Happy New Year! Sydney Australia fireworks finale

 Here's a link to the fabulous finale of the Sydney, Australia fireworks display for those of you who like us older foks have a hard time staying up till midnight; or for those who just enjoy great fireworks displays!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbMLEImKiDE

I'd like to wish you all a most glorious New Year, filled with hope, peace, joy, and abundance in all things!

Jim and I are enjoying our typical, stay at home New Years Eve. We just finished our dinner  (well at least I finished mine, he's still eating).

He's enjoying the Oklahoma Stanford game and I'm going to finish moving my music files out of Itunes and otherItunes files, rename the folders, move them to a different area,  then uninstall the program and do a clean re-install. Windows 7 refuses to recognize the fact that I removed the check box on the the compatibility change I made earlier; and since 3 attempts to reinstall the software in repair mode hasn't worked, I'm resorting to the longer, pain the rump process.

We woke up to a thin, but pretty light dusting of fresh snow followed by rain, so it's been a good day for cooking and computer work. At our ages we probably won't stay up till midnight, so I'll set off my Farmvillle fireworksm and end the year with a long prayer of gratitude, and a meditation.

Women potters of Ghana

Here's a link to a series of photos on video, of the women potters of W. Ghana.

Women potters of Ghana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyeUNaWWpgw

It looks like we have one more day of decent weather before snow and sleet arrive so we'll be heading out to do some last minute shopping later and have our big meal of the day out.

We're New Year's Eve stay at homes and I usually make a nice dinner. Jim loves Caesar salad so I'll make that with the rack of lamb. He's also requested my potaoes au gratin with mushrooms, so that will be on the menu as well.

At some point today I want to see if I can get this new tape conversion machine working and then get the converted MP3's on to disks which I'll be buying today. There is still a lot of computer filing to deal with but I needed a day or two of rest from that chore.

No knead whole wheat, raisin pecan sourdough

Here's one of the two loaves of whole wheat, raisin, pecan sourdough bread I baked this afternoon.
I think I'll make it with yeast instead of the sourdough next time, which I think might suit the sweetness of the raisins and nuts.

The day is almost gone and wasn't the day we had originally planned. We were going to celebrate my belated birthday dinner tonight, but our dear friend Jim woke up this morning with a high fever, and other flu symptoms, so the birthday dinner will have to wait till we're all healthy and the weather is good enough for an evening trek to Asheville.

Our power went out again last night but fortunately it was on this morning. To be on the safe side, we topped off our 500 gallon propane tank today. Seems a lot of people had the same idea. They said that their 3 trucks delivered 6,000 gallons of propane today. Our generator is powered by propane, as well as my kiln and my studio studio heat. We also have a propane fireplace in the living room, so it's a good idea to keep that tank close to full  this time of year.

My day was spent cooking and sorting through a lot of old audio tapes. My new ION Tape 2pc machine finally arrived and I uncrated it and got it plugged in; but that's as far as I got. Tomorrow I'll read the book and get the software installed. If all works well I'll be able to convert all these old audio tapes into MP3 files and then burn them to CD's.

I also did some web searches for more recipes and wound up ordering the new "Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes" cookbook. My current recipes are very good; but I want to expand my repertoire into some more healthier, whole grained breads once in a while.

Making bread today and tomorrow

After breakfast,and  animal and plant care,  I decided to take a nice, soaking, jaccuzzi, thinking that since Bonnie kitty was outside, she couldn't get into trouble while I filled the tub. Well, woman plans and God laughs. A bully neighborhood cat was threatening her and she wanted back in. By this time the tub had about 3 inches of water in it. Curiosity got the best of her and she jumped, straight away, into the tub! I wish I had a camera to catch the horrified look on her face when she realized what she had gotten herself into. It only took two tries for her to jump out of that tub, shaking her legs as she ran back into the laundry room.Even Jim who is rarely amused by her, was laughing so hard at the sight of this kitty looking like she was doing the makarena.  I wonder if she's learned her lesson on that one!

I spent a lot of time today, searching out some bread and pasta recipes. After all the meat this week, my body is craving some simple pasta, and soon - probably Wednesday since we're eating out tomorrow and I doubt if they'll have pasta at the  Grove Park grill.

