Ready, set, POUNCE!

I don’t know what the kitten lying on the bed did, but the cute black kitten seems to think it needs punishment. Look at those claws as the kitten flies through the air! I’ll bet that hurt when it landed on the other kitten!

Actually, it kind of looks like the kitten on the bed is about to jump on something itself. Maybe it moved before the other cat had a chance to land?

BTW these are not my kittens, although I kind of wish they were. They’re so cute!

Oh she’s tried. She’s paced and paced in circles on the lawn out front, but hasn’t produced anything. The one time it looked like she was going to be successful a neighbor came outside their house and called out to me. Great timing. Midnight stopped trying and had to go over and great the neighbor.

Then once we were back on the boulevard for another try another neighbor came by with their dog - just as I was becoming frustrated with Midnight and yelling “GO POOP!” at her. Naturally, Midnight stopped her pacing and went to play with the other dog -stealing his leash handle and making it look like she was going to take him for a walk!

Midnight has a few really good “doggy” friends in the neighborhood and this dog (a lab collie mix) is one of them. So as they played I talked to the other dogs owner. Trying to explain why I was frustratedly telling my dog to poop. LOL Hopefully he understood! We’ve talked several times about our dogs. He’s a very nice guy, but I hate to say this … he kind of needs to look into treatment for acne scars. His face is really pockmarked. sad really as he’s a nice looking man otherwise.

In total I’ve been out with Midnight approximately five times today, for a total of maybe 2.5 to 3 hours! A few walks and trips just outside the house haven’t helped her at all. Plus when Chris just came home from work I told him she was having trouble so he took her for yet another walk. He just got back a few minutes ago and all she did was pee.

She’s had a few other days where she’s been like this over the last week. She’s always caught up to her normal amount of deification by late evening, but this time I don’t think she will. I’m more used to her having the opposite problem, this is something new for her.

Fellow dog owners … has your dog ever been constipated? Is there anything I can give her to help her go? Maybe a fruit or veggie. I seem to remember reading about people giving pumpkin to their dogs but I can’t remember if that was for loose stool or constipation.

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It’s beginning to get colder here in Toronto and soon .. the snow that falls will stay on the ground for days or a week at a time, or perhaps like last year it might stay for months! As I was just saying on my gardening blog, my plants have finally realized that winter is just about here and have reluctantly gone into dormancy.

There are still a few roses clinging stubbornly to their stems, but they are dead … unlike the rose below which was very much alive and happily blooming in August.

Chicago Peace produced such lovely roses all summer. It’s a shame that I won’t see another rose from this plant until next May or June … but it’s worth the wait.

I think that as a Northern gardener I appreciate my garden all the more in the spring, summer and early fall because I know there will be several months during the winter when all I’ll see will be the white of snow, gray skies … no green leaves or grasses, no colorful flowers, no scent of rose perfume, lavender, beebalm or jasmine … no garden to sit in with my laptop or a good book.

I’m resigned to winter’s arrival, but secretly I’m already longing for spring.

We still aren’t sure what kind of gifts we’re going to buy all the kids in the family! Perhaps tomorrow outing will just be a trip out to get some ideas. Most of the kids, nephews and nieces, are teens and I think those are the hardest people to buy for each year!

I had mentioned in another post that I was thinking of getting some of them newly released movies and or gift certificates to their favorite stores, but if you have any ideas for gifts for teens I’d love to hear them. Especially gifts that don’t break the budget! I haven’t been making much money lately so we don’t have much to spare to buy gifts this year.

My only brother that lives in the area has invited us over to his house for an early Christmas get together next weekend. His wife, my sister, her twins and their girlfriend and boyfriend, and my brothers daughter, her husband and their new baby will be there. It’s just a small gathering, but one that we try to do each year.

My brothers and sister and I usually don’t exchange gifts anymore. As I said in an earlier post we decided a while back just to buy gifts for the kids. This year I might get my brother a gift though. I found some fantastic silk ties and I know how much he loves his ties. So I might surprise him with a small gift. The gift would be a thank you for the Tom Cochrane and Red Rider concert passes that he got us in the summer.

Have you started shopping for the holidays yet? I’ll bet that some of you started today consider that it’s Black Friday! Did you put yourself on a budget this year? Cut down on the number of gifts that you’re going to buy?

I always find Christmas the most expensive time of the year. I’m still trying to figure out how we are going to manage to buy all the gifts we need to purchase this year on almost no money.

I got an email last night from eCost and they are having some amazing Black Friday sales! I mean, how would you like to get a Nintendo Wii for only $99? See what I mean by amazing deals? That Wii would make a great Christmas gift wouldn’t it, and at that price it wouldn’t break your budget either!

