And Now We Wait

I went and voted after work, but I'm not entirely sure my vote will count, since I didn't post a photo of my "I Voted" sticker to social media.  

Relax.  It's a joke.  

So, now we wait for the election results.  I won't be glued to the TV, because no matter who wins, I still have to get up at 3:30 AM for work.  

And while we wait, God waits for us to repent and turn from our wicked ways. 

You know, I think this is probably one of the most misinterpreted verses in the Bible.  

Far too many people seem to think it means if those heatherns will suddenly start acting right...If lost people will come to Christ...if they...if those people...if, if, if....But, no.  Read the verse again...

It says, "if MY people, who are called by MY name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways."  

If MY people...MY people.

God isn't talking to the lost here.  He's talking to his church.  He's talking to US.  

The church has become lukewarm.  

The church has lost its saltiness.  

The church has become virtually indistinguishable from the world it's supposed to be in but not of.  

A few years ago, I actually heard a pastor's wife say that you can't say you truly love the sinner if you don't embrace and affirm the sin.  No wonder people are leaving the church in such great numbers.  They look at us and wonder, what is even the point. 

Even our church services have become little more than a praise band concert followed by a motivational speech to pump us up to get through the week.  We need to get back to preaching the Bible.  We need to get back to living like sons and daughters of God.  We need to become the salt and light of the world again. 

Then, and only then, will He hear, forgive, and heal our land.  And then we will be a blessed nation once more. 

A New List

I'm sure you'll all be thrilled to know that my window air conditioner worked just fine all night last night.  The compressor cycled on and off like it was supposed to and I woke up with icicles hanging off my nose.  

OK, it didn't quite get that cold, but it was so much nicer than it had been before, and more importantly it kept the humidity down.  It no longer felt like I was sleeping on wet sheets.  And that, Gentle Reader, is the real reason for running the AC in November.  Well, that an the white noise that helps me sleep.   The only downside is that today, I'm sore -- which is a perfect excuse for me to take it easy -- it being a day of rest and all.  

And with that, my to do list is down to one item, which is to finally at long last get my car radio fixed.  

 It's been a year, but it's also been a pretty low priority since I can listen to music on my phone while I drive.  I've even figured out how to listen while using the GPS.   Pretty impressive for a Boom-A-Ludd such as myself.   The only downside is that I can't plug it in to charge, or the music tries to go through my car speakers, and I can't figure out how to turn that aspect off.  

Even so, it shouldn't be too much to just replace the thing, and I've already gotten recommendations for people who can do it.   It's just a matter of getting my butt in gear and taking the car to him.  I actually had one guy who said he'd do it on a certain day, but when I called him, he never returned my call.  Then he messaged me two days later while I was at work to tell me he could look at it then.  Um, nope.  If you can't be there when you say you're going to, then you blew your chance.

These people seem to think we have nothing to do but to sit around and wait for them.  They don't seem to realize we have lives, too, and obligations and jobs.  If he'd have just returned my call or messaged and said something came up, then I'd give him another chance.  But don't ever take a potential client for granted like that -- at least not me.  

All that to say, I need to make a new to do list.  The problem is, everything I have left that I need to do will involve hiring someone else, and I guess I just don't know how to talk to contractors because they always make me feel like I'm being a bother asking them to do a job for which I am willing to pay them generously. 

In knitting news, I'm moving right along on the next hat.  

I'm telling ya, I'm loving this hat pattern. It's so simple, yet fun to knit.  I've got a lot of sock yarn to use up, so I'll be making plenty more of these.  But why don't I just make socks?  Well, I'll tell you.  Back in the spring, I stubbed my toe on something -- I don't even remember what-- and it broke my toenail down to the quick.  Now that little section of the nail simply doesn't grow any more.  It's the weirdest thing.  However, the nail on either side of it still grows, and if I don't stay on top of it, it turns into a miniature bat'leth on my foot.  

Almost all of my socks now have a hole right over my left big toe.  It just isn't worth it to spend that much money on sock yarn, that much time knitting socks, only to have them wear through the second or third time I've worn them.  Thus, I buy store bought socks now.  

And finally, in a strange twist of irony, the birds are eating out of the squirrel feeder.  Only not right now because the Incarnation of Evil is out there stalking them. 

