Christmas Mantel
Yesterday, my mother found a stable for her Nativity scene when I took her to Hobby Lobby. We had seen some at Park Meadows, but they were very expensive.
Unfortunately, most of my mother’s Christmas decorations have to go on the mantel because it is the one place her cat won’t bother them. Smokey seems to view Christmas decorations as entertainments expressly import for her pleasure.
Dogged Determination
Dudley has apparently decided that in order to increase his chances of getting into an automobile, it is a very good thing to lie down in the garage whenever he manages to get into it from the mud-room. He does so with the air of one who is prepared to wait all day. Nothing, not even walkies, compares to car rides in Dudley’s world.
For a while, Dudley would attempt to plaster himself to the door between the garage and the mudroom, in a seeming effort to keep me from going into the garage without him. Although his air of determination was rather touching (and strongly reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoon characters) I tried not to reward this behavior, because a hundred and ten pound dog plastered against the door can be a nuisance. I broke him of the habit by leaving by the front door instead until he gave up his attempt.
Several Days Ago
In the Center of the Heart Nebula
Today, Astronomy Picture of the Day presents a fabulous photo: In the Center of the Heart Nebula. Although APOD has always been one of my favorite sites, I have been following it a lot more consistently since I subscribed to an RSS feed using Bloglines.
Support
Yesterday, I installed Fedora Core 3 on the machine we use as a file server. The previous week, I installed Fedora Core 3 on Jack’s machine, so we are all using the same release now. Since Jack was running SUSE 9.0 before that, I hope this will cut down on the number of questions from Jack that I will have to research before I can answer them. I am a lot more familiar with where RedHat/Fedora Core puts files and how it expects you to do things than I was ever able to become with SUSE.
Folly and friend
My friend, with her new kitten named, appropriately, Folly.
Perl 2004 Advent Calendar
The Perl 2004 Advent Calendar has its first entry up.
To the Library
I have been wanting to take a picture of my mother’s place after it snows, but the weather hasn’t been cooperating with any deep snow falls. I took this photo yesterday as my mother left her condo to go with me to the library.
Cold Snap
The high today, briefly accomplished, was 18 F. Before I moved to the state, I shared the common misconception that Colorado is very cold during the winter. However, at least here along the Front Range, daytime highs of forty and fifty are not uncommon in the winter, and it seems really cold right now.
The horses seemed resigned to it. I looked out this morning and they were all standing in the light snow, with an inch deep layer on their backs. Their fur coats provide sufficient insulation to keep the snow from melting from their body heat. The first winter we had horses here at home it used to bother me that they were not using their nice, new (and expensive) barn when it snowed, but over the years I found out that you can’t pry them out of the barn when it is blizzarding or raining, so I suppose they have their own set of criteria of miserable weather.
Dudley drove me crazy this morning by requesting to go outside, and then scratching the door to be let inside again, because, you know, it’s like COLD outside. By mid-afternoon, he had evidently decided that it was not going to improve and I no longer felt like a doorman for a dog. Damn: he just scratched again.