Catching up.

Tess and Jesse were here from Saturday night and left at 8:30 Sunday morning. Their new puppy is so cute. They are traveling with the puppy and the chinchilla. The chinchilla never has to come out of its cage. But apparently we wore out the puppy Saturday night and it slept all during the ride on Sunday only to be frisky when they were ready for bed Sunday night. Oh well. Puppies are like babies. Especially this one. If it was running around the house, and I mean running, and it stopped to look for Tess or Jesse and didn't see one of them she would start to whine till one of them appeared. Her name is Pepper and she is really attached to Tess and Jesse. She is so funny running. She is a dachshund and so long that the front runs ahead and the back end swings from side to side as if trying to catch up to the front end. So funny.

The temperature is high enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. I bet when they used to have slate sidewalks you really could fry an egg in 100+ temps.

I went down today and got my house appraisal lowered from $133,000 to $114,000. The guy at the appraisal office said they raised everybody's across the board to collect more tax money. If too many people go down to get there's lowered to what they really should be then they'll just raise the tax rate. But he says it hasn't been busy there so not that many people have caught sight of the raise in their taxes yet. We could not get more than $90,000 for our house right now if I tried to sell it. But I couldn't get the appraisal any lower unless I scheduled a formal hearing and I don't have the stomach for that.

This week end I made brisket, spinach and artichoke dip, apple crisp and brownies. Yum.