More Moose & Squirell

I know I post these two all the time but I couldn't help myself. Here they are just now while I'm at the computer. That cat follows the dog everywhere. If he gets too far afield for her she'll climb a tree to watch for him. I've never seen a cat love a dog so much.

More Weather

It's been raining. A lot.

This is the Cedar River where Bear and I occasionally walk. I copied this pic off of the city's website. The river is channeled as it goes through downtown Renton. I shot the video below at about the same spot this afternoon. If you were the dude on the bike you'd have about 3 feet of water over your head.



Makes me thankful to be warm and dry in a house on a hill.

Miss Lilly if your nasty...

Not much going on here. I stayed home Monday and Tuesday. I've been fighting the cold one of the rugrats gave me over Christmas. Not really feeling too sick but enough to take it easy. It's been stormy and rainy for days now, the time of year I like the least. It will be this way until March at least.

I do have one rather disgusting story to share with you. I've written before about my cat Miss Lilly and her ever lasting war on terrorist mice. Well the battles seemed to slack off over the past two months as no new victims were found. I got my first surprise on Sunday. The cat and dog share a bed that sits in the walkway between the living room and kitchen. This is the preferred spot as they can keep tabs on what the humans are up to with out having to get up from their napping spots. The bed gets dragged around the room a bit and I'm always kicking it back into it's position. Sunday when I went to nudge it back into place it did slip across the floor like normal, so I picked it up to find a very dead and very flat mouse. Now, not only are her little conquests brought into the house, now SHE'S HIDING THEM.

Disgusting? Yes, but wait, it gets better.

I was vacuuming (Yes, I do keep a moderately clean house regardless of what this story will make you think) the living room and saw a odd scrape of material just barely sticking out from the area rug. I thought at the time, 'Oh great, the backings coming undone' but not actually bending over to investigate it to much.

Hey, if you don't get sucked up in the vacuum after a couple of swipes maybe you've earned your spot.

As I was vacuuming again on Monday I saw the thing again and decided to find out what was up. I bent over and peeled back the corner of the rug and found very dead and very flat mouse #2. I went and got some paper towels and lifted the poor thing up --- I'm editing myself here - you don't want to read what I was going to type - let's just say the little mousey was about the size and texture of a communion wafer. That sucker had been there long enough to dry out completely. You'd think we'd have noticed a smell? Nope.

I guess I'm going to have to work on my house keeping skills.

Wanna come over for dinner ?

Happy New Year! - Pay It Forward

Happy New Year! I went to bed at about a quarter to midnight last night. I figured hearing the fireworks would let me know when the new year started. I was thinking as I went to sleep that at 45 I really don't relate to the number of years going by anymore. It just seems a silly and arbitrary way to measure a life. I'd rather focus on the number of days. It seems to me that focusing on the number of days we're here would keep you more in the moment and enjoying what you have right now. Today I'm 16,744 days old.

Or, it's just a crock and I don't want to have to say "I'm 46".

We spent the day de-christmasfying the house. The place looks so bare now. Our friend Kathy came over to help and hang out and get her Bear fix. A perfect way to spend a grey soggy northwest day.

I'm feeling pretty special today because the lovely Trace was good enough to choose my name to be one of the recipient of Real Live Lesbians 'Pay It Forward' . RLL was a paid forward by Scarlet and now it's come to me.

I went back to Scarlet's benefactor to find a bit of it's origin. “the exchange focuses on doing an act of kindness without expecting anything in return other than that the recipient will, in their turn, pass the kindness along and pay it forward in their own way.” The idea is to "send something fun, inspiring or uplifting" to three bloggers. "The little something you send can be something you made, bought, were given or found. No biggie, just a gift that will make the person smile. Maybe something unique from where you live? There are no cost restraints, but don't go crazy!" I think it's a great idea. Coming up with the next packages will be almost as much fun as getting fun mail from RLL. Go check out the video of Trace doing the picking. She kinda snuck me in there in the end.

