Winter's Arrived

The boys have buttoned us up for the cold. Now that winter has arrived, and we've had out first snow we'll see how well we prepared.
The first snow, Wednesday, was exciting, as always. It chilled the earth enough to prepare it for a projected 2-4 inches tonight, Thursday. Another 2-4 inches are predicted for tomorrow night and more on Sunday! We'll see.
Macks doesn't remember snow last year, since he was a puppy. He got very excited today when I was cleaning the walk; ran around and bit the snow, throwing and chasing his ball.
I spent yesterday writing the paper on the Small Hive Beetle. Most of it was written off the top of my head, then corrected and added to from research off the internet. It was enjoyable to work on. I had hoped to go to the beekeeper's meeting and use it to start folks thinking about the pest's arrival, but the snow tonight fouled my plans. I e-mailed it to the Beekeeper's Group, Bee-L, the Irish List, the State Bee Inspector and posted it here. The Bee Inspector was kind enough to reply.
GT missed 10-degree weather and snow... she's glad she's in Grenada. She has a quiz tomorrow and hopes to do well. She mentioned A's. Bravo!
WT has passed his Real Estate Salesman's exam in FWB, and is working at Howton Real Estate. He may go back to Bay Cafe as needed to support himself. He called Sam yesterday and said he is working on his first listing. Bill must be proud of him.
CH is almost through rebuilding the FWB houses. The guys are tied up in Niceville, so the final bits are waiting on them. I'm anxious to get the rental house with the damaged roof fixed, since it shorts the income so much. The main house tenants have started paying their rent again, thankfully. I haven't heard back from the builder who was so hot to buy the Ranger property. I'd really love to build on it myself, but that will have to wait until GT gets through school, probably.
I just got back from checking on a fire alarm at the B'hse. The tenants had been cooking. It was a good trial run of the alarm system, so now they know the code and password. They were chagrined to get, in sequence, the howling alarm, the phone call from the monitoring people, the sheriff's deputy and then me. It was worth my trip over in the snow to see them 'en famille' in the kitchen baking cookies and eating dinner. They are really nice folks. Bet they won't forget the code! I asked them to call the security company and reprogram the codes and numbers. Sam congratulated him on his first year basketball team's record. They lost, but only by a few points, and played some tough teams.
Amelia, the tiny, tailless cat has figured Macks, the dog, out enough so that she is living in the downstairs now. Still cautious, she weaves around his legs before he reacts, and puts her paw on his nose to keep him at a distance. The other (6) cats are still living upstairs. I'm hoping that they will figure him out soon.
Macks and I are going to training lessons. Sundays we go to agility training in Appomattox and Tuesdays we go to obedience training in Lynchburg. Carla has volunteered to teach me clicker training at other times. She spent almost four hours with me this Tuesday! Macks is already somewhat trained, but I am not. He works fine for the instructors. I mess him up with my unsure ways. Yesterday we worked on making eye contact. Macks wants to work with the clicker a lot, since he gets food each time I click to mark the behavior I want. I am supposed to go to Carla's tomorrow at 3 PM, but the snow may cancel it.