January 2010 ~ 10 weeks until Spring

Christmas in Phoenix was really a lot of fun. These are a couple of my gifts! Joey found these in an antique shop in Chicago. On says A T & T, the other says "Made in the USA." I love the colors especially. I was a little worried about getting these aboard the airplane for the 2,500 mile trip home, but it turned out to be OK. One of them even smelled a bit like burnt electrical wires....I have seen these all over the country, especially when we've been hiking. I can't tell you how many times I tried to get Ed to climb an abandoned telephone pole to get me one of these, but he was No Way to that. In Colorado, we talked to a farmer from Nebraska that told us he had bushel baskets of these in his barn. He offered to send me one, but I was too shy to really take him up on his generous offer. I should have left him my card! (How did this come up? We saw some of these on the train ride to the top of Pikes Peak. The farmer heard me admiring them. These are fun!





While we were in Palm Springs, we saw a model train exhibit - low and behold, they had taken the time to include these electrical insulators in the display! So cool!

I was tickled to find a package from Ohio under Amanda's tree! It was so much fun to get those East/West Coast photos of Z ! She is the star of my fridge right now. I can't say that Lilly was too thrilled with the cutest sweater, but she was tolerant of our playing with it and her. That was funny too, the dog weighs 35 lbs., and 25 lbs of that is her hair! Lilly is a quiet dog, very well mannered.



I was sick most of last week, home for 4 days straight with no contact other than these two cats. Poor cats!! They were loving the sunshine, warn through those glass doors, even though it was in the teens outside and blowing so cold.
I'm feeling a lot better now, sadly back into my windowless office, missing this sunshine. I leave the drapes open for Zeus and Hera.
Actually, I can't really say "No Contact" -- not with Facebook, Skype and the iPhone. But, I digress.
I even hosted a conference call for attendees that were all over the country, they had no clue I wasn't in my office.