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What a great weekend! The short story: food, travels to my hometown, pedicure, invitations ordered, dead cable modem.

The longer story:

Food. The new twist on turkey the past two years has been to grill it breast-down. And damn, if it isn’t some tasty turkey!

Travel to my hometown. A few years ago, a tornado wiped out most of the trees on my godparents’ cabin property. And there were a LOT of trees. They borrowed a log-splitter from my childhood home and our extended family cabin in north-central Minnesota. This weekend, we hauled it back. We didn’t quite realize it was 175 miles, however. At any rate, I hadn’t been to the cabin (aka The Dome) in about 18 months, and it was good to see the changes. They put in new windows! Stunning and gorgeous. Amy liked the place, which didn’t surprise me. It should be nice to be there at Christmas, with the snow, etc. Maybe she and I will bring our skates too…

Pedicure. See the photo above. My toes feel great. Amy had never had a pedicure before, but I think she liked it.

Invitations. Had to stop by the stationary store and see what they had in stock for the upcoming parties. We ended up at Give My Regards To… and really had fun. Picked some paper, some fonts, and put down a deposit. The train chugs merrily along…

Dead Cable Modem. I confess that I thought this was my fault for a while. I spent a long time cleaning up the “my documents” on the family computer, and set AOL to download things to a different folder from now on. And after that, the internet connection wouldn’t work. A lot of sleeplessness later, I remembered what I do to my DSL connection when it flakes out: I cycle the power on it, and that usually makes it happier. Sure enough, Sunday morning I cycled the power on the cable modem, and voila! Over Christmas, we’re going to have a crash course in digital photography management. I think I’ve found the image editing program to use, which works with AOL email - hooray! Just have to do some documentation on getting digital images off cameras and onto computers - should be fun.

Hope you all had good Thanksgiving weekends too. To finish my lunch now!

P.S. The dogs came home from the pet resort happy and healthy, although tired! I spent 10 minutes snuggling with Otter this morning (picked them up around 8:30 am today), and then put him into his crate. Then I curled up with Maggie on the bed, and she CONKED OUT while I was rubbing her chest. Such a sweetie-pie! They gave me photos and a report card, and apparently love these two dogs. We’ll use Steward’s Pet Resort again, enthusiastically!

Amy and I are heading to Minnesota and Wisconsin for Thanksgiving this year. The dogs are headed to Stewart’s Best Friends Pet Resort. We get to eat a great meal, spend time with family and friends, and sit in a sauna. They get to hang with each other for 5 days in a 2-room “doggy suite”. We have to spend this afternoon and evening, and Sunday afternoon and evening in the airports. They have to spend 15 minutes in the car going to the boarding facility. I’ll let you know after the weekend who got the better deal.

This morning Otter ate a pair of my SmartWool socks. Punk.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends! Hope you enjoy time with loved ones, have a nice meal, and get to spend some time reflecting upon the blessings in your lives.

To celebrate our relationship, I commissioned a painting for Amy. My friend Michelle paints such wonderful pictures - I am especially fond of her female figure paintings. When I read on her blog that she had done a couple of commissions, I knew that a painting of hers for Amy would be a perfect gift.

This is the result (click on the photo to see it larger):

I am so incredibly pleased with a.) working with Michelle, b.) the painting itself, and c.) Amy’s reaction to the painting last night. I already emailed Michelle the whole story - suffice to say that Amy likes the painting, and it was a total suprise! We still need to figure out where it should live in the house - until then, it’s above the fireplace, looking over us.

Thank you Michelle!

Have you ever wondered what dogs do all day when we’re not home with them? Amy and I did too. Maggie usually spends the days sleeping on the bed. Otter usually spends them in his crate.

Last week, we decided to run a little experiment, and we left Otter out of his crate for several hours with Maggie. As we hoped, they played and tired each other out. As we realized after the fact, we also didn’t Otter-proof the room quite as well as we probably should have.

Word to the wise: make sure the trashcan is empty or not in the room when you leave the very playful, happy, inquisitive dog out of his crate for the first time. Click on the photos for more details of the day’s adventures!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the twenty-fifth annual Charleston Conference. It’s a collection development conference I’ve been wanting to go to for years. Luckily, I was asked to present with a couple of my colleagues on a project our libraries have been working on regarding shared collection development approval plans.

Unlike the insanity that is the ALA annual conference, or even the midwinter meeting, the Charleston Conference is small, focused, and happens mainly in the hallways between meetings. Unlike Internet Librarian, hardly anyone had laptops, and I don’t think anyone was actively blogging the sessions. That’s really too bad, because there were some great presentations!

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