They still haven't found the new feeder, but now that they're coming back to the old one, hopefully they'll discover it soon. 

Subscribe

Thanks to my friend Marcy at Amnicon Studios, there is now a gadget in my right sidebar where you can subscribe to get my blog posts directly in your email.  This might benefit those of you who used to get my posts from Facebook, before they started their war against day lilies.

I'm not sure what they have against day lilies, but that seems to be the common thread.   Every time I vlogged about them, Facebook took the post down.  

Anyway, Marcy had recently added the gadget to her blog, and I thought, "Hey!  That's a great idea!", so now you, too, have the option to subscribe to my posts.  Or if you prefer a feed reader, Feedly is the one I use, and I've been very happy with it. 

Now, on to today's post.  

We actually got a little bit of sunshine this afternoon, even though the morning was still chilly and damp.  All of my Whatever Cacti are totally enjoying this weather if the number of buds on them are any indication.  

Today's major project was to pull the air conditioner out of my bedroom window and give it a good cleaning  It hadn't been cooling well here lately, and a quick search of YouTube revealed that being dirty could be the reason why, so I put that task on my to do list.  

Truth is, I was kind of dreading it, because I didn't want to have to wrestle that thing out of the window, and indeed that was the most difficult part.  Once it was out, it was pretty easy to pull the casing off and wash it down, and boy did it need it.  This front coil was so clogged up with dust, it's a wonder any air could flow at all.  

I think I jumped the gun a bit putting the thing back together and back into the window.  I'd intended to let it dry for several hours, but at the time it looked like it was about to rain, and I wanted to get it back inside.  If I'd known the sun would come out just a few minutes later, I'd have left it in the back yard a bit longer.   No matter.

I got a bit concerned that I'd gotten water into the electronic parts even though I was very careful not to, but when I plugged it in to test it, it came right on.  Then it tripped the little breaker on the plug.  Really, it had tripped it three or four times as soon as I'd plugged it in, so after checking that it still worked, I unplugged it and let it dry out for a good long while. 

I plugged it back in just a few minutes ago, and the breaker didn't trip, but I'm kind of scared to turn the unit on just in case it won't stay on.  Oh well, if it doesn't, Lowes still has plenty of window units in stock and they aren't that expensive these days.  If I have to, I can drive up tomorrow and get a new one, though I really don't want to do much driving until my car is fixed.  Just to work and back, unless there is somewhere I absolutely have to go. 

The only other thing I did today -- besides watch football and knit, that is -- was to download the Google Photos app and back up the photos on my phone so I can delete them.  It still made me cringe to delete photos from my phone, even though I've got them backed up to multiple places.  I think the reason it bothers me so much is because years ago, I had a photo storage service called Webshots.  I even paid money to get the extra storage, then one day they said, "Oh, we're closing the site down.  Your photos are toast." 

Not really.  They sent them to me in a zip file, which I never could get to open.  I still have it stored on my external hard drive.  I may see if Cody can get it open next time he's here.   Even so, I've been leery of backup services ever since.  Even the ones like Prime, Google, and Flickr.  

Speaking of football, Texas and LSU both have byes this week; Navy is in a weather delay, and I will need my computer to watch Mississippi State, so I'd better close for now. 

Laters.  

That’s Baffling

Today was an absolutely dreary, cloudy, damp day.  It never did really feel warm, even though the temps got up into the mid 70s.  The cloud cover and dampness kept it pretty chilly all day.  I even had to go put my house shoes on because my feet were so cold.  Just perfect for sitting inside watching Christmas movies and drinking hot chocolate.  Which I did not do.  Much of...

OK, I watched one Christmas movie while knitting a bit, but I kept myself pretty busy otherwise.  

The first project on today's list was to get the squirrel baffle installed on my shepherd's hook.  And since I'd bought the set of two, I took one of the sections of the second pole and added it to the first, so it's a little bit taller. 
 

Right now I have the suet cake feeder on the smaller one, but during the spring and summer months, I'll put a hummingbird feeder on it -- in addition to the one in the front yard.   

