Last night we were watching American Idol (yes, a guilty pleasure, especially during the try out sessions!) and Paula was laying on the rug by my feet, chewing a rawhide. Out of nowhere, she looked into the kitchen at Ellie Mae and let out a very loud, "woo woo woo arghhh woo woo." From the kitchen, we hear Ellie Mae answering back with the same noises! Marc and I started laughing....then Paula responded back to Ellie....and Ellie talked back! At that point, Paula stood up and peered into the kitchen with her head lowered - I'm guessing she gave Ellie the old fish eye, then she plopped herself back down, shook her head as if to say, "And that is that," and continued to chew her bone. We were in hysterics! In all our years having dogs, we've never been treated to a doggy discussion like that. From the deep quiet in the kitchen, I assume that Paula won, LOL!

This morning I had the radio on as I usually do while doing chores around the house...or in this case while I had breakfast. The DJ was asking what rock star stated that he now was excited by having a large variety of teas in the cupboard. Are you ready for this? Ozzy Osborne! Now I don't feel so bad about having a cupboard devoted to all different kinds of tea! Tea bags, loose tea...flavored and plain teas, black and green teas, and herbal teas. I have two tea pots and a tea cozy to keep the pot warm when I brew my afternoon tea :) When we got tea for Christmas gifts from two different people, I was afraid everyone thought we were deadly dull, but knowing that Ozzy Osborne is a tea lover makes me feel somewhat better about that

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!