April in review

Wow. Two posts in one month! I gotta cut back.

So what's happened? Not a whole lot. Weather's a fair bit warmer, snow's gone. The warm-up happened pretty fast; it wasn't wet and melty as long as I expected it to be. For fun, here are some pre-melt and during-melt pictures of the back yard.

Cold and frozen was great; the dog's curly turds were visible and avoidable, which hardly mattered since they were, of course, frozen.


Melting was less awesome. The back yard became a pool of sewage that often as not got tracked back indoors... ugh!


Aaaanyway... I finally got the dog fixed the other day. I'd heard all sorts of crazy prices so didn't know what to expect. I first checked the city clinic, hoping it was cheaper. It wasn't and the soonest they could get us in was October. So I called the local vet, who scheduled us for the very next day. For the operation, there was a whole slew of options, mostly involving hooking up the beast to machines to decrease her chances of croaking during surgery. I opted out of most of it (and was quite surprised these were optional -- I'd expected the worst), so the grand total was a measly $240. I like to think I got a fair deal.

There was also a cone available for sale, since the dog shouldn't even lick the sutures for a few days. Fortunately, we've done very well without one. The first couple of days I wrapped her belly in a length of gauze, and after that she paid very little attention to her new belly button. All that left now is to regrow her new bald spot.


We went to visit family in southern Ontario for the Easter weekend and somehow I managed to take no pictures whatsoever. The visit involved the usual farm stuff: collected some quail eggs, bought some ducks for the farm, extended a chicken coop run, reinstalled Windows (hey why not), did some trapshooting with a 12 gauge shotgun, visited more family, visited friends. Good times...

Last Sunday we had some friends over and feasted like kings. The weather was okay at first, and we could sit on the deck. But then in the space of a few minutes, we saw ominous clouds swirling our way; in even less time the wind suddenly picked up and pelted all sorts of airborne junk at us. And then the skies opened up. We hurried inside... and then realized that we needed the deck table inside for dinner. Needless to say, things got a little wet. Apparently a tornado actually touched down west of the city; I wasn't surprised as I'd seen a green glow to the west right when things were getting ugly.

The gang.


Cannelloni and quail were on the menu.


Dessert: someone brought tiramisu... delicious!


We went to look at some used furniture the other day in Smiths Falls, an hour out of town. We picked out a couple of items, which were delivered this morning.

Our new table and chairs. It only came with five chairs, but the other available sets of six just didn't appeal to us.


A dresser of sorts.


That's about it, I think. Let that tide you over indefinitely :).