Times, How They Are a Changing...

Wow. I admit I have been a bit lax in posting, and a LOT has happened since my last post detailing our Vegas trip. We lost my long-time companion, Ri, the lone Brittany Spaniel in our pack of greyhounds, a few months ago. She was a faithful companion who had been with me a LONG time - since I picked her out of a double litter of 21 pups back in the early Summer of 1994 when she was 5 weeks old. She came to live with me about 2 weeks after that day, after she was fully weened. I still look for her, and miss her like crazy, but, she gave me 14.5 years of happiness and constant companionship, right up til the day we had to say goodbye.

We also have moved to Burnt Dog Lodge full time - for those of you that don't know, Burnt Dog Lodge was our vacation home in Sautee, GA, in the North Georgia mountains just outside of Helen. We relocated here December 19, and we also moved our business to Cleveland, GA at the same time and had the doors open and hit the ground running the following Monday 12/22. Talk about hectic times! Suzy & I had lived in our house in Albany pretty much our whole married life, and 12 years is a LONG time to accumulate "stuff". We managed to get most of it on the moving truck and relocated up here. Thank goodness we have a generous basement to hold all of the overflow.

Our good friends from Albany, The McClungs, came up over the long weekend between Christmas and Nw Year's, and The Julians also came up and camped at Unicoi State Park with their kids. We had everyone over for a traditional good luck meal of smoked wild hog from Longpond Plantation (my parent's home). I put the boneless shoulder on the smoker early New Year's day, and we had pulled pork for dinner. Suzy made some off the hook black-eyed peas and collard greens - traditional Southern fare for good luck. We rode mountain bikes several times, hiked a bit and just relaxed and enjoyed good food, good views and great friends over the long weekend.

I'll try to make it a point to post more often in this new year, we'll see how well I do. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and look forward to a prosperous new year!