Of course, after I took the above photo, I moved the shorter hook a bit further so the squirrels couldn't climb up that pole then reach across to the feeder.  That would defeat the whole purpose of putting a baffle on it in the first place. 

A few minutes of fiddling and the baffle was pretty easy to install.  

Since I'm not completely heartless, I filled and hung the old feeder back up, at least until I can get a new squirrel feeder and put it somewhere. 

They and the birds have been feasting on it all day.   I put a little bit of feed in the new feeder, and now we wait for the birds to find it. 

By the way, I do have this supposedly squirrel proof feeder, but I don't really like it because the birdseed tends to fall down into that bottom compartment and sprout and grow, then rot.  

The only way to clean it out is to take the feeder completely apart, and that's a pain in the patooty, so I don't use it any more, even though it was expensive. I might just find a new home for it, so if anyone locally wants it, just let me know. 

My other project for the day was to clean off another shelf in the junk room. 

As with the first shelf, most of what was on there was garbage and could be tossed.  All that was left -- that I actually wanted to keep -- fit into one single storage bin -- the top middle one on the shelf above.  As soon as I get the other shelf I bought put together out in the shed, I'll move those boxes out there, and use this shelf to store yarn and other craft supplies for the time being. 

Now, I just have one more shelf to clean off, 

then I can start working on this pile in the middle of the floor. 

And finally, today was the day I had to put my car into the Ford place to get the transmission checked.  Turns out there is a recall on my clutch or something that I didn't not even know about.  They're going to have to order the parts, then call me back to set up an appointment to get it back into the shop.  They said there should be no charge for the clutch, but there might be for one of the additional parts they need to replace.  She said they normally cover all parts when there is a recall, but they have to get pre-approval for the additional ...whatever it is. 

Funny, I hadn't planned on going anywhere today anyway, but with my car gone all day, I still felt trapped.  Cars are freedom, which why we love them. Now it's safely back home for the time being, and I feel so much more relaxed. 

After all that, I'm going to watch another Christmas movie and knit a bit more on the hat.  

Laters.

Caught Out

Well, I got caught out today.  I was expecting the rain to start around 6:00 PM because that's what the forecast called for all day yesterday, and even this morning when I checked it.  That storm must have seriously sped up or something because it started around noonish.  No matter. I still went by the bank and paid my house note -- which in all the hubbub over my checking account last month, I'd almost forgotten to do -- then, after some mental debate went on to Walmart and got my weekly shopping done.  

While I was there, I went ahead and bought another one of those black shelves like I have in what will eventually become my craft room.  I'm going to put this one out into the shed also, and start getting that mess better organized.  A lot of what's out there is junk that needs to be tossed, and the rest needs to be stacked up neatly.  I'll let you know how that goes. 

In a bit of bad news, the shortening on the shepherd's hook trick didn't work.  I guess the next step will be trying a baffle.  I've already ordered one, and it's supposed to get here tomorrow, so if it stops raining long enough, I'll get it put onto the pole.   Then we'll see... 

In better news, the new hat is coming along right nicely.

The name of this colorway is  Horn Section, but I've been calling it Starry Night -- for obvious reasons.  I'm thinking if the body of the hat looks like the brim, I might just have to keep this one for myself.  

In fact, since there's not much else going on, I think I'll put in It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and knit on it a bit more, but not before I leave you with my traditional Halloween prayer:

Good night and Happy Halloween, everybody. 

All Right, Then

Sometime yesterday afternoon, I made up my mind.  I was going to send my diabetic cookbook back for a refund. Shortly after I published yesterday's post, I opened my Amazon app and began the return process so I'd have the QR code already on my phone.  Then I could run by the UPS store after work and return the book. 

Imagine my surprise when I received a notice that it was not necessary for me to return the product.  They still gave me the refund, but said I could keep the cookbook.  I've had this happen before -- where they say I don't need to return the item -- but usually it's when something is defective. Never for a perfectly good book I'd simply decided I didn't want.  

I might cook a few things from it, but I'll probably end up putting it into the Little Free Library on the town square.  

In other news, this is me for these last few days.  

 I am so over this hot weather and ready for something fall-like.  It doesn't look like it's going to let up any time soon, either.  We're supposed to have temps down into the 70s by Friday, but then it'll be back up into the 80s for the foreseeable future. 

