Possibly a record… my parents Newfoundland, Elsa, had 17 puppies on Thanskgiving day. My folks are breeders. They actually have 2 more littlers coming which when all added up could double this number. The pictures of the babies are already on their website . They are cute as cute can be. Newfie puppies weigh about 1 lb each when born and then they just grow and grow and grow!

Blue Heaven Newfoundlands

A little family tree:

The puppies’ mother is Elsa and father is Solomon.

Elsa’s father is Theo. Solomon’s mother is Theo’s sister, Celeste. (So they are cousins, not siblings…this is not scary in the dog world, like it would be in the human world!)

Theo and Celeste came from France, but their mother, Rudy, was a puppy bred by my parents and her father is Packard.

And Packard is the son of my Daisy!

So these puppies are Daisy’s great, great, great grand-puppies! 🙂

Daisy, by the way, will be 13 years old in January. But Tasha’s not impressed, as she will be 14 in two weeks. 13 and 14 are both amazing ages for newfies.

My parents breed Newfoundland dogs. This fall, 3 girls came into heat and they bred all three, just in case. Surprisingly, all three girls got pregnant and the latest x-rays counted a total of 26 puppies in their three big bellies.

You can see the girls, the fathers and lots of pictures of lots of gorgeous newfies on my parents’ website here: Blue Heaven Newfoundlands.

My mom called tonight to say that she was with Elsa (who has at least 10) camped out at a hotel near the vet so that there will be no problems. Rather than take chances, my mom  let’s the vet help (with all of the safety nets nearby) when there’s lots of puppies coming. So probably tomorrow for Elsa and another few weeks for Celeste and Bumper. Very exciting!

Last week, I was fortunate to have dinner with Rick Chapman, author of In Search of Stupidity, who had come to Vermont to speak at the monthly meeting of the Vermont Software Developer’s Alliance.

Rick is an software marketing guru who also author’s the Softletter newsletter for software company business owners. He is also someone who does a lot of trend analysis.

During our dinner, the conversation shifted to e-books. Rick is sure that e-books, when the devices reach the right form factor and functional features, will replace books. I said,”No way. I love books. You’ll have to take them from my cold dead hands.” (Very creative of me, eh?)

He couldn’t be convinced; but I know I love books. I know I love it when I get to add the latest read to my bookshelf. I love reading in bed and I love carrying a book with me when I travel. One argument of his was “aha – so how many books can you carry on a plane? Wouldn’t an e-reader be better?” My reply was that it didn’t matter because I can’t read that fast anyway. One book will usually suffice for a plane trip.

I love the different fonts that are created for letter presses. I love the varying quality of the covers and the paper. I love the feel of the paper.

It’s probably why I also always enjoy Charles Petzold’s many posts about his books. Today he wrote about digital vs. paper books and wondered about wanting to re-read a book after a decade or two. If it’s digital, what are the chances of the original technology/format that the books was delivered in still existing, or the device still even working. But if it’s a book on his bookshelf, no problem. Just pull it out and read it. Maybe a little dusty, perhaps some yellowed-pages, but there for all time.

It’s been snowing for about 5 hours. The grass is still peeking through the wet & slimy white stuff, but the ground is throughly covered. And I"m sitting here at my computer wearing a brand new pair of back country ski boots trying to determine if they are keeper or not. I’d say winter is here.

Over a week ago, I accidentally left a car window partially open overnight. The next day there was lots of evidence of a mouse in the car – shredded kleenex, mouse poop and more. I looked everywhere for the mouse but could not find him (her?) and figured it was gone. I didn’t really go anywhere for about a week. On Friday night I rove to a neighbor’s house wondering if it was possibly still in the car and was going to jump on my head while I was driving, but it didn’t.

But on Sunday I looked in the car again and there was more shredded kleenex and poop. Rich and I spent an hour cleaning, vacuuming and inspecting every nook and cranny but found no mouse.

Rich decided there was only one way to get rid of the mouse if it was still hiding out in the car – a solution that I am not fond of at all, but let him take charge of the situation. So he put a mouse trip (oh boo hoo) with some peanut butter on the floor of the front seat. I’m more of a hava-heart trap kind of girl.

Poor little mousey.

This morning I unwillingly looked into the car when I took the dogs out. Seeing a tail and a butt was enough, I didn’t want to see his poor little head or neck under the business end of the trap. Rich is going to go out and deal with it.

I pilfered this from my parent’s website, www.BlueHeavenNewfoundlands.com. They are newfie breeders (mostly Landseers, like Rollo). Rollo is one of their puppies, now 8 years old, who is owned by a really neat lady who dances with her dogs competitively. Yes dances. She and Rollo were even on Nick at Nite and they compete in various “Freestyle” events. YOu can read more about that here. She dresses up her dogs for the dancing and also for pics like these – for Halloween, New Years and more. There’s a page filled with them on my parent’s site.

I am a graduate of a college that I will love until the day I die, Well College. I went to Wells almost begrudgingly, with my heart set on studying film at a giant party school: Syracuse University. Being at a tiny 500 student school with no boys around seemed like hell for an 18 year old. During my first semester I begged my parents to let me transfer, but they made me promise to see the year out.

And I fell in love with Wells and spent my entire four years there, learning, learning who I was and not worrying about how I appear or sound to possible love-interests in my classes. It’s amazing to have all of that stripped away so that you can just keep your eye on the prize – getting a great education. I allude to this in my “Proud to be a Geekette” essay on OReillyNet’s Women in Tech series.

Wells is in a tiny little town in New York State on huge Cayuga Lake (one of the finger lakes) half way up the lake from Cornell (in Ithaca). Many former Wells students stayed in Aurora after graduating. Most continue to have strong ties in one way or another. Mine is through the incredible friendships that I have maintained with a number of women that I graduated with and are still the absolutely dearest friends in my life.

One former grad (from before my time) went on to create the American Doll company and in the 90’s sold it to Mattel for $700 million dollars. She decided to use a lot of her new-found fortune to help the college and to help the town. But it was soon apparent to many that her help came at a cost. She turned the town into a big doll house, which created a moral conundrum for so many and a rift through the residents of the town. I haven’t been back since my 5th reunion, but have been thinking that I’ll be there for the one coming in 2008. (my TWENTY-5th! Egad!). I wonder if I’ll mourn the old Fargo, where I spent probably more evenings over those 4 years than I would like to admit. Oh, the memories! 😉

While my suspicion is that there is a Wells alum working at CNN, it must be a slow news day because this is the headline story on CNN.com this morning. In reality, the article comes from the AP Newswire and was written by Helen O’Neill.

I promise not to say anything along the lines of “it’s about time“. I promise! I won’t!

(And you can blame Cicero for that little trick I learned in Latin class many years ago…)

There’s been a lot of talk about role models in the various Women in Tech essays over on OReillyNet.

But I wanted to brag about my best role models!

My parents celebrated their 50th anniversary yesterday. 🙂

Our resident garden snake has gone of for some growing and left behind his skin – right next to the garden. Something of an “I’ll be back” message, I suspect. This year he (she?) was about 15″ long. Rich is already teasing me about how BIG and scary he’ll be next year!