After dinner, I mixed up a double batch of a sour dough, whole wheat, pecan and raisin bread.. It will proof till around noon tomorrow and should be ready to bake around 2 or 3 o'clock. A couple of other no knead recipes I found, look good as well - a spelt, and a whole wheat sour dough with millet, quinoa, sesame and other seeds,etc.  But those will have to wait until I can get to a store that carrie vital wheat gluten and some of the other ingredients in those recipes.

Another Under the Tree Village scene

Here's another section of  Jim's under the tree village decor.

It's a cold, but beautiful morning. Bonnie Lass, our kitty is having a grand time outside and repeated attempts to lure her back in have failed miserably.

We had a big breakast and will just have some almonds for lunch. Friends are coming over late afternoon for pate, cheese, fruit, wine and chocolate cookies.

After I make some phone calls I'll get back to this computer work for a few hours. I won't bore you with the gory details of computer woes another further!

Seed catalogues have been arriving this past week. I'll peruse them after the holidays and get my seeds ordered,  plant some perennials under the basement grow lights and plan the garden layout for  this spring. We're still eating potatoes from last season's planting; but they're already starting to sprout, so I'm going to have to think about eating more potatoes - think it's time to think about making potato pancakes.

More under the tree decor

Here's another section of Jim's under the tree village/farm scene. I've been posting them in left to right order. Tomorrow I'll post the last section. 

We're enjoying a lazy, after Christmas morning. Yesterday was a busy cooking day. Julia Child's Boeuf Bourguignion is a time consuming recipe but we decided it was worth  it. The best part is that we have leftovers for tomorrow. If you want to try the recipe, and don't have her cookbook, the recipe is on line.

Tonight we'll have the leftover pumpkin soup and ham. The rest of the day I'll be dealing with this computer. My backup failed yesterday so I may need to remove some files from the stand alone hard drive before I try it again.

Merry Christmas Everyone

 Here's a pictures of one of the fireplaces at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, taken when were there celebrating a good friends birthday a couple of weeks ago. I should take a photo of our fireplace, which looks a lot like this one, and post it some time this week.

Yesterday I baked Babka, which is a Polish, sweet bread. We'll have that for our Polish breakfast along with with kielbasa and hard boiled eggs with horse radish. In the past we also had ham, but our appetites aren't as big as they used to be, so we had ham for dinner last night instead.

Right now I'm listening to a Josh Grobin Christmas album while sipping my morning tea. The tree and staircase are lit and I'm thoroughly immersed in the feeling of Christmas. Bonnie and Bodhi have fresh food and water and Jim is walking Bodhi in the rain, which is slowly melting our beautiful mantle of snow. The temperatures is above freezing, so we avoided the freezing rain and this will be good for anyone traveling locally today. .Life is very, very good.

On this special day, and every day, we are so grateful for the love we share, our beautiful family including the furry members, good friends and enough abundance that makes sharing and giving an easy choice. Merry Christmas everyone!

Another under the tree village scene

 
Here's another section of our under the tree village scene. I found this cute Craft Gallery building a few years ago, which seemed a good addition to our collection. It's one of the contemporary pieces which goes well with our antique/vintage pieces.Some of those antique pieces were from my mothers childhood. We have a lot of  bisque farm animals  and other figures which Jim puts on the windowsills, making our living room a childs Christmas playground!

It's been a busy day with cooking, computer time(the computer woes continue and seem to be getting worse), and animal care. For dinner I made a delicious pumpkin soup with oven baked brown sugar, butter and cinnamon croutons,  ham, yams and green beans. Jim pulled a lovely cabernet out of his wine cellar to top off the meal. For dessert we had some chocolate which always goes great with wine.

There were emails to answer, phone emails from our son who needed Mom's cooking advice on how to make a port wine reduction. His whole family is sick with a 24 hour virus  and he was the only one healthy enough to tackle kitchen duties.He's always cooked a bit but since Gordon Ramsey became one of his clients, I've noticed his repertoire is increasing and getting more sophisticated. He finds cooking relaxing (wish Jim would have found joy in cooking. He just enjoys eating well and maintaining a decent wine cellar; but his cooking endeavors don't extend beyond making toast and hard boiled eggs.).

As soon as I post this blog update, we'll  watch Stings Christmas special on PBS, and if we're still awake after that, we'll watch  "A Christmas Carol". (our favorite is the Alistair Sims version.) We have our own videotape so we don't have to rely on local programming. We usually watch it on Christmas eve, which has become part of our family's tradition; but we may not be able to stay awake for it tonight.

