weather

I forgot about this part of spring

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The rain is messing with my running plans.  It was raining hard this morning when the alarm went off, so we slept in the extra hour and I went straight to work.  When I got home from work (less than an hour ago), it was raining enough to keep me in.  It’s supposed to rain into the evening, slack off for a little (when it’s too dark and too late to run), and then pick up big time over night and all day tomorrow.  So even if I wanted to get up super extra early (we’re already getting up extra early to meet Jess and Chuck at a book sale in Maryland) to run tomorrow morning before we leave, I couldn’t ’cause it’s supposed to be pouring cats and dogs.  I like rain and everything, but I was on a roll!

</whining>

It’s Friday, it’s the weekend, I get to buy books tomorrow (Hi, I’m Zannah.  I read.), and I get to hang out with people I like.  And I can sleep in on Sunday.

[Pause while I peruse my bookmarks.]

I really and truly just gasped.  Out loud, by myself.  I think I found the house I’m supposed to live in.  At the very least, I need lots of money and an interior decorator who can read my mind and find these pictures years from now when I can afford to redo our entire house.

Go here and read this.  (You don’t have to.  Next time I’ll ask politely.  But it’s a nicely written post about being alone during a power outage.)

I’m done for now.  I have very important things to do, like going through my books and writing down titles I’m missing and authors I love so I can look for their books.  I think we’ve already discussed my need for lists.  I can browse through a book sale forever, but if I don’t bring a list, I might browse right past something I’ve been looking for because I didn’t recognize the author.

Lest you think I only blog about convulsing dogs…

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…(’cause it sure feels like that sometimes)…I’ll write about something else.   Like how disgustingly good it feels to run when you’re in the third or fourth or fifth mile and you’ve gotten past the REALLY tight calves and you’re running slightly downhill and “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie starts to play and you’re singing along (through the panting) and you know you’re  hungry, but it’s not that long before John will be home and you can hug him (I can hug him – nobody gave you permission), but maybe not until after the shower ’cause no one appreciates a sweaty hug (and did I mention that my fifth mile is mostly downhill and I was flying?), and then we’ll grill hot dogs for dinner.  ‘Cause it’s spring!  Close enough, anyway.  It was 63 degrees out when I left the house to run this evening.

I finished The Road the other day (Sunday, I think).  I know Mom and Dad thought it was the most depressing thing they’ve ever read, but I liked it.  Yes, it was a bit (a lot) depressing, but that doesn’t make it a bad book.  I definitely want to see the movie.  And now I’m re-reading Bel Canto.  I love it.  It’s beautiful, it’s lyrical, and all of a sudden I feel like I’m in a Frank Sinatra song (“You’re much to much, and just too very very to ever be in Webster’s dictionary”).  Anyway, I love it.

Up early

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I guess I was awake anyway, and getting up at 5:15 is something I need to start getting used to, but I wasn’t ready for that this morning.  I heard something, and pretty soon after that something resolved into the sound of Roxy convulsing.  I dashed downstairs and found her under the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs.  Poor thing.  I pulled the gate off of her, made sure her head was free, and waited it out.  It was a normal seizure, no cluster this time, and she took her usual half hour to shake it off.

We were both up and irretrievably awake, so running, breakfast, and getting to work all happened a little earlier than usual.  Not a bad thing, I guess.  We took the dogs for a long walk yesterday afternoon (I really like taking walks with John.  And the dogs.  I need to convince him that we should make it a habit.  Even if it’s just a weekend habit.  I like it.), so my legs weren’t completely unprepared for this morning’s run.  I was a little stiff, but it felt really good.  Best thing?  It wasn’t cold.  Yay!

5 miles? Not so bad.

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SPRING!  I know it’s not spring yet, but it’s starting to look like it.  It’s sunny, it got up to 50 degrees, we ran a race, the dogs spent the day outside, and I almost opened some windows.  More progress on that tomorrow, hopefully, since the high is supposed to be 55 (!).  It’s been a very cold winter, and I am SO ready for it to be over.

