The forecasters started Friday night - we were going to get hammered with a massive snow storm Sunday night and most of the day on Monday. 9 to 14 inches predicted, heavy snow...high winds...everyone panic! Yesterday when I did my usual Sunday morning grocery shopping, the store was packed and the lines were incredible - do these folks really believe they would be snowed in for more than possibly half a day?

I got up during the night, around 3 am or so, and looked out the window - yep, it was snowing, but it didn't seem like we had too much out there. Marc got up at about quarter to 6, and said, "It was a dud, there are about 2 inches of snow out there." Well, maybe we got 3 inches, but it was soft and wet and once the dogs ran around in the yard, there were bare spots from their paws! Not the storm of the century by any means!

It is beautiful, though...the snow stuck to the tree branches and gave us that scenic New Englandy look all day long.





Trudy is getting as big as a house and she has close to three weeks left to go. I hope there are 6 big puppies in there and not 10 medium ones! I'm not a big fan of big litters

I've been having fun playing World of Warcraft, although I'm not the most proficient computer game player there ever was. I'm up to Level 8 which I was pretty proud of...until Andy told me it took him about an hour to get to that level. Oh well, I'm having fun and that's what counts. Now if I can only get out of this cave full of vicious grellkins...my character has been killed three times already and I'm getting tired of it, LOL!

I got confirmation yesterday that Trudy (Nutmeg's Hazy Shade of Winter) is indeed pregnant and due around Groundhog's Day. Now everyone keep their fingers crossed for some brindle puppies!

One of the reading email lists I belong to, On the Porch Swing, is having a reading challenge this year for the first time. It gives us a chance to go through all our cases of books and choose some that may not be chosen in a typical year to be read. This challenge has 5 categories:

read a book with a color in EITHER the title or the author's name

read a book with a person's name in the title

read a book with the word house, or home, or cottage in the title

read a book with the word family, brother, or sister in the title

read a book with some type of water in the title -this could be ocean, lake, pond, river, rain, etc.

I spent some time going through my books this morning and came up with the following titles:

Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith
The Memoirs of Helen of Troy by Amanda Elyot
A Place to Call Home by Deborah Smith
Family Resemblance by Tanya Maria Barrientos
Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons

I've had a few of these hanging around for over a year at least, so time to get them read!

Yesterday morning I woke up about 4 am and thought I smelled something suspicious. After walking up and down the hallway and sniffing, and standing at the head of the stairs and sniffing, I decided that Babs, who sleeps upstairs every night, was probably a little gassy and that was what I was smelling. Nobody was whining or making any noise at all, and I didn't want to go downstairs and wake up the troops at that hour of the morning if I could avoid it!

We got up around 7, and Marc got downstairs before I did. He said that Biz had had an accident overnight and his toys and blanket got messy. He had brought him outside and he had pooped a couple of times and seemed settled. Well, Biz was NOT a happy camper. He had a pathetic look on his face and I realized that the prime rib bone I'd given him to chew the meat off of on Friday afternoon, was nowhere to be found. He must have eaten the entire bone. Biz had "boney belly" - an upset stomach due to eating a bone. He's done this a few times before, so I knew what to do. He had to give his stomach a rest, and for a dog who loves to eat as much as Biz does, this was not going to be pleasant.

All morning I had to put up with baleful and hateful looks from him. He got no food, no cookies, and couldn't chew any rawhides or other goodies that he usually does. Poor Biz - his blanket and toys were in the wash, and he couldn't even take out his frustrations on them! He was miserable. After a bit he gave up giving me the fish eye and went to sleep.

By late afternoon, I could see he was feeling much better, so he got some water which he was able to keep down. An hour or so after that, I gave him a couple of spoons of canned food, which he inhaled and kept down. Looked like he was definitely on the mend. I was giving him more food a while later, when a big hunk, about a half cup chunk, of the canned food fell into his food dish. He grabbed it and ran in the corner to inhale it, LOL! He wasn't taking any chances that I might take it away from him!

By evening he was fully recovered and relieved to go back to his normal routine. He's such a drama queen! None of the big dogs would ever carry on so about a small temporary change in routine. Biz is such a character, and we do get a lot of laughs at his expense. I'm glad he's feeling better today and was back to screaming for pizza bones when Marc brought lunch home!