Hope you all are enjoying a wonderful, festive, and healthy and prosperous, holiday season, surrounded by those you love and who love you!

More under the tree goodies

Here's a picture of another section of Jim's under the tree village.

Looks like a beautiful day ahead - sunny with temperatures going up to 50 this afternoon. Jim is out walking Bodhi, and carefully treading over the icing driveway and Bonnie who must have been a Himalayan snow leopard in her last lifetime is out leaping and diving into the snow. She loves it! And who would of thought! Since cats notoriously hate rain, I thought snow would have been greeted with the same disdain!

Well, time for me to leave my computer chores for a while. My farmville farm is tidied for the morning - harvested all my crops, made a lot of money but nowhere to spend it. :-) It's time to head to the kitchen and make pate (one of Jim's favorite things in the whole world)!

More under the tree decor

 Here's another section of Jim's fun, under the tree decor. Most of these figures are from my childhood; but in recent years, we've managed to add a few more contemporary and antique pieces.. In our early married years, one of my treasured boxes of antique figures and decorations  from my mothers childhood were stolen from our apartment storage area; and I've yet been able to replace most  of those childhood treasures.

Around 5pm we heard the rumble of the snow plow beginning it's job of digging us out from all this snow. Now that we're free, we'll get out later to pick up the mail and do some grocery shopping. It's been fun hibernating in the midst of this lovely snow, especially after our power was restored !

Yesterday I did my studio plant watering, studio leaf cleanup and spent some time going through some test tiles and making followup notes. The rest of the day was spent cleaning up computer files and some paperwork. After dinner I deleted another 1+  megabytes of duplicate photos and that job and other computer file work will continue for days, in between holiday cooking and other chores.

Right now I have to follow up on some grand children's Christmas presents that I ordered from Amazon, that have yet to arrive at our son's Oregon house, which is where the family has gone to celebrate Christmas.

Under the Christmas tree

Here's a picture of one section of our under the tree decor that Jim lovingly and beautifully sets up every year.

We got our power back yesterday afternoon, so I  was able to make a roast chicken dinner since I was no longer concerned about being miserly with our propane supply. After breakfast I'll turn the propane heater back up in my studio, get the plants watered and get then get back in there again after lunch to do some sweeping and a few other paper work chores.

WhenI bring all those plants indoors for the winter, they go through a period of adjustment where they drop a lot of their leaves. So I need to give them a good shaking and sweep up all those leaves.

Windows 7 from hell problems on this new laptop continue to consume my time. I won't bore you with all the grisly details, other than to say that when I finish getting all these files back in to proper directories and back on to the stand alone hard drive, I'm serious considering formatting this laptop and reinstalling Windows XP or Vista so I can use all my old software and have this video card working properly.

I hope I remember this horrible experience when it comes time to buy a new computer and reason wins out and I wave goodbye to Dell and Microsoft and become another Apple Macintosh convert!

More snow on the way

Lots of beautiful snow and more to come!

Our power is still off; but once again - thank God for our generator!

It's my 70th birthday today and plans for company and  dinner out have been waylaid because of this winter storm. So, Jim and I are cuddling near our propane fireplace, enjoying some of our taped movies, hot chocolate this afternoon with extra marshmallows for Jim  and a dinner of the rest of the turkey noodle soup and butterscotch pudding again for dessert. Jim opened a great zinfandel to make up for the leftover dinner.

More snow is expected tonight; but hopefully not much more to add to the already 9-12 inches we've already had.

Our dog and cat are a bit thrown off with this deep snow. Poor Bonnie, our kitty, tried her best to walk on it but decided after a minute or so of sinking and not being able to keep her tummy dry, thought better of this, her first journey in the snow, and reluctantly came back into the safety of her normal digs in our bathroom wing.

We're now going to watch "Love Actually" while enjoying the last of this lovely wine.

First winter storm of the season

We're in the middle of our first winter snow storm (have about 6-7" so far), so this is going to be short. Our power went out  a while ago and we're operating off our big generator at the moment. We had planned to go out for dinner with house guests, but this weather kept company away, and got us to cancel our dinner reservation. Instead, I retrieved some turkey soup from the freezer and made some butterscotch pudding for dessert.

