Red Letter Day!

Orange letter day?
Today I got the most bootiful Hallowe'en card in the mail! I am lucky to have such creative, thoughtful friends.

In other news - boy is it windy out there! Small people are being blown about by sudden, intense gusts of wind & rain. Also there are fast moving, homicidal shopping carts driving themselves around the parking lot at Lowe's. So I passed on the grocery store and picked up eggs & Splenda (all I really needed) at Walgreens. Mr Swami may be coming down with the flu to I fortified my medicine cabinet just in case. He only looks for medications in the middle of the night, never at a reasonable hour.

Twenty-Five

This is how many little lights are on downstairs we turn off the house lights at night. The main floor of the house is just full of little red, orange & yellow "ready" LED electronics, or glowing clock faces. The computer room is the worst culprit, but the kitchen lights up pretty well too! Technically, my frige has 5 little icons that stay lit even though I counted the frige as just "1" when I counted to 25.

I bet if I looked hard I could find more! Because almost all our stuff is plugged into surge protector cords with their own LED "power on" switches and some of those cords are well hidden behind furniture and stuff.

That's a lot of power stuff for a nice environmental tree-hugger like me, isn't it?

Ring, ring.

I have done nothing all day but talk on the telephone. Long, long phone calls. It's weird but in my family everyone tends to call me on the same day. Then nothing for weeks.

Looks like Christmas is at my house this year - which is fine with me because I haven't had a big family Christmas in a long time! Tom may be a little stressed since the relatives are all mine. :)

Usually, when my grandson visits I try to take him & his mom to a Minneapolis Children's Theater show. He just loves that & we are all kinda theater fans anyway. Usually, it is also my treat. Now I have to figure out who gets treated and how to handle that because reservations for Christmas week are going quickly. I don't want to buy all 9 tickets at about $25 each for the 8 adults. I'm also not sure how to ask someone if they are really interested in a Children's Theater production or not (altho these are high quality, well-acted shows, scripted to be enjoyable by all.) It's just a complication, but I would hate to break my string of taking grandson to the theater.

Maybe I can assign everyone I don't take menu items or house-cleaning projects to work on while we're gone!

Sorta, Kinda Here

Mr Swami has the rest of the week off and we are doing a lot of misc household things from his Honey Do list.

--new hooks for the outdoor bird feeders
--last minute planting of a cedar tree
--relocate the pterodactyl (to long to explain)
--knock the top off one of those computer hutch-style desks so it can live in the guest room as a regular small desk
--put away the outdoor hoses (should have been done already)
--reposition almost all the furniture in the family room (this is the one Mr Swami is really trying to avoid because we have to relocate the TV and all the electronics this is involved with that, along with a really really big & heavy credenza. The last time we moved the credenza he brought in the floor jack from the garage & we moved it one end at a time.)

I would rather just buy a nice 52" plasma and start from there but Mr Swami freaks out every time I pick out my new TV. So I may have to wait a few months, but at least when I finally get it the room will be properly aligned, furniture-wise, for the BIG TV. Because 37" just isn't enough enymore, and plasma prices are in almost free-fall around here.

What's on you Do List?

True Love

Right now I am totally in love with Diana Gabaldon again and won't be able to do much of anything (like blogging) until I've finished An Echo In The Bone. So freaking good...

Who's your favorite author?

Like Gorillas in the Mist

My neighbours houses are slowly emerging from behind the screening leaves of the forest. Usually I can see only one other house from mine. Now I can see 3 more. There is one more house to appear and this view will last until spring. I am not happy about this, preferring my illusion that I live alone in the North Woods.

About 18 years ago I planted a strategic row of hemlock between my house and property of a neighbour who I really don't like. Maybe hate. Yeah - probably hate. So I never have to look at her house in any season. I can still hear her from the screen porch, however. She and all her kids think that when you are outside it is required that all conversations be yelled.

Coq au Vin for supper tonight.

I'm Watching You

In that other place - I think you call it Over There. It looks smaller and much more civilised than when I left. I got reaaaaally bored last Friday and wound up opening some old links just for the heck of it. So now I am watching. Just watching.

My Life As a Lonely Hobbit

Well - maybe my day as a lonely Hobbit.

Today I am holed up like a Hobbit since it is raining kittens & puppies (with occasional cats & dogs) out there.

I am feeling even more Hobbit-like because today I had Breakfast, Second Breakfast and Elevensies! Six a.m. Breakfast was a blueberry muffin that Mr Swami bought yesterday as special treat; since I was driving him to work he though a treat might be in order. Muffin was barely okay - nothing special.

He did not know that I was planning & looking forward to a Sausage Biscuit from McDonald's. I love Sausage Biscuits! So after I dropped him off I stopped at McD's for an 8 a.m. Second Breakfast - a Sausage Biscuit with coffee. Yay!

Then my sister in Canada called just before 11 a.m. and I munched some crackers while I talked with her. Elevensies!!!

Mr Swami works late today and then has a meeting - so I won't see him until about 11 pm. which makes me a lonely Hobbit.

I cancelled my grocery store trip because I don't like to schlep groceries around in the rain and returned home. Is this the most pathetic blog entry or what? Lol....

Stoopid Effing Car

She broke down right there at the corner of State Hwy 95 and Nowhere. Suddenly the engine is totally hot and the car's warning system began it's urgent disaster! disaster! warning pings.

So we stopped, let it cool off a bit and Mr Swami checked under the hood. Nothing obvious, oil, coolant & other fluids all seem fine. Start it again - ping! ping! ping! ping! Billowing smoke. So we called for a tow truck. Fortunately we were in a place where there were two bars on our phone!

Tow truck came. Taxi came to take us home (could not raise my DD by phone.) And all we wanted to do was take a Sunday drive into town, mail a few letters & buy some bird food. Stoopid effing car!

I hope she is okay! I like my car and would happily drive her another 100,000 miles os so.

Rainy Rain-Rain

Finally, now that the growing season is almost over we are getting some much-needed rain. The cat drove me crazy yesterday trying to find the right door or window to go out of which would lead to the Land of Not-rain. We have 3 doors we commonly use, six in total and one window in the office that I often open to let the cat quickly jump in or out. Stupid cat wanted all of them opened to check for rain!

All the houseplants I had outside were brought in earlier this week, along with 2 others that were purchased just for the deck. Now I will have to decide where to put them all.

The parakeets are now indoor birds until spring. They will sorely miss being wheeled out onto the deck for a little afternoon sunshine.

Tom and I are meeting at Mongolia for dinner. BC's Mongolian BBQ restaurant. I will get my choice of meats & veggies, with my choice of sauces & such grilled on the giant flat plate. I will grab some favorites off the buffet line. I will eat almond cookies & lament that they no longer make my favorite sesame halvah (I have no idea what it was called but sesame halvah is fairly descriptive.) I will have enough left-overs for a big fat lunch tomorrow. Yay Mongolia!!!