HoundBlog

Good morning everyone! Here in South Carolina, we are singing “Let it Rain, Let it Rain, Let it Rain”.

It started raining yesterday morning and continued through the night. It’s stopped for now, and is supposed to clear off today and be windy — right now, it’s just breezy, but we sure did need and welcome that rain! It was a good ground-soaking rain, too.  Even my cockatiels were singing for the rain yesterday although they certainly were not out in it 😆

We did our Christmas shopping yesterday — 4 hours worth (that’s a record for Ken!) and today, along with laundry, I get to wrap presents and prepare them for shipping. Ken also wants to take pictures of the puppies as it’s getting close to time to let them go to new homes. No rest for the wicked, it seems.

New Christmas song up at  Musings, so check them out — Dolly Parton, Eartha Kitt and Walter Brennan among others. Look over on the right and find the Category of Christmas or music, click it and all the posts with Christmas music in them will be listed.

I hope you have a great day today! See you tomorrow!

Love to all,

Margaret

It’s Friday! And the end of a rather long week. Well, it seemed like a long week no doubt due, in part, to last week being short and with Wednesday being such a long day for me.

I hear on the news this morning that the Northeast was hit by a bad snow/ice storm, so my day today may be quite busy since we have an office that works about 20 techs out of it up there. Our call volume for that area will more than likely increase by a significant margin.

On my other blog, I’ve been sharing Christmas songs with my readers. If you are interested in some of them, please pop over to Musings è¿é and catch the action before I take them down. Look for any of the posts tagged with Christmas — over on the right hand side, you’ll see all the different categories, and if you’ll click Christmas, it will show you all the posts I’ve put in that category. The songs are all in different posts there. Several are sung by Burl Ives, I have one by Brenda Lee and one by Elvis and some fun ones as well as the traditional. I’ll be putting up more as the month goes on, so check back from time to time.

Nothing important going on this weekend .. we do have to do our Christmas shopping and it will depend on if Ken works Saturday or not as to what day we get it done. Then I will have to wrap and pack all the gifts. I heard about something this morning on NPR that I will have to check into. It’s called Charity Cards and they are gift cards that you purchase in whatever amount you want to and give to someone to donate the money to a charity of their choice. It sounds a tiny bit complicated, but I like the idea and may buy some to give the older grandkids. It’s never too early to teach them the value of helping others, IMO and this time of year seems to encourage a lot of self-interest which this may also help offset.  I know one year I asked the kids instead of spending money on Ken and I to donate that money to a charity. I don’t know if they did it or not, but truthfully, there’s nothing that we really need, so I think supporting a charity would be a great thing to do. I’ve also found a place online where you can donate things like chickens, geese, goats and cows to different places that need these livestock animals to replace ones lost to drought or war. To me, helping people get back to helping themselves is the right thing to do. Just giving money, food or clothing is not quite enough. People thrive when they are self-sufficient and doing things to help them get that way seems a very worthy effort.

Well, I’ve blathered on enough for one day. I hope you all have a wonderful Friday!

Love to all,

Margaret

Sorry I’m so late this morning! I hope you are all well, fat and sassy!

I have a story to tell you….

Once upon a time there was a really WONDERFUL lady who had to go to Sam’s Club to buy her poor doggie a bone (or something like that). It was late in the day when she got there and she’d had a really busy day where she didn’t get to eat lunch, so she was hungry and you KNOW how Sam’s Club is! All that FOOD!

Anyway, after walking the 40 acres to get to the very back corner of the store — of course the opposite corner from the door, so it was a REALLY LONG WALK, she loaded up her dog bones into her cart and started the trek back to the checkouts (another 40 miles or so). Well, by the time she got to the front of the store, her tummy was just rumbling and grumbling something awful and she’d already passed all the healthy stuff, so there was only candy left and she fell into temptation. She strolled the aisle quickly intending to buy a candy bar, but the candy bars were so expensive! So, she settled on a bag of Reese’s Pieces thinking that they were mostly peanut butter, so wouldn’t be quite as bad as the total sugar items were.

She checked out and loaded her purchases in the car, putting the bag of candy in the front where she could access it going down the road. Well, as you probably know, Sam’s Club doesn’t sell anything in a “personal size” — it’s all “team size” — and suitable for an NFL team of 40 players (are we stuck on this number or something??). So, she opens her bag of Reese’s Pieces and proceeds to munch as she drives home.