Now we're going to settle down and watch one of our Netflix Earth documentaries, since the movie we were watching went bye bye when we lost our cable connection.

Charlie Odum in Mashiko, Japan

Here's a video of Charlie Odium in Mashiko. Check out his unique wheel placement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHba8ammscI
Yesterday I actually got away from this laptop for a while. I set up my new stereo in the studio, did some studio clean up and did some more Christmas decorating. Jim cut me some pine branches and holly and I made a few table top arrangements. I used the bottom of Linda McFarlings casserole for the dining room table, and another wonderful wood fired shino bowl for the kitchen table arrangement. The house is looking very festive and appropriate for the season.

Since I was busy with other things I didn't get as much paper work done as intended, so I'll focus on that today;but first I need to see if there's a way to transfer some of my Ipod music on to this laptop, since I lost a lot of the music when Vista gave me the blue screen of death and I had to format my drive and lost so much data, including music files.

Each new thing I try to install seems to require fixes. At first the computer didn't recognize the Ipod; but after much reading and then finally changing my input plug, I was able to get it to at least recognize the Ipod. So, this morning I'll see if there's any way to transfer some of that music. Otherwise I'll have to get what I can off the old desktop and on to a flash drive, transfer it to this laptop and then reload the Ipod, which then erases everything on the Ipod in the process. I wish these Ipods had delete buttons so you could just delete and add new files without first, having to remove all the data currently on the Ipod.

Who woodah thought Gingerbread entry

Here's another remarkable gingerbread entry.

It's a cool, clear morning -  nice winter day. If I didn't have all this paper work to go through I'd be thinking about a nice walk in the woods later.

Jim's sister, husband and one of our nieces is coming on Friday, so I need to get guest rooms ready and  this living room back to looking like a living room rather than a second office! I have computer software boxes, disks, assorted recipe books, and magazines that I need to sort through, read, put away or throw out. It will take at least half a day to go through this stuff. I've given up on trying to transfer more files until after Christmas. I got enough important files and some programs installed that I can afford to wait to finish this project.

Since Jim and I don't exchange presents - just treat ourselves to what we want. I bought  a new cd player for the studio. It plays MP3's as well as regular CD's, is an Am/Fm radio,  and  also has a dock my Ipod . I have to get that unpacked later and make sure all parts are working. If they are, I'll be looking for a home for the stand alone MP3 player and Ipod dock that are taking up studio space. Hopefully after Christmas I'll be able to get into the studio if this cold and sinusitis have cleared.

Gingerbread castle

 Here's another of those fun gingerbread entries from the Grove Park Inn's yearly gingerbread contest.

There hasn't been much to blog about. Yesterday Jim and I drove to Johnson City, TN to do some shopping and have dinner out. Today I'm just sitting next to the fireplace, working on the computer and drinking a lot of liquids and popping a lot of vitamins to try to get rid of this cold and sinusitis.

I bought the Norton 2010 anti virus software yesterday and I'll get that on my computers today. That's my big activity of the day other than making some rice for the leftover gumbo.

Another gingerbread house

 Here's another gingerbread entry to enjoy.

At the moment I'm dealing with a bad cold on top of the sinusitis of the past couple of weeks. I'm definitely doing my part in keeping the Kleenex corporation in the black and getting pretty good at being a reclining,couch potato.

Other than working on getting this laptop working, which is proving to be a bit of a challenge with incompatible, older software, I'm just popping vitamins and drinking lots of liquid

It took 2 days but I think I got the majority of music CD's I can't live without, on to the laptop. There are a lot more to go when I feel up to the task of going through them all.

Fortunately we have leftover Chinese food for dinner because I am definitely not in the mood or shape to stand around the kitchen for any prolonged cooking adventures  I did manage to get my studio and house plants watered this morning and now I'm going to try to take a nap.

First I need to see if kitty is ready to come in.

Gingerbread Log House

Here's a cut little gingerbread log house - one of the entries in the gingerbread contest at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC.

Computer hell continues, but I did manage to take time away from it, before I went to bed last night to mix up a batch of no knead bread which I baked right after lunch. It  will go nicely with the mushroom bisque we're having for dinner.

I'm still dealing with the laptop keyboard problem which takes what I type  and puts the letters in different words, and paragraphs. I'm not getting the problem when I use the wireless keyboard, only the laptop keyboard. It's definitely a puzzlement!