For the last two and a half weeks, ever since John coaxed/supported/shamed me into registering with him for the 5-mile race, I’ve been dreading today.  I wasn’t at ALL prepared to run 5 miles (high winds, snow and ice on the sidewalks, and being forced to run in the neighborhood streets are my main excuses), so my plan was to run as much as I could, counting on adrenaline to help a little, keep a steady pace, and then if I need to walk, try to walk only for one minute and then jog for at least three minutes before walking again.  So I had a plan.  I also took a peek at last year’s race results and I knew that at least a handful of people took between 70 and 85 minutes to complete the race, so I was fairly confident I wouldn’t be last.  But you never know.  Maybe those people decided never to run 5 miles again so they didn’t bother registering this year.  I told John (who wasn’t feeling all that great about it, either) to look for me around 60-67 minutes.  Closer to 67.

It was a beautiful morning (and it’s been a beautiful day), but pretty breezy, so it was still plenty cold (wind chill in the upper 20s, I think).  We joined the crowd at the starting line and John asked me where I wanted to fit in: front, middle, or back?  Definitely not the front (I’ll get trampled, plus I’ll just be in the way of all those super-serious, super-fast runners), and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be in the back (why start there?  I’ll get there eventually on my own), but in the middle, there’d be all the psychological pressure of watching all those runners pass me along the way.  I said something to that effect to John as we threaded our way to the back of the first third of the crowd, and he said, “Well, you know what it’s like.”  I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean that I should be used to watching runners pass me.  Pretty sure.  🙂

The course took us through neighborhoods in Ashburn John and I don’t typically see, and there were a few people out cheering us on.  There was a big hill near the end of the first mile, and just after it, a woman shouted from her front porch, “It’s all downhill from here!”  She was mostly right.  There were a couple of times the course doubled back on itself, so I could see that I wasn’t actually last, or even that close to last (definitely in the last third, last fourth, maybe even last fifth – I’ll post numbers when the results are up).  One of the times we doubled back, though, I saw a guy juggling.  While running.  He had 5 (maybe 4, but I think five) red balls in the air at once while he jogged up the hill.  Pretty cool, very weird.

Just after the 3-mile mark, I realized I was doing better than expected, averaging about an 11-minute mile, and I started daydreaming about finishing in under an hour.  I wondered if John would even be looking at the finish line that early.  (Of course he would.  There isn’t much else to look at.)  Any walking I did was for less than a minute and not all that often (4 or 5 times total), and I was still on track at the 4th mile, so I ran the entire 5th mile and managed to pick up the pace at the very end, enough to feel like I was going to throw up as I crossed the finish line.  That’s the way to do it.  🙂  It passed, quickly, and John was there, and my time on the clock was just under 55 minutes.  I don’t remember exactly what, but my official time should be lower since it didn’t start until I crossed the starting line.  My watch said 54:24.  You know that means?  That I can do that without training for it?  It means I can do better.  And it was fun and I liked it and I won’t be afraid to do it again.  Another side effect: my fear of 10Ks disappeared.  I can DO this.

I just checked.  Results have been posted.  My official time (matches my watch exactly, for once) is 54:24.  Out of 280 women, I finished 241st.  John finished 197th out of 316 men with an 8:45 pace.  My pace was 10:53.

I can do better than that.

Anyway, we got home, had breakfast, cleaned up (ourselves, not anything silly like the house), and then John had to stay close to his computer since he’s on call to work today.  I talked to Jess (we’re making lots of plans), and then we filed our taxes.  John wants to buy an external hard drive today (and I need a new Scalzi book) AND I really want sushi for dinner, so we’re heading out soon to do all (at least some) of that.  The big decision for the evening is whether we eat out or bring sushi home (and snuggle in for TV or a movie).  Tough call.

