Alex has been whittling on his to-do list for me.  While he was unable to fix the dangling fan (though he did give it considerable effort) Pokey's crate is now all scrubbed and stored away until next year, and the area where it sat all winter has been swept and is awaiting its scrubbing.  Afterward Alex took a swim in the pool while I just sat on the edge dangling my legs.  Surprisingly the water isn't as chilly as I expected. 

Another chore was moving some of heavy cement blocks, leftover after the irrigation pipe redo, to the NW corner of the Back 40 so we could prop the boards back up against the fence to keep Brownie from walking under it.  The same wind that pushed on one of the backyard gates, opening the less-than-secure wire wrap, obviously did its thing in the Back 40, and we certainly want to keep Brownie contained and out of the street! 

When I took over some mail for Alex that was delivered today, I picked up the gift that Aja had brought for me, which turned out to be a very nice quilt book.  It has some lovely projects in it, and I've already seen (at least) a couple I will probably <g> add to The List!

Laura and I played some phone tag today - but eventually we connected.

We've decided that Friday afternoon will work best for both of our schedules as far as going to see the penguin movie. 

She is going to check with Ruth (also penguin person) and I'm going to check with Mary and Marcie.  We could end up having quite a Foothills Quilters Penguin Party!

And in the phone department, Mom called me today.  Even though I didn't recognize the number I still answered the call, and of course was glad I did.  The bad news is that despite being on medication for her shingles, she has developed some new patches in the same area as the original ones that were getting smaller.  No idea how/if this will impact her release from rehab.

Got an e-mail today in a strange format asking if I'd be home this afternoon to receive some chocolate (silly question!)  I assumed, correctly, that it was from Wanda, though neither of us know why her message arrived the way it did.  

I've been working with Brownie, trying to get him to sit for a treat, and this morning we had a breakthrough.  When Marcie and Latina joined the 'party' this afternoon (bringing more completed blocks to show us, and more resulting triangle scraps) I brought out the treat container, and continued his lessons.  "Sit" didn't always work - but we all cracked up when the magic words seemed to be "Any other dog knows to sit when it sees the treats come out."  That worked much better than just plain "sit"!  LOL