blogging it

brrrrrr, freezing on the prairies

Oh MY it's cold! Yes indeedy. Highs of minus twenty-five celcius and as low as thirty-five below overnight. Cold enough for ya? Yah, for anyone. I was out in it today rediscovering just how tiring it is to bike in this deep cold. Took me a full damn hour to dress up for a thirty minute ride! Cripes. I'm exhausted but I didn't freeze. My toes got unhappy but that's about it.
I had a baby quail here but he didn't make it because nobody fed him. I thought he'd pick for food but I guess mommy and daddy normally should take a more active role. I figure they didn't because they were incubator raised and don't know how. It was quite sad to lose him. I adored the little guy. I suspected things weren't going right on the last day when he seemed less energetic in general and I considered if I should feed him but it was a busy day so I thought I'd try feeding him next day if he still seemed lethargic. Now I know better. Poor little mite. I'll figure out a way to feed the next one that shows up.
Dan and I got our Christmas presents early so we could start enjoying them. Mine is overwhelming me and now, with the cold, I'm even less inclined to fiddle with it. Frankly I'm amazing busy just keeping the house cleaned. Or maybe I read too much news these days. I think that's part of it. Anyway, Dan got upgrades to his computer and I got a new dslr camera, a pentax k200D. I love it. I just don't have anything to photograph right now. I'd like to go out and do some photography but I am too winter-shy lately. It just never seems like a nice day to go out.
The Christmas trees went up last night. Yes that would be a good thing to photograph but I'd have to get up and set up the camera and digitally fix the resulting pictures, all for what? So someone out there might look at the tree. Blegh, can't be bothered. In my defense, I am still pretty wiped out by the ride to the dentist. At any rate, they look lovely, not nearly as tacky as I'd expected. I mean, there's five trees, all under three feet tall. Two plain silk ones, one pink one with white lights, one silly silver rainbow laser cut one, and one green one with fiberoptics woven into it. it should look tacky but actually looks charming. I guess I have the touch. We went to the Festival of Trees this year at the museum. I kept thinking it would be fun to do a tree for it, but I think you have to pay out of pocket for all the decorations and the tree and donate it all to the festival charity. That could be awfully expensive. Bad enough to have to hunt down just the right decorations.
Dentist went great. No cavities and so little to clean that we were done in twenty minutes including the polish! Very nice. The cleaning hurt though because the device sprays water as it works, keeping the blade and tooth cool. The water in question was extremely frigid on account of the cold outside. My sensitive teeth didn't appreciate that in the least. I'm much better with my fear of the dentist. Don't really like the current one, mind you. He seems awfully passive aggressive and it's annoying. They rotate the dentist in the clinic annually though so he'll be gone when I'm back and a new guy in his place. There's been some I really liked, one a woman with a touch so gentle it was like being handled by an angel. What a sweety. She's doing pediatric dentistry and I know she'll excell in that field.
Finances are okay. Nothing too dramatic, although I'm beginning to worry about taxes again. We'd better start putting money away.
I got this goofy new vac at the cheapy place last week. Dan was in a bear mood when I brought it home and had nothing good to say about it till after it was set up and doing it's thing. It's billed as a central vac system with trash bin. LOL That's what it is, really, only not quite. There's a large garbage bin with a powerful vacuum built in the base. This vacuum is meant to stay in place while the hose is really long, twenty-six feet of hose and up to ten feet of tubes, so it reaches pretty much all over the house. it doesn't eliminate the usefulness of the robots but the other vacuums in the house, the little stick vac, and the rainbow, are more obsolete. The rainbow continues useful for portable applications and wet vacuum situations, but the shark stick vac I could give away. not that I will. I'll eventually park it in a closet in the bedroom for spot cleaning in there or something like that. You never know when a small vac will be handy. It's pretty worn out anyway. I think I've had it around fifteen years, so that's reasonable. The new machine only cost fifty bucks which is what I paid for the weak cheap stick vac. With the new system I have almost no setup or tear-down, just plug in the hose and turn it on, then put the hose away. It also has a nifty front that lets you sweep debris up against it then turn it on to suck up the debris! Only real fault is the disposable bags I'll have to buy.
Indigo is doing really well here. She's the dog we adopted off freecycle. Her family had to move in with an elderly relative who won't let dogs in the house. She has gotten much fitter here, better skin and fur, brighter eyes, softer to pet, and more energy. It's the food. She sure likes it and because of her Sarah doesn't pull finicky anymore. They're not close friends yet but they don't have any animosity at all anymore either, so that's really good. Okay, that's about all I've been wanting to talk about with a friend.