Last Day Home for a While

It's that time of the month again.  It's time for me to return to my job tomorrow, so today was spent doing all thost last-minute things that need to get done before I disappear for a while. 

Some of it was pretty mundane.  I made my monthly visit to Just Haircuts so Joe could make me "look like a Republican".  I have to maintain a very conservative appearance to keep my employer happy, and keep the pay-checks coming in.  If I had my own way about it my hair would likely grow to at least my collar and my beard would rival that of Billy Gibbons or Dusty Hill. 

Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill of ZZ Top

I picked up my prescriptions from the pharmacy, made a stop at Sam's Club, then off to Cold Spot Feeds for a gallon of fish oil for the dogs.  From there I back-tracked to the military surplus store, looking for wool pants.  Since I've lost so darned much weight I need to replace most of my winter gear, and that's a seriously expensive proposition.  The surplus store only had 1 pair of wool pants that will fit me, but I was able to pick up some of those nice wool/acrylic blend glove liners that I like so much.

Back at the house, I cooked and ate a hot lunch, and then headed outside to rebuild the gate to one of my chain link pens.  the pen attached to the garage is the oldest of the free run pens on the place, and has been in use LONG before I got into mushing sled dogs.  Over the years various escape attempts have required some repairs to the bottom of the gate.

Well, yesterday when I went out to feed the dogs Cassiopiea and Nels greeted me at the main gate.  They had snuck out of their pen and were playing run amok unsupervised.  None of the other dogs tattled on them, so I have no idea how long they had been free. 

I put them into the 'garage pen' and it wasn't five minutes later that I caught Nels trying to force his way through the old repairs of the gate.  Rather than trying to patch the thing together again, I just removed the old chain link, and replaced it with newer, undamaged material from a partial roll I had laying around the yard.  Ted came over to help and between the two of us we completely rebuilt the thing in about an hour.  When I put Cassie and Nels back in that pen they looked sorely dissapointed.

With the gate redone, I then hauled a load of garbage to the dumpster station (aka Two Rivers Shopping Emporium) and fetched my mail from the post office.  Shortly after I returned home from that run Stephanie Little Wolf and Robin Baker stopped by to visit the dogs.  While Steph and Robin were available to help supervise, I gave all the dogs a turn in a game of run amok, and then made it a point to house them with different pen-partners than they'd had before.  It's part of the process of rotating dogs through different housing arrangements.  While the pens were empty I took advantage of the opportunity to scoop the poop. 

While Steph and Robin went up to visit Ted's puppies, I did a very quick and very down & dirty job of land surveying.  Ted wants to expand his kennel a bit, and I needed to make sure it wouldn't encroach on the neighboring property.  Then it was time to do the evening kennel chores.  All of the dogs were fed and watered.

Once the dogs were fed, watered and settling in for the evening I came inside to cook and eat my own supper.  I still need to finish packing my suitcases for the tour of duty at work and do a bit of house cleaning so I don't come home to a mess, but neither of those tasks will take very long. 

Oh, I also contracted with Allen Moore and Aliy Zirkle to do a little home improvement project while I'm away.  I think I'll try to be a bit of a tease and not describe it until it's finished, so I can share some photos. 

That pretty much covers all the news for this R&R from work.  To (mis)quote the Walt Disney 7 Dwarfs song - "I owe, I owe.  It's off to work I go...."