I should be ashamed of myself that I haven't written about Moxie sooner.

Moxie is our girl. She came to our house when she was about 8 weeks old. Nobody knows where she came from, but she was found on a tobacco farm near the Kentucky River. From the start, she's been very passive. She didn't play as a puppy, she just slept.

<>We think she's a border collie/pitbull mix. When I got her, I started training her using Barbara Woodhouse's books. Moxie doesn't lick, doesn't jump up on people, and barks very rarely. She adapted very well. For the last year and a half, she goes to work with me almost every day. Everyone at work loves her. One of the ladies even taught her to 'shake' in order to get cookies. I never thought she'd learn a trick. She always acted insulted when I tried to teach her.

Now that she's approaching her 8th birthday, she doesn't play frisbee anymore. She can't run fast enough to catch the frisbee before it hits the ground.  We've even had to cut back on the tennis ball, because I think she's getting arthritis. She hobbles around for a good day after a game of fetch.

OK, we've been moved in to the new house for just over a week now.

<> My parents and mother-in-law were a huge help during the move-in. Dad did a lot of the basic handyman stuff around the house, Mom cleaned and unpacked boxes, Mother-in-law did landscaping work. We couldn't have done it without them.

Our city provides us with garbage cans for garbage, recyclables, and yard waste. We haven't received the recycling and yard waste cans yet, so my first lawn mowing wasn't a bag job. It still took about 45 minutes, and the skies opened up and rained on me about 5 minutes before I finished. Mowing and bagging is going to take even longer.

<> Our big purchase for the new home was a 50" LCD HDTV for the family room, where we spend most of our time. Once the DirecTV people got the satellite installed, we got to watch some serious HDTV. For those of you who don't know, HDTV is amazing. I've been watching the HD channels just to see HD programming. We're excited to find out Arrested Development is going to be on HDNet.<> I also can't wait to see the new season of LOST in HD.

<> My big project for the rest of the summer is to tend to the yard. Currently, it's infested with weeds. I learned from my Dad that taking care of a lawn is a big project, but making your lawn beautiful and weed-free is a glorious thing. I'm gonna have to get lots of weed killers to get it up to shape, and it's going to take time, since I refuse to use a lawn-care service. Here in Kentucky, we've got a particular weed called wild violet that is a pain in the butt to kill. It took years to get it out of my last lawn, and when the neighbors don't care to get it out of their lawns, it doesn't make things easier.

OK, we've hopefully gotten past all the mortgage issues. They tried to drop a $1400 addition to our scheduled closing costs, but since I did some research and found this to be an error that shouldn't have been made in the first place, the bank agreed to eat the entire amount out of their fees. It actually lowers our monthly mortgage payments slightly. Hooray!

Closing is on July 21, and we can start moving our stuff in immediately afterwards.

The worst thing is that the weather is predicting temps in the 90s with a chance of thunderstorms. The temps are to be expected for late July, but the chance of precipitation really stinks.