Jabbering about the weather and other stuff

Is this another El Nino year? Lots of terrible weather on the coast and really nice weather everywhere else? Being in Texas for the second Winter in a row has been downright pleasant; most of the time. Take this week for instance- It's been t-shirt and shorts weather. And even when it gets cold- like it's about to tomorrow- I just need to look at a weather forecast for Wisconsin, or Michigan and I say to myself: This ain't cold. This is all right.

The AKC trials and tests at Glen Rose, TX last weekend were pretty successful, despite an uncharacteristic bonehead move on my part. On Sunday, I imagined that I had swapped CF cards with Margaret, and went ahead and reformatted the card in the camera. Oops.. senior moment... It was a card with the first 22 or so JC's, which hadn't been downloaded to the laptop yet. Gone... just like that. Fortunately, we have a program that we found last Summer when our external hard drive crashed, disappearing about 9000 archived images. It's called "Get Data Back", and it worked then, to recover the images, and it worked... finally... this week, after a couple of days of trying. Some of the images were corrupted, but most of the good ones were saved.

Many of you read about Rally, our half & half gyp in Performance Sighthound Journal. Since her early success in the open field, there have been a "series of unfortunate incidents". Starting with a dislocated toe in early December, followed by several episodes of grand mal seizures- origins unknown, but some popular, non-prescribed medications and treatments are prime suspects. The seizures are under control now, and we'll be weaning her off the phenobarb, as she's unlikely to have any more as long as I don't give her any more Ivomec or Arnica Montana. I think there's another whole Sighthound Performance Journal article brewing here.

We've been spending the week indoors. The Bounder.. er, the Hare Brained Express, has been parked inside at The Paint & Body Shop in Brownwood, TX, finally getting the tree damage repaired. The guys here have done a fabulous job so far, and the owner, Terry Blevins, (a poor, misguided "W" supporter), has let us live in the vehicle, has given us a key to the building so we can come and go in the evenings, and, the building even has a shower in the bathroom. With luck, we should roll out of here tomorrow. And the best part is the insurance company pays for all but $800 of a $5000+ repair. (Almost $6000 when the shipping's thrown in). And I thought all I did was damage the right outside mirror. Wrong-o.

More news as it happens, and after the AAWC trials in Hutto this weekend.