Reality check
Back to normal now, after 5 days of a different reality. Left for Rhode Island Wednesday morning. Tuesday night I stopped at Ken's and my friends Rush and Annie (also called Rush'nAnnie) were there so I had a quick visit with them. I'd had a long talk with Rush on the phone the night before. He's thrilled with the election results, and not just his (he won handily, 65% to 35% in New Jersey's Congressional race). He's very optimistic and says the Republicans are now dealing with members of the minority party in a completely different way. Dorks.

Anyway, I left for RI at 9 and had a good trip, sunny but not too bright. Instead of trying to listen to a book all the way and being put to sleep by it I listened to music CD's, which make time go faster and are less soporofic. I started listening to a book I downloaded to CD from the New York Public Library's collection, after we had a demonstration by the vendor. It's pretty cool--you can download the books to your computer, then burn them to CD's. Takes lots of CD's for long books but it's free and opens up a whole new collection for me. Anyone in NY State can get a NYPL card so I'm all set.

Got to RI at 3, had a nice visit & dinner, up early Thursday morning. We worked hard all day, company arrived at 1 and dinner was at 2. There were 9 of us--Mark's sister and her entourage. That group of people is in the middle of a seriously crazy time so it wasn't the most relaxing visit, but they only stayed a few hours, then thankfully the kids had to go to their mother's family Thanksgiving so they left. We collapsed and talked about them a lot.

Friday Mark worked and Liza and I went to the pottery & art sale we always go to, done by the regional art association. Lots of really nice pottery this year--I found something for my Secret Santa gift here at work. I hate Secret Santa stuff a whole lot but can no longer object. I bought a very pretty little bowl, which is really queer but too bad. We stopped at Mark's work and I had a latte. We went to the drugstore and I got some chewable zinc because I was coming down with a cold. Predictably, later in the weekend Chances chewed much of the chewable zinc while we were out. She only ate a few pieces, then chewed the flavored outside part off of several pieces before discovering that the flavor was only on the outside layer. Blech, blech she said and spit them out on the rug.

Lots of turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. The people where Mark works told him he'd need 10 lbs of mashed potatoes for 9 people. They were wrong. Very wrong. We did our best but only ate about 2/3 of what he made. They'll freeze the rest. We ate slightly more than half of the 17-lb bird, which was a really good bird. And I made the mistake of saying we didn't have enough squash, so Mark got more and we ended up with waaaay too much of that. Mostly we had so much left over because the kids had to eat another dinner so ate very little at our house.

Our walk on the beach on Sat. was wonderful. It was sunny and warm and the water was a beautiful color. We walked and walked and the waves never caught me.

I left yesterday at 10:30, uneventful trip home. I listened to both discs of The Beatles White Album and some of the book I'm listening to. When I got home the house was 54 degrees, about what I expected. I got a good fire going, discovering that part of the woodpile is drier than I'd thought (saints be praised!) so I actually got a HOT fire going. I heard a thump at one point and discovered the dogs had tipped over my new burn barrel to lick the grease off the bottom of it. I'm afraid this will go on for a long time--the barrel was used to store cooking oil by the man Ken got it from. He runs his car on oil rather than gasoline. When Ken and I first lit paper in the barrel it became a 10' high torch, burning on the inside and outside, very dramatic. Now it still sizzles when I burn papers in it, but the outside doesn't burn. Guess there's still fat on the bottom, though.

And today I've already finished the juvenile books for Peru that we'll return to them on Weds. when we go back to barcode again. I'm ready to start with the huge collection of Adirondackiana from our collection that I'm giving to Plattsburgh Public. They claim not to have most of it so I need to check our database and create records for anything that's not in there. I suspect there will be a fair amount of cataloging, since most of the stuff is not barcoded. Ah, entertainment. My ancestors are in some of these books.

It's warm here during the day, but the small ponds have a thin layer of ice on them and the ground has just started to freeze. There's ice on the rock cliffs in the mountains. We're getting ready for winter, it just hasn't come yet. OK by me!