The Many Adventures of Girl Dog Watermelon

We got our kids a dog, since our very large yard was terribly lonely. Bug's very wisely named her Girl Dog Watermelon (but it's just Watermelon for short). Within the first week living with us she took out all the other puppy competition by biting the eyes off every stuffed dog we owned.

Clearly she was born to be a member of the family.

And also:

Did you know it's a terrible idea to lose your internet card?

It is. All kinds of very terrible things happen, like you disappear off the face of the map: no blogging, no Twitter, no email or newsfeeds or comic book information or anything. When you're cheap, it's even worse, because your entire house gets ripped apart (and subsequently rearranged) in the attempts to find the damned thing because shelling out the cash for a brand new one that you only need because you're a dolt is physically painful.

But, because it was driving me absolutely mad, I was missing everyone terribly and getting ten minutes of free internet from the library was proving to be an impossible task, roughly three months or so later I've finally broken down and bought a brand new one, which means as soon as the return policy runs out I'll find the runaway. Which is virtually impossible, dammit, since I've looked everywhere but beneath the floor boards, but it'll still happen.

So, hello internet! I got a lot of really nice emails (thank you so much) that I'll be replying to throughout the week and expect to get comments on a bunch of your older posts as I start working my way through. I hope everyone had an excellent holiday season, and now my new internet card is attached to a keyring finder beeper thing.

The technical name clearly escapes me at the moment.

So, tell me what's been going on! What have I missed, how were your holidays, what's new and fantastic that replaces out the old and terrible? All sorts of things, please save me from months of catching up.

And hello!