Christmas Wrapup

Another busy busy Christmas is in the books. Well, not completely. We still have a family Christmas party on Saturday down in Illinois. It should be a ball, the family white elephant gift exchange is always an interesting present experience.

For Christmas, we did our normal Christmas tradition. On Christmas Eve we exchanged presents, we went to her church for the late night service, and packed up the house in preparations for driving down to Illinois for visiting my family for Christmas. Let me tell ya how thrilled I was about getting up and driving to Illinois at 4am. Yea, not a huge fan of mornings. The upshot of that was all 4 dogs were tired and slept most of the way down. Unlike on the way back when the puppy was on a mission to get into my lap while I was driving. He's cute, I'll give him that. But he can be a bit annoying at times. Puppy + Lap + Driving = a challenging, but cute, driving experience.

(By the way, the puppy is up for adoption: http://search.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=9934223
we are fostering him right now before he finds his permanent home.)

Upon arrival at home, the cats were happy to see us. Not so happy to see the dogs of course. I bet they were hoping we would "forget" them somewhere so they could have the house to themselves. The present they gave the house for Christmas was to use something in the living room as a toilet. Not sure what they relieved themselves on (it wasn't the litter box), but it smells like its near the couch. Bad kitties. The house gave us a Christmas gift too, a clogged drain. The main line going out of the house is clogged. again. So the water from the washer found it's way to wander over the basement floor. This time, I am not going to hire a plumber. I know where the clog is and all I need to fix things is a drain auger. So after work today, I'm off to Home Depot to get one to save the day. Getting the auger and using it successfully once will pay for itself right away. Because of the age of the house, the main drain line cloggage is a yearly/semi-yearly event. Fixing it myself will be much cheaper than hiring a plumber every time it gets backed up.

And now back to training. Two days of work, then back to Illinois for the weekend and returning in time to hit the new years party.