The downward slope of winter is what we're on now. Once February begins, you're securely in the second half of winter and you can actually entertain thoughts of spring. This morning it smelled like spring, where it was wet outside. There's still at least 10" of snow on the ground, left over from the 1' we got last week, and we're going to get at least 6" of new snow (probably more at my house--the storm is west of Plattsburgh) today and tonight. But I'm an optimist and I believe in spring. Plus I am totally sick of burning wood. Totally. I can't stand to strike another match but I don't keep my fire going anymore, I've been letting it burn out so that I have to restart it all the time, with kindling and smaller pieces of wood. Hard to believe I was so conscientious and always had huge piles of wood in my house for so many weeks not so long ago. Where has that girl gone? Now it's all I can do to carry in two armloads an evening and I let the fire go out every night. Shame on me.

Friday night I went to the doctor with Ken. This was really important to him as it was a new doctor and he was very apprehensive. He told me later he was dreading the appointment and almost didn't go. Turns out he has an infection in his foot and the doctor said that if we don't treat it "he could lose his foot." Who knows if that's really true but I repeated it enough times to make Ken believe it and take this all seriously. I went into the visit with Ken to act as interpreter and ask the doctor the right questions, etc. Ken looked so cute sitting on the exam table in his union suit. Anyway, now we soak the foot every day and I put Betadine and a band-aid on it, make sure he takes his antibiotics (he won't take his pill until I get there) and he only walks on the heel of the foot. He's not supposed to walk at all but of course he can't do that. I've got his walking down to a minimum, though. Friday night after the doctor's visit we went 4 places to wrap up loose ends, then had dinner in a nice seafood restaurant in Plattsburgh. It's a place that's our version of Champlin's and I had a lobster salad roll and an order of fried calamari. Saturday morning I took him to AuSable to the post office, got his prescription filled, did his grocery shopping for him (where I saw Jackson's former and chatted with her about her barking dog), then took him to Plattsburgh to get his truck, ending up at his house to soak and treat his foot. Now every night on my way home I stop at his house to treat his foot and have a drink with him. We both sort of like this routine, it's a nice social occasion and it gives me a chance to check on his health. The foot is better, mostly due to the antibiotics I'm sure. He had a cut on the bottom that was infected and the infection had spread throughout the foot. He had no pain, still has none, but was worried. Part of the toe nail fell off (he saved it to show me--this gives you an idea of how important my input is to him) but again, it didn't hurt and the doctor said all this was just fine. So now once again we're bonded by an experience. We go back to the doctor next Tuesday for a follow-up visit. This is a good, very nice doctor with a strong accent who treats a lot of older people. I'm happy to be doing this for Ken but wish people would stop making a fuss over it because of course I would do this, who wouldn't?

We were supposed to have a meeting after work today to discuss the characteristics we'd like to have in our new director--staff, member library staff and trustees, plus our trustees. It was postponed, though, because of the weather. The director leaves for Labrador on March 5, I think, but she seems to have told some people she's leaving on the 25th of Feb. Who knows with her, she's not here half the time right now anyway. We're still negotiating our contract and they're very eager to settle before she leaves. That should be interesting, they'll have to give up a lot in order to get us to settle so it might work to our advantage after all.

I watched part of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show on tv but fell asleep last night while it was on (those cocktails with Ken are killing me). During the day they had streaming videos of the breed judging so I could see the Labs. That was fun. They all looked like Chances (only better, of course) and were beautiful. I also watched the Sussex spaniels, which I really like, and the American water spaniels, which I think are cool dogs. There were only 3 of them in the class, since they're rare. New this year to the AKC is the Neapolitan Mastiff, an incredibly unattractive dog, but they're making a huge fuss over it. Huge dog with huge paws. I learned that the Bullmastiff is called a foundation breed because it's the foundation of so many other breeds (bulldog, Newfoundland, etc.). And that's what I learned in school today. Anyway I fell asleep before seeing the final round last night and had to wait until this morning to find out that a German short-haired pointer won Best in Show. Apparently she pointed during her 15 minutes of fame and really won over the crowd.

My dogs, non-show quality that they are, are just fine. Jackson is sound asleep every single morning when we get up. Tess pounces on him to wake him up. Some day he'll have a heart attack when she does this. Even if I beat her to him and gently pat him he awakes with a start. He's a good old boy. Chances is particularly cuddly these days. She goes through these phases when she just wants to be right next to me all the time. Tess is like that a lot of the time--in the evening she likes to sleep on the back of the couch, draped over me. Now Chances likes to be on my lap on the other side. So there we are, all 4 of us on a pretty small couch. Nearly 200 pounds of dog and me. No wonder the couch is ready for the dump.

Work is ok. The director is pretty cheerful, burning her time before she leaves. Her last day is April 29 but she'll be gone all of March. They've posted the position a few places but so far I haven't seen any national postings just yet. One of our clerks retired last week and there's lots of speculation about what the board will do about filling that position. We're desperate to have someone in that spot but they're thinking they might hire a paraprofessional and use part of the time as a fundraising function. Not a good plan from our perspective. We need a full-time clerk who DOES NOT work directly with the board.

I have to pull together lots of statistics for our annual report. Always a challenge, especially since the State changes what they ask for almost every year. They seem to have simplified it this year, but they've introduced a category called The Union Catalog--a physical list of our holdings. This is different from our Automated Library System, and we don't have one. So there's one category I don't have to worry about! A whole new section full of zeros.

Over the weekend I watched Ben Afleck and James Gandolfini in Surviving Christmas. It was actually pretty good. Light but entertaining and not as bad as I expected. I'm still waiting for the right moment to watch Garden State and have 2 other DVD's from blockbuster.com to watch. Can't remember what they are, and will be receiving another one this week as well. I love having a bunch of stuff in my queue. One of my friends has 250 titles in her queue. Yikes.