Altivo

Today is the 31st anniversary of Gary's and my first date. Earlier this year, I had hopes that the useless Illinois legislature would pass a gay marriage bill in time for us to finally make it official today, but no, of course it's still stalled. Passed the Senate, but the House continues to dodge the vote. Perhaps Wednesday's Supreme Court decision will finally put a fire under their lazy butts but I doubt it.

Anyway, Gary gave me tigers. Because, y'know, we had lions and bears, but not lions, tigers, and bears, (Oh my!) Turned out he wasn't quite right, because the tiniest tiger in the photo was already here but he hadn't noticed it. The large Wild Republic Cuddlekins tiger and the medium Aurora tiger on the left arrived today.

I know a fair amount of music from the 30s and 40s that I play on piano and/or organ, but this should perhaps inspire me to learn the Tiger Rag (not easy, but I can do it if I work hard.)

Well, a little one. This is the little guy I mentioned yesterday:



He's made by "Mane Events" and is supposed to be a dog squeaky toy. Once I saw him I couldn't bear the thought of him being chewed and possibly ripped to pieces, so I took him home with me. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford to rescue all his brothers and sisters and had to leave them at the store.

No photo of the steam locomotive I mentioned several days ago. It did arrive today, but alas, it doesn't run. I did make a reasonable attempt, including cleaning, lubricating, adjusting the power pickup brushes, but no luck. It's supposed to be returnable, seller message sent.

Gary and I went and finished shopping this afternoon. This included a visit to a new wineseller where I was intrigued by possibilities but only bought what I needed for gifts. I'll be going back later, I'm sure.

We got a couple of items for his mom as well, and that concludes everything but the wrapping and the cooking. (Yes, we're making a ham and hauling it to Chicago. Sigh.)

This time for the private detective.

Today's installment here.

Cumulative word count: 15727

And I gave myself an award for staying ahead of quota during the entire first week. In fact, I'm presently a full day ahead. The Big Zoo has a sale price on the Natural Poses 30-inch wolf. I don't have one of those guys yet and it sounds as if they may be about to be discontinued, so for half price and free shipping, I rescued one. Now I just have to stay on quota for the next week to justify that. ;D

Rain most of the day, supposed to get colder tomorrow and the "chance of snow" is back in the forecast for tomorrow night AND Thursday morning now. We shall see.

Indiana? Well that's where he was shipped from, and he arrived via UPS today.

Here he is, just emerging from his birth caul:

(Click photo to view additional images.) Leonard is a 30 inch lion in the Cuddlekins line, and quite appropriately regal.

In other news, yesterday I updated the maps in my Garmin GPS. This is noteworthy because it is so agonizingly slow that I resist the process until the maps are obviously full of errors. At work, on a T1 connection, it took over five hours. I have no idea what the volume of data transferred actually might be, but these are only the default US and Canada maps that came with the unit. The last experience, about 14 months ago, was similarly slow. Why should this be so difficult? You'd think it was NASA updating the program of a Mars rover, one bit at a time.

Weather report: it actually rained today. For about three minutes. Continued forecasts of rain and even thunder and lightning, continue. Actual fulfillment of those forecasts? Somewhat less than 10% of the time period involved.

But Thursday usually is, because I get a chunk of it to myself, even at work.

Remember last spring when I went to see the marsh marigolds in bloom and Timmie gave me a big hunk of showy white trillium root?

I divided that root into five pieces, and planted them in several spots around our place here. They all did still bloom last year (the buds were already showing when I got it) but I was concerned that they might not all survive the winter. They did. Checking yesterday and today, I found all five pieces coming up again, and all of them have flower buds. Hooray! Photos when the flowers open.

Hearing unfamiliar birds around, even though it's been cloudy and raining much of the day. I suspect the warblers are starting to pass through. We will be going to count birds, especially the migrants passing through, a week from Saturday. Wish us sunny weather, please. Last year was gloomy, cold, and rainy.

I have committed a small splurge. I do have a nice tax refund coming, but it will all be eaten by the property taxes. I'm not getting a raise (no one is) but this month had three paydays in it instead of two. Consequently, I have purchased three modest but utterly unnecessary things: a Carcassonne game because I'm curious about it (both the table board game version and the computer version,) a plush okapi (Webkins) because it looks so cute, and a lion puppet from Folkmanis. I may buy some clothes too, but good quality is so expensive... and cheap Walmart stuff doesn't last.