Bad hair timing

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But good hair.  I went to work today, went to DC, got my picture taken for my new ID for work, came home, and NOW my hair looks good.  Now that I’m wearing my baggy fuzzy pants and my really old, very fragile Murfreesboro t-shirt.  And earrings.  When I noticed my very nice-looking hair, I noticed that I forgot to take my earrings out when I changed into my comfy clothes.  Looks a little weird.  But great with the hair!  All the layers are curving where they should be curving, and there’s depth and body.  So how do I get it to do this during the day?  Wait to go to work until 6pm?  (Nope, that’s no good.  No one will be there to see it.)  Aha!  Get up earlier and – no.  I guess I’ll just deal with it.

It sounded like spring the other morning.  Birds were chirping, rain was dripping, but I looked around and saw nothing but bare trees and giant piles of dirty slush.  Not spring yet.  Or maybe I was in a bad mood.

A list

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Things I Like (in no particular order):

  • Reading fiction, anywhere, anytime
  • my dogs
  • all dogs
  • PUPPIES!
  • And kittens
  • And cats that actually like people
  • chocolate
  • milk chocolate
  • white chocolate
  • Paul Reiser
  • Mad About You
  • Saturday mornings
  • sunny days (“sweeping the…”)
  • summer days
  • trees
  • books (and their smell)
  • big band music
  • lists
  • flowers
  • BIG bathtubs
  • showers with real water pressure
  • manicured lawns
  • manicured nails (my own, anyway – don’t much care for anyone else’s nails)
  • clean sheets
  • John’s clean, just-out-the-shower smell (much better than his just-came-back-from-a-long-run-sweaty smell)
  • John (duh)
  • everyone else I like (but won’t list here for fear I’ll leave someone I like off the list and that person (let’s call this person “H” for “hypothetical”)  will notice and be mad at me for leaving her (or him) off (even though it was an accident and I really do like H) and she will stop visiting my site, assuming  she was visiting and reading anyway, but if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t know I left her off and she wouldn’t get mad and stop reading, so I guess H was reading, which means, again, that I shouldn’t list anyone because I might leave someone off and she’ll get mad and stop reading)
  • decorating with books
  • my pretty new dining room table
  • Ellen DeGeneres
  • working from home
  • that relaxed feeling as you drift off to sleep

Speaking of that last one, it’s getting close to my bedtime.  More accurately, it’s getting close to that time when I should be in bed reading.

Should a post have just one subject?

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My day didn’t quite live up to its promising start, but how could it have?  I had to go to work.  Not that work is a bad place.  But it’s work, so it can’t compete with anything that’s not work.  No, that’s too big of a generalization.  There are lots of things not-work that are worse than work.  LOTS of things.

It rained today!  That’s the first non-snow precipitation we’ve had since early December.  Well, maybe not, but it’s the first I’ve noticed, and it made a big difference in the amount of snow left on the ground.  I’m SO glad.

I finished The Pillars of the Earth a few days ago.  The last third was much better than the rest, starting just before the (very quick – really, I was surprised)  grand tour of France and Spain.  But I’m not in a hurry to pick up the sequel.  I started a Stuart Woods mystery/thriller instead.  Actually, I read the first Dresden Files novel first (it was okay).  Almost forgot about it.

