Remember

True life on Ledge Hill

OK, so I'm whining a lot about the snow. I know for a fact I'm not the only one. As Carol and I were settling down to sleep last night she commented that were we in December we wouldn't give it much more than a second thought. How true.

Enough of that DIP, onto another, “Our Chemical Pet” Patches. Actually, I don't think of this situation as a disaster in progress as much as a process to work through. We are now on the second medication in this journey. The first medication we tried was “Clomicalm”, pretty much strictly for separation anxiety issues. Things seemed to be going well up until three weeks into it when he pulled off what might be considered his greatest escape from the dog kennel. He slid out along between the kennel fence wall and the face of the exterior dog house, a space of about 4” (we’re talking a 55 lb dog here) after having gone over the top of a 2 ft length of 2x4 bracketed vertically on edge against the dog house to block that route. Then he had to have spent some time wiggling his way out of there as he left a lot of loose hair intertwined in the woven-wire of the kennel fencing. Then the icing on the cake – he jumped the backyard fence, so he was wandering around the outer yard when I got home, shesh! Since then we’re back to leaving him in the house as Scotia’s charge now that we give her the run of the house while we are away. We just switched Patches to a different medication “Amitriptyline HCL” in two small doses a day, which is a drug for human depression and I had to pick up as a prescription at a pharmacy. From what I looked up on the web it could take 2 or 3 weeks to build up to an effective level. So today we get home from work and he had gotten all three closet doors upstairs opened. The journey continues…

Me, Guilty?!?

Last on today’s topics is a weight loss story. When I began my program after the 1st of the year to lose weight someone at the office began a weight loss pool, which she has done for several years now and I figured since it began shortly after I got started I weighed in. It ran 14 weeks, we had to put in $14 each and 14 of us joined. The winner was chosen based on weight loss percentage. Well, I came in first at 9.71% (19 lbs loss) for $138 – 2nd was 8.26% for $39 and 3rd was 6.38% for $19. As a group we loss 90 lbs (two people did not weigh in at the end), not bad as we all could benefit from losing some weight. When I started this I wasn’t planning on losing this much weight as quickly as I did and my motivation wasn’t in the pool, I pretty much went about this the way I planned. Still working on it as I want to lose at least 6 more pounds then I’ll decide what to do from there. More on this subject latter as I figure some things out.

The truth about winter...

...it should stay in winter. Another April snowstorm has begun - blasted global cooling. I took today off to work through a few small tasks that have been lingering around my field of vision and occasionally on my mind. So far so good but when I look out the window from this keyboard what do I see?!?

SNOW - it began about an hour and a half ago and is suppose continue until about 4am. I'll get to frolic on the local roadways later when I take Scotia to the vet for her feline leukemia booster. Carol will be driving home from work and stopping to pickup groceries before she gets home then we'll hunker down for the night before getting up in the morning to clean out the driveway to get to work. The forecast calls for two more messy weather patterns to come through in the next few days. All this before picking up our camper next weekend from winter storage. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that whatever we receive for snow has melted away by then.

Easter at Bert's (Mom's)

Easter dinner at my mother's was terrific. Brother Dave, sisters Kathy and Doreen's families were all able to there too. Big ham dinner, mashed and scallop potatoes, carrots, peas, green bean casserole :-p, and the classic desert (see picture below). Plenty of talking and the kids doing their things and as usual the time goes by real fast.

Danny and Harris harassing Jen.

Lindsey calmly observes the aforementioned harassment.

David and Beanie.

Carol, thrilled to have her picture taken. Looking good anyway.

Ian, Melissa and Deanna.

and Ta-Da!...

The Easter Bunny arrived...
Then we ate him, hmm, chocolate cake good...

HAPPY EASTER

of winter and taxes

Barely tolerating our recent April snowstorm. We got about 12 inches overnight here Thursday which included a bottom 1"+ layer of slush where in landed on the paved driveway. This made it difficult for the snowthrower to do it's job and required using a shovel, for me just a little is enough of that activity. I was so unhappy about dealing with it I couldn't be bothered to take any photos at the time but I did take this photo from my office window after getting in 2 hours late. And a miserable ride into the office it was, people in 4 wheel drive SUVs creeping along like they're driving across a lake with thin ice. I tried going a different route to avoid traffic going directly into Portland and hit a detour that took me further away before getting back in the right direction. It was all such a drag being April and all. I never trust that the chance for snowstorms is gone until we're well into May because we've been through it many times before.

Compared to snowstorms income taxes come in at a close second. Just finished up last year's today. We get enough back from the federal government to pay the state taxes we owe. So that's a wash. Better than owing both. Now don't get me started on the "State Use Tax". That one really gets my dander up.

After finishing the taxes to relieve the "stress" I did a little webcam traveling to Great Britain - here's a picture taken yesterday from the webcam at Eilean Donan Castle. We stopped there on our travels around Scotland in 2000. A must see. Below that is a photo overlooking Aberdeen Harbour. We didn't go there but we hope to next time we travel to Scotland. In the future I want to do some blogs with pictures from our Great Britain trips.

Ian is home for a brief visit this weekend. He spent last night at the nearby Scout camp for the OA's ceremony team practice then he'll be here tonight. Tomorrow we're going to my Mother's for Easter Dinner then we'll take Ian to the train station for him to head back to school for a couple of weeks.

Tonight's Netflix movie, "Invincible".

Happy April Fool's Day and Palm Sunday

Oh yeah, I have a blog, guess I should write something occasionally.

I have no pranks planned for today, my imagination has been stifled of late with real world things - which are going well enough. Last weekend's strange weather brought out my camera for some interesting clinging snow pictures.

This was last Sunday morning, I think I took about 25 shots from various windows around the house. It was snowing with a bit of rain mixed in as I got out of bed which is when I took most of the pictures. This one I took from the breakfast table as the sun started to break up the clouds.

Friday night after supper Carol and I went into Windham to pick up a few things one of which was a window shelf for Scotia to look outside from. The sills are a bit narrow for comfortable viewing and with spring weather approaching I thought a place for her to watch snacks, er, birds from would be entertaining.


Last night was movie night here. Our Netfix for this week was "Million Dollar Baby" starring Clint Eastwood, Hillary Swank and Morgan Freeman. Excellent movie. An observation I made was that many times a really good movie may not be about what you expect it to be. That is definitely the case with Million Dollar Baby. All three actors brought you into the the world of a boxing gym and the dreams of a woman boxer. It didn't take long to care about the characters and what they were going through. I'd rather not say much about the story except that I'd recommend seeing it for yourself even if you have no interest in boxing. Clint Eastwood continues to turn in performances (and directing) which reinforces his lifelong success as an actor and director.