Here’s what the eCOST newsletter said:

Shop eCOST.com for outrageous Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers. eCost has one Nintendo Wii available at $99 on Black Friday between 2AM EST to 4AM EST. On Cyber Monday the Navigon 2100 will be available at $29*, Look for the Outrageous Deal Icon to get that Deal in Bargain Countdown.

*Please note that the Nintendo Wii ($99) and Navigon ($29) are available in limited quantity.

Oh and don’t think that you have to live in the US to take advantage of these amazing deals. eCOST ships worldwide!

Here are some direct links to some of eCost’s Outrageous bargains!

eCOST.com Holiday Gift Guide- Ideas to help you get the right gift at the lowest prices
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Hot Deals

Nextar 7″ Digital Photo Frame - Black ( N7-202 ) $29 (Save $60)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Samsung T220 22″ Widescreen LCD Monitor ( LS22TWHSUV/ZA ) $189.99 (Save $50)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Westinghouse 26″ LCD HDTV w/DVD and Dual HDMI ( SK-26H590D ) $299 (Save $80)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Telesteps 12.5ft Telescoping Ladder - ( 1205 ) $79. (Save $170)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Navigon 5100 GPS Navigator w/ FREE Real-Time Traffic (10000130) $89 (Save $70)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

HP Evo D510 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 Desktop PC ( 470057-015 ) $149 (Save 50%)
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Black Friday Deals. Outrageous offers! iPod for $45
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Cyber Monday Deals. Outrageous Offers! GPS for $49
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Platinum Premium: Get Free Shipping on next 4 orders & exclusive offers
Offer Ends: 11/28/08

Ongoing Offers:

Rebate Center eCost: Search Hundreds of Rebates by Manufacturer Name or Product Category

Bargain Countdown eCost: Limited Time offers at rock bottom prices
Dates: Ongoing. Items change hourly

Free Shipping eCost: Free Shipping and Exclusive Offers with Platinum Premium Membership
Dates: Ongoing Promotion

I don’t think I’ve ever put so many sales links in one post before … but they just have some great deals. I couldn’t help it! Besides, wouldn’t you rather shop online rather than staying up all night waiting outside a store waiting for it to open in the morning to get at all those big sales. I mean, you can shop and get bargains while in the comfort of your home. Forget the crowds!

If you look at my About page you can see a list of some of the social media sites that I use. It’s not a complete list as I get invites every week from blogging friends to join new sites! It’s hard to keep up!

Some time ago I came across a site called Second Brain. I didn’t join it when I first came across the site, but I decided to sign up a few days ago when I realized that I could connect most of my social media accounts to Second Brain.

There are a few other social media sites where you can connect quite a few of your other accounts, but I liked the look and feel of Second Brain.

Not only can you bookmark favorite sites in your Second Brain account (or use their Bookmarklet tool in your browser), but you can import your bookmarks from sites such as Delicious, Faves, Digg, GoogleReader, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Reddit and Mr. Wong.

You can also import feeds from your Blogger, Wordpress, Metaweblog, RSSBlog and tumblr accounts. If that’s not enough you can also connect your Second Brain account to your accounts at GoogleDocs, MindMeister, ZohoDocs, Slideshare, Box, Scribd, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Revver, Vimeo, Qik, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Behance, Diigo, and GoodReads.

One thing that I discovered recently is that you can upload files from your computer to Second Brain. I don’t think you can do this on many of the other Social Media sites. I’m not sure what kind of files one might want to upload - perhaps articles - but it’s an interesting feature to have.

Anyway, I know that a lot of you already have accounts at many of the Social media sites that I’ve listed above, I get enough friend invites each week to know that, LOL … so why not join Second Brain too? It’s free to join!

Remember to add me as a friend if you do start an account there!

This is a nice enough looking house … maybe a little small, but I think it’s just a little too close to the water. Don’t you?

The owner must have really wanted a house on the beach!

I’m so thankful that we have a PVR. It’s like Tivo. We pretty much record all the shows we like to watch even though we try to watch several of the shows we like on the same night that they are on tv. This way though we can watch them without commercials and of course watch them whenever we want.

It’s definitely a good way to pass the time when you aren’t feeling well!

Is it my imagination or is just about every actor/actress on TV these days just a little too thin? What happened to shows with actors that looked like real people? I mean it’s like most of the characters on the shows I like are taking diet supplements like Ephedrasil hardcore or something. They’re just too thin, too muscular, too perfect …

Do you find that when you watch TV the people just don’t look like your neighbors, co-workers or people that you’d see in your city or town? I guess most of the stories aren’t much like real life either for that matter! LOL

Well, ok, we really got our Labrador Retriever on November, 23, 2007, but after the long drive to the breeders and spending about two hours with at least 10 puppies in a barn while trying to pick out which one we wanted, it was nearly Midnight on the 23rd when we finally decided on our little girl. So the 24th is really the anniversary of her first full day with us.