I haven’t mentioned yet how nicely John planned my birthday.  We got up early to go to Ikea for the shelves, but not before waiting half an hour or so for this woman who answered the craiglist ad to show up to take the old dining room table.  She didn’t show, so we left.  In the car, John said, “I got you this for the ride to Ikea,” and handed me a card and the new Michael Buble CD.  At least half of the songs are standards, with a couple of new originals, and another couple of covers.  I really like it.  We went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast (yay bagels and boo coffee), and then we shopped at Ikea, which is always fun.  When we got home, John put all the shelves together, and sometime in the middle of that, the other woman who answered the craigslist ad showed up for the dining room table.  So it’s gone.  We went out to dinner at the  Woo Lae Oak in Tysons Corner (it was really good), and as we were leaving, John said, “I didn’t bake you a cake, but we can’t let your birthday go by without dessert, so what do you want?”  I decided we should go to Wegman’s and visit the bakery ’cause they were likely to have chocolate-covered strawberries.  They actually didn’t, but when I asked them if they knew where else I might find some, they said they’d make some for me.  🙂  They did, and they were yummy.  So we got home (with the chocolate-covered strawberries and some peanut butter fudge for John) and I found another card and another present on the coffee table.  John planned our evening, too, and bought me a copy of the movie Clue, which neither of us had seen in I don’t know how long.  So we sat on the couch with our chocolate-covered strawberries and fudge, opened a bottle of the dessert wine we bought in Charlottesville when we were there for Jess and Chuck’s wedding, and watched Clue.  Pretty much until we fell asleep.  I couldn’t have been happier.  And that’s why my birthday was so wonderful.  John planned it.

Take control

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Things I’m doing to get out of this hibernation funk I’ve been in since the snow started:

  1. Train the dogs.  I started practicing down with Riley and stay with Roxy, and I’m meeting with a trainer this coming week to work on leash manners and come when called.
  2. Clean the house.  Our room looks like a cave.  Clothes are EVERYwhere.  And there’s stuff piling up on all surfaces downstairs.
  3. Get outside.  Yes, it’s cold, so I won’t be spending lots of time outside, but it’s good for me to see the sun and breathe fresh air.  Dogs like walks and so do I.
  4. Meet with the financial guy.  I need to ask him tax questions and we need to finally pay off the student loan.
  5. Buy the new dining room table!  But not until I’ve cleaned up enough downstairs and found places for everything so we don’t immediately cover our new dining room table in crap.  But that might be today!

More later, I’m sure.

The snow makes running really difficult.  Impossible, really, unless I’m willing to run in the street instead of on the sidewalks.  I could do that in the neighborhood – you know, I might.  I have to do something, and exercise DVDs just aren’t calling out to me.  That should probably be #6, with eating right (and less) #7, but those are all-the-time things.

And here’s a picture for Corey.  It’s me, wearing all the clothes I could find ’cause we were taking the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood, standing next to the biggest pile of snow we have.  John took it Thursday evening, so there’s already been some melting and settling.

Back to work

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I tried to get to work yesterday, but as I left my neighborhood, I slid out onto the semi-major road.  It’s usually pretty clear and much safer than the neighborhood roads, or at least it has been after all our other storms and weather events.  Yesterday, I couldn’t see pavement at all.  It felt like one big sheet of ice, so, after I caught my breath, I went back home.  John didn’t even make the attempt (not in the mustang, no way), so we had another pleasant day of working from home together.  We took a walk around the neighborhood (almost completely in the streets, since most sidewalks aren’t clear) with the dogs before it got dark, and then I started working on our taxes before dinner (I’m not quite done, but how do we owe again?  What’s going on?).

Back to the office today.  I really really really want things to go back to normal.  Normal = NO SNOW.  Go away now.  Melt faster!

The Snow Also Rises

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Bridget and her boy came up with much better names for the snowstorm than I did.  Actually, since Cleveland routinely gets SO MUCH MORE SNOW than we do, I’d be surprised if Cleveland residents didn’t have a system for naming snowstorms.  Kinda like how hurricanes get named.  This year they’re all named after girls.  Like Driving Miss Snowy, Snowy Poppins, and Forgetting Snowy Marshall.

I’m reaching, I know.

WTF?!?

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More snow.  The Post is calling this one Snoverkill, which makes me laugh a little every time I see it.  We’re in the band on the accumulation map that says 8-14″ between now and tomorrow evening.  The National Weather Service says our county should get between 8 and 12 inches by the tomorrow evening.

