Once upon a time there was a young couple living in military housing in Winnipeg. Days after moving in, their house was broken into and the door busted off the hinges. Military housing took 3 days to put a new door on the house. The wife couldn’t sleep and was scared. So they decided to get a dog.

They were told the dog they were rescuing was an 8 week old GSD. After the first trip to the vet they learned they adopted a 1-2 yr GSD/Coy mix, starved & scared of men.

She blossomed. Never grew to the giant size expected originally. Partially due to her Coy genetics. Partially due to a harsh puppy-hood.

She loved. She adored playing in water. She grinned like a fool. She camped. She ruled the house as alpha as two new dogs were added to the family over the years. And always, she kept us all feeling safe & loved.

14 years & 4 months later, she crossed the rainbow bridge. Goodbye Fenris Wolf. We shall all miss you.

I struggled picking my charity to support with my annual Poppy count this year. The non-profit I’m involved with supports Equality Now, Kids Need to Read, and Edmonton’s Youth Empowerment and Support Services so as much as I love those three charities, I thought I needed to select a different organization. In the past, I’ve also tied Movember donations to the poppy count. This year I supported a few people in their moo-stache escapades at the beginning of the month, which took it off the list of potential charities…

So that left me with a handful of military related charities and my favourite dog rescue to select from. I was leaning towards a military oriented charity (mostly because I support CaliCan all year long) when the unthinkable happened. A CaliCan pup, on it’s way to it’s fur-ever home, got lost in Leduc in the middle of winter. Poe had only arrived in Canada a few short weeks before and, being from California, had no exposure to bitter cold before. The snow flew, the temperatures dropped, and dozens of volunteers scoured the neighbourhoods of Leduc to find a 6 lb black chihuahua. Reports of sightings came in near daily. After 5 days of being on the run, Poe was finally found and returned to CaliCan. Which, of course, meant a trip to the emergency vet.  Having had experience paying emergency vet bills (thanks Zoe!), we know that it can be significantly more expensive than visiting a vet during normal business hours. So, with that in mind, we’re sending our poppy pennies to CaliCan to help defray the costs of Poe’s visit to the vet.

Seems to me that life has become crazy busy lately. In addition to working on my final course for my degree at RMC, the not-for-profit organization I helped establish (Alberta Browncoats) has been growing by leaps and bounds lately. We’ve been attending conventions, planning a shindig, and rolling out membership options over the past month. And, of course, I’ve been knitting like a mad woman so we have convention stock.

Somewhere in there I still manage to work full-time as an eLearning developer.

Next week Drew and I will be taking a much needed vacation to Ottawa. Drew’s been many times but, despite living in capital cities of many states and countries, I’ve never been to our own country’s capital before. In addition to traipsing around museums and spending a few days with Drew’s parents we’ll have a chance to participate in the Remembrance Day ceremony on Parliament Hill.  Something I’ve had on my bucket list for years now.

Time to pack my bags. And knitting 😉

In a week it’ll be 6 years since dad passed. A lot can happen in 6 years. Many memories that never get shared. Many times when you pick up a phone wanting advice and remembering, at the last minute, that the person you’re calling isn’t there. Since his passing we’ve been putting an annual memorial notice in the local paper. This year, partially because so many other things have been going on, I didn’t send in a notice for publication. I’m torn. It feels weird knowing that this year there won’t be a letter from mom with a snippet out of the local paper containing the memorial notice. It feels even stranger that I’m quickly approaching university graduation (May, 2013) and knowing dad won’t be there to celebrate.

Wow, it’s been nearly a year since I updated my blog.

A lot has happened this year. I don’t think I’ll be going to back to record any of it.

Onwards and upwards. Or something like that.