BTW we named her Midnight because of her glossy black coat and because we picked her out at almost Midnight. We think it’s a good name.

The day that we got Midnight was the day after a huge ice storm. So driving two hours to the breeder was a stressful trip, but I remember how happy I was driving back with a tiny black puppy cuddled in my lap.

Midnight is our first dog, so those first few months we went through a big learning curve! Of course, Midnight is only 15 months old now, so she’s still quite hyper and puppy like in her behavior so we’re still learning how to train her and cope with her energy level.

Speaking of learning curves - hiccups were confusing! We didn’t know that puppies hiccup a lot and Midnight must have had hiccups fifteen or twenty times a day! Violent hiccups that shook her tiny body. She looked like she was having a seizure every time she got hiccups!

I took this photo of Midnight the first time we took her into the backyard. She loved the snow and exploring the garden (still does!).

I’ve taken lots of pictures of her over the last year. I wanted to be able to remember what she looked like at different stages of her growth. You can see most of the pictures I’ve taken of her over at Flickr in my Labrador Retriever Puppy folder.

Midnight was quite a sick puppy when we got her. She looked healthy, but she had a very bad case of worms, a gastrointestinal infection and later an eye and ear infection developed. The breeder we bought her from kept the puppies in a barn (in a horse pen) and while the conditions didn’t look all that bad it’s obvious that the puppies didn’t get the care or initial worming meds that they should have gotten. So we ended up having to take Midnight to the vet on her very first full day with us!

She continued to be a sicky for about three months, but she rallied and she’s a very healthy dog now.

She’s actually bigger than I thought she’d every be. She was always a lot smaller than other Lab puppies that were close to her age (well if we have her right birthday (August 26th) - we’ve been told a total of three different birth dates from the breeder). She’s now tall enough that when she wags her tail energetically she can clear off the top of our coffee table, and she’s still growing! I think she’s probably still a little small for her age, but as I said she’s grown more than I thought she would given her beginning with us and her health problems.

Thanks to my loyal readers who were following this blog when I got Midnight, especially those that are not really dog people. I think every second or third post back then, for at least two months, was about our new puppy. I was obsessed with her and I guess I still am. I’m also thankful for all of the advice I got regarding training and all the items I need to take care of her properly (like the crate - good idea!).

A few final pictures:

5 months old and cute as a button

Graduating from Puppy Training Class - 6 months old

A new way to wear a Bandanna! 7 months old

It’s been a fun and educational year. We learned that we love to go out for walks in the woods with Midnight as well as watching her swim in Lake Ontario. I wonder what other great adventures the years ahead will hold?

Over the last few years our families on both sides have pretty much agreed not to exchange presents between the adults. Why? Well, everyone has children (except us) and we’re all established in our homes. We don’t really need presents. Oh they’re nice, but when you already have most everything you need or want you don’t really need to get Christmas presents.

So for the last few years we’ve all just been getting presents, for the most part, for the kids in the family. That’s still a lot of gifts to get! Between Chris and I we have 17 nephews and nieces, plus two on my side have kids of their own so add three more to the list (oh and add our two god-children as well!) If we were also buying for each of the adults individually we could add another 20 gifts to the Christmas list that we’d need to buy! So I guess we cut it in half … but it’s still a lot of gifts to buy.

Most of our nephews and nieces are in their teens and I find teens the hardest to buy for each year. Most of them don’t really need anything in particular. I mean they all have iPods, game players, closets full of clothes … so what do you get for a teen that already has everything?

As I said earlier I’m keeping my open for anything that’s on sale that might make a good gift. I think for at least half of the kids I’m leaning towards getting newly released DVD’s, music CD’s, and perhaps some popular games. I just need to find out what they already have (what games and game players, dvds and music) and what others are planning on getting them so they don’t end up getting two or more of something.

I spent some time this evening looking at the DVD section at Buy.com. There are a lot of great movies that have just been released on DVD and there’s a section there where you can pre-order DVDs that will soon be released like The Dark Knight , Mama Mia, Indiana Jones the Kingdom Crystal Skull, Step Brothers and many other movies. I figure that if I order some movies that are only being released at the end of November or in early December there’ll be little chance that the kids I get them for will already have these movies.

Of course, for some of the kids I might just buy them gift certificates. I’m fairly sure some of the teenage girls might like a gift certificate for one of their favorite clothing stores.

So do you have teens on your shopping list? If so, what kinds of things are you thinking of getting them?