Post-Thanksgiving catch-up

I was lucky with my Thanksgiving traveling, avoiding heavy snow and heavy traffic.  I did have to stay an extra day but that's always a nice "have to do" thing.

I drove to RI on Tuesday (skipping work) without incident but with lots of company on the roads.  I went through Worcester, which turned out to be a bad idea because a lot of other people had the same idea.  Oh well, I got there in good time and all was well with my mother in her house.

I did some shopping on Wednesday but pretty much all the food shopping had been done.  We had a nice Thanksgiving day, our celebratory breakfast of lox & bagels then lots of prep for the dinner, which we had at 4.  Boy do we have a lot of food for Thanksgiving.  I made my usual pumpkin pie, using my Martha Stewart recipe of many years.  It was good, as expected.  Secret ingredient=1/4 tsp of chili powder.

We took the dogs to the beach in the morning, poor Treasure on a leash the entire time while Bear got to romp in the water (only a little, he is always surprised to discover that it's SALT water).  We saw juvenile loons but they didn't reveal their original location.  I think our Silver Lake loons winter in New Jersey and Long Island Sound, if I remember correctly.

Friday was a good shopping day, we just went to a couple of places and had a grand time spending money.  It was all good.

We had restful days on Saturday and Sunday, lots of visiting and reading.  I read a few books while I was there, that's always a treat.  We don't watch much television so I read read read.  Very nice.

I had planned to come home on Monday but the snow storm in the Northeast convinced me to stay an extra day.  Tuesday morning it snowed in RI, about 3 inches or so--that's very dramatic for southern New England, especially along the coast.  My trip home was just fine, roads were clear and empty.  My house survived my absence and all was just fine.

The lake froze over during my absence, that was quite a shock.  It was chilly, down to single digits at night.

Now I'm back into my routines, I worked at the thrift store yesterday.  It was busy but not hectic, just the right pace of shoppers and drop-offs with the right number of volunteers.  Today I worked in the Archives, we have many projects to get started on after our Needs Assessment in November.  That was a great experience and I'm really looking forward to the report that will result--we've been promised a 40-page report.  Yikes.

It's been snowing today and we picked up maybe 2 more inches with more expected tomorrow.  Oh it's winter all right.