John and I will both be working from home tomorrow, but since the snow isn’t supposed to stop until evening, I don’t know if we’ll be able to dig ourselves out before Thursday morning.  My normal after-work evening is out of whack today, too.  John normally has class Tuesday nights, but it was canceled because of snow last week, and this week, the professor decided to have class via webinar.  So since just before 7, John has been glued to his laptop with headphones and a microphone so he can listen to the lecture and participate.  On the plus side, the professor apparently said he was going to try to get through the material quickly.  AND he’s home.  Also a plus.

I’m afraid I might be over The Pillars of the Earth.  I used to really like it, and I’m still enjoying it, but as I’m reading it, I catch myself 1) getting really annoyed with Tom (like REALLY annoyed), and 2) wishing they’d just hurry up and get to the good stuff already.  What good stuff?  I don’t really know.  Maybe I’ll remember why I liked it so much when we actually get to the cathedral-building sections.  Those are the parts that stuck with me.  That and the mini-tour through Europe near the end.

I might cry

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They’re talking about another 10 to 20 inches of snow tomorrow and Wednesday.  I don’t know where we’re going to put it.  Did you SEE the five-foot-tall piles of snow on either side of our driveway?

The roads were pretty bad this morning, so John and I both worked from home.  It was wonderful.  We set up in the dining room with a fire in the fireplace, sat in on conference calls, drank hot chocolate, and got a lot of work done.  I ventured out early this afternoon to go to the pharmacy and check out the roads.  They’re not terrible, but they’re not totally clear, either.   And we will both be heading to our offices tomorrow.

This snow, she is unnatural

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Now I have everything I want (for today).  We have a fire blazing in the dining room, and John and I are set up on our laptops across the table from each other.  Riley is on a towel on the floor to my right, and Roxy is on the dog bed in front of the fire.  I have a glass of wine, classical music is coming from the family room, I’m wearing my pretty new shawl from Jess, and if I really want to, I can watch the Super Bowl ads on hulu.com.  I may even turn the TV on at some point during the game (John has expressed an interest in seeing The Who during the half-time show).

We did a lot more shoveling today and managed to get both cars out of and back in to the driveway, so we know we can get out tomorrow.  Then I was done shoveling, but John decided to be a good neighbor and help the downhill neighbors clear their driveway and sidewalk.  I played with the dogs in the backyard.  Then I made John come out with the camera and see it, ’cause it’s really funny to see them try to stay on top of 3 feet of snow.  Which they wouldn’t even try until I jumped in first.

Here’s John shoveling the sidewalk:

And here I made him pose:

And here’s the neighbor with the snowblower who could make a TON of money if he wanted to rent that thing out to his neighbors (or a ton of friends if he wanted to clear everyone’s sidewalks for free):

The poor buried mailbox again:

And the path I dug to it so the mailperson can deliver the mail:

The view down the street:

The view up the street:

The house, with a clear driveway, clear cars, and a TON of snow piled in the yard:

Here’s a short series of Riley in the backyard.  First, sitting nicely but not looking at me:

Second, getting WAY too close to the camera.  That’s his nose in the top right corner.

Third, Riley singing “STOP in the name of love!”:

Me and Riley swimming through the snow:

Roxy coming over to see what’s up:

And here she is, glad to get away before the wrestling and the hand-chewing started:

The hand-chewing started when I grabbed Riley’s lower jaw:

Riley, trying to crouch in the snow and failing miserably:

And here, apparently, he’s trying to fly, but his little ears just aren’t big enough:

Riley and I are sitting on top of 3 feet of snow and..yelling at each other?

And here’s a series of Roxy going “Okay.  Enough with the yelling and playing.  Can we go inside where it’s warm now?  What is WRONG with you people?”

