After a good week of researching (because that is what I do), I decided to buy an ASUS mini PC. Everything is built into this small box, from wifi to speakers. It fits right on top of my desk, with very few plugs running in and out of it. But the one thing it doesn't have is a CD/DVD drive, which is a minor trade off because how often does one really use one nowadays anyway?
About a week ago, Colleen was trying to sync up all of the music she has on iTunes to her iPad, which Apple doesn't exactly make a simple task. I did some research online, and found a relatively new service called iTunes Match, which allows you to put thousands of songs into the Cloud, accessible to any device in the house. At $25 a year, it seemed like a good deal - so I went for it. So far, so good there.
Being perhaps the biggest Alanis Morissette fan in the world, I decided that I wanted to put my entire Alanis collection into the Cloud, so that I can listen to it every night when riding my exercise bike. Of course, to do that, I needed to load all of her CDs into iTunes. That required me to use Colleen's computer.
Colleen is one of the biggest dog lovers you will ever meet. She treats them all as her children, giving them as much love as they give to her. My two male Goldens rarely leave her side, and even bark at me sometimes when I approach the room she is in. Suffice to say, if someone broke into this house, Colleen's life would be well-gaurded. Mine? Not so much. She subscribes to dog rescue sites to get alerted whenever a Golden becomes available. We weren't seriously looking - she would forward one to me from time to time, and I would decide whether to inquire. The few times I did, I rarely got a response - or got one a week later telling me the dog was adopted. No big deal - we already had two, after all.
On Monday, I had a break in my work day and decided to load in yet another Alanis CD into my collection. I walked over to Colleen's computer and started loading in songs from Flavors of Entanglement, which isn't too well known outside the world of Alanis fandom. As I was sitting at the desk waiting for the CD to load, a new e-mail came through on her computer from a pet rescue site, so I decided to open it. The dog being featured was a 7-month old female Golden Retriever (my sister suggested to me that if we ever got another dog to get a female this time instead of adding more males to the mix). Not expecting much of anything, I quickly sent an e-mail response to the ad, figuring I would be lucky to get a response, never mind actually getting the dog.
Much to my surprise, about 5 minutes after sending the email, I got a reply from the woman who needed to give up the dog - her son had severe allergies to the dog and she needed to find her a home as soon as possible. After several back and forth emails. I decided to meet her (with our dogs) at a dog park near her house. Colleen was sleeping during most of this exchange, and I only woke her up to ask her if she wanted the third Golden. She said yes without hesitation, of course.
Going in, I knew what was going to happen: Our oldest Golden (Josh) would sniff her a few times and walk away, while our youngest (Jeter) would probably be a bit defensive towards her. My prediction came true, as Josh didn't care while Jeter was a little more excited and a bit snippy.
After we decided to take them into the park and put them off leash, things changed in a hurry. Jeter and Milky Way started to get along, and Josh...well, he still decided to just run around the park without a care in the world, oblivious to the dogs running around him. As an aside, the dog park was completely empty other than us, which was a good thing.
After 30 minutes or so of play time and getting to know each other time, the woman asked what I was thinking - the only words that I could come up with was "I want her". No more than five minutes later, I was in my blue Honda Civic with three golden retrievers in the back seat. You will be amazed how dogs find ways to get comfortable in that situation. And what better way to truly test this new dog than by being in the back seat together for a 40-minute drive home? Since I had no room for anything else in my car, the woman offered to bring it all down to Toms River for us. I told her I would email her when I got home - much to my surprise, when I got home (taking a bunch of back roads), she had already made it into the Toms River area. She came over, dropped off Milky's stuff, said good bye, and that was the end. It was about as fast of a dog adoption as you could ever even imagine. Milky's first night and day here have gone smoothly and Colleen has a nice early 6th anniversary gift.
And that is how Alanis Morissette, who Colleen likely thinks I think can walk on water, lead us to our newest family addition. More to come on her adventures.
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