Yes, our dog Bruce turned five today. He spent the morning napping on a pile of clean clothes then I put his bandanna, which we got him for his birthday, on him and let him outside to play for a bit. Other than that, he got cuddled a little extra, and Amanda sang him happy birthday and gave him some Pops for a snack. (We’ve cut back on the snacking for him quite a bit lately.) It’s hard to believe he’s five. I know, he’s just a dog, but Amanda and I really love him to a ridiculous degree.

(Bruce wanting to go outside, Harvey’s gift of pine combs.)

For some reason I had more activity on my Facebook account today than I have probably in all the time since I signed up for it. Hannah Frazelle had asked me to add a few pictures from Labor Day of her and her friend Maddie in an inflatable turtle. I did that and we had a couple messages back and forth. Then, since I had pictures of Maddie and I know her at least a little, I added her to my friends list. Stephen Dunn sent me something, I got a message from Gamal Abdo (which is awesome- I don’t think I’ve heard much from him since he graduated high school a year before I did), a got a response from my cousin Roger, my other cousin, Alex, Roger’s brother, added me to his list, and Caroline, Amanda’s cousin, added me yesterday. Okay, it really isn’t all that much I guess, but it seemed like I was getting an alert that some activity was going on with my account with some heretofore unseen regularity.

Amanda and I had thought about having a little Christmas get-together this weekend, and we knew it was short notice, but everyone else is already doing something.

I wrapped Amanda’s gifts tonight. I was finishing them up when she got home. She made burritos for dinner and we watched last night’s CSI Miami. There wasn’t much else on of interest so I putzed around on the computer while she watched some Deal or No Deal and the penultimate episode of The Biggest Loser before going to bed. Those are not shows we typically watch.

There’s been a lot of bad stuff going on lately which I have neglected to mention. A few days ago there were two shootings at churches in Colorado. I haven’t followed up on it, but it’s believed the two incidents were related. Several people were killed, along with the shooter at the second scene, which was a church and missionary training place.

Today in Las Vegas several high school kids were shot getting off a school bus, but thankfully nobody was killed.

Ice storms across the nation, I think from Texas to the northeast, have taken down power and caused a number of deaths. Meanwhile the temperature here in North Carolina has been in the seventies. It’s supposed to get colder this weekend though.

Just going along with the news theme, Michael Vick was found guilty for his involvement in dog fighting and will serve up to two years in jail I think.

No real news on Grandma Bolin.

Zach Dotsey