Sunday Morning

It's a chilly, snowy Sunday morning. Fat flakes have been drifting down lazily all morning, no real accumulation, just enough to make for pretty outdoor vistas. Everyone has had a walk and some tasty breakfast - duck and potato kibble for the four leggers and eggs and potatoes for the two leggers, and settled in to their Sunday tasks. So let's set the scene with pictures:
I've built a cozy little fire in the fireplace....
...and set the newly decorated Christmas tree to twinkle. I'm busy tapping away on the keyboard keeping the faithful blog friends up to date with our happenings, and eventually doing some light work. What about the rest of the family unit? What are they up to?
Alycia is crafting up lesson plans for her class next semester.
Tito is solving complex quadratic equations and calculating optimum angles for snatching fallen bits of food from the kitchen.
And Shaak Ti is...well she's just napping. The peer pressure to stay awake is enormous right now, but I think we can do it, at least until the first football game comes on, then all bets are off.

A Shaak Ti Story

The last few days have given us an opportunity to assess how Shaak Ti is going to deal with life in a snowy climate. She loves the snow, but hasn't mastered it by any means. I've already witnessed this sequence two or three time in the past few days.

- Smell something really good.
- Insert face into snowbank/under snow convinced that the bunny/squirrel/moose is underneath.
- Inhale and snort deeply to get all the good scents.
- Spend the next 2 minutes sneezing and vigorously pawing at her nose while squinting painfully due to what I can only assume is severe brain freeze.
- Ten minutes later, forget the entire incident and repeat the above process.

I'll get an amusing picture or two of this in the next day or two if I can.

On the other end of the spectrum is Tito, who due to his Christmas break visitations with Alycia over his seven years, is an old pro dealing with snow and cold. When it gets cold, like this morning when the temp was near zero, Tito gets hooked up his leash, but quickly realizes how cold it is and does his all business before we get to end of our driveway, then stops and refuses to go any further. He's probably smarter than I give him credit for....

We're going to decorate our Christmas tree later today or tomorrow, so prepare yourself for some festive photo fun.

Homemade Gluten Free Chex Mix

A recipe for Homemade Gluten Free Chex Mix? I just happen to have one right here.

It's tasty, I'm eating some right now for breakfast with a hot cup of coffee, a perfect winter morning breakfast.

Snow Run

It continued snowing off and on most of Thursday, nothing significant, just light snow showers to snow flurries all day. But I had a bit of a problem, an overactive dog named Shaak Ti who isn't concerned by things like snow and cold. In our walks the last few days she keeps bounding through the snow like it's not there leading me to believe that her attitude about snow is somewhere between oblivious and indifferent. Yesterday she needed some good exercise and didn't make any qualms about letting me know.

My options were either to hop in the car and take her to the dog park or go on a run. Even though there were a few inches of snow on the ground I felt determined to get a run in, and it was loads of fun. I strapped on my new waterproof Kamik boots (they're awesome and very lightweight) and went for a very low speed jog along our usual Greenway route over to Minnesota and back.

Since I didn't have my usual running sneakers on and wasn't going to be timing my run or distance, we stopped to take pictures a couple of times.
This is the bridge over the Red River, pointing south, taken from the Minnesota side.
The Greenway path on the Minnesota side. There hadn't been too many visitors/pedestrians over the past few days. With the exception of one older guy walking his black lab off leash (who luckily paid no attention to Shaak Ti) I didn't see or hear a soul, it was very peaceful and serene. That one guy we did encounter looked at me like I was nuts, running through the snow, though I was very polite and bade him good day, he gave me the "Are you friggin' crazy?" glance, which I loved of course.
"Uhhhh, can we please start running again?"

Just after these pictures on the way back to the house, it clouded over again and flakes continued to fly.

Snow Pictures

We got our first snow of the year, not a whole lot, maybe two inches, but it was enough to make some pretty pictures. It's still coming down this morning too and there are forecast to be snow showers/flurries today and tomorrow.
Here's the view towards the Northeast from the front door of our house.
This is the view towards the Northwest, the intersection of First Avenue and Fenton Avenue, our street corner.
The path leading up to our front door. You may not be able to see the detail, but the only footsteps on the path are that of the mailman and paper deliverer. As you can see, I've got a bit of shoveling to do. We're off to the garage to see if we can engineer some type of snow plow apparatus to attach to Shaak Ti that will allow her to pull me on her leash while also plowing the sidewalk. You never know, it might work.

