HoundBlog

All week this week I’ve been typing the date a day off. That’s how I’ve felt I guess — a day behind.

I made quiche for supper last night and it was so good, I thought you might be interested in the recipe. It was also pretty easy to make.

Base Ingredients:

Pie shell (it took 2 for these measurements and make sure they are DEEP DISH)
2 cups half-and-half (use low fat for a heart healthy recipe)
3/4 cup parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
5 eggs

Beat the eggs, add the parmesan, salt and pepper and hold on to your hat.

Optional stuff — the really cool thing about quiche is that you can put all kinds of stuff in it and it’s always yummy. Last nights’ had:

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup cubed ham
1 can chopped spinach drained well

put all this solid stuff in your pie shells arranged evenly over the bottom, then pour your egg mixture on top.
Bake in a 375º oven until brown on top and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let sit for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

I’ve seen recipes that include artichoke hearts, hot sauce, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, peppers, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, mushrooms and they all sound wonderful. Vary the cheese with your other ingredients — cheddar is not the only cheese in the universe! I can see cauliflower with bleu cheese, chicken with salsa and monterey jack cheese — well, you get the picture I’m sure!

It’s light on the tongue but very filling. We had the quiche and a green salad for dinner and Ken took some of the leftovers for lunch today. Oh and it smelled wonderful cooking!

Ok, now that I’ve made you hungry…..gotta run

Love to all,

Margaret

Hi ya’ll. It’s raining like crazy here and I should be in bed taking advantage of great sleeping weather, but here I sit wide awake and wondering why.

Last week was one of those frustrating weeks where nothing went as planned. I made it through though and this week is going much better so far.

I have a seminar to go to Saturday on SQL server stuff. Don’t know what we’ll be doing Sunday, but I’m sure we’ll find something to keep us out of trouble. It’s a cinch we can’t afford to do much. With the stock market like it is our 401K’s are looking pretty shriveled, so we’re watching our spending like many others are.

No dog shows until next month when we’re planning on going to Greensboro and then either Savannah over Thanksgiving or the following weekend to Winston Salem. Ken still doesn’t know what the plant’s schedule will be over Christmas as there have been many changes and tons of rumors flying around. Sales are down for BMW, so there’s no telling what they’ll do. They are laying off most of their temporary workers, but Ken’s job is secure. It’s going to be a hard candy Christmas for a lot of folks.

I’m hoping to hear from Chrystalyn this week. I think she was supposed to get her first report card and I want to find out how she did with the changes and new school. I’m a bit worried that she still hasn’t made any friends.

Well, I really need to get into bed and get some sleep. Y’all take care.

Love to all,

Margaret

Good morning! TGIF to everyone! I hope your week has been MUCH better than mine which has been rather frustrating. Dealing with people who have no common sense is the absolute pits. Oh well, it’s Friday and the weekend is ahead of me, so I will resolve to put all that behind me now.

Last weekends’ dog shows didn’t turn out too well. Tigger was Best of Opposite sex both days, but he had to get Best of Winners in order to get any points. Butterfly got into something during the week before the show and had a big yellow stain on her show side that 8 baths would not get rid of. She was Reserve both days.

We have one show this weekend — Saturday only, so maybe we’ll do better. We’re planning to go to Greensboro and Savannah next month and those will be our last shows of the year.

Ken’s working Saturday, so I’ll be taking Tigger and Butterfly with me to Augusta. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Gotta run — have a great weekend everyone! Stay safe and don’t do anything I wouldn’t.

Love to all,

Margaret

Hi everyone! I sure hope you’re all enjoying this glorious weather! I love the cooler temperatures and the clear skies. We still need rain, though.

Ken and I talked about our show strategy last night. We have 3 puppies that will soon be old enough to show, but still have 3 adults needing to be finished. My counsel to him was to let the puppies grow up and mature as we concentrated our show budget on finishing these 3.

Now, I do hope that one of them finishes this weekend, but we all know how fickle showing is, so I wouldn’t be totally surprised if that doesn’t happen. I haven’t been able to find out who but one of the other females entered is, so don’t know what my competition consists of. Not that knowing would tell me much anyway.

If Butterfly finishes, then we can concentrate on Tigger and Payne who are both in the same boat of needing a few singles and one more major. Tigger has a good chance of singling out over the next two weeks in which case we’ll be hunting majors for him. The work I’ve been doing with him really seemed to have paid off with his excellent showing last weekend.

Payne is a different story as she has her variety to contend with. Some Crested judges just don’t put up powder puffs unless they are super excellent. Payne is good, but I’m not fooling myself into thinking I do such a great job of grooming that she can fall into that “super excellent” category. I have every confidence that she’ll finish, but it will no doubt take longer than finishing Tigger will.

I’ve also made the choice of a stud to breed Butterfly to. She’ll be put with Tigger’s brother, Kurt. Why not just use Tigger? Well despite the fact that the pedigrees are the same, Kurt exhibits more traits that Butterfly needs to correct small faults of hers. Tigger doesn’t have these outward traits, so I’m using a dog with a phenotype that’s desirable as well as a pedigree that meshes very well with Butterfly’s.