By the time she’s arrived, she’s feeling a little queasy from the sugar that she’s not used to eating so much of, but at least she’s not dying of hunger anymore. She does all her chores, fixes dinner for hubby (fried catfish fillets, shrimp and grits and coleslaw), but can only eat about half her dinner — too many Reese’s Pieces you know — certainly way more than 40!

After dinner, she goes into her computer room and proceeds to answer emails, write blog posts (although not on this blog), answer forum questions (geeky forums — nothing you would be interested in) and before she knows it, it’s 12:03 AM!! Well, her clock is set to go off at 3:45 AM, so she hightails it to bed.

Moral of the story is — sugar is worse than caffeine for keeping you awake.

I think she learned her lesson regarding Reese’s Pieces — they are being freely distributed to all her co-workers today so as not to tempt her ever again.

I would imagine that I will go to bed early tonight.

Have a great day y’all!

Love to all,

Margaret

p.s. if you would like the recipe for shrimp and grits, it’s HERE

Gosh! Middle of the month already (well almost — I can hear Ma now!) and I’ve not even started shopping for Christmas!

That’s not true either. I have a few gifts, but the bulk still has to be done. Guess we will get out this weekend and get that all taken care of. Then it’s wrapping and shipping said items. Keep thinking “it’s only once a year”. And I know I’m making a big production out of this, but it’s all in the spirit don’t you know? I actually have a lot of fun picking out things for everyone.

Maggie’s trip back to SC is mostly arranged. The family that has her will take her to my friend Patience in Paducah, KY and Patience will meet up with a nice lady who offered to bring her to a lure trial in Georgia the weekend after Christmas. We’ll pick her up there. Erin and Patrick offered to bring her to the house from Georgia, but that would take them out of their way a fair amount, and we have an errand to run down that way anyway, so will just pick her up ourselves.

I got the mountain of laundry done yesterday as well as dusting (I’m ashamed to admit just how long it’s been since I dusted ;( ) and vacuuming which was needed very badly.

So, now you know what’s up with us.

Have a wonderful day!

Love to all,

Margaret

Good morning everyone!

Well, plans have changed (don’t they always?). Ken was very uncomfortable with my driving 22 hours in 48, so has decided to put the trip off until the 22nd. In the meantime, I’ve put a call out to the Whippet lists for a ride for her, and might just have a possible one at the end of the month. I don’t want to jinx anything, so will leave the details til it’s all formed (or not).

Colin — thanks for the offer of bed and breakfast. That means a ton to me! And it wasn’t CommentLuv, but rather that you’ve never commented before and I moderate the first two, so you have one to go 🙂 Thanks for reading my blog, too by the way. Oh, you might want to check out Ben Spark’s blog — he has a contest going for some gadget (called a GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr Lite) you can put on your camera that has a GPS that will mark your photos with the co-ordinates of where it was shot. At any rate, it sounds like something that would appeal to you, but the requirements to enter the contest are beyond my feeble abilities.

I FINALLY got the photo of Butterfiy’s BBBEIS win in Columbia in October — the photographer had to fix the ear and did a decent job of it! It’s a great photo of Butterfly and I want to use it in an ad as well as on my website.

Well, I need to get started on the mountain so I have a head start on it before I have to begin my real job 😛

Y’all take care!

Love to all,

Margaret

And a good Monday morning to you all! Here I am, back at work after 4 days off, and, while we enjoyed our weekend at the dog show, as usual, we are tired and in need of some rest. A sad state of affairs if you ask me. 😛

We didn’t do anything spectacular at the show. Had some nice placements with the Whippets in some stiff competition, and Payne took a reserve yesterday, but that was the best we did. Now we get a few weeks off until Ladson in January.

On a sad note, our placement of Maggie with the family in IL is not going so well, so I will be taking a run up there to pick her up tomorrow and returning Wednesday if my boss OK’s my request for the time off. I have vacation that I haven’t taken and the company won’t allow it to be carried over to the next year, so if I don’t take it I will lose it anyway.

Work seems to have survived quite well with my absence for a change — at least there aren’t a zillion and a half problems to handle this morning which is a good thing! Tonight I’ll need to start on the mountain of laundry we managed to create this weekend since I won’t have my normal Tuesday to work on it, so I not having a ton of stuff to clean up at work is going to be rather nice. I’ll have more energy for the mundane 😆

I think that gets you all caught up with us for now and I need to get back to work, so will sign off.

Take care and love to all,

Margaret

Happy hump day! Yes, it’s the middle of the week and actually Friday for me 😛 I am on vacation the rest of the week! Wahoo! We leave for Winston-Salem in the morning.

