That's a wrap ...

The buildup to holidays is always so huge and then they're over in like 20 minutes.

I'll probably take the tree down (did I tell you a co-worker gave me her tree when some of the pre-lit lights wouldn't come on? No? well ... it's a huge $300 tree with a small section of non-working lights. A simple strand of 100 lights took care of the problem and we now have a beautimous Christmas tree for free!) and put the village away at some point this weekend.

I'm really not a leave everything up for an extra week kinda gal. Maybe if we had kids, it'd be different.

Anyway ...

I'm coming to you from a snazzy new 23 inch wide-screen monitor. Score! And I have a new kick ass digital camera. No more trying to take pictures with the crappy camera in my cell phone. Double score!

The downside is that we discovered I had a facebook worm and ended up reformatting my hard drive. Bye bye Sims3 and fave places. I can restart the Sims3 no biggy, but I always forget to backup my faves list. Woops.

Hoss continues to do well. He's pretty much back to his normal self. The cold weather has wreaked a bit of on and off havoc with his arthritis, though. Luckily for us both, I weened him off his prednisone early so I still have several pills left. When he seems pretty limpy, I throw 1/2 a pill at him in some cheese and he's much better. I'm going to put a call in to the vet's sometime this week, though. I can't keep odd and ending him on prednisone. I want to talk to them about getting some Rymadil to use when he's stiff. He's been on it in the past, so I know he tolerates it well and that it does work. And he won't be on it steady, so the worries of toxicity would be greatly reduced (as with any drug, Rymadil can have some seriously nasty side effects if a pet is on it full time).

He's actually barking right now. It's cold and damp and he won't sit in one spot (cold butt and all), but he'd rather not sit in one spot outside of his kennel even though he has like 5 blankets to keep him warm and comfy in his dog house.

Like I was saying ...

Hoss is back to his normal being quiet through the night and sleeping late in the morning routine. We plan on removing the kennel piece between his and Pearl's kennel (I think I've mentioned that), but I'm not sure when. I'd like to do it soon, though. No sense in keeping him cooped up in the 10 x 10 when he could have 10 x 20 (front to back is 10 ft and then it'd be 20 feet side to side).

He also doesn't run to Pearl's kennel as much now. He still goes and looks sometimes, but it's no longer a multiple times per day thing anymore. Now it's just maybe once or twice a day.

Speaking of Pearl ... Marc came over on Christmas Eve to help with a bit of cooking and then he was going to my mom's with us. He was looking at Pearl's box and opened it to see the bag of ashes and discovered, to my surprise, that they did include a lock of Pearl's fur. There it was, in a seperate baggy sitting on top of the baggy holding her ashes.

It was bittersweet.

And that's about it for us for now. I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday and was surrounded by love and laughter.