Nigel Reports on Odds & Ends...

Since I live here, I guess I can report on "odds and ends"... information we wanted to share.

Cookbooks:

We all remember the sad story of the cookbooks. All summer, we collected recipes. A volunteer said she was reformatting them as they came in, getting them ready to go to print. She said she would turn them over to Ricky in September to be printed in plenty of time for Christmas. But what she turned in had not been formatted at all... in fact, it did not even include all the recipes that had been turned in! It was just a mess.

Ricky retrieved all the original emails that had been submitted but it was October by then and there was no chance of getting the cookbook completed for Christmas.

Thanks to our friend, Dione, we got some really great software for getting all the recipes into the same format, which is necessary to make a book out of them.

Now the problem is time. We just have not had any.

Ricky and Jay wanted me to ask if there was anyone who might be willing to help us get the recipes into this software program so we can get them print ready. It would have to be someone with some time to donate, and someone who is meticulous and pays attention to details!

If you think you might want to tackle this project for us, please contact Ricky at Intake@SmilingDogFarms.org

Whatever it takes, we promise we will get this cookbook finished and printed, even if it takes until this coming Christmas to do it!

Weather Conditions:

Today, things were closer to normal for the first time in five days. Our high was 60, and the low overnight will be in the mid 40s. That is still extremely cold for our area, but it's positively balmy compared to what we have had all week!

Today, everyone enjoyed the sunshine and milder weather. Tomorrow, it is supposed to be even warmer. We are just holding our breath that whatever it was that took over our weather this past week is gone for good!

I always tell people that our climate is much like Tampa, Florida. And 99.9% of the time it is!

I don't know what blew through here this last week, but I hope we never see it again!

Building Schedule:

We have pretty much lost a whole week because of the weather. The artic weather left us in pure Survival Mode all week. The focus was on keeping the dogs warm and safe, and that was about all we got done! Even with most team members working overtime each day.

Even if there had been time, it was so cold it would have been impossible to build anything!

Ricky was able to resume his construction schedule today, and will be working at it again tomorrow. And we are hoping the weather will hold this coming week.

There are some ominous predictions for another cold wave, but it is hard to imagine that we could possibly have cold on the scale we just endured! This past week has been a once-in-a-lifetime kind of winter.