way to go. Hopefully, the car runs for many more than that, though. And worst case, I guess I’ll be able to listen online for the rest of my life.