The rest of my day is being spent on the computer. I think I have the majority of files transferred but am having problems with some music files not opening in iTunes, but opening fine in Windows Media player. I may just have to  get all my cd's out and manually re-install them. That will be another days project! And I still have to either get new drivers for some of my software, or new software.
 
Microsoft isn't publishing Front Page any more and the old version probably won't work on Windows 7, so I need to do some homework on some easy to use, reasonably priced Web page software.

Gingerbread chuck wagon

Here's another clever, gingerbread contest entry.

Yesterday was a computer day from hell. I was on the phone with at 4 or 5 (lost count) Dell techs in India  for almost 4 hours, then waited till bedtime for a call or email for a code to install the pic tuneup I purchased over 10 days ago. Never did hear from them.

They billed me and never gave me the code, instructions, etc. Each tech after getting 10 minutes of information about my system, etc, said, they weren't the one to help and directed me to the next one. I was on the computer merry go round  from  hell until I got the last tech and even he couldn't help with all the issues. Seems Micrsoft has again put out a Windows program before the software and hardware people had a chance to upgrade drivers, etc.

On my own I manged to get some upgrades from the Microsoft site, so now I at least have my wireless mouse and keyboard working and don't have to sit with the laptop on my lap all day!

Today I'll continue the file transfers and search some of my other software sites to see if there are any upgrades for Windows 7. I'm hoping today will turn out to be as nice as yesterday so I can take an afternoon break and go for a walk with Bodhi.

Tonight I'll make the pasta dish I planned for yesterday. Since it was still on the phone with Dell at 6 o'clock, Jim drove down to the local seafood restaurant in town and brought us back a couple of fried clam dinners. Today has got to be better - one can only  hope!

I WILL get back into the studio soon - hopefully before Christmas!!                                     

Another gingerbread entry

It's another computer day. The new drivers didn't arrive yesterday but Jim is  heading to the post office later and if it isn't here today I'll definitely be calling Dell. I was way too busy to call yesterday but I must call today about their 6 month old software that isn't working with Windows 7.

This morning I dug out an old wireless mouse and was very happy to find  that  it works with Windows 7.

I just put Bonnie out for a bit. It's a beautiful day and there's no sign of the bully tom cat. She was crying to go out and I didn't have the heart to make her stay in on such a beautiful day. I hope this isn't a mistake after yesterdays journey. She's good about coming when called, so I'll check on her every 15 minutes or so.

Other than making dinner (mixed salad and orichette pasta with broccoli, pignoli nuts and an olive oil, garlic, anchovy sauce),. I'll be on the computer all day . We haven't had pasta for a while and this dish  is one way I can get Jim to eat broccoli.

Grove Park Inn Gingerbread contest youth winner

As promised, here's the gingerbread winner in the youth category. I think this was my favorite. I love the ingenuity of using shredded wheat for the thatched roof - rather brilliant, I thought.

It's been a bit of an eventful day. Bonnie kitty was terrorized by a neighbors Tom cat and got herself cornered on a steep slope filled with wild roses.  Jim and I spent over a half an hour, in the freezing rain, trying to locate her by her moanful cries. We managed to chase away the bully and Jim got the neighbor to lock up the offender so we'd have a chance to coax her out of there. We were cold, wet and bleeding from those rose thorns and finally retreated to the house, hoping she would soon follow.

A very cold, wet, Bonnie kitty finally showed up a bit later, after much coaxing and calling. I rubbed her dry, gave her treats and she's been sleeping ever since. I started on the dal and raita for our Indian curry dinner and now I'm going to have a well earned glass of wine. I may never let her out again. The physical and emotional strain is too much for these old bodies!

This years Gingerbread contest winner

Yesterday was a lovely, grown up play day - drove to Asheville with dear friends and brunch at the Grove Park Inn. The guys had full seconds plates as well as dessert. Where in the world do they put all that food! I couldn't  even finish one plate and  leave  room for dessert, so Bodhi had some of my leftover sausage when we got home. Afterwards we walked around the  beautifully decorated Inn looking at the Christmas dnecor and the Gingerbread contest entries. Here's the picture of the winner. I'll post a few others in the next couple of days.

Evidently this contest is a big deal - with entries from all over the country. I think  my favorite  was the youth winner, which I'll try to post tomorrow.

