Targa and Tucker took off again yesterday morning. This time they got out of the yard. Tucker has gotten out of the yard before, but I think this is the first time Targa has run through the invisible fence. They have been gone overnight – this is the second time they have been gone overnight (the last time, they took off on a walk in the woods). I don’t usually worry if one of them is gone by himself – alone they don’t go far. But together they can go for hours.

I think it is a combination of Tucker being a beagle, and the invisible fence covering too much of the yard.  For most of the yard, the invisible fence follows the property boundaries, even when there is no natural barrier for the dogs (e.g. a stone wall).  It makes it difficult to train Tucker to the boundaries in the back of the yard – he is pretty good at not approaching the boundaries when someone is watching him.

Yesterday, Will and I rerouted the invisible fence. It now only will allow the dogs in about half of the yard. It now follows a stone wall (a natural boundary for the dogs) for about half of the boundary. Hopefully this eliminates the section of the yard that Tucker has been escaping from. We also will build a fenced (real fence, not just invisible fence) section of the yard to let the dogs run in when we can’t watch them outside.

Our friends, Rob and Anna are re-homing their dog, Dillon, because he isn’t getting along with their horses. Rob asked if I wanted Dillon (he offered free eggs along with the dog – I was heading over to pick up eggs from their farm yesterday). I told him (joking) that we would trade Tucker for Dillon. When he told Anna what I said, she thought for a second and then said that they would rather keep Dillon.

The boys’ blog books arrived today from Lulu.com. They are perfect – the boys immediately took them out and read them. And Will didn’t even complain about having to write in his blog tonight.

Now I feel obligated to write in my blog.  I have taken a nice 10 day vacation between posts. I think it was a combination of the cold weather, maybe being a little burned out of writing, and the stress of worrying if (thanks to congress failing to do their job) there will be a furlough of federal employees starting this April.

Susanna has started school again – her last semester. That means that she won’t be free to work on house projects during the week. And probably not much during the weekends as homework starts to pile up.

We have made some progress on Will’s room. I have most of the drywall up, and the window repaired/repainted. I’ll try to get pictures up later this week.  I hadn’t spent much time at all in the workshop – I’ve been waiting for the weekend temperatures to get above freezing. Working on the power tools when it is too cold outside sucks. Even after I get the workshop warmed up, the heavy tools are still bitter cold to the touch.

The weather today gives hope for warmer weather. I know by Sunday we will be back into winter, but hopefully not for that much longer.

Or, a visit to Madame Tussaud’s museum. Of course that isn’t all we did. But it is most of what we did. We were a bit slow getting out of the house (we couldn’t find Targa’s invisible fence collar that had been misplaced – but don’t worry the dogs found it while we were gone and chewed it up), but made it by lunch time. Will picked Mexican for lunch.

After lunch we walked through the museum. We then walked back to the train station, stopping at the New York Library for a short break (in the kids section). We were back in New Haven by dinner time (an exciting dinner at IKEA), and home before bed time.

Waiting for the train in New Haven

Yesterday, Susanna and I took a road trip to New Bedford, MA. We planned to visit the New England Demolition and Salvage company.  The plan was to look at possibly getting a new door for the kitchen. In hindsight, I should have measured for a new bedroom door. Our bedroom door is the only really crappy replacement door in the house (hollow core, flat panel).  There are tons of doors that match the style of our house, most for $50-$60. Exterior doors are closer to $150-$200.

We wound up not buying anything at the salvage store – but it is a great place to get ideas. They have an acre of claw-foot tubs. Thousands of doors and windows. And countless other treasures.

We made it a day trip, with lunch after the salvage store, and a visit to some more antique stores (and a flea market in Fall River that wasn’t worth stopping at). We aren’t really in the market for anything specific for the house, but it is nice to get out and explore.  We were home in time for dinner and a movie.

Merry Christmas! Our family had a great Christmas day. Susanna and I went to Christmas Eve services last night (yes, I don’t know what is wrong with me… but it was nice to get out of the house). The boys arrived this morning and will be here until Sunday. The plan was to let them get settled from transition and then open gifts. The boys decided 15 seconds after arriving that they had settled long enough to open gifts.

We all enjoyed a relaxed Christmas day. Susanna started reading “50 Shades of Grey.” I helped the boys with their Christmas projects. Ben spent most of the day assembling a complicated toy roller-coaster. He doesn’t actually need much help (only a little help at the end getting things running smoothly – it won’t be much longer before he gets to the point where I won’t be of any help).

Will had a lesson on carving wood at the Mystic Seaport in on a field-trip with his school earlier this year. He had enjoyed carving, and had asked for carving chisels for Christmas. Today, I helped him get set up in the workshop, and I milled him some lumber to carve with his new chisels. I think he likes carving because it is something he can show the rest of us how to do.

I first traced some letter so he could carve his name. Then we milled a piece of sapele (actually two) and he carved a sign for his room. We hung it on some sash chain and brass hooks outside of his door. Maybe tomorrow he will make a sign for his brother’s room.

It is that time of year again. Time to look back on the year. Time to get the blog printed into a book. Not only do I need to get this blog printed, I promised the boys that I will print their blogs as well.

Last year I used blog2print.com. The site make it easy to print a hardback book from a blog, and the quality of the printed book is good.  One of the things I didn’t like with the service was there was no control over the size of the pictures in the book. The quality of the images was decent, but they were all a little smaller than I would have liked.  The book also doesn’t include comments. The comments aren’t really an issue for my blog, but for Will’s and Ben’s blogs, the comments would be nice.

I’m trying a new path for the boys. I haven’t decided what do do with this blog.  I am using BlogBooker.com.  The service is free (though to get it to use high-resolution photos you must make a donation (about $14). The service takes the blog and converts it to a print quality PDF.  I can then upload the PDF to Lulu.com.

With BlogBooker.com and Lulu.com, I can only (easily) get the book in a 6×9 or A4 (letter) softcover book.  I probably could find a way to get it to one of the hardbound book sizes for Lulu.com, but it would require a couple of extra steps. Another advantage is that I could open up the Lulu.com books if grandparents wanted to get a copy of the boys’ blogs.   BlogBooker.com also allows comments to be automatically included.

If anyone has a better way to take a blog and publish it, please let me know.