Snow! Lots of it! We did go out earlier and the roads weren't too bad. The crews are doing a good job cleaning them. We were out between 1:30 and 2:30 pm - by the mall and all the shopping plazas, even Walmart. The area is dead for the Sunday before Christmas! Not good for retailers, that's for sure. Good for shoppers though - no crowds at all.

I "needed" to go out so I could get my free after ECB items at CVS - and my free after rewards batteries at Staples. Yeah, necessities! I was also out running errands yesterday morning and stores still weren't as busy as I'd expect them - except for the grocery store. Yikes!!! My bank is in the grocery store and I have never seen the store that busy. I'm thankful I only needed to make a bank deposit and not shop. So glad I have enough food here to feed a small army.

The work crunch has calmed just a bit. Still working a lot and not having fun, but I think the worst of it is over. I'll be glad when the holidays are over, but there are a lot of loose ends to tie up with the health plan changes. Stuff that all falls on me as well as my "no pressure" payroll job. Yup, looking forward to my 3 day New Year's weekend - no plans and loving that!!

Here's a rare moment with the mutts yesterday. I think it's been at least 6 months since I've seen the black cat on the bed. Three out of four of them are there now as I type this. I hear the tiger cat munching away at her food bowl.



My old boy, the lab, took a nasty tumble Friday morning. DH was walking the dogs and let the leash go so he could run around. That dog has quite the energy for a 13 year old!! Well he ran by and DH accidentally stepped on his leash. Dog faceplant with all four legs out from under him. It was FREEZING out and we were trying to convince him to get off the ground and into the house. He finally got up (favoring his back left leg) and went in. Well, what can you do but wait things out? So we've been doing that. He was MUCH better by evening, but he's still having trouble getting up on our high bed. This is causing massive panic attacks and DH and I haven't gotten much sleep the last couple of nights. It hasn't been fun. He's been with us for 3 years now, but was abused prior to coming here. He's hurt, scared, and doesn't understand what's going on right now. If we even raise our voice for any reason, he pees where he's standing. We were getting ready to take them out last night and I yelled at the beagle for something. Next thing I know - dog pee all over the entry way. Ugh! I'm a cat person... We still just have to wait this out for now. Just worried since he's an old, neurotic boy.

Well my other gift I got for myself, a "refurbished" netbook, is FINALLY up and running on my home network as of today! It's an Eee PC 701 that came installed with the Linux Xandros operating system. Apparently there was a conflict between the OS, the wireless card, and secure networks. It connects just fine to an unsecure network. I tried EVERYTHING to resolve this, with no luck. So this morning I installed eeeubuntu on an SD card and created a live boot situation. Online to MY network within just minutes. Ok, now maybe I can begin to learn to use this thing now? Quite the learning process so far. I know nothing about this stuff!!

After the holidays I plan on jumping into a massive payoff on those loans. Still tossing around plan ideas at the moment.

Well, Christmas cards don't address themselves, the vac doesn't self-run, turtle tanks don't self-clean, and the laundry wont fold itself. Perhaps I should get back to work?

There must be!! The car is acting up, go figure. It's nothing overly major, and it's not a safety hazard. I heard a pop near the glovebox and I apparently have blown a blower resistor or something like that. The fan blows normal on 4, not so great on 1-3. It heats fine though, so we wont freeze. And yes, we ARE hitting the road Tuesday night. My car is still under warranty, we just can't get it fixed until at least next week. If it's not covered for some odd reason, it's around $50 for the part and DH can fix it himself. Just bad timing of course. You'd think my car would appreciate the oil change and the new tires it got this weekend! Ingrate.

Well I'm kind of aggravated with the girl I sent that care package too. I just found out she's running around with a married man more than twice her age - and has been involved with him over a YEAR! I never said before how I "knew" (never actually met in person) this girl, but a good friend of mine is in jail after getting her pregnant 4 years ago when HE was twice her age. The baby did not survive. To top it all off, these two guys are practically best friends. Ugh, people really sicken me.

I'm still busy at work, to the point it's making me sick. I told my boss today that I don't care what happens, I am GONE as soon as payroll is processed Tuesday. Can't they just figure everything else out without ME?? I can't work myself sick like I have been.

Speaking of, I have packing to do and pumpkin bread to get out of the oven. I'm in ok shape for the trip if I can just get off my butt and back to work.

We need to run some Christmas gifts by the local program Tuesday before we skip town. Called this weekend to get matched up to two kids. We had a BLAST shopping! A 12 y.o. boy is getting an MP3 player, a remote control jeep, batteries, and a gift card for clothes. A 3 1/2 y.o. boy is getting cars and trucks, coloring books and crayons, a car carrying case, a warm winter jacket, hat, mittens, pants, shirts, and socks. That really was a lot of fun and I'm feeling SLIGHTLY better about Christmas. Still can't help but feel like everyone I know suffers from serious gluttony though.

Speaking of our own gluttony: we hooked up our new tv Friday night. So much for "no cable"! Best kept secret in many cable markets: If you have basic cable (just network channels) and you get a new tv with a QAM tuner, you get the ENTIRE cable lineup. That's correct, it's not currently scrambled and comes across as clear QAM. DH is in heaven now! Yes, I know it wont last forever.

Ok, enough random babbling from me for today.