Well, enough dog talk.

Ma needed the address of my photo blog  so here it is — Travelin’ Show is the blog where I post the photos I take. I try to put some of them up on webshots, too, but it’s so much easier to post them here.

I reckon it’s time for me to get back to work. Ya’ll take care!

Love to all,

Margaret

Well we are home from Atlanta and tired, but happy.

Tigger made the cut every day but one and was 2nd in his class on the day of the AWC specialty out of a class of 17. We thought that was pretty good.

Everyone was ecstatic to see us when we got home including the birds.

We (or at least I) have a busy month coming up. We have shows the next two weekends in a row plus I am going to try to put in an appearance at the Responsible Dog Owner Day in Greenville next Saturday. Then on the 11th, I am supposed to attend a SQL Code Camp and on the 18th, I’m supposed to judge a match.  WHEW! Just thinking about it makes me tired! I should have another Sharepoint class coming up the 15th - 17th also.

Can you believe all this going on with the financial markets? I read somewhere that if you divided out what the government is proposing to spend to cover these bad debts that it will cost each American somewhere around $2,150 each. Since that includes children not of income producing age as well as people on fixed incomes, welfare, etc you can probably double that for each WORKING American.  While I don’t want us to go through another Depression, I can’t help but wonder if there is a better way that keeps people employed without “rewarding” the financial institutions that threw common sense to the winds when they encouraged and/or actually wrote mortgages for people who would not have qualified under even the most reasonable/generous of terms that still kept overall risk to an acceptable level. I will probably never understand the whole complex issue and still keep trying to reduce it to simple and understandable terms.

I am thankful that we still have our jobs, that our health is relatively good and that we didn’t succumb to the lure of a 100% mortgage. Yes we have debts, but they are not so much that we aren’t keeping up with them.

I hope all the rest of you are in the same boat with us.

Well, my boss is calling and I need to discuss stuff with him since I’ve been out of the office for 3 days, so I suppose I had best close this out and attend to business. I do need to keep this job

Love to all,

Margaret

Gosh! It’s hard to believe that September is halfway over. This year is flying by! Usually I have at least some Christmas shopping done by now, but not this year. I’m afraid it’s going to be a rush at the end of the year if I don’t get a move on.

We leave Wednesday for Atlanta. I sure hope the gas prices are on the way down by then. They are ridiculous right now! I’m glad I filled up Friday before it got so out of hand! We HOPE we have the spot we requested for our reservation, but all they sent us was a spot name and no map, so we have no idea where our spot is. The whole reason for assigning spots was so they didn’t have to spend so much time taking people around to an open one, but without a map of the hookup locations, we certainly won’t be able to just drive right to it. Crazy!

We have guests at work today, so we were asked to dress nicely. I wore a skirt and blouse. I think we’re supposed to dress up tomorrow too, but I will work from home, so that will not be an issue for me.

Did you all see Judy’s spider and praying mantis photos? She did a great job taking them! I haven’t seen any praying mantises on our property since we moved there which is a shame since they are such helpful insects. I wonder if I can order praying mantis eggs online or something like that so we could have some. We get way too many June bugs and they would help control that population I’m thinking.

I’ve had a LOT of wasps this year. Both the red ones as well as the black ones. One kind builds the mud nest and the other builds the papery nest. I don’t like either kind to tell you the truth. At least I haven’t seen any yellow jackets which build their nests underground. The mud kind built a nest in the window casement of my office. I’ve noticed quite a bit of activity from them the last few days. I don’t know how to get them out of there — those are double windows and if I open the one, I’ll end up with wasps in the house which would be very bad. ICK! It’s also close to my hummingbird feeder and the wasps are competing with the hummingbirds for the nectar. I notice the birds are very wary of the wasps, so they are probably susceptible to their stings.

Well I suppose I should get back to work. Lunch time is over.

Love to all,

Margaret

Hi everyone! I hope you didn’t miss me too much!

I had a class Thursday and Friday and so was out of pocket.  Ken’s working today and I’m doing regular homebody stuff. Ho hum how boring.

I did finish reading a book this moring — Phillip Margolin’s Wild Justice and have another I want to start soon called City of Shadows by Ariana Franklin. For some reason Wild Justice seemed very familiar, but not exactly as it was. I don’t know if I read an early version of it at some time or if someone is plagiarizing. Not my deal though. It was a pretty good book. Unfortunately, I have to return it to the lady I borrowed it from, so can’t send it on to any of you. I would if I could it was that good.

Next week, Ken and I are taking 3 days off from work to go to Atlanta for the Southern Specialty. We’ve only entered Tigger,  so I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing other than cooking and scooping poop. Then the weekend after that is Columbia where I have Butterfly entered and then the next weekend is Augusta which is a one day show. If Butterfly finishes in Columbia, I’ll probably skip Augusta although Ken has Tigger entered. I sure hope the gas prices have dropped back down by then.

