First hot cocoa of the season. (And well-deserved. It’s cold outside, and not so terribly warm inside.)

At 10:00 AM on the first Tuesday of the month, the county tests its emergency sirens. #dogsofmastodon
The very first month we had Ashley, we happened to be walking right under one of the sirens at the moment it started up. Ashley started howling along with it, which made me laugh. And Ashley looked a little embarrassed, thinking she’d done something wrong. I didn’t want that, so I started howling as well.
Since then, Ashley and I (and Jackie when she’s with us) have howled along with the emergency sirens every month.
Our neighbors have not complained, although I suppose they think we’re rather weird.
To celebrate voting (and because the dog is at her Canine Academy) we’re having lunch out. I’ve got a Three Floyd’s Zombie Dust (yummy—I’ve had it before), and Jackie has a Big Grove Old Fashioned.
Jackie and I have exercised the franchise.
You can’t really see it in this photo, but there are a wide range of diverse, multi-ethnic “I voted” stickers this year.
There’s a small creek that runs behind Winfield Village. It feeds the ponds in the Lake Park subdivision, and then the water flows on to the Embarras River.
It usually has only three or four inches of water in it, but after heavy rain it swells quite a bit.