It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

"It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas", which means the decoration bins are in the livingroom, strings of lights are snarled on the table, a dozen or so Christmas mugs are on the floor in Josh's room, and there are a few unwrapped presents on the stairs. We took Zoe with us to pick out a tree at Taylor's Hardware; she wasn't enthused about getting out of the car, but once she was out, she trotted around sniffing at things and letting people admire her.

We got the tree into the stand, although not lit and wrapped and decorated and hung.

A couple of days ago it was 76° but this weekend was a lot cooler. Gwen sent pictures of snow and ice in Blacksburg; it didn't get that cold here, but it was certainly wet and chilly. Muttling was shivering at one point; we took her upstairs, put her on the bed, and put the warming blanket over her. When she had to go out, Diana put a green turtleneck on her, which looked properly Christmasy; unfortunately the sleeves wouldn't stay rolled up and kept falling down to cover her paws. I have a couple of vests which should work, though, and it's not like she's going out much anyway. Unfortunately. She's still quite strong--when I want to pull her one way and she's made up her mind not to go, she plants her little 35 pound body and it takes quite a bit of effort to haul her along--but she's just not interested in going out. She's beginning to loose her balance, though; I saw her trying to stand on the hardwood floor, and she sort of stumbled backward until she sat on her rump. Usually she stays curled up on one couch or another; but she can trot right upstairs when she's minded to.

She does like eggnog quite a bit, and I've given her three bowls of it. I've had to dip a finger in and put it to her mouth to get her attention, but once she's got the idea, she laps it all up. She's also eating chicken, usually from our hands.

Other things about the house: I've caulked Josh's shower, and installed a new printer. Our printer scanner no longer scans, since Lexmark never got around to updating the drivers to work with Win7. Since we're sending documents back and forth to Montreal now, we decided to go ahead and get a new printer scanner--this one is an Epson XP 610. XP is always good, right? 1 It prints a lot faster than the Lexmark did, and I've got it set up to print from both computers instead of just Diana's.


1 This is a gamer joke: XP is Experience Points. Ask your local gamer for an explanation.