That's really all I have for today, so I'm going to get off here and knit a bit. 

Laters

An F.O.!

 I have an F. O.!  

For you non-knitters out there, that means a finished object, and this one isn't a charity hat, either.   It's a hat, just not for a charity.  This one will be a gift for a family member. 

Since it isn't a run of the mill charity beanie, I let Charlotte model it for you. 

Yes, it is a slouchy hat, so it's supposed to look like that.  

As soon as I was done, I caked up the yarn I'd chosen for the next one and cast it on. 

I had to lay it on the arm of the chair to take the photo because this Incarnation of Evil was napping and wouldn't move. 

Brat.

In other news, we got a little bit of rain this morning.  Not nearly enough to relieve the drought conditions, though.  Just enough to wet the dust. Still, when it's as dry as it's been here lately, every drop helps. 

Not much else went on today.  Pretty much the only thing I did besides watch TV was to finally peel and boil down the sweet potatoes my coworker gave me.  They are now safely packed into containers, labeled, and tucked into the deep freeze.  

I've been finding a lot of stuff in my deep freeze that I did not properly label so I have no idea what it is or how long it's been in there.  I'm still thawing and eating it -- provided it passes the sniff test, followed by the taste test.  If it doesn't taste off, it's still good.  

You know, I've been thinking....I'm considering doing something this year that I've never ever done before.  I'm considering putting my Christmas tree up before Thanksgiving.   The reason for this is twofold.  One, because Thanksgiving is so very late -- November 28th.  And secondly, because Cody and Brennan are wanting to come for the tree lighting on the town square on November 23.  If they can come, they can put the tree up for me that day.  They weren't able to stay long enough last year, because they both had to work Friday and had to hurry back home Thursday night.  

I'll still leave the rest of my Fall decor out until Thanksgiving weekend, though.  

Eh, It’s A Start

Every year when I take these long weekends off, one of the things I say I'm going to do is to finally get my spare room organized.  And every year I don't.  I walk in with good intentions, then get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of junk in there and walk right back out. 

This morning, I told myself, "One shelf.  Just get one shelf cleaned off and organized."  And that's exactly what I did.  

I've still got a long ways to go, but it's a start.  I'm going to have to get more storage boxes, and eventually I'm going to move that black shelf out to the shed and get something a little nicer looking to put into this room.  I really hope I can get that whole shed rebuilt, because it's in pretty bad shape.  Not only that, it floods every time it rains.  That'll be sometime in the future, though.  I've got too much work that needs to be done on the house first.  

Speaking of, I checked my shutters over after letting them dry overnight and they look good.  I don't think they'll need a second coat of paint, so I put them back into the shed for safekeeping until I can find someone to hang them for me. 

In knitting news, I've only got one inch left to knit before I start the crown decreases on this hat. 

I've already picked out the next yarn I'll use for this pattern.  This is the one Leann dyed for the second Fiber Fun In The 'Sip in 2019, called Horn Section. 

It was the second colorway she'd dyed for the FFITS, the first one being called Jazz Rhapsody.  I'd bought one of those, too, but sent it to my dear friend Suzy, who left us in 2020.  

And finally, the moon is waning crescent, so I went out last night and tried to take some long exposure shots of the night sky.  

 It turned out OK, but there is too much light pollution around here to get a really good photo.  One of these days, I'm going to find myself a dark sky preserve and go camping out there.  

But right now, I'm going to go work on that there hat some more.  

Laters...

The Bad Part

You know, the bad part about having to get up at 3:30 AM for work is that you tend to wake up at 3:30 AM even on your day off.  So it was this morning.  

I lay in bed until shortly after 4:00, then decided I wasn't going to get back to sleep so I got up and did three loads of laundry before the sun even came up.   Then I washed dishes and cut and hung up a bunch more peppermint to dry. 

On a similar note, I'm considering sending my diabetic cookbook back.  It wasn't really what I expected -- or wanted.  I'm looking for quick and easy stuff that I can whip up after a 10 hour shift in the factory, and none of those seem like that.  I don't know...  Well, I have until November 20 to make up my mind.  

Once the sun was finally up and it had warmed up a bit, I got out and painted my shutters. 

