Windierpeg

This morning dawned bright, with a few scattered clouds in the blue prairie sky... and only a mild breeze wafting across the snow banks.

My sister, her two dogs, myself and Zoë trundled off in my truck to the local dog park for a romp through the snow. There is a creek that winds through the park, edged with reeds the colour of my dog... or is she the colour of the dead reeds? Needless to say, it is all too easy to lose sight of her as she wanders in and out of them.

Being winter here in the Centre of Canada, the creek is frozen solid. Does walking on frozen water make one holy? I have no idea, but it certainly makes for a lovely trail to wind along. And being lower down than the surrounding terrain means you are protected somewhat from the breeze that is blowing.

Despite reaching a temperature of +1C here today, the wind was still biting our faces and it felt about -10 on our walk. But the dogs ran and romped and played and had a wonderful time. My sister and I walked and chatted, stopping to visit with other dogs and their humans along the way, staying out for over an hour in the sunshine.

I was really wishing I had taken my camera with me on this walk. It was lovely walking along with the reeds tall on each side of the creek, watching the dogs gambol about with each other or on their own, eating a drink whenever they wished.

Zoë loves to eat snow and ice, crunching up chunks of the white stuff as she trots along. In the light, fluffy snow that is not packed down, she bulldozes her nose through it, occasionally lapping up mouthfuls to slake her thirst. The nickname 'SnoNoze' is quite aptly earned.

Around noon, or shortly thereafter, the wind began to pick up and the clouds rolled in. The system tracking across the Prairies was about to hit. The sky to the west darkened with rain laden clouds, and the howling commenced.

By mid-afternoon, the winds were blowing at 65 km/h with gusts reaching 80 km/h. The rain splattered the windows but was thankfully short-lived. Having experienced rain in winter and the consequences of an environment coated in stunningly beautiful but wickedly treacherous ice, I was not too pleased to see it start. And was very glad when it ended a short time later.

The house groaned and creaked for most of the afternoon, causing the dog to wander nervously from room to room, searching for a safe haven. I ignore her when she is like this... I refuse to feed her fears unnecessarily. She eventually settled and has been sleeping soundly for hours, recovering from the romp along the creek this morning.

In my front yard is a huge Colorado Blue Spruce tree. As I sat in front of the computer, chatting with friends online, I kept an eye on that tree as it convulsed and shook in the wind. And thought that it was good the wind was coming from the west, because if the tree decided to snap, it would be parellel to the houses and shouldn't do any damage. If the wind had been coming from the south, I would have been right in the line of fire.

Things have settled down now and upon checking, the wind is blowing at 50 km/h. No longer worthy of a wind warning. I can now breathe a sigh of relief, with no tree parts littering the yard (other than needles blown about) and a roof still over my head.

Sunshine Snoozes

Saturday afternoon. Outside: -33C (that's with the wind chill). Inside: +22C (where there is no wind at all, unless someone farts.)

She's not dead yet...

I have no idea how Zoë can lie like this.... She has each end of her body twisted in opposite directions. These photos were taken on two different days. This is pretty much her favourite position to sleep in.



She looks like she's been killed and tossed on the floor....

Pips, on the other hand, tends to sleep in normal positions most of the time. On occasion, she will be stretched out, especially if in the sunshine that streams in the living room window in the afternoons. But usually, she just looks like this:

IT'S ALIVE!

Well. I am rather proud of my self. My major undertaking with this computer upgrade was a success!

Not without stress and pitfalls and hair pulling, teethgnashing, swearing a blue streak and stomping away from it, but still a success. Finally... after a few hours of not knowing if I could pull it off because of various road blocks.

But...

The patient survived and is functional. Fully... well, I don't know yet, but for the most part, yeah. I still have all my files, except for one folder of pictures of my dog.... that seems to be corrupted and causes the external hard drive to loop endlessly, for some reason, so I may have to resign myself to having lost those forever.

But I am now fast and funcitonal in Cyberland again, so I am a happy camper! Thanks to everyone for your words of support. :-)

Closing For Renovations

Okay, here's the deal.

My computer is 9 years old. And it is feeling kinda puny, so it is time for some upgrading.

It is a homebuilt computer, put together by my ex-husband, who is a computer geek. He's employed as an IT manager for a local architectural and engineering firm. So he knows a thing or two about computers and when he built this contraption for me, it was great! 20Gb hard drive, 512Mb of RAM, CD-ROM, floppy drive. Worked like a charm!

But now... it is very undersized. I have had to buy a 500Gb external hard drive for all my data files. All the program files remained on that tiny 20Gb internal drive, but it is now telling me it has less than 2% free space.

I can't even defrag the damn thing. You need 15% free space to do that.

So I decided it was time. Either buy a new computer or upgrade this thing. So I check out prices on new machines versus installing more RAM and a larger (much larger) internal hard drive.

The upgrades won out hands down. I actually do have a little experience with the innards of this thing as I replaced the CD-ROM when the old one crapped out. Plus I added a second 512Mb RAM modules a couple years back.

So I have purchased a 500Mb internal hard drive, a new IDE cable, two 1Gb RAM modules, plus a new webcam to replace the $20 thing that displays the fuzziest, crappiest, most off colour video that you can imagine (just look at my avatar - took that with the old webcam; I may have a pink complexion but that's ridiculous!).

For a sum total of $300.... that is all I spent on all of that. A mere $300... Canadian yet! So for you Americans, that is about $240.53 and for the Brits, it is 163.24GBP (I can't figure out how to make that cool capital L with the squiggle through it, so that's what you get.... sorry) or $180.94 Euros. For anyone else, you'll have to do your own conversion if you really care to.

So.... please keep your fingers crossed that this will work out. I have printed out the installation manual, I have read it over several times, I have asked my computer reference person (a friend) lots of questions and he has been very helpful.

So come tomorrow morning, I will have the door to the office closed (with a huge neon sign that says "NO CATS ALLOWED!!! PIPS - THAT MEANS YOU" and "DOG SPIT HIGHLY FORBIDDEN" as well as "ANTI-STATIC ELECTRICITY DEVICES IN OPERATION". I will then don gown, gloves and mask, a snorkel and fins, as well as my reading glasses and will get down to brass tacks to perform this major life threatening operation.

So if you don't ever hear from me by Wednesday..... it blew up and I am now smithereens plastered on the walls. Could someone please come rescue the dog and the cats? kthkxbye