The squirrel, on the other hand, had no fear whatsoever.  He pressed his little rear end right on the window so he could conveniently eat the sunflower seeds, and even the cat’s frantic scratching and hissing did nothing to shift him.

It was a fairly nice day, and my thoughts began to turn to the garden I will one day have, but snow still covers the ground, so instead, I went over to Skillins to get some plants for my office.  I had our office manager Tanya take a giant nasty plant out of my office, because it was large and particularly ugly.  No accounting for taste, however, because Tanya loves the miserable old thing, and after repotting it (I did provide the pot, least I could do for the poor thing) she moved it into her office, where she now has a Jungle.

But I don’t hate plants in general, just the one I was giving up.  So Chris and I and Rudie the Dog went over to Skillins to get a couple of new plants for my office.  I had found, amongst my junk drawer, a notebook from the Welcome Wagon that they must have sent when we bought our house last year.  In it were two coupons for Skillins - a $10 off coupon and a coupon for free cut flowers.  Both of which, I believed, would cheer up a cold weekend nicely.

This is the time of year when cyclamen are sold in the shops.  I know this, because my birthday is coming up and I often get a cyclamen for a gift.  And I love them,  because they are colorful, hardy, and almost impossible for me to kill, which is saying something.  I have a white cyclamen that I have had for almost four years at home.  And so, I had cyclamen on the brain as I walked into the greenhouse.

Skillins had some gorgeous specimens, so I took a largish one and a smallish one and picked out two matching ceramic pots, and had them repot the plants.  I also bought Rudie the Dog a singing chickadee toy.  Then I picked out some pink tulips for my cut flowers and we headed on home.

I spent considerably more than $10, but the change to the office was worth every penny, and the change to the dining room - which had been feeling neglected since I took apart the Christmas basket on the sideboard - was also refreshing.

We needed a couple of things from the grocery store, so while Chris was at work that afternoon, I went shopping, then called my friend Jean to come over for tea.  I had also stopped at the library, because I had finally run out of Christmas books to read. Unfortunately, I nodded out over a mystery in the living room, and woke up to Rudie’s frantic barking at the back door, where Jean was coming in.  I had turned up the house heat all the way to 60 degrees, but she elected to keep her coat on anyhow.  Can’t imagine why.

I quickly made some cucumber sandwiches and put some cookies on a tray, though, and we had tea.  And somehow we managed to chat for a couple of hours ... mostly about bocce.  When Chris came home, he said he wanted to get a team started from Starbucks.  I will try to get one going from the paper, too.  But we’ll lose to the seniors anyway.

Chris had ordered a wireless card for an ancient laptop computer, which runs on Windows 98.  It came from China, and after trying unsuccessfully to install the driver for about six hours on Saturday night, we finally read the box.  It was priceless.  The name of the company was ‘Enjoy’, and the box exhorted us to ‘Enjoy in wilessless’. 

That should have been a clue, and we were never able to get it to work, but it only cost $4 and shipping.  So we went off in search of a real wireless card, and ultimately found one that worked. 

But we now have cable rather than DSL, so we had to go looking for a signal elsewhere.  I am sure we looked very suspicious, stalking around the library in the bitter cold, laptop in arms, and driving around town and stopping suddenly when a wireless signal came up.  So in case anyone was thinking of calling Homeland Security, that’s what we were doing.

That, and confusing Rudie the Dog thoroughly.