Our First Snow of the Season

I guess Mom wins the "First Snow" Sighting contest!  Apparently my mother and siblings have had this on-going competition to be the first to see snow and notify the others of the sighting.  Our eldest sibling married a man from Pennsylvania and she is the most frequent winner of the contest, but not this year.  I was not even aware that this competition existed between my family members.  And why would I?  I've been in Southern California for the last 30+ years.  What are the chances that I would have ever won?  It is still snowing as I type but the flakes are very small and I don't expect it to amount to much, but a win is a win!  Congratulations Mom!  (PS  We ended up with about 1/8" of snow that actually stuck on the deck.)

I have the wire down for Buddy's invisible fence, the wire is into the garage, and the transmitter is up and working.  Maureen is talking about planting a garden in the spring.  After putting that wire in the ground I think we'd have more luck taking up brick making as a hobby.  We definitely have the clay for it.  About every 75 feet or so I had to stop and get the clay out of the dog line trencher I got from the equipment rental yard.  I was not able to use gloves when unclogging the trencher and I could barely tip the trencher over because the gas would leak out of the tank onto the hot motor so I was working blind.  My hands look like I just joined the Fight Club and had my first real bout.   I hope Buddy appreciates what I do for him.  Fairly soon he'll have the run of our acreage to chase squirrels and keep the cats off our property.  Of course as cold as I expect it to be this winter I'm going to appreciate being able to just kick Buddy out the back door when he has to go out and not have to bundle myself up to walk him.  I've started the training routine.  I'm supposed to encourage Buddy back into the "Pet Area" when he gets close enough to the wire to set off the tone from his collar.  The problem is I can't hear the collar when it goes off.  I got down on my knees with him to see how close he had to be and Buddy thought I was trying to play with him and there went that session.  The first evening I had the collar set to actually correct (shock) him Buddy panicked and would try to run away from me across the line.  He did that every time.  I was thinking this was going to take a while to get him to come back into his yard rather than cross the line and get stuck outside of the fenced area.  But apparently Buddy is just as smart as I thought he was.  He must have have thought about the sequence of events, hear the tone then get zapped, over night.  The next day he had it figured out first time.  As soon as he got close enough to the wire to hear the tone Buddy stopped dead in his tracks and almost backed out away from the wire.  We are only a few days into a 15 day training plan and Buddy is already going out off lead and staying within the fenced area with no problem.  Which is good because it's raining right now and I don't feel like going out in it to walk him.  I've left the back door to the porch open for him for the last hour but it looks like Buddy doesn't want to venture outside into the rain either.

From my opening paragraph you might suspect;
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!"  Not so much.  Except for my pencil tree and the wrapped packages next to the fireplace.  That snow we had lasted less than a day and it has been warm and rainy ever since.  Christmas day is projected to be about 71 degrees with 80% chance of precipitation, which at 71 degrees means rain not snow.  I checked, California's daytime high is projected to be only 59 degrees on Christmas day.  What's that all about?  I was looking forward to my first cold and wintry Christmas in decades and it looks like I left it behind in California.  Not to worry, I'm sure it's just an anomaly.  I can't imagine it would become a trend.

I intend to take a small holiday break from my blogging.  We have guests coming over for the Christmas holiday.  Some neighbors we've met are coming over for Christmas dinner and one of my siblings and a displaced friend from California that I know from my AYSO days will be up the next day to tour the Biltmore and stomp around Asheville for the weekend.  Then immediately after we are headed up to Cleveland to celebrate the New Year.  I just wanted to take a moment to share with you how much Maureen, Liam and I appreciate and miss all of our friends.  We all wish you'all the very best for this holiday season we hope you have the happiest New Year that you can remember.

Love to you all!

Rick, Maureen and Liam

PS  I was going to wish for you all "slim bodies and fat bank accounts for the new year", but that's what I asked for myself from Santa last year and he got it backwards, so I'm not taking any chances this year.