Welcome our new family member

After filling out many applications for many different dogs, Kelly and I were finally approved for adoption of a lovely little girl.

Everyone, meet The Baroness Nymeria Frieda von Hopkins-Michael. Her friends call her Nymeria. She is a short-haired dapple red boar mini-dachshund weighing about 8 pounds with startling blue eyes. She came from a rescue called Out of the Woods Rescue.

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Dash and Nymeria enjoy a sunbeam together in our kitchen near the door to the deck.

Like her dearly missed older sister, Thumbelina, she is a puppy mill rescue. Nymeria comes from Pennsylvania, in Amish country. She did not even have a name, just a tag that said “11”.

Nymeria enjoys some time in the big bed.

She was born in September 2016 so she is about 3 1/2 years old. So she is by far the baby of the household now, which is kind of ironic since she has had a litter of puppies every heat since she was able. This poor little girl lived in a rabbit hutch with a wire floor for pretty much her entire life, until she was rescued.

Nymeria working on her tan on the back porch.

Still, she seems to be in pretty good shape considering all she has been through. She has her appointment with our vet scheduled this next weekend, but her foster mom, Chrissy, and the good folks at Out of the Woods did an amazing job with her initial shots, her spay, and her dental in which she lost17 teeth!

They love spending time together. It really was love at first sight.

She is full of energy and has a great sense of curiosity. So far she gets along well with all the other animals. Just this weekend she touched noses with Violet, which was a huge and pleasant surprise. There were cats in her foster hom who she apparently ignored, but Violet was very concerned upon her arrival. But she doesn’t seem interested in chasing them, and so far she has only had a passing interest in them at all.

She and Dash LOVE to play together, and it’s great because now he will be worn out enough to go to bed without much fuss, the way he would after a long day of walking around at Brimfield.

She is named after Nymeria, one of the direwolves from ASOIAF/Game of Thrones, and after Frieda, a character from Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.

The good folks at Out of the Woods Rescue sent us home with food, medicine, toys, and so much more. I can’t tell you how thankful we were for their treatment of our still scared but wonderful little girl. If you are so inclined, please celebrate with us by making a donation so they can continue their excellent work.

~Geoff & Kelly

Game of Thrones and the End of Character Arcs

A lot of Game of Thrones Fans were disappointed when the Battle of Winterfell seemed to be somewhat anticlimactic, particularly since most people felt that the fight between the living and the army of the Dead would be THE BIG BATTLE of this final season of the show.

Well, then last night happened.  Season Eight, Episode Five: The Bells.

If there is ANYTHING you can say about last night’s episode with 100% certainty, it is that the episode was decidedly NOT anti-climactic.  And it was one of those things that you just couldn’t stop watching.  Like the Red Wedding, but orders of magnitude worse.

Continue reading “Game of Thrones and the End of Character Arcs”

GoT S8E2: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

The first two episodes of Season 8 have come and gone, and there are only 4 episodes of the show left.  It took two years of waiting, but it almost seems like it is going by so fast now that it’s here.

Well. I won’t spend too much time recapping the episode, as I would rather spend time talking about what I think it all means and what will happen next.

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Some Predictions for GoT Season 8

Well, here we are – rapidly approaching the final season of my favorite TV show.  HBO has released some teasers and such.

So I thought I might make some predictions for what we might see in the final season of the show, and specifically, who I think will live and who will die.

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Winter is coming, finally

I love New England.  One of the things I love most about it is that is has four distinct seasons (five, if you count Mud Season).  So when the winter weather here starts acting like the winter weather in the South, i.e. rainy and cool with no snow, it kind of annoys me a bit.  I expect to have snow.  And we have had no snow (or bitter cold) since November.  We had a wet fall, and that seems to have extended into winter.

Well, it now looks like we will get our first winter storm of the season, some six weeks into calendar winter.  And for some of New England, it looks like it may be a real doozy.

Continue reading “Winter is coming, finally”

Does the Night King have Greensight? A theory

I rewatched S7E6, “Beyond the Wall”, again and noticed a few things I had not noticed the first time.

For one thing, it almost seems like the Night King knows when Bran is watching him through Greensight.  Is it just me?  When Bran had warged into the ravens to fly over the Army of the Dead, the Night King looked up and the ravens scattered immediately, as if the connection to Bran had been suddenly interrupted or broken.  And since Bran immediately goes out of his warg/Greensight trance also, I am assuming that it is broken.

The Night King was created by the Children of the Forest.  Did they pass on Greensight to him when they created him?

Continue reading “Does the Night King have Greensight? A theory”

Thank God for Game of Thrones

As the news just gets harder and harder to watch, a little escapism once a week can be a wonderful thing.

Sadly, there are only two episodes left in this season, including tonight’s episode.  So GoT’s ability to blot out the awfulness of reality is going to be temporary.  You might even say limited to a brief… eclipse. [rim shot]

Thank you, thank you, remember to tip your server.

-Geoff

Not quite what I was suspecting in S7E2, but still good

So while there was a lot I liked in this episode, there was also some stuff that I didn’t like.  But first, a few things that were guessed correctly.

Continue reading “Not quite what I was suspecting in S7E2, but still good”

Game of Thrones Season 7, so far

I have been meaning to write a post about the first episode of Season 7, and so here it is, along with some other bits of new information from the trailer shown at ComicCon in San Diego.

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We’re having a Season 7 Premiere party! (And other Season 7 things.)

So after many years of wanting to throw a GoT theme party, we are finally going to have one – complete with costumes.  The occasion is, of course, the premiere of Season 7 on the 16th of this month.  I am going to be preparing a dinner of some sort based on A Feast of Ice and Fire and maybe a few other recipes from the Inn at the Crossroads site.  Hopefully this will be the first of many.

So anyway… I have had Game of Thrones on the brain lately and have been thinking about what we might expect in Season 7 (and maybe Season 8).

Continue reading “We’re having a Season 7 Premiere party! (And other Season 7 things.)”