Whoo-hoo! It's raining! I usually find this irritating, but now I realize this means snow in the mountains, and a friend and I have plans to go boarding on Sunday. It'll be interesting if we end up needing chains - she has some, but neither of us have ever put them on a car before. I have a feeling Sunday is going to be a very early morning!

Once again, Wally has been thoroughly enjoying the rain. He wants to go out more then normal to play fetch in the downpour, but I'm tired of having to dry him off again and again. I let him out on the porch a few moments ago, thinking he would just sit on the stoop, but when he came in he was soaked again. Sigh. At least he'll be soft!

Tonight is my first hockey game in exactly three weeks. That's a really long time to go without playing hockey, not just because I miss it, but because I'm no longer conditioned and I know the game tonight will be long, hard and tiring. I'm sure I'll be sucking wind before the warm up is over. Also, we're playing the first place team. Yeah, great scheduling!

I went to Best Buy today and bought the new DVR receiver to upgrade my dish to HD. I have an appointment next week for the guy to come out and install the new dish. Let me tell you, making the switch to HD has been expensive. Aside from the $1500 tv (which was actually a really good deal), it cost another $300 for the DVR plus $70 for the special HD cable for the DVR (not included). The biggest pain in the ass is that Tivo no longer has a contract with Directv, so their boxes will only work with digital cable now. I've been a Tivo owner since the very first version came out and love the interface. I've seen the Directv DVR interface and it sucks. But I have a contract with Directv and it would cost even more to get out of it and switch to cable. Sigh. I hate proprietary equipment.