I think it’s criminal the way the gas companies can go up on prices at the drop of a hat this way. I know the storms may cause problems with refineries and off shore wells, but geez louise! To jump up over 60¢ per gallon in one day seems outrageously exhorbitant.  Our little local station is also out of gas which means the big chains don’t have anyone to keep them in check, so their prices are through the roof just like everyone elses’. I did top off the cars yesterday before the big jump, but that’s only going to see us through the next few days. Ken filled the truck up with diesel on Friday, too, so it’s all ready to go and diesel had dropped down to $3.99 per gallon from $4.57, so he did pretty good there. That will get us to Atlanta and MAYBE by next weekend things will be back to normal.

Well, there goes the dryer buzzer. Gotta run!

Love to all,

Margaret

I hope you had as nice a weekend as we did. Ken and I just kind of lazed the weekend away. We did normal chores and stuff, but we had no firm plans to do anything and resisted making very many. I think we both needed the down time from stuff. I know I did!

I took him to Grits N Groceries for breakfast Saturday morning. He didn’t order anything off the brunch menu — I don’t think he even glanced at it much and thought the waitress was joking with him when she suggested frog legs. He remarked later that “she would have been surprised if I had actually ordered frog legs!” to which I replied “no — they were on the menu, so if you had ordered them, you would have gotten them.” — You should have seen the look on his face

I haven’t had frog legs since I was a teenager and Judy and RB made them. I remember them being pretty good, but then again, I remember squirrel being pretty good too. No sheep’s eyes, though — that was GROSS!

I hope Mama had a good Sunday. I think this was the Sunday she was going to EJ’s church. I’m hoping she had such a good time that she’ll go back again in the coming weeks. She needs to get out some.

It was muggy and hot this weekend — guess the fall-out from Hannah. We didn’t get any rain though which surprised me. I’m glad she was pretty petered out by the time she hit NC & VA. I’m sure they were too!

I talked to Eddie Friday and Yvonne has bronchitis. He was at the hospital with her getting prescriptions filled and the connection was terrible. Then we IM’ed each other some Saturday and I IM’ed Chrystalyn, too. She said she was enjoying her new school and had some potential BFF’s (best forever friend in case you didn’t know). I had ordered her some books and she got one of them Friday and was pretty excited about it. I have others on order for her, but it will be towards the end of the month before they get here.

I talked to Pam earlier in the week and they all seem to be doing well. Patrick has a new truck after he crashed his other one. BeBe is doing well in school and at dance and her mom and dad are about the same. I learned that Pam has gone to college to get her teaching degree. I can’t say how proud I am of her! I think that’s wonderful and that she will be a great teacher.

Well, that should catch you all up with us. I hope you have a great week and that this heat wave breaks real soon! I thought we had seen the last of 90+ weather, but apparently not.

Love to all,

Margaret

I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. Ours went by too fast, but it was nice sleeping in 3 days in a row! We drove to Raleigh Sunday afternoon, had dinner with Gail and Chuck Sunday night, watched Tigger show to a 3rd place Monday morning, then came home. The rest of the afternoon was spent doing little things around the house and resting. I think Ken mostly watched t.v.

There are no plans ready for this weekend. Next week (Thursday and Friday) I’m in a Sharepoint class. Then I have another class in October to take on Sharepoint along with one on Dynamics, so I’ll be smart one of these days

I haven’t seen our buck all week this week. I sure hope he’s OK and hasn’t gotten hit by a car or anything, I guess it’s dove season as I’ve heard shotguns going off quite a bit this week. The doves that come to our feeder are certainly nice and fat….probably from all the birdseed I’ve gone through this summer !

Well, that’s about it for us. I think you’re all caught up now.

Love to all,

Margaret

Tags: Cheryl Hines, Labor Day, Lindsay Lohan, Long Island, Luke Kirby, Marnie Stern, Microsoft SharePoint, New York City

I took Tigger to Raleigh (well, really Apex) Tuesday and drove through that awful rain/tornadoes/hail/thunderstorms. I was really tired when I got home Tuesday night, but all in all it wasn’t too bad really. The little car did really well. Got fairly good mileage and wasn’ta at all intimidated by the big hulking trucks that kept cutting us off. It was nimble and sure-footed despite the water standing on the road.

Tigger showed today and got Reserve. We were hoping for better, but there are 4 more days of shows, so keep your fingers crossed for him. Saturday is a major if all the dogs show up. That’s the one we really want to get if at all possible.

Ken’s not working this weekend after all. He said they called for only re-workers to work Saturday, and no one volunteered, so he’ll have a nice long 3 day weekend as will I. We’re planning on driving up to Raleigh Sunday night so we can watch Tigger Monday morning and bring him home after the show. After all the rain, he needs to mow the grass and I have laundry out the wazoo since I didn’t get any done Tuesday. As always seems to be the case, my dust bunnies are having dust bunnies, so I have to get the vacuum going.

That’s about it for me. Ya’ll take care.

Love to all,
Margaret