It was a pretty business as usual day yesterday. No disasters and nothing exciting happened.

I baked lemon bars and they are tasty enough, but nothing to win a prize with. Ken liked them (which actually surprised me) and I’ve now tested my first recipe from the new cookbook. Week after next, our company is having a bake-off and I will make the raspberry bars that are in the cookbook. They look very yummy!

I should have started sprouts yesterday, but didn’t start them until this morning. I’m afraid my birds will have to go without sprouts in their breakfast while we’re gone which is bad on my part. The sprouted chick peas, lentils, mung beans and grains make up a lot of their healthy diet. They will still get their chopped veggies (squash, peas, broccoli, carrots, sweet potato and cauliflower), but not very many sprouts. I will also add almonds, millet and brown rice to the mix. They will also get whole nuts, chili peppers, sunflower seeds, and some fruit pellets. Oh well a couple of days won’t hurt them.

It looks like I will be adding a bird to my flock. An orange-wing Amazon parrot who is 12 years old is in need of a good home and I happen to have an empty cage. Amazons are known to be good talkers and very smart birds, so we’ll see if this one lives up to that reputation.

Well, that’s all the news from Donalds. I hope everyone is feeling good and has a wonderful day today!

Love to all,

Margaret

Happy birthday, Sis! I hope you have a wonderful day!

I’m getting a bit of a late start on this today. Have been hard at work since 5:30 and just now came up for air. I need to get the Whippets out, but I was trying to wait until it got warmer. I’m sure they’re about ready to bust, though.

I’m getting the finishing touches on my report. Waiting on the boss to say yeah or nay on it.

I was asked to review a book on SQL Server 2005 administration. They’ll send me the book and then I have to write a 800-1200 word review on it. I hope I didn’t bite off more than I could chew 😆

At any rate, it’s getting me a free book to keep and if I do a good job, I’ll get to review more books.

I”m hoping to find time today to make some lemon bars. I’ve been dying to make some of the recipes in this Land-O-Lakes cookbook I bought and today might just be the day! I also have to run out in a bit to the grocery store since Ken forgot to buy canned dog food. I’ll need that tonight to feed. They can’t do without their yummy in their  kibble, you know!

Well, gotta run — those dogs need to GO!

Love to all,

Margaret

Good morning and a Happy Monday to all of my faithful and not-so-faithful. It’s dawned a beautiful day with temps a very bearable 52. I know it’s supposed to get colder as the week goes on, but today is a nice interlude.

It’s a short week for me as we leave Thursday for Winston-Salem and the last dog show of the year. We have Tigger, Butterfly and Payne entered. We are hoping to go out of the year with a bang, but you know how these things go. I have a lovely cranberry colored suit to wear one of the days that I bought last week. If I’m lucky, you’ll get to see it in a win photo sometime soon 🙂

I have a couple of reports to work on this morning — some I began last week and didn’t get very far on for putting out fires here and there. I hope it’s a fire-free day so I can get more work done on these.

Ken got really upset with Butterfly yesterday. He left the room for just a moment and when he came back, she had his wallet with the entire contents strewed across the floor. He said she must have thought it needed cleaning out and I told him, no, she wanted a credit card to do Christmas shopping with 😛

Well, I suppose I should get on with it. Those reports won’t write themselves.

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, we made it to Charleston in time to see the ballet. Oh! It was WONDERFUL! The Russian dancers were just phenomenal  and the kids were great — one or two mix-ups, but all-in-all a nice job by all.

No photos, unfortunately. They didn’t allow cameras and Bebe was out of costume by the time I got to see her off stage. We are supposed to get a DVD of the performance, so I’ll see if I can lift some images off that.

We ended up taking the truck to Charleston. It seems that the motor must have 500 miles on it before you tow anything, and that seemed to be the best way to break it in. It rode well, was very quiet and got 16.4 mpg. We’ll see what mileage it gets pulling the trailer.

I hope you had a nice weekend. While ours was busy, as you can see, we had a good time. The only thing to mar it was Gina’s call Saturday afternoon to tell us that she had Chris taken to the hospital the night before because he couldn’t breathe. He has pneumonia and is still in the hospital tonight. They had to give him steriods and breathing treatments every 4-6 hours and of course he was on oxygen. We talked to him this afternoon and although he sounds bad, he says he’s feeling better. He also says he expects to be in one more day. Let’s hope he gets better soon.

Well, that’s all my news.

Love to all,

Margaret