The paint is almost exactly the same color as the primer, so that tells me I did a good job of picking primer.  And since I did use primer, I don't think they'll need a second coat.  I'll check them over tomorrow after they've had time to dry really well, but I think they're OK.  Now comes the hard part:  finding someone who will hang them for a reasonable price.  But at least I got them painted and that's one more thing I can cross off my list. 

In knitting news, I'm making good progress on the hat.  

Only about four more inches until I start crown decreases.  It's a folded up brim, by the way, which is why it's so long.  You know, I got to thinking...this is a unisex hat pattern, so maybe I'll make one for everyone for next Christmas.  I'll just pick masculine colors for the men, and feminine colors for the women, and voilà, we're good to go. 

In piano news, I'm still plugging away at both of my books, but lessons have really slowed down because....I've been playing Christmas music!   It's nice to be playing something just for fun.  I might even get a few little songs recorded for you this year.  

Or I might not...you never know.   It'll be a Christmas Eve surprise. 

Thank You

I don't know why I did it, but I bought a new birdfeeder today. 

The old one was pretty raggedy, but it was still usable, which is why it was so odd that I'd buy a new one and toss the old one, but I did.   While I was hanging it, I noticed the little rubber cap was missing from my shepherd's hook.  

It's not essential, but does keep the rain out of the tube and prevents it from rusting from the inside out.  I have no idea how it could have come off.  I thought maybe I'd pulled it off when I was taking the old birdfeeder down, so it should be on the ground, shouldn't it?  I looked all over for it, but never found any sign of a black cap.  Naturally, I did what any red blooded American would do.  I grabbed my electrical tape and taped the sucker up. 

It may not win any beauty contests, but it'll keep the rain out.  

Speaking of beauty contests, look what I found on my Cactus!  Buds!

I've got a couple of them that are starting to bud.  It wasn't that long ago that I didn't even think they'd survive, so I'm pretty stoked about this. 

In other news, a few years ago I bought some shutters for my house.  Strictly decorative, but I felt they'd increase the curb appeal.  I'd tried a couple of times to hire someone to paint and hang them for me, but the one...one... person who showed up gave me a quote that I thought was outrageously high but I wanted the job done so I agreed to it.  But then, that guy never came back to do it.   

Ever since then, I've said I was going to get them out and at least paint them, then maybe I could find someone to hang them for me.  I'd do it myself, but I don't feel comfortable drilling into brick.  Alas, it's been one of those things that I just couldn't seem to motivate myself to do, so they sat in the shed...until yesterday.  

Somehow, someway, motivation found me and finally, at long last, dug the shutters out and primed them.  

Amazingly enough, the primer still sprayed, and I had just enough to do all six shutters.  It's on the list to get them actually painted tomorrow.  

I'll let you know how that goes. 

And finally, I'd like to thank the two of you who still read the blog without me shoving the link into your feed on the book of faces every time I post.  It really means a lot to me.

I'd also like to point out that there is a comment box below each post, if you'd like to ....you know...leave a comment or something. 

Because I do miss the conversations...

Be Proud

Be proud of me.  Be very proud. 

Why? 

Because I made a phone call.   Yes, me!  I made a phone call!  This calls for a celebration!

Ok, maybe we won't go that far, but I'm pretty stoked that I finally got it done.  

And what was this phone call I made, you may ask?  I finally called to get my transmission fluid in my car changed.  It's been on the list for a while, and after trying several times to schedule it online, I had no choice but to call.  I'd been psyching myself up for it all day long, knowing all the while I'd probably lose my social energy by the time I got home from work and would put it off yet again. 

Then, along about 12:30, Group Leader Shark came around and said, "Only two brazers can stay.  Everyone else has to go home at 1:00."  At first, I'd said I wanted to stay, but then I looked at how much work I had left on the order I was doing, then looked at the clock, and thought, "I can get that done by 1:00", so I told GLS I'd leave.  So two other brazers stayed, and I came home and made my phone call.

