Morning all:

What a great start for a slightly stiff body. I guess that is why the morning java, which fills my Maine mug, tastes especially good. For many years my Maine mug has been my main mug. Kirstin gave it to me after a babysitting job/vacation in Maine and it is not only the perfect size but also the fact that the ceramic is not too thin or too wide. See a bit of the Papa Bear of children’s stories coming through?

Why a slightly ‘stiff’ body you ask? Well, we’ve had fairly miserable weather for the front part of the Thanksgiving Day weekend. It’s been quite cold and wet. So, my workout last night was on the old Nordic Track ski machine. A workout on this is easier on the joints since you do not get the pounding but since there is forward and push resistance plus an upper body workout I was using some muscles that had gotten downright flabby over the summer.

All this was a far cry from last weekend when I blew out the gutters on the house in just a T-shirt and jeans in warm sunny weather. The ‘blowing’ out of the gutters is a new technique I worked out. Strapping my little leaf-blower engine pack on my back I climbed the two stories up to the gutter and got one half done. Then with a single placement of the ladder on the other half of the front got the rest done. Amazing!

For those of you who have been following the ongoing annual saga of the icicle light competition with the perfect little family across from us know that we (actually Marcia since she is the lighting manager) have been the perennial losers. This year it was massively different since I declared us the winners! Wahoo! Wahoo! On the surface it would appear that they, once again, had beaten us in that their front lights were lit last Saturday and ours didn’t come on till Sunday. What people didn’t realize is that we actually sneaked a complete lighting display onto our rear deck, and it was lit first. What had been assumed to be some deck rail lighting only meant for the Tall Stacks weekend in fact has become part of the total Christmas lighting package. We win!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. First a brunch at Adrianne’s place fit for vegans and carnivores alike (we ate vegetarian while Marcia was baking the evening ham in the oven) that was filled with great food and still better conversation. Even I didn’t go into my normal holiday snooze state. This was then followed by a delightful and very traditional meal and evening at our neighbors where about 14 of us were gathered. Once again it was very obvious that we sure do have a lot to be thankful about.

Have a great week.

Cheers,

Dirk