I’m going to take a little break from the Playlist. We’ll do another edition next week. I’ve noticed my page views (the way Google Analytics measures visits to the blog) are down, so I’m thinking that not everyone is interested in the Playlist. I am, of course, and many of you have left comments saying you love the lists. I never tailor the subject matter of my posts to analytics, but it did make me think that perhaps I shouldn’t do several of them in a row, but instead, throw them in once a week or so. So that’s what we’ll do.

Let’s get back to harsh reality:

What the heck? If you walk up to the back of the corral, the fence posts are thoroughly covered with snow. We must have about three feet of the white stuff on the ground and it just keeps coming. Thank the heavens for the snow blower. Yesterday’s snow was heavy and wet and would have been a giant pain in the tush to shovel. Fortunately for me, Mr. Sparks took over and, aside from shoveling the mini-corral, I watched the action from inside.

We are more than ready for Spring.

This girl won’t know what to do with herself when she gets to use the big corral again. She’s been confined to the mini-corral (the best decision we made this winter) and she’s been a trooper, but she needs more space. I told Don yesterday that I yearn to see her loping from the back of the corral all the way to the kitchen door. She’s tries to lope now, but it just doesn’t work, bless her heart.

It’s March. That means a new edition to my Penguin Classics Jane Austen collection. And look what arrived on my doorstep yesterday:

Hello, pretty little Coralie Bickford-Smith designed cover!

Yes, I’m going for one a month. Yet to come are Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. I’m also going to add Bickford-Smith’s edition of Middlemarch by George Eliot – another dearly loved favorite of mine.

Each of the books has a pretty satin bookmark, as well.

There they are, right next to the two volumes of Shakespeare that dear Judy gave me. I’d say this is a “Favorites” section of our bookshelves, wouldn’t you?

A funny little story – yesterday morning I was sitting in my chair in the den and the phone rang. Just one ring. I got up to get it and nothing showed. No number. Nothing. Okay, I thought, and went back to whatever it was I was doing.

A short time later, one ring. Then nothing. Hmmmm.

Then about ten minutes later, one ring.

In the meantime, I was planning to call my dad to check on him, so I did. In the course of our conversation, he said that he had tried to call three times and got a busy signal each time. I mentioned what had been happening with the phone. We couldn’t figure it out.

A while later, I was telling Don about it. Since I was able to make an outgoing call, I was thinking there was maybe something wrong with the circuit or the line or whatever. So I decided to use the cell phone to call our landline to see if it was still happening. It was. One ring on our landline.

But the cellphone I was holding kept ringing in my ear and to my shock, my dad answered.

What the heck?

Was something screwed up? Were the lines crossed?

I tried again. Same thing.

Finally, after some sleuthing on my part, I deduced that somehow our phone number was being forwarded to my dad’s number in Florida. Since we have a landline phone that is made by AT&T, I googled something or other that took me to an AT&T page where there were instructions on how to forward your phone calls and how to cancel forwarding. I tried several methods and finally hit on one that worked. We tested it. Our landline rang several times. Bingo.

Here’s what happened. I think. Our number shows up as Private when we make outgoing calls. When I call my dad I always hit *82 before I dial his number so he knows it’s me calling. According the chart I consulted, you can forward your calls by hitting *72 and then dialing the number you want to forward to.

So, I must have hit *72 by mistake. That’s a first.

It was the strangest thing. Thank goodness we discovered it rather quickly, or my dad would have been getting our calls all day!

Happy Thursday.