The good news is, when I explained that I'd like to have it done on Friday so I wouldn't have to take an extra day off work, the person at the car place replied, "Gotcha!" and fixed me right up. She didn't have any openings for this Friday, so I'm scheduled for next Friday, November 1, and I requested the valet service so I don't have to get up and get dressed.  I mean, I'll likely be awake anyway since I'm used to getting up at 3:30 anyway, but I won't have to get dressed and leave the house.  

That'll be one more thing I can cross off my list. 

Once that was done, I went outside on this beautiful but slightly warm day and hung the small bird feeder on my new shepherd's hook, because the big one I normally use was just a bit too large and laid up against the pole.  

Then I got my shortening and rubbed a thick layer up and down the post.  I'd seen that on YouTube, and thought I'd try it.  It's supposed to make the post too slick for squirrels to climb.  I guess we'll see if it works, eh?  

Finally, as promised, the progress photo on my latest knitting project. 

It's about 7" long, so only 6 inches more to go before I start the crown decreases.  I'd forgotten how slowly knitting with sock weight yarn could go, but it is going.  

In fact, I have lots of sock yarn.  I might make a few more of these for Christmas gifts.  

 

Books!

Back when I was a kid, my mother had some books. 

Well, she had a lot of books, but three in particular she'd kept from her own childhood.  I loved reading those books over and over again.  Alas, I'm pretty sure they got ruined in Hurricane Ike -- like so many of my childhood memories.  

From time to time over the years, I'd thought about trying to find them on a used book seller site, but the problem with that was I couldn't remember the titles of two of them.  I could remember the third, but when I searched, I kept getting something else than the book I'd remembered.  

One of the books was about a family who decided to move out of the city and build themselves a new house out in the woods.  I kept thinking the title was something about the little house in the forest or something along those lines, but when I'd search, I would get the Laura Ingalls Wilder book, Little House In The Big Woods.  

The second book was about a little boy named Corky who entered his chicken Beulah into a pet show and she won when she laid an egg.  Alas, this was another one I couldn't remember the title to.   So there I was on Ebay looking for the book about the new house, when suddenly it came to me. 

Corky's Pet Parade!

It seemed so obvious, I'm a bit embarrassed that I couldn't remember that.  But no matter.  As soon as I had the title, I did a quick search and the book was mine!

I kept on trying to find variations of the title of the book about the little house, when out of the blue, eBay's autofill feature found it for me.  A quick perusal of the offerings, and the second book was finally mine, too!

All right!  I now had two of my favorite childhood books on the way to me.  That brings us to the third one.  As it happens, this was the only one I could remember the title to.  It was Clover.

The book was about a boy who befriends a wild rabbit, but when I typed Clover into the search bars on both eBay and Amazon, I kept getting totally different books.  I did a general google search, and even went to the Library of Congress website to search.  No luck.  

I was beginning to think I'd imagined the whole thing in some sort of Mandela effect, so as a last ditch effort, I put out a call to the internet.  Well, to Facebook.  I posted, explaining my dilemma and wonder of wonders, within 10 minutes someone had found the book and within 10 more minutes, it was in my shopping cart -- soon to be on the way to me. 

Full disclosure, I've had them for several weeks now but haven't blogged about them until now because I'd intended to record myself reading at least one of the books, but never got around to it.  Maybe someday I'll do that. 

On a similar note, my diabetic cookbook arrived today. 

I've glanced through it, but haven't really gotten a chance to really look at the recipes.  I was hoping to find a few I could make ahead of time, then freeze for those days when I don't feel like cooking.  Which is most days.  One thing, though, it is in large print, which my over 50 eyes appreciate.  

And remember the shepherd's hooks I ordered?  They arrived yesterday, but I'd already taken my shower and didn't want to get out and get all sweaty again, so I didn't put them out until this afternoon.  I'd originally just pushed them into the ground, but felt that wasn't stable enough, so I tried a different tack.

I dug a small hole about 6" deep, then shoved the spikes down into the bottom of that.   That wasn't easy, either.  The lack of rain these last few weeks has turned the ground hard as a rock.  I had to pour some water into the hole just to get the dirt soft enough to shove the spikes into it, and even then, I had to get my hammer out and tap them down a bit. 

It was a daunting task, but in the end I persevered and got 'er done. 

I had to kind of put it out in the middle of nowhere, and hopefully it's far away from both trees and fences that the squirrels can't jump onto it. 

