It was a dark and stormy day...

Yesterday was very cold, rainy and dark. It started getting cold Friday and by dawn yesterday it was really quite raw. It spat rain and tumbled dark clouds all day.

Friday afternoon late I went to town for the Christmas "Uptown Get Down". The first Friday in every month two of the main streets in town are closed off and there is music and food and vendors set up booths and it's just a jolly good time. It goes on from 5-9. The Humane Society sets up an adoption booth and does some pretty good business. The HS needed some of the t-shirts we're using for fund raising so I bundled them up and took them to the booth at 4:30, not intending to stay. But I saw lots of people I knew and the music was good so I ended up staying until 6:00pm. By then I'd seen everything I wanted to see and had system over-load with folks and had a hot sausage w/onions and peppers in my bag and it was getting cold, so I came home.

The first thing I did when I got home was build a nice little fire in the fireplace and brew a pot of de-caf. Then with Shirley, Goodness and Mercy in my lap I sat in front of the fire and wolfed down the sausage. Yummy!

When I got up yesterday I still had some decent embers in the fireplace so with a little lighter knot and newspaper I had blazes in no time. I stoked the fire and kept it going all day and late into the night last night. Lovely!

It was truly a laid back day. I didn't even dress until almost noon. Flannel jammys and hot coffee, a good book and the fire, I was all set. Then at 9am the phone rang...it was MJ. She and I talked for about an hour and a half. Then I decided it wasn't going to get much warmer, so I jumped in the shower and got dressed in warm sweats (almost as good as pj's). I'd no more dressed than the door bell rang and it was LJ and Max, her little dog. They came in and stayed for about an hour. Shirley and Max were a HOOT! They ran and played, jumping off the back of the sofa and skidding on the wood floors as the cats sat on the dining room table (among the ornaments I'd unpacked and done nothing with) and watched their antics with BIG eyes! What fun.

Well, when LJ and Max left I settled down with my book. Got a couple of hours of reading in and the phone rang. It was Helen. As she said, she just wanted to "yak"...and yak we did for almost 3 hours. And the day was done.

I stayed up and read until 11:30...just 20 pages short of finishing my book, just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, so I went to bed. Slept straight through till 6 this morning. That's a first for me in a while.

I'm meeting MJ this afternoon at the shelter office. We're going to sort t-shirts and work on making files for the new year. Our annual membership meeting is tomorrow night and I'll be installed on the board as membership chairman. Still have a lot of work to do to get ready for it.

All in all, it's been an interesting weekend and it ain't over yet!