RLL's package came yesterday. Here, look-see what she was sweet enough to send on to me.



I love it. Planting an Amaryllis bulb on New Years seems like a great way to mark the day. After that I'll be running around the house with my bubble blowing scrubber brush. Maybe, if Jay's lucky I'll take my clothes off.

This next part is almost more fun then getting stuff. So leave a comment (even if you never do) and Bear will pick three names for me to pay it forward to. Come on you know you wanna.

Slo-mo holiday week

I like this week in between the holidays. Te roads are quieter during the commute. The phones aren't ringing to much. It's nice and quiet here at the office. I was able to recreate the prior week from all the notes I took while working from home. It was a big old hair ball to get all those scribbled notes in to the systems at work and make sure all the invoicing was done and other details where captured. It made for a crazy Monday but now I can sit back and relax pretty much.

We had a great Christmas. Janta brought me a new camera amongst other tresure. God love 'em. It's the same make I had before but one model up from it. I'm liking the bigger display screen. I'll bore you with pictures soon. We spent a quiet Christmas Eve dinner with my Mom and Christmas day with Jay's family. Somewhere in there one of the vertically challenged (and sticky) relatives passed on their germs and I'm incubating a cold right now. We did have a moment of worry Christmas day as a 25' limb off the doug fir on the corner of the house gave way under the snow and crashed down on the rockery. If it had been on the other side of the tree it would have taken out the power, phone and cable. - Whew! close one.



The week wasn't all joy and light, Lolli's nephew committed suicide a few days before Christmas and it certainly affected her holiday. There's more than a little strained family dynamics going on there and having to pull the whole family together for this is a challenge. The funeral is today, a few hours from now. Hopefully differences can be set aside for the poor grieving mother. Jay & I will check in on Lolli at the end of the day. Send her a prayer if you would.

One of my favorite gifts this year was a Russian samovar. It's kind of a long story. When Jay's Sister & BIL got posted to Russia years ago I told them I'd always wanted one and asked them to find one for me. I'd expected to pay for it myself. About 5 years ago the samovar was found and purchased but need export licenses as it's considered a piece of heritage. Long story short, it finally made it's way out of Russia this year. It's an interesting piece. I'm still trying to decide if it is indeed a 'heritage' piece or not. It doesn't matter if it is or it isn't I love it all the same. However it's got some interesting clues. There's no double eagle mark on it so it must have been made after the revolution. There are what appear to be tax stamps that have been pounded on to the sides but since I can't read Cyrillic I'm not quite sure yet. The fixture is brass, but it looks like it's brass plated over copper with some copper showing thru in places where you'd expect it had a lot of handling. I'll need to do a little research of production methods. Again I love it as it is but I can't resist trying to figure out if it's from the early Soviet period or a very well done fake. I love this kind of stuff.



Hope your having a great day!

B

Find Me

A friend sent this picture to me this morning. I'd never seen it before. My sister and I, with the Houghton children. They'd just emigrated from England. Their family had come to live near their aunt, uncle and grandparents. Their grandmother "Nanny" took care of my sister and I growing up.

Can you find me?

UPDATE: I'm behind my sister with the long brown hair.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

Well, it's day 8 of the big snow and more is coming down this morning with more to come. I was able to get out twice in the past two days to finish up shopping and stocking stuffers so were all ready.

The plan is to go to my Mom's tonight for dinner. It's only about 3 miles but unfortunately it's all hills, but with the jeeps 4 wheel drive it shouldn't be a problem. Tomorrow we plan on driving down to Lacey to Jay's folks about an hour south of here where the snow is deeper and they're house is in a rural area that most likely won't be plowed. We'll have to see how that goes and if we can get there.

Lolli's with us. Jay was able to get down to her house and get her last week. So our little family is complete.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, doing exactly what you want to do. Thank you for sharing the gift of your time and thoughts with me over this last year. I treasure your friendship.

Brad