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Winter Is Coming

Up until now the lot of us in Arizona have been kind of jealous of the balmy “Winter” weather up north.

Up until now.

During the last 24 hours we have been experiencing constant, 20 – 40 MPH winds as low pressure moves through the Southwest.

The winds hit us about 3:30 AM Saturday (It woke us up), and it hasn’t stopped since. The wind was strong enough to kick up enough sand so we couldn’t see the mountains all morning.

It’s headed your way — up North — as a “Panhandle Hook”.

Fasten your seat belt.

See This Movie

I Origins

Merry Christmas (Part 2)

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JAN & ME: Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way . . .

OUR NEIGHBOR: Hey, your electrical box is smoking !!!

JAN & ME: Where’d our power go?

Yes, indeed, when we went outside to check, there was smoke coming out of the top of our electrical pedestal.

We pulled all our breakers and called the campground for help.

Harold to the Rescue

Long story short . . .

One of the buried power line “legs” fried. It seems someone (who shall remain nameless) dumped salt water from our water softener near the power pedestal yesterday.

Because the campground power cables are 20+ years old, one of the cables didn’t take well to being drowned in a solution of highly conductive salt water. C’est la vie.

The guys from the campground had it fixed in a jiffy, and we — along with several other park models — were up and running again.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Merry Christmas!

TWD (“The Walking Dead”) T-Shirt & Pop Up Book

Since neither Jan nor I have any willpower when it comes to opening gifts . . . we opened our gifts to each other early.

I’m wearing my Walking Dead T-shirt to the Crazy Horse Christmas party. Jan’s listening to Pentatonix on her new iPad. I’m asking for a Ferrari next year.

Merry Christmas!

In Memoriam

Today we had our dog Ellie put down.

She was 14 and 4 months and full of cancer. We had known this was coming for months. When we were in Bishop, CA, we had a cancerous tumor removed from Ellie’s mouth. The vet told us it was only a matter of time before the cancer spread throughout her body.

We will miss her.

We rescued Ellie from our Green Bay Vet. Because of a divorce, Ellie had been wasting away at the vet’s office for several months. We used to take Jack, our former Golden Retreiver, to the Doggie Day Care at the vet, and we’d pass by Ellie each time we brought Jack. Ellie looked very sad.

We inquired about adopting her and on September 28, 2008 we took her home. Both Ellie and Jack were standoffish at first, but quickly became fast friends. Soon they watched out for each other when we took them to Doggie Day Care.

I didn’t like Ellie at first. She wasn’t as pretty as our show dog Jack and was not as overtly friendly as Jack either.

And then one night she sat on the couch right next to me — just like a person would. I started teasing her and she responded in kind. That was that.

This is our fourth pet that we’ve had to put down. It doesn’t get any easier, and I think that’s good.

Let us share way too many photos . . .

ELLIE

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ELLIE & FLIRT

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ELLIE & JACK

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