Does a Bear Poop in the Suburbs?

Well, this is different. I went to bed around 10 last night, Girl had fallen asleep on the couch (allergy meds) and I heard her get up and go to her room later. I woke this morning to this note propped in the living room:

"Careful letting the dogs out - BIG BEAR on our street last night."

We aren't in the country. We're in a fully-built-out residential area that has been here for decades. But we're a couple of miles, as the crow flies, from a state park that does have a bear population. They've wandered into other neighborhoods before, but as far as I know, this is a first for us. And it wasn't even garbage night!

I'll be looking around carefully when I get up tomorrow, that's for sure, because everyone's trash will be out - a buffet table for Yogi and Boo Boo. I'm used to raccoons and possums, snakes and hawks, owls and bunnies - but bears? I can just see my 8 lb. Rottweiler-wannabe Murphy telling off a black bear, defending his neighborhood from the intruder. Maybe not - he loves raccoons and bunnies, he's fascinated by them and watches them quietly, he doesn't even growl. He may decide a bear is just a really cool big dog. But we won't be taking any chances on that, thankyouverymuch.

Yesterday should have been a yard work day, but became a computer-geeking day. A few weeks ago I downloaded a trial of some add-on McAfee security program, (I use their virus protection) and it ate my network. I mean, the software for the wireless router disappeared from my hard drive. Gone, not just corrupted, deleted, as if it had never been. I deleted McAfee's "helpful" program when it began stopping me from doing just about anything on my own damn computer, but it took a few days for me to figure out that I no longer had a wireless network, and even longer to get around to fixing it. It led to a general cleaning and rearranging of the office and computer hard drives.

I loaded the upgrade Windows software on the Axim - Oh my God how I love this little device! It's so cool, and so handy.

Unfortunately, my FL real estate license school software didn't load properly and gave me an error message - I'll have to call them tomorrow.

I listed yarn for sale here, and on Knitter's Review. Sold quite a bit of it, too - I listed a few more things on KR than I did on this site because I'm lazy and it was easier to add them to the subject there than edit my list here over and over.
The unsold portions of yarn from here will go out for the physical garage sale, and the leftovers from there will go to charity. The stash will get lean and efficient.

A link off a link off Daily Kos led me to this:

Why Do You Have So Much Junk?

Do you recognize yourself? I do. I mean, I'm not to the point where family and friends would arrange an intervention, but despite months of effort, this house is still cluttered. I'm still working on it. I've gotten my random shopping urges under control, I'm actually planning a garage sale, I never miss a chance to throw out some random crap from the garage on garbage day, I'm really trying. I think today's task will be weeding out unworn and unneeded clothing (again). I'd love to empty the tall lingerie chest in the corner of my bedroom and turn it into yarn storage. Right now I have a large wire tower with bags, boxes and such in my bedroom, and it's unattractive and cluttered. Maybe today's mission will be getting rid of the Tower 'o Crap.

Enjoy your Sunday!

I still haven't updated my sidebar.