B) Traced strange dead smell to geriatric dog # 2 and spent 20 min clipping, disinfecting, scrubbing, and removing bits of dead decaying papilloma [...]]]> A) Emptied anal sacs of geriatric dog #1 (a rather invasive procedure which involves rubber gloves and vaseline) after witnessing her moonwalk her butt across the living room carpet – check.

B) Traced strange dead smell to geriatric dog # 2 and spent 20 min clipping, disinfecting, scrubbing, and removing bits of dead decaying papilloma growth from her head – check.

C) Opened first beer of the day immediately after A and B – check.

Winter thought she wanted out…

…but changed her mind.

The snowcat was joined by a snowowl

if you look real close you can see our power lines – under the weighted hemlock branches.

neighbor’s house through the snowy fence

Even the abandoned rundown house next to us looks pretty in the snow

My favorite [...]]]> The entire gallery can be found here.

Winter thought she wanted out…

…but changed her mind.

The snowcat was joined by a snowowl

if you look real close you can see our power lines – under the weighted hemlock branches.

neighbor’s house through the snowy fence

Even the abandoned rundown house next to us looks pretty in the snow

My favorite pic – one of our dogwood trees, as seen from below.

We ended up with eight inches and the snow was tapering off when it got dark. The roads are now clear. I am assuming at this point that I’ll be able to get out of here and get to Tennessee tomorrow but it should make for an, uh, interesting journey through Sam’s Gap.

She’s not [...]]]>

Lindsy turned fifteen this past month. The picture above is of her eating the last of the Pfeffernusse Christmas cookies from Trader Joe’s – we bought her a doggie cupcake from a local petshop but it was hard as a rock. She loves Pfeffernusse so that was probably a better ‘birthday cake’ for her.

She’s not doing real great these days. There have been several incidents where she couldn’t stand up, and she’s losing control of her bladder sometimes as well. She spends most of her time in a confused fog and it’s really sad to see that. She’s covered in huge lipomas and papillomas that keep getting infected and bleeding. Her appetite isn’t what it used to be, and we have World War Three with her over her ProIn pill (for the incontinence) every day. But she does still eat, and enjoys her bedtime cookie… I think we may be coming up on a hard decision soon, but we aren’t there just yet.

It just occurred to me that since we usually count our rescued animals’ birthdays from the date we adopted them, that Cricket had a birthday in January. Which one, is anyone’s guess. When we adopted her five years ago, our vet said she was at least ten — so I guess that makes her fifteen, as well. She’s doing pretty good, she got past that last bad spell and though her eyes are filming over now, overall she’s pretty spry, bad heart and all.

Simon will be nine this year… Olive will turn thirteen… how did everyone get so old?

Lindsy at a park in Garland, TX six years ago.

I was originally scheduled to go to Oak Ridge, Tennessee today but had to reschedule [...]]]> March is starting off with a bang…as of right now (3:36 PM) we have about six inches of the “two to four inches” of snow we were supposed to get, and it’s still pouring down. This picture was from around noon:

I was originally scheduled to go to Oak Ridge, Tennessee today but had to reschedule for tomorrow. This morning the snow wasn’t sticking and the roads were OK, but I was worried about getting stuck on my way back. That turned out to be a good call on my part, it would be an hour from now before I came back through the mountains and I don’t think I would have made it. Instead, I caught up on some training and inventory work, clocked out early, and built a snowman!

Or rather, an snow cat.

Joy supervised from the porch, and took a few pictures:

snow covered bush

driveway with the Jeep in position in case we get snowed in

abominable snowcanuck

the snowcat surveys his domain (note ears at lower right)

The flakes are getting bigger and falling harder. Maybe time for some hot chocolate and popcorn.

He or she never [...]]]> I was walking a dog at the shelter today and ventured up the hill behind the building so we could really stretch our legs. Something caught my eye sitting on the hillside in the sun… at first I thought “wow, what an ugly cat” but then I approached for a closer look:

He or she never moved, even when we got about twenty feet away, I almost got the sense I could have just walked up and nudged it and it would have fallen over like a statue. Of course, being an opossum, it might well have done just that.

We awoke yesterday morning to a sea of snow, slush, ice, and freezing rain. It was also pretty chilly because we’d turned off the heat the night before so we wouldn’t have to worry about the heat pump seizing with ice.  I’d already rescheduled my service calls for the day, which were way [...]]]>

Ice encrusted fence

We awoke yesterday morning to a sea of snow, slush, ice, and freezing rain. It was also pretty chilly because we’d turned off the heat the night before so we wouldn’t have to worry about the heat pump seizing with ice.  I’d already rescheduled my service calls for the day, which were way up near the NC/Virginia state line, and planned to work from home, but at 7:00 AM the power went off so I ended up having to call in and take a vacation day. At least we’d been able to heat the house back up and make coffee before we lost power.

Ever wonder what it would be like to be inside the Slurpee machine at a 7-11?

The shelter was closed due to the bad weather but Joy and I went in for a few hours and helped clean and feed. Afterwards, since downtown still had power, we went out for lunch and picked up a few things from Ingles, and this proved to be a great day to go to the DMV to renew the Jeep’s registration – no lines!

Ice-encrusted trees

By the time we were home for the day the power had come back on. We were really lucky – as of today there are still over 15,000 people in Henderson County without power. We did have some problems with our heat; I knew I was going to have to keep an eye on the heat pump icing up and even bought a heat gun to be prepared for this, but besides having to de-ice it ever few hours we also had an issue where the furnace would not shut off. We ran the heat pretty much full out for most of the day, in case we lost power again, and when we did finally cut it back the motor just kept running. I went up in the attic and there wasn’t any obvious switch or cutoff, so I finally flip the switch on the circuit breaker panel. This morning when I turned it back on it seemed to be working normally, maybe we had tripped some sort of relay or something?

Icy power lines. That green blur, I think, is some effect of water pouring down, the edge of a Tibetan prayer flag, and the camera flash. Or ectoplasm.

All in all, the storm wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and for us, impacted life pretty minimally. The gas logs kept the living room nice and warm while the power was out (we shut them off while we were at the shelter, of course) and we didn’t have any big downed limbs or anything like that. We hope those without power have it restored soon. I suppose we do need to figure out a better long term solution for the heat pump icing issue – maybe build the roof overhang out a bit? Spending the evening babysitting it, running out with the heat gun every couple of hours, was a bit nervewracking. But then again, this has been a really unusual run of weather, not typical at all, hopefully next winter the El Nino will have passed.