My condolences to the Dennison Family

Conditions at 6:00 am - 12* and rain (still)
Expected later - chance of more showers and 14*

I received an email from Patti on Sunday morning telling me that Dakota had passed away. I was truly sad to hear that. After I read the email, I started thinking of how I felt when we lost Chloe many years ago and it brought tears to my eyes.
Dakota was such a great dog. He was a mixed breed but  mostly husky and I've never in my life met a gentler dog than he was.  In all the years I've known that dog, I've only once heard him bark and it was one 'woof'.  When you arrived at Patti and Greg's house, he would look up from where ever he was lying, and determine you weren't a threat, then lye back down as if to say come on in.  Only later would he come over to be petted, and how he loved to be petted.  He was always so patient. He quietly put up with various amounts of pulling, pushing, hair pulling  with from three kids as babies and when he'd had enough, he would just get up off the floor and walk away to another room. We looked after him many times when his family was away, and in the past year, Lloyd has enjoyed his company numerous times. I know Lloyd will miss that as well.  He's always been very fond on Dakota. He will be missed.

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I knew it was a wet weekend but I just heard on the radio that from Friday to this morning, we received a total of 89.4 ml of rain - that's a lot of rain! But at least the wind finally died down. Friday was very windy but by Saturday morning it had eased off.  Friday night Brenda came over and we watched the taping I had of the Oprah show  I had taped. It was about men who had been sexually abused as children and a man from Fort Augustus was one of the 200 guests. It is actually a two part show and the second part is this coming Friday. So while we watched, we had wine and nachos.  Brenda and Bernie were going to New Brunswick for the weekend so I had no excuse not to get stuff done. My plan was to work on my quilt after work on Saturday but when I got home I checked the bag I had that I thought had lots of batting in it, only to find I was sadly mistaken and I only had small pieces, nothing I could actually use. But it was almost 5:00 when I realized it and both sewing stores closed at 5:00. I called Walmart and they had some in packages but it wasn't the kind I wanted to use, so I was out of luck, as both stores are closed on Sundays. So much for that plan. I did finish the iron on pieces I wanted to add, but other than that, I was out of luck. So instead I spent the evening watching TV wit the dog. 

I woke up really early on Sunday morning, a little after 4:00 and I couldn't go back to sleep so I got up. Unfortunately I completely forgot to set the clocks back before I went to bed so you can imagine my frustration when I got downstairs, and turned on the TV to see that the time had changed on the receiver and I realized it was actually 3:00 am.  But by this time I was up so I figured I might as well stay up, I was really awake now. I watched a couple of things on TV then did some odd jobs around the house - things like tidying some cupboards, putting away the stacks of cookbooks that have migrated off the shelves, the piles of magazines, etc. One of the downsides of living alone is you tend to get lazy sometimes, and let things pile up. So while I did work nonstop for a few hours, you wouldn't know what was done if you walked in the door. But it is a bit tidier. I finally got some little jobs done that I've been putting off. By 8:30 I was tired, so I laid down on the couch and slept for about an hour and  a half.  I thought about going into town later but it was such a wet, dreary day I didn't feel like going out. But I did go out to take the dog for a walk and we were both drenched when we got back. After changing into dry clothes again, I felt like cooking something so I made some granola for my breakfasts, as I'm trying to get more nutritious ingredients into my diet.   I tend to eat too many empty calories. I was watching Alton Brown the other night and he was talking about how he lost 50 pounds just be eliminating certain foods and eating others everyday. One of the things he had everyday was some kind of nuts, and lots of whole grains. So I figured granola will do that quite nicely as well as fill me up with good fibre before I head out in the morning. I'm not so much about losing weight (although I certainly could stand to do that), but more about eating more healthy.  If I'm going to eat calories, they may as well be healthy ones.

I was out of bread so instead of making a huge batch, I just did one loaf of multi grain bread in the bread machine. It actually turned out okay and it took lots of willpower not to just eat it right away slathered with lots of butter. When it was cool I sliced it and froze it wrapped in packages of two each. Now I just have to remember to take one out each evening for my sandwich in the morning. 

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I  can't believe it's Monday morning again. The weekend is really short when you work on Saturday, but I;m going to be doing that for a while now, so I'm sure I'll get used to it, if I'm doing it consistently.