Post for the new year

Someone told me I needed to post something because I hadn't done anything since last year.  Well, heck, last year wasn't so long ago.  Although I guess 2 weeks is sort of long.

I haven't been doing much, the usual winter-type stuff.  I'm trying to keep my fire going all the time, especially since I got my latest electric bill.  It's expensive to have no heat in the back of the house because the heaters in the front of the house work harder.  I need to find someone to fix the heater, but I hate to bother people.  There are a couple of people I could ask (to pay) and I may get desperate enough to do that.  I think my washing machine will be fixed soon.  That's not a crisis, though, since I can use the Holt's equipment easily.  I spent 2 lovely mornings at their house over New Year's while I washed clothes & bedding.  Geez, I guess I haven't done any laundry since then.  No wonder I have no clean socks.

I spent Saturday night with the Holt's, having dinner then working on the jigsaw puzzle I got for them.  It was a map of the world, with pieces shaped like the countries.  And lots of oceans & seas.  We concluded that we are woefully globally geographically ignorant.  Why are there 2 Tropics of Capricorn?  What IS the Tropic of Capricorn?  and so on.

I've not really been up to much else.  Working--time to get the year wrapped up, lots of statistics and conclusions we can reach from the statistics.  Or make things up, maybe.  I'm still weeding, an endless project.  I'm in the gardening books now, which are heavy and not very interesting to look at.  And we have tons and tons of them.

We got a grant to buy ereaders and ebooks, so I ordered 6 Nooks, 6 Kindles, 2 Sony readers and still have money left over to buy more.  We're all supposed to familiarize ourselves with ereaders so that, when our ebooks subscription kicks in we can help people who have questions and will no doubt call us.  Even without the bookmobile.  So far I've learned a little about the Sony reader, which is not as nice as the others, but isn't very hard to use.  Problem is we can't download books until our subscription is live, so we can't learn how to do that (except for the freebies).  Meanwhile I scan the 172-page users manual that's loaded on the reader.  yawn.  I'll take it home this weekend.  Along with the 2nd season of Mad Men.  I recorded a bunch of episodes, then watched season 4 (out of order, because I didn't notice that someone had put the discs back in the container out of order).  So now I have some awareness of story lines, but there are mystery people who've shown up, and a divorce happened somewhere along the way.  I'll also watch Midnight in Paris, because I need to catalog it (OK, I'm not watching it because I have to catalog it, I'm just watching it because I want to) and return it.

Sunday I'm hosting the Sunday Snack Hour.  Instead of having a big Sunday dinner the way we did for years and years we get together at Pat's for snacks and a visit.  I don't go every Sunday, just once in a while.  So I decided to host the event this weekend.  Because I cleaned my house for book group last weekend, and I have Monday off so I won't feel cheated out of ME time for the weekend.  I can't decide whether to take down my Christmas tree or not.  I think probably I should, because it takes up too much room.  There was enough room for book group, but there might be more people on Sunday.

We had a good book group meeting.  Nice visits, exchanged presents, ate a lot, had a good evening.  Next book is Chocolat by Joanne Harris.  I liked the movie, especially the Johnny Depp part.  I'm reading The poisonwood Bible right now, for the second time.  It's very funny in places, and I know I really liked it the first time I read it (many years ago).

Dogs are ok.  Chances is in her own special world, not aware of much and not very active.  Tess and Treasure are quite a pair.  Chances isn't any more mobile but she gets around.  Everyone tells me I'll know when it's time to end her life, but so far I've not received such a message.  But I'm not sure how much longer she wants to be around for.  I had a long conversation with the vet about it and he said as long as the quality of her life is good ("are her eyes bright?"  Well, no, she's got congenital cataracts and never could see very well) there's no problem.  I don't know how great the quality of her life is.  She does very little and falls down a fair amount.  And likes to pee on the floor.  Which REALLY irritates me.  It's not that she's unaware of doing it, either, she does it deliberately on the bathroom rug.  Honestly!  What about the quality of MY life?

We're getting snow today.  I went out at lunch, did grocery shopping so I won't have to stop on my way home.  It's supposed to turn from wet snow to ice and/or rain later in the day, so we're closing an hour early.  Yippee.  Big deal, but nice.  It would be nicer if today were Friday and we were getting paid.