Just an Update

Just an update because it is now December :-)

The living room is coming along ... the floor is done and we bought an area rug. We are now on the hunt for two wing-type chairs and an ottoman. The drums still need to go away and we need to put in the sofa table and end table. The chair that was in the living room is up in our bedroom and the couch is still, temporarily, in the dining room. It will be thrown out ... poor Luce ... she sleeps in that a lot! Not worry, I put one of the dog beds in the a corner in the living room and will be on the look out for a nicer bed for her. She was already sleeping on the bare floor after it was done, so I have made it a bit more comfortable. She does like her little corner of the room :-)

There is still a lot of stuff in the dining room, but at least we got to eat Thanksgiving dinner in there. I brined the turkey for the first time and, boy, was it ever flavorful and tender! A little salty, but then again, the brine recipe was for a 20lb bird and ours was 13lbs. I did cut down on the salt, but I guess I need to cut down a little more.

I also made this pumpkin cheesecake. Other than the crust, it was SO good! It wasn't a dense cheesecake, but rather, was kind of fluffy. The crust got hard, like a really hard cookie, but it was good too. Other people had the same problem, so I'm not sure what the answer is.

I worked from home a lot last week. Brennan had his last day of work last week on Monday and Evan spent most of his time here out with various friends. Hugh was out of town, so I was able to get a lot done!

I also, finally, got a website up for my trial secretary stuff: www.dognutmom.com Took a bit of fiddling to find a website template that I liked and that I could update on my own. Brennan was going to write it, or find me a template, but I wasn't liking a lot of the choices. We tried Wordpress as well, but I found it hard to customize to the way I wanted it to look. Wordpress is primarily blogging software as is this site, Blogger. This site doesn't really easily allow the separate pages that I wanted. Separate pages are slightly easier to get in Wordpress, but I was having trouble with formatting. The hosting site that I went with has SiteBuilder for free and it just "clicked" with my brain, so that is what I went with :-) I don't want to have to reinvent the wheel or relearn everything every time I update something. Or have to rely on Brennan to do it for me. After all, one of the reasons I did want my own site was to be able to publish trial test schedules, copies of final confirmations and running orders when it was ready and not to have to rely on the webmasters of each individual club to do it. Not that it never gets done ... it does! But things can happen, people can be away, or they have work etc, so I wanted my own site to consolidate it all.

I'll get my first chance to update it when the test schedule for the sanctioned match I am doing is finally approved, which will be this week I hope. I got that done last week as well and it is at USDAA for approval. I am sure there will be changes as there always ARE changes. I was lucky ... only two changes for the February Keystone trial and those were changes in wording that USDAA had just decided on, nothing that I had missed .... but this is a brand new test schedule, from scratch, so I am sure there will be things that I need to change around.

I also need to figure out how to get a list of height cards that I have on file into one big READABLE list and figure out the best way to update it as well. And I want to get results on there for the two October trials. I got some of it on there already. It will be easier to produce when I am wrapping up each trial rather than go back and do two whole trials all at once.

Evan went back to Duquesne yesterday. Hugh decided to come along as he hadn't seen the school since Evan went to look at it in April. However, it rained/sleeted the whole drive there and rained/sleeted the whole way home. The drive there took a bit longer than usual as we had to slow down to 30mph at times due to fog. As we got over to the west side of the state, past all the tunnels, we noticed that the eastbound turnpike was stop and go with lineups miles long. A couple of times it was due to the salters being out and doing their job, but other times, we weren't sure. We're talking MILES long. So, after we got Evan moved back in, we got out the map, played with the GPS and took an alternate route home. Which took longer. LONG day of driving and Hugh did all of it. He wanted to drive and kept refusing our offers to drive. I slept off and on and listened to books on my ipod :-) Evan slept most of the way.

Because there were 3 of us, we were able to move Evan back in one trip. Hugh, of course, was appalled at small size of the dorm room. He was always appalled when Brennan was at school too and can't understand why everyone just doesn't live at home :-)

We didn't walk around the campus because it was cold and raining. Of course it was ... I brought my camera!