Riley’s sneak attack…

…Ended with kisses:

Then he went back to my hands (coated in bacon maybe?):

Apparently, my hair was coated in bacon, too:

Riley officially won, though, by STANDING on me as I tried to get up:

Okay, enough pictures.  Really.  And it may look like I was having fun in the snow, but don’t believe everything you see on the internet.  That smile was photoshopped.  I had a dream last night that the snow had melted away overnight and I was so happy.  Then I woke up.  Snow snucks.

Snowmygod

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The snow just stopped.  Maybe 15 minutes ago.  And the sun is out.  Our total is somewhere around 30 inches, maybe a little more in places.  Definitely more in the corners of our yard.  When we were shoveling this morning, the sidewalks (which were a little lower than the yard) had 24″ of snow.  We spent a couple of hours shoveling the driveway and part of the sidewalk, mostly to make sure we could get the car out if we really had to.  Tomorrow we’ll tackle what fell after we quit, the rest of the sidewalk, and we’ll try to dig John’s car out.  If he can swing it, I really think he should work from home on Monday.  The roads will be terrible.  We had a plow come through sometime last night, maybe early this morning, but none since then.  Our street has at least a foot of snow.  Snow snow-snow, snow-snow-snow.  I’m tired of it.  And it’s way too deep for the dogs.  The first thing we did today was clear a path on the deck, clear the deck stairs, and shovel out an area in the yard so they could get around.  They can blaze their own paths from there, although they really haven’t this time.  They’ve stayed under the deck overhang, where the snow isn’t as deep.  Mark asked for pictures (apparently, he needs proof – Hi, Mark!), so here they are.  Maybe it’ll all disappear overnight.  I’m ready for spring!

Snow depth on the bench around 9:30 last night:

Snow depth on the bench as of about 9:30 this morning (through the sliding glass door with snow on it):

Snow depth on the bench around 4:45 this afternoon:

The back corner of the yard yesterday afternoon (3-ish, I think):

The back corner of the yard around 4:45 today:

My flower bed, buried:

An evergreen in the neighbor’s yard, yesterday:

Same evergreen, after the snow stopped today:

Out the front door this morning:

The driveway, before shoveling:

John shoveling the driveway:

The house, after shoveling (and the buried mailbox):

The neighbors, also shoveling:

And Roxy, peeing in the clearing we shoveled for her:

You’re welcome.  🙂

So yeah, we have lots of snow.  We came in from shoveling around 11:30 or so, showered, and then had breakfast even though it was after noon.  Hot chocolate (of course), cereal (Wegman’s version of Lucky Charms), and muffins.  And we watched a little TV.  Since then, I’ve been messing around on the internet, and John has been stealing cars and beating people up.  Seriously.  Oh, yeah, and we’re drinking champagne that’s been in the fridge since New Year’s.  It’s better aged.  🙂

It’s starting

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The DC area’s second giant snowstorm of the season is here, and I really don’t like the name they’ve chosen.  I think they called the December storm “Snowpocalypse”, and they’re calling this one “Snowmageddon”.  “Snowmageddon” is weak, so here are some names I like better:

Snowmygod (heard on the radio)

Snowzilla

Mt. Snowverest

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Snowing – hm, that’s for when the storm is over.

And there I get stuck.  I need more ideas.  In the meantime, here are some pictures as of about 2:15 this afternoon:

And a bonus funny picture of Riley:

The Snowhemoth

The Abominable Snowstorm

The Snow Has Eyes

My first white Christmas

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Assuming, of course, that the snow doesn’t melt away today.  It’s Christmas Eve morning, and John and I are sitting at the kitchen counter in his parents’ house in PA.  John’s dad is sitting at the desk in the kitchen, and the three of us are ignoring each other in favor of our laptops.  John is working (let this be a lesson to you all: work sucks), and I just applied for two jobs (required for unemployment).  Emily and I went for a jog with Mabel this morning, John went for a jog by himself, Molly slept in, and Pat went to work at an absurdly early hour.  I was awake then, too, because I blocked her in last night and she had to wake us up so we could move the car.  She’s on her way home now.

