It's not below zero!

Hey everyone,

I am currently in New Orleans where it's not 5 million degrees below zero. It's 53 degrees outside. Sorry to all the folks who are freezing their a$#es off in Wisconsin. It was nice to take my long underwear off. I ws sitting in Jackson Square about an hour and a half ago. I also was sitting St. Louis Cathedral for about a half hour thinking about my friend, Don Wyman, who passed away early Wednesday morning. We will miss you Don.

Of course, I forgot to get some of those airplane earplugs, so my ears are all screwed up today. I bought some not at a Walgreen's. They're getting better now, but I still don't feel all that well. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

More tomorrow.

A little better

We are doing a little better than my last post. We still miss Jeffy terribly--the we includes Churchill. Churchill's blood glucose has been way better than it has been in a long time. We don't know if it's the new insulin or that Churchill is just missing Jeffy or the new dry food he's got. Unfortunately, his blood glucose was 48 this morning at 5:30 (not good--nornal is between 80-120). We managed to get it to raise to 105 or so and hour later. Poor Billy. He seemed okay the whole time. Unfortunately, this makes me extra nervous to leave him alone while we go away.

Churchill met his new cat sitter, Julie Gibson, who has a pet sitting service that comes to your home when you're going to be gone. Her company is called Oshkosh Unleashed if you are interested. There's more information here as well. She will be taking care of Churchill while we are in New Orleans. I don't know if I would really have picked right now to go, but I could probably use a change of scenery anyhow.

On the knitting front: I am two inches away from decreasing for the sleeve tops of my cardigan. Yippee! The end is in sight. I am not using that for airplane knitting, since I don't want to be running into my seat mates with the ends of the needles. I will be starting a pair of socks to knit on the plane.

Goodbye old friend

It is with a broken heart that I must tell you that we had to have Jefferson put to sleep on Friday, Jan. 2. We are all very sad. Churchill keeps looking for him. He was 15.

Jeffy came to us in January 1994, on a very cold day. He was born around Thanksgiving 1993. Paulette wrapped him up in her scarf to bring him home. He was such a cute little scamp. He could play and play. He also liked to jump into bowls of microwave popcorn when he was a kitten and lick the butter stuff off of it. When he grew up, his delight was going outside. He loved to lay in the grass and take a nap. He also like to chase the butterflies, which I do not doubt he is doing right now in heaven as I write this. You could leave Jeffy alone in the yard without a leash and he would stay in the yard. He will be greatly missed by us since he helped us with the gardening. While Churchill and him did not always get along with each other, they did love each other. Jeffy would get really concerned if there was something wrong with Churchill.

We love Jeffy very much and we will never forget him. Heaven has a new furry angel.

Merry Christmas (late)

Ooh, it sure has been a while since I blogged last. Sorry about that. First I was shopping, etc. Then, a bunch of other stuff happened. Jeffy has not been feeling well and he had stuff done with his teeth on December 15 (really expensive stuff). I hope he feels better soon. He just looks so sad. Our Christmas tree fell over on December 17 at 5:30 in the morning. Only 5 ornaments broke, but it's not a nice way to be awoken. It took 5 hours to put it back up. It looks better now, since I could rotate a bad spot to the back, but I didn't need that to happen then.

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and holiday season. I will not be sad to see 2008 leave us, as it has been a bad year since June for a lot of us. The hits just keep coming.

Deja vu?

Okay, the weathermen better stop saying that the almost record snow we had last year couldn't happen twice in a row. I think Mother Nature is taking that commentary as a personal challenge to see if we can break the old record. Today we received 11.5 inches of snow in Oshkosh. It wasn't really bad shovelling it, but I must confess we had help from the nice neighbor guy, Scott, who dug out the driveway and shovelled the front walk. Paulette and I both called in to work today because of the snow. It was a fun day, except for the shovelling part. I got to button hole #2 on my right sweater front. Yippee.

Here are pictures:

Here's a picture of Mother Nature's good start to try and beat last winter's tunnel of snow in the driveway. That picture is from February 2008. The snow in this picture looks eerily similar--and it's only December. Yikes.

Here's the start of one of the giant snowpiles at the end of the driveway. How big will it get this year?

I gotta go now-the dryer is calling me and that means my Christmas jammies are dry. I want to put them on and knit some more. More from snowland soon......

Welcome to Christmasland

Well, we got our tree on Friday. Here are pictures:

Here is Paulette being eaten by our Christmas tree (she is actually cutting it down).

Here's a much cuter picture of her.

Eek! Who is that?



We have a good time going to the tree farm. I didn't go sledding this year with the sled they give you for the tree. We could have used our snowshoes, though. Holy cow, what a lot of snow. We have been going to the same tree farm for 19 years, Heritage Christmas Tree Farm in Wild Rose. Robin, the owner, told us that next year is their 20th year owning the farm!



Here is the finished product:







On the knitting front, St. Nicholas (aka Paulette) got me this yarn from the Loopy Ewe:

It is Lorna's Laces "Team Spirit" sport weight. Hmm, whose team colors could those be? Maybe I need to knit it into something to help our team.

Back to normal

Well, it's day 2 back at work and it feels pretty good to be normal again. The cats are liking it. I can actually think about other things besides election stuff. Yippee.

Knitters are good people. Paula, one of our fellow recounters, is a knitter. She sent me the following items in the mail:

Felted acorns. Aren't they cool? (Sorry about the bad picture)

Handspun yarn she bought. It is fingering weight--there are 500 yards of it!

This beautiful sparkly yarn from the Great Adirondak Yarn Co. There are 100 yards of it in worsted weight. The picture doesn't do it justice.

Winter (which isn't even officially here yet) sure is starting off with a bang. We had 4.5 inches of snow last week, a couple more the other day and now we are supposed to get 5 more tonight and tomorrow. My snowshoes are feeling happy. I better go down and check the bindings on them to make sure they are ready for fun.

Last night Jeffy (see picture below) decided he wanted turkey from Thanksgiving. He stood up and removed a couple of items from the refrigerator while I was putting water in there. I gave him some of course, since he put in all that effort. Yes, he is looking really old in the picture below. He is 15 years old, which is 74 in people years. He has taken to sleeping behind his chair. I think he's waiting for the Christmas tree which we are getting on Friday.