Wallyball Results

It took a few weeks, but our wallyball results finally got listed in the Grand Forks Herald. Our team name is "Strangers In the Night" (we didn't all know each other and I thought it would be funny) and currently in second place. The one loss occurred while i was back in San Diego for work, so I'd like to think with all our regular players, we'd be undefeated.
We won again last night to finish the regular season at 6-1 (the paper seems to lag a week behind, though I can't tell why, this is breaking news) and are primed for a deep post season run at the title. The title and free t-shirts. The post season tournament is next week, so stay tuned for the results from our wallyball happenings.

Snow on the Way

Snow is on the way, how much is yet to be determined. A big "Alberta Clipper" system is moving down out of Canada, but it expected to stay mostly to the North. Alycia's parents in Cavalier should see 6 inches or so, but we'll be lucky to get half that down here in Grand Forks. It's always pretty amazing what a difference a hundred miles makes. The forecast is still changing, but snow should start late morning/early afternoon and continue with snow showers through tomorrow.

You can see the local forecast and accompanying Winter Weather Advisories here.

I've also finally tracked down the charger for the digital camera (it was misplaced in the move) and am charging the battery. The battery had run out and that's what has been preventing me from posting any pictures. But now with the battery fully charged and raring to go, I'll post any and all applicable winter wonderland scenes as well as any "apprehensive about all the snow on the ground" puppy pictures.

We probably won't get enough snow to warrant using the snowblower, which is a good thing since we can't get it started. Alycia's Dad was tinkering with it for over an hour on Saturday and other than two brief startups, we couldn't make it run. I could tell that this vexed him greatly as he called both Sunday and Monday with additional ideas on how to get it going. It's a fairly new machine (pictures to follow in a subsequent posting) but I don't know how long it has sat idle in the garage, it could be a number of years, so it's possible that gaskets, seals, or even the carburetor need to be replaced. There was recently a coupon in the newspaper for a snowblower tuneup (with pick up and drop off service) for pretty cheap. I think I'll be giving them a call.

Thanksgiving Recap - Part 2

...and so the tale of Thanksgiving continues.

Once Alycia's Dad and I had returned from our lumberjack escapades, the family wanted to venture out to the local Cavalier, ND Christmas tree farm and select a tree for us. So we packed up the entire family unit into our version of a sleigh (the Cummings family red Pontiac Aztec), plus Alycia's folks and their two pooches and drove west of town to the little Christmas tree farm.

The Christmas tree farm was a half mile off the road and consisted of trees of varying ages and heights, all growing lined up four to six trees wide on each side of a rutted grass road, stretching for a few hundred yards. In between all the trees was essentially meadow grass that would have been nearly waist high in summertime, but had now died back and was knee deep and very fun to wade through.

Shaak Ti was on doggy cloud nine, bounding through the brown grass as fast as I could keep up, pulling at her leash with every ounce of her being, and sniffing intently every few feet, at times burying her entire head under the dead grass to get a better whiff of the aromatic goodness below. The grass was surely home (at one time or another) to some manner of bunny, pheasant, or other tasty smelling creature and I thought Shaak Ti might stroke out from the sensory overload, but lo, she did not. When we finally returned home that night though, she did walk straight past her dinner into her bed and promptly fell asleep, too tired even to eat.

After much debating over what defines perfect arboreal artistic form, we selected our tree and Alycia's Dad brandished a hacksaw for us to cut down yet another tree. We secured it to Alycia's parents car and headed back to Cavalier. Alycia's parents were planning a trip to Grand forks the very next day, and along with the Christmas tree, they also had the trunk full of the wood we had spent chopping earlier that day. We were thankful for the door to door delivery service.

And that's the Thanksgiving story. OK, really the day after Thanksgiving story, but a story none the less. Alycia and I were both thankful to have a full weekend to recover from all the festivities.