We decided to use a pet-sitting service instead of the kennel this year.  We’re a little nervous about leaving the dogs loose in the house for so many days, but the sitters have five different ways of getting in touch with us, so we should find out pretty quickly if disaster strikes.

I’m just babbling now.  The plan for the day (since no one has any emergency shopping to do – a first!) is to go to the mall (outdoor mall) to soak up the Christmas ambience and then maybe go to a movie.  After breakfast, I hope, ’cause I’m getting hungry!

Shoveling is hard

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Shoveling is made harder when there are 19 inches of snow and only one snow shovel.  I was using the regular shovel.  Not as efficient.  It took us more than two hours to clear the driveway, the cars, and the sidewalk.  Then John cleared the deck.

Also, our shopping is basically done.  Yay!

Now, pictures.

Here’s the bench on the deck after the snow stopped last night:

View of the deck before shoveling this morning (through the sliding glass doors):

The deck after John shoveled:

Some pictures of the yard:

And some pictures of Roxy in the snow:

This isn’t supposed to happen here!

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It’s 3:40pm, we have over a foot of snow (judging by the undisturbed pile on top of the table on the deck), and it’s still coming down.  This is nuts.  We could probably leave the house if we really needed to, in the Tucson with 4-wheel drive on, but the roads haven’t been plowed (not in the neighborhood, at least) and we have everything we need here.  I got home last night right about 5pm, let the dogs out, unloaded the car, and went back right back out to Wegman’s.  We have plenty of food.  Good stuff, too.

The snow started before we went to bed last night, and we had 4-6 inches when we woke up.  John went out front to shovel (we figured it would be easier to shovel at the end if we made a dent in the beginning), and I played in the back with the dogs.  We shoveled the deck, too, but that was three and a half hours ago and it’s like we were never outside, front or back.  I just let the dogs out again, and Riley didn’t even bother to leave the deck at first.  He just peed on a pile of snow.  ON the deck.  I can’t blame him.  It doesn’t really matter.  But they love the snow.  Riley more than Roxy.

We didn’t eat breakfast until about noon (since we shoveled and played first).  We have a fire, we’re watching TV, John is doing some programming stuff, and I’ve been reading during the commercials.  We’ll probably switch to movies (other than those that happen to be on right now) soon, like White Christmas.  Seems appropriate.  🙂  We were watching Keeping the Faith earlier.  I love that movie.  It was on TBS or USA or something, so it was edited a bit, but I love it anyway.

And here are the pictures.

View of the deck table around 9:30am:

View of the bench around 9:30am:

View of the deck table after we let the dogs out:

View of the deck table about 5 hours later:

View of the bench around 3:30pm:

Sister Mary Riley:

Obi-wan Riley:

A good (normal) picture of Riley:

And Riley’s warning look: “Back off, buddy, I’d had about enough of you and that camera.”

Cold in Kentucky

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Well, the weather outside is chilly (not very frightful), but inside is nice and toasty, made more so by the Yuletide Fire DVD Mom got.

I had a very weird few moments at the Canadian Brass concert (where they played only a couple of Christmas songs) Saturday night.  They played Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which I know from their Greatest Hits album.  I listened to that album on repeat while reading The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through, by Stephen R. Donaldson, years and years ago, and ever since then, whenever I hear that album, I’m returned to that story.  That’s never happened to me with a live performance before, but it did Saturday night.  For the length of the song, scenes from the books were shuffling through my memory.  Strange.  But cool.

Then Jess and I stayed up to watch Love Actually and drink champagne.  🙂  Until 2am.

I wimped out on my run this morning.  I took Howdy with me, but I left my ear muffs and gloves behind.  We only made it three blocks before I decided I was too cold.  That was dumb, ’cause it’s going to be even colder tomorrow.  I won’t forget my ear muffs and gloves again, but I don’t know how much that’ll help.