Devastating news - Mandy's gone

Mandy’s been having a really rough time the past few days, and thinking back, probably longer. Her regular Veterinarian hasn’t been answering their phone, and her regular Animal ER has moved far away, so I finally reached out to the new animal ER, CVSG, who took her in right away. It turns out to be bad - really bad - the kind of diagnosis where there will never be a good time without pain and drugs for the rest of her life. It is unbelievably difficult for me to say, but we came home without her. Rest in peace, my sweet little Italian Greyhound Chihuahua rescue dog. We had a pretty good run of nearly sixteen years, after her first two rough years. Jennefer and I are a couple of emotional wrecks right now. It’s helping a little to talk about it, while composing this announcement for all of you. Whew… This is a completely unexpectedly rotten way to end our year. Through my tears, I found some solace from knowing when she relaxed into my lap, that she didn’t have to suffer any more.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

 Quiet day for us. Jennefer still isn’t feeling all that well. She was a little better, so we went for a walk today, and the streets were all still icy from the snow on Tuesday. The sidewalks were pretty navigable though…

 We enjoyed a pretty sunset a little while ago, while we were talking to my sister's family in Atascadero. 

 Now we're just relaxing on the couch and watching an episode of the Netflix series The Crown, about Queen Elizabeth II...

Record low!

The weather folks say that Denver Airport hit -24°F last night, the lowest temperature in 32 years! I think that’s kind of a funny record, since the airport hasn’t been there that long - it was first commissioned in 1995, but “whatever,” as Dad would say. We’re glad to have a relatively new, fully operational and (comparatively) very efficient furnace, and woke up to a comfortable morning, with this beautiful view out the bedroom window. It’s somewhat over-exposed, but I really liked it that way, since that’s about how it looked to my sleepy eyes.

We received a few inches of snow overnight, which made the drive to pick up breakfast prettier. We went out to shovel the driveway before leaving, and I had on warm boots, thick socks, flannel lined jeans, three upper layers, and a hat. And I still froze my ears and face off... and decided to quit before finishing, for fear of them literally freezing off… with earmuffs and a scarf a short trip into the house away, I had no excuse, but still didn’t wear them, which felt kind of dumb, after the fact. 

Somebody is having fun decorating their yard, at a house that we see on our way to pick up breakfast.

Pretty expanse of snow-covered grass at Little’s Creek Park, on our way home from picking up breakfast.

The local birds are enjoying the bird feeders even more in the cold weather. We’ve seen House Finches, Chickadees, Nuthatches, Woodpeckers, Flickers, and Dark-eyed Juncos. 

Here’s a House Finch inbound to the tire swing bird feeder, with what looks like a bank of frozen ice crystals in the air over the foothills.

The local squirrels have been somewhat miffed, ever since we turned off the hospitality switch for them, after they chewed through my Christmas lights in multiple places. Sorry guys, you’re free to do what you do, but I’m also free to decide I don’t like that.

Goodbye Degoo

This is just a friendly warning, to anyone who was considering using Degoo for cloud storage backups. It was a fun experiment, but since the email announcement from Degoo.com yesterday (12/17/2022), and some of their unwieldy operational considerations, I no longer recommend them for free cloud storage.

They're lowering their free storage limit from 100 GB to 20 GB, and requiring users to either delete data to get under the new limit, or start paying for their "Pro" service, by 1/6/2023. That's an inhospitably short grace period, especially considering that they also have a limit on downloads per day, which could make it impossible for some people to retrieve all their files in time.

I was experimenting with relying on them for backing up all the screenshots from my flight simulator adventures, and some Linux development files, neither of which is a big deal for me, as the originals are already in two places. So I simply removed all my files and deleted my account.

Some people are accusing them of a bait-and-switch tactic, but since I've been using them for over a year now, with no issues, I'm thinking they simply found themselves in a bad financial situation, and felt compelled to make a quick change to fix it. Their "Pro" service isn't expensive, but I didn't like the other constraints they were imposing, so I don't expect to be looking back at them.

Lights and sunset

I caught this nice sunset picture, with my Christmas lights on the deck. I'm glad that the squirrels have focused on the first string of lights, and left the second string alone. The first one happens to run past the bird feeders, and the deck box where we used to put out the bowls of seeds for the squirrels and larger birds. I had the lights daisy-chained, but after they chewed out several sections in the first string, I dragged the power cord around to the second string, and so far, we still have some pretty lights out there in the evenings.

Fighting back

There’s a new Sheriff in town... armed with the deadly dihydrogen monoxide projector! And the Christmas-light-chewing squirrels are learning new places to hide… Even racing across the deck, over and under the furniture, they're not safe... from The Enforcer! 

 

Checking all the hiding spots… they like to quickly run around behind things, and knowing we can't see them, pretend they're not really there.

 

 

 

 

  

Making sure they stay down, after they scurry down off the deck… they often will rush down to the backyard, and then hurry right back up another support post. 

 

 

 

Chasing them across to the other end of the deck, and making sure they leap off into the trees in the yard…