I'm going to grease the pole with shortening, too, so they can't climb it 

And finally, I took the hot pink hat with sparkles to my coworker, and she loved it.  Now, it's back to working on my sock weight hat.  I'll have pictures later.  Right now, this post is quite long enough, thank you very much. 

I Gave In

I gave in this morning and turned on the heater.  I'm getting too old to try to be tough all the time.  Truth is, I thought we were supposed to be in a warming trend but it was 42° when I got up.  I'm just glad there wasn't any frost, because I'd put all of my plants back outside.  I didn't build a fire, because it's been getting up into the mid 70s by  mid-day, though I was a bit tempted for a moment.   But now, it's beautiful and I have the back door and kitchen window open, getting fresh air into the house.  

As soon as it warmed up enough, I went out and cut the last of my French Tarragon from my herb garden.  It didn't do well here, and I don't know why.  I don't know if it's too hot or what, but I don't think I'll get any more next year.  I've been trying to harvest as much of my herbs as I can before the first frost kills them all off.  

But even before that, the first thing I did was to watch the first half of the Navy game, since I missed it yesterday due to being at the company picnic, then I caught up on my cheesy Christmas movies.  Oh, and I ran my dishwasher, too. 

But, but, but I thought you said it didn't work!

Sort of.  It still functions, but the hose that goes to the top rack has come loose.  Everything I've researched says it'd be easier and cheaper to just buy a new dishwasher than to get someone to pull it out, take the whole thing apart, then reattach the hose, and frankly, it was an old dishwasher that didn't work all that well anyway.  It had always been the plan to replace it eventually even if it did work because it's black.  I know it's the style, but I don't like black appliances, or black walls, or black ceilings or anything.  To me, it makes the whole room so dark and gloomy.

For what it's worth, I don't even like bright red walls, or dark blue, or anything like that.  But that's another subject for another post...  

Back to what I was saying....  I basically use the dishwasher as a glorified dish rack, and over time, the crud builds up in the bottom and it gets just downright nasty.  Every so often, I empty it and run a cycle to wash all that crud away.  This morning was that time.  Now the bottom of my dishwasher is all nice and sparkly clean.  

Don't envy me my exciting life. 

OK, moving right along.  

As I briefly mentioned before, yesterday was our company picnic, but I didn't take a whole lot of photos.  I took a few of the petting zoo, but that was about it.  They had miniature donkeys.  

They had teensy goats.

And this baby kangaroo.   

They had some alpacas and some sort of miniature cow which seemed very intent on washing my hands with its tongue, but those pictures didn't turn out to well, so I won't post them here. 

There was good food and door prizes, and I won a vacuum sealer.  Alas, I already have one, so I asked Cody if they'd want it, and he said yes so I'm going to give it to them.  I was hoping to win one of the fire pits, but I didn't.  They way they do it is they call out your name, then you have to draw a number form another basket.  Whatever number you draw is which gift you get.  

And there was a pie eating contest, which nobody wanted to participate in except one person -- the one on the right in this video.  She kept trying to get someone to come up and do it with her, but couldn't convince anyone, then everyone began chanting The Big Man Up Front's name.  I mean, his real name.  They were out there chanting Big Man Up Front.  

So he came up and did it with her, and it was hilarious. 

In the end, the coordinators declared it to be a tie, and they both got to go into the money machine, only TBMUF didn't.  He let one of the floor employees go in his place. 

After the picnic, I came home and finished my coworker's granddaughter's hat. 

I don't know why I can't take good photos of pink and red hats, but they always turn out like this.  Anyway, she'd been wearing the same hat I knit for her when she was born two months premature, and it was time she got a new one.  I'd originally cast on 64 stitches, but after a couple of inches, I ripped it and cast on with 72.  It may be a bit big for her now, but at least I know she'll be able to wear it for a few years. 

Finally, I keep forgetting to tell you I finished re-reading Stormy: Misty's Foal, another old childhood favorite. I'm still reading Paradise War, by Stephen R. Lawhead.  

And if you have not watched the new Matlock with Kathy Bates on CBS, I strongly encourage you to do so.  There are only two episodes out, but it's been much better than I expected.