I came across mention of a book recently, a first-person account of a woman and her therapy dog who visit nursing home patients. I looked it up on Amazon and just had to get it for my dad's longtime ex girlfriend, who has two dachshunds which are certified therapy dogs. They visit the local hospital, patients in their homes and hospice patients.

Then Amazon's clever marketing reeled me in as I saw on the order page they also had a book written by a man who owns 3 dachshunds, and the "life lessons" he's learned from them.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't do something like this since K. is an avid reader and who knows if she already had read the books, but both of these are new releases due out in mid-May. I could have waited til Christmas (I missed her birthday back in March) but again, I didn't want to run the risk of her getting the book before I had a chance to ship them to her.

K. was a nurse for many years, before she retired, and she's very devoted to the whole therapy dog thing. It's a big part of her life. And, she is a dachshund lover. So how could i NOT get these books for her?

To pay for the books, I used up most of this month's Amazon gift cards I earned for my participation in 2 online forums. I know she will enjoy them both.

The saga with the range hood continues. As you may remember reading here earlier, it was supposed to be installed yesterday, but it came out of the box with a big dent on the front, so they had to reorder. He had told me if it rains, I can do it tomorrow (today) morning, which would have been perfect as I don't have to return to work until 1 pm. But the shipment hasn't arrived as anticipated so now we're shooting for tomorrow morning, 9ish, which means I have to arrive late for work. I hope to stay after 5 to make up the lost time. If...and that's a big if, the guy gets here on time, it will only take 15 minutes to install. He already took the old one away, so now I have a big hole in the wall to the outside. It has only a flimsy vent to keep out the bugs, plus a towel I stuffed in there.

I have someone coming over in a little while to give me a price on fence repair/replacement. Hopefully it will be more the former than the latter, as I don't really want to spend more than $100 or so but I may have to. Plastic fence would be nice, but that would be even more money, I'm sure.

It's been raining intermittently, which is very good. We so needed the rain here.

On my way home from work I'll stop by Stop & Shop to pick up organic green pepper and celery so I can make my pasta/sun-dried tomato salad to serve as lunches for the rest of the week.