This cold day is going to be spent back on the laptop sorting files and attempting to fix glitches.  Hopefully the disk with the new drivers will arrive today and will work to correct some of these problems as well as some of the Dell software which came with the laptop which is not compatible with Windows 7. Otherwise I'm going to have to get  back on the phone with Dell about replacing those disks with ones that are compatible.

I ordered this huge book on Windows 7 and am hoping I'll be able to glean enough information that I can understand, to make good use of this new operating system. Ah, the joys of computers. Jim manages to live a full and happy life without these things, why can't I. HMMMMM!

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Here's a trip down memory lane - me proud as a peacock with this big bowl. It was taken at Davenport California, in the early 80's at a Karen Karnes workshop.

 Wow, it was 20F degrees this morning. Winter has arrived!

Still dealing with Windows 7 woes. There was a real screwy glitce, some of the letters skip bakc h "Example, when I typ" See what I means??? If I don't t pe super slow, the letters go backwards, sometimes, several words back. What a mess! Any computer experts out there with a possible fix????

Needless to say, this is a short message today! LOL We're doing brunch with friends and I'll have the rest of the day to see about fixing some of these glitches, getting my files transferred, etc.

Christmas tree is up

 .
Here's our Christmas tree. I decorate the tree and Jim does the village under the tree.

Been playing with the computer and cooking today. I made a cauliflower, tomato and garbanzo beans curry and dal. I used store bought, frozen, Naan; but it wasn't very good. Next time I'm make my own or use Chapatis.

I'm still trying to get my wireless mouse and keyboard to work with the new Windows 7, but they tell me I need need a different driver for it  work. Dell is sending me a disk, which should be here either tomorrow or Monday.               
                         
It's probably  going to take a week or so to get this new Windows 7 working. I lost a lot of files when I used DOS to transfer files to the stand alone hard drive. When I tried to get them yesterday they said there were problems on the stand alone drive and it needed to fix them, but fixing them, seems to erased some of my most recent files. Have I mentioned again that I'm still in my "I hate computers" mode.

Windows 7 is also not compatible with some of my 6 month old software that came with the laptop, so I'm going to have to get on the phone again with Dell after I check the rest of that new software. If 6 month old software isn't working, I'm not holding up much hope for my older programs. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't have any information on a lot of program compatibility for their new system - typical! :-(

VIdeo on historical Stangl & Fulper Pottery

Interesting video on the historic Stangl & Fulper pottery in New Jersey.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9-QZb2qSBI

 I'm up to my ears in computer woes this rainy morning. Got the Windows 7 installed, but some drivers need updating, but the web address for doing that only gave me options to update drivers for Windows xp or Vista. AARGH. Then I tried to re-install the McAfee antivirus, only to find out that  it's not compatible with Win 7 and there's no fix available. So I closed down the laptop and headed back upstairs to my office and am working on my old desktop. After breakfast I'll be on the phone with Dell once more. Ah, the joys of computer ownership!

Today will be spent getting all my files back on to the laptop and loading some software to see if any of it will work. I have a feeling I'm going to be buying a lot of new software.Windows 7 is so new that they don't even have information on their web site about the compatibility of many popular software programs, like my Word Perfect. So I guess I'll just install it and see what happens.

We didn't have the turkey soup last night so we'll have it tonight. Jim decided he'd rather munch on pate, fruit and cheese after our big lunch. Well, time to get to my morning mail and harvest my Farmville crops so I can get back to working on the laptop. I think I'll also do some checking on line to see if there are any good reviews on some free antivirus software that I can install on the laptop until Dell sends me a McAfee disk that will work with Windows 7.

Wedgewood plate with potter throwing

Here's a fun Wedgewood plate that I have hanging in my studio. I found it on Ebay a few years ago and had never seen one like it before.

I'm still waiting for the Dell tech to call to help my install Windows 7 on my laptop. Jim and I need to get out a bit later to do some shopping, so if this guy hasn't called before we leave, I'll have to call him again when we get back. We'll have a big lunch out and just have a light dinner of the turkey carcass soup. 

These computer woes and dealing with my office paper piles has consumed all my time lately; but the pile has gotten smaller and the trash bucket has been emptied several times already with more to go. Now I have to finish filing all these sorted food and glaze recipes and other assorted pieces of information. I'll pick up a bunch of folders when we're out and that will help me clear most of this stuff off the desk and into appropriate file cabinets.