First off, if you happened to zoom in on the Corrigan's Lookout picture from the last post, I apologize.  The picture has been edited.

We have internet at home again.  Our cable company officially pulled out of Mercer the end of last month.  We had actually lost our connection two months ago, and since they were closing up shop, they decided not to fix it.  There is a fixed-wireless company in the area that took over the cable company's antenna-tower in town, but the water-tower hill is between us, so their signal doesn't reach us.  For the near future, I have a kludgy system that surprisingly works better than the TV antenna, and beats going to the library.

Let's see, we picked all the apples before the first frost last month...

I put them in the basement in front of a fan to dry out, then I packed them up in the root cellar.

Kelly has a couple lights we put on the dogs for walking now that it's dark twenty-eight hours a day...

She works at a weird place...

Speaking of deer, Kelly brought one home last week.  We have at least eight meals of tenderloin, and we ground up about twenty pounds of burger...

That's about a quarter.  Most of it will be used for Mexican Mondays. (I'm not even done typing up this post and some guy from Belgium already "faved" that picture.)

We had about three-to-four inches of wet snow on the ground, so I fired up the snow blower today for its inaugural run...

Kelly had bought me a Weber grill for Christmas last winter and the snow blower for my birthday last spring. Go figure.

Ugh.  We haven't had internet at home in almost a month, now.  I snuck my laptop into work so I could post this quick update during lunch.

We introduced Finlay to our annual, family trip to Corrigan's Lookout...

I set-up my new snowblower...

Just in time, too, because we got snow this weekend...

And Finlay has decided she likes snuggly-puppy time...

Kelly got called out to a roadside fire yesterday afternoon.  Turns out it was SIXTEEN roadside fires.  They were stretched out along two miles of US 2.  The largest was about three-quarters of an acre.  There were three Fire Departments.  The Sheriff Department had Deputies out on the highway directing traffic.  Of course, there was a reporter from the Ironwood Daily Globe who wrote up a short article for today's paper.  When she went out to check on it today, Kelly found two more spots that had burned for a total of eighteen fire.  They think a truck was somehow throwing sparks as it drove down the highway.

I attached a vibration sensor to the sump pump pipe.  Through various incantations, this plot of the run-times was created...

It updates three times an hour.

We went waterfalling on the Presque Isle River today.  This is Manabezho Falls...

I'll get more pictures from Kelly to post later.  Here's one...

We took the dogs.  They hated being on leash the whole time.  When we got home, they both wanted the same tennis ball...

It's finally Spring here.  We got a little snow last Sunday.  The baby robins are blooming...

And the asparagus is growing...

Kelly picked enough for us to have with dinner tomorrow.

Spring has been delayed again...

In other news, Kelly has been busy making syrup...

She had a barrelful of sap last weekend...

And there are little chickens in the kennel...

They should start laying in about four months.

The MECCA Cross-Country Ski Club, the local ski club which Kelly and I are both members of, held the first day of the Turtle River Pursuit last weekend.  It was bitter cold; maybe just above freezing at the start of the race at 11am.

We had both worked the previous ski races that had been held here; the original Stormy Kromer Pursuit, and then the Iron County Pursuit when Stormy Kromer left us.  So, we were pressed into labor for the day.

We both were on the Crossing Guard Crew.  The race route crossed the snowmobile trail four times.  We had a few people at each crossing to stop the sleds when a skier was coming.  Here is a picture with the Medic Crew just before the start of the race...

I am on the far left.  My volunteer hat was defective...  The pom-pom fell off the day before.

I was at the first crossing the skiers would make.  Kelly was at the last, but it was only a short walk down the snowmobile trail betwixt us.  When the last skier passed my crossing, I walked down and spent the rest of the race at Kelly's.  The skiers had to go about four-and-a-half miles through the woods to get from the first crossing to the last, so I teased some of our friends who were skiing the race...  "What took you so long?  I've been here almost an hour!"

The photographer was there and took more pictures of us, but he apparently didn't post them.

Sorry.  I rent a virtual server with a company for my several websites.  Last month, I received an email that the company was shutting down.  So I needed to find a new host this month.  I did without too much trouble.

I then had to transfer over my websites from the old host to the new host.  Since I only do that when need-be, every couple years or so, I never really remember how to do it.  Something got messed up with this site and I was unable to post.  I finally fixed it by comparing all the config files from this site with another one that was working.

Anyway, in celebration of getting it working again, here is a picture of Hooty-Hoo...

He is the solar-powered owl that lives on our gate. It was a frosty morning when I took that picture.  He is kind of like a weather rock...  When it's been a sunny day, he glows for a while after dark to welcome us home.

Kody is a pretty good big brother.  He lets Finlay crawl all over him and chew on him.  Sometimes he even lets her snuggle up against him for a nap...

We went out to visit the Harmons down by Lake Superior last weekend.  They have a bunch of deer and turkeys that come for meals each day...

And, hopefully, here is a video of Finlay's amazing tennis-ball skills...

Of course, Kody has to get in the video, too.