The latest issue of Audubon magazine arrived today and has articles on both Florida black bears and urban coyotes. Some great photos, including a coyote riding a shuttle train in Portland, and people trying to coax a coyote out from under a taxi in Chicago.

Bedtime. One more work day this week, and no major plans for the weekend I think. Yay!

Nanowrimo word count: 43649 words (2240 today)
Sponsor me!
Story draft available here.

I'll proof and upload the segment in the morning. Still on target to complete the 50K in time, but I'd like to get well ahead this weekend. Oh, and by the way, I'm still $15 shy of the goal I set for sponsorship. I would be delighted if any of you could kick in a buck or two for a good cause, tax deductible in the US. Follow the "sponsor me" link above for more information, and thanks!

We had not planned to go anywhere during the Black Friday idiocy but changed our minds on the spur of the moment, since I wanted to run up to work and pick up my paycheck and since that would take us right past Tractor Supply we stopped in there. That store is never busy in my experience, but there were quite a few cars in the lot. They had in fact advertised one day specials. Gary wanted to replenish his supplies of winter bird feed, and I stopped to look at flannel shirts that were offered at half price. When we got in line at the cash registers, there was a backup, something I've never seen there before. It turned out that they were having difficulty processing credit card payments. Their connection to the processing system was so overloaded (presumably by activity in other locations) that it kept timing out at each step. Consequently, the manager was standing there and phoning someone to force each transaction through remotely. Slow as molasses, as you might expect. Still, there were only two customers ahead of us. We paid cash to save time.

While waiting in line, I noticed several cute little plush donkeys on display. They were wearing blue hoodies with the Tractor Supply logo on the front, and had been marked down to just $2.99. How could I resist? I took one with me. Here he is with a moose I received in a Harry and David box a couple of Christmases ago. Rocky the Not-Squirrel and Not-Bullwinkle the Moose. I think they make a good pair, no?

The usual work stuff, plus:

In spare ten minute fragments, trying to get CIFS/Samba installed on the Alpha DS10. After several false starts, it is installed, but still not properly configured I think.

Drove home in the same rain in which I had driven to work. C'mon, it's supposed to be June.

Took Gary out to dinner to celebrate his birthday a week early. Came home and watched Robert Morse in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying which unfortunately does match my recollections of what it was like working in a for-profit corporation and also in many non-profits including the Federal Reserve and the American Hospital Association.

A box came from TheBigZoo.com and squished into it was the large Cuddlekins wolf that I wanted to get last Christmas. I finally found one at a reasonable price. There was also a birthday present for Gary in there. (Shhhh.)

Someone posted a message to me on F4L asking "Are you really 60?" Yes, I am. Duh.

Installed CIFS/Samba onto the Alpha PWS433au at home, too. Also not yet configured but it runs.

And that's enough. Now bed.

Valentine Day gift Gary gave me this adorable tiny Clydesdale. Plush equines are hard to find, but Clydesdales are almost impossible.

Supposed to snow, but not happening yet. I'm being bad and reading a book instead of doing anything useful. Well, I'll be writing a review of the book, but still.

Weather seems getting ready to break a bit. Here it is 10 o'clock at night and we're still well above zero F.

Gary got a plastic kids' sled today for hauling water. I haven't tried it yet, but he says it handles three buckets full without difficulty and with little or no sloshing. At least while we still have snow on the ground this is going to make it easier.

It takes four buckets of five gallon capacity to do morning feed chores. A couple more are needed while cleaning stalls to top up heated buckets in the stalls. About two more are needed to set things up in the evening for feeding. And the boys have a heated water trough that needs topping up every couple of days. My only concern with drawing water from the house is that it has been through a water softener and has a lot of sodium in it. I have no idea whether that's a long term risk for horses or sheep. I'm guessing that we won't be able to replace those hydrants until April at the earliest, though by then we should be able to use hoses rather than having to haul buckets.

Went through a bunch of plush animals that had been in storage since our move eight plus years ago. Cleaned them up and returned a lot of small ones to a couple of better plastic storage crates that should keep out mice and such like. A few cute ones were "rediscovered" and moved into the house. I was hoping to find a Dakin lion that I know I had, but no luck. I can't imagine what became of him.

Off to bed now, a busy weekend starts early tomorrow.