Christmas was very good here. I thought for a little bit it wasn’t but then I grew up and got over it! (long story).

We spent the night at my Aunt and Uncle’s house on Christmas Eve since my Grandparents and my nephew were already there. Robert and I opened most of our presents to each other on the 23rd. We didn’t want to take everything over to the relatives as they were having a rather lean Christmas AND it would’ve been a pain to haul it all there and haul it all back. We already had to take some presents for them, clothes for us and the dog and her stuff, so the car was full.

I got Robert a lot of tools that he was wanting… jack stands, a creeper, a droplight for the garage, and a benchtop grinding wheel. He  also requested socks and underwear and boy did I cover that one! I also got him some sweatpants he was wanting and some long sleeved tshirts. He was happy with all of it.

He got me some really nice skillets, a mixing bowl, tongs, silicon spatulas, the sneakers I wanted, two pair of jeans, something nice from Victoria’s Secret and some perfum (which he just remembered he had yesterday and got it out for me).

We took lots of stuff over to the relatives. We bought groceries for Christmas Eve dinner, and Christmas day breakfast and dinner. We also bought their dogs a 40lb. bag of dog food, a huge box of Milkbones (from Sam’s) and some other treats. We had several presents for my nephew and two presents each for everyone else. And we had stocking stuffers for 8 people. It was kind of crazy. We could afford to be Santa in moderation this year though and no one else really could so I did my best to spend our budget wisely and get everyone nice gifts they could really use (but that weren’t totally boring). I totally scored on a few things – I found the nightgowns my Aunt likes on clearance and was able to get her three for the price of one. I found Tony Stewart flannel so I could make Tony Stewart pillow cases to go with the Tony Stewart sleeping bag we got my nephew.

I loaded  Robert’s stocking with matchbox fire trucks… he uses them in his training work at the fire station and has been wanting to add to his collection. Anyway, Christmas Eve was fun… we just hung out and ate and enjoyed being together. Christmas morning  was fun… my nephew  was all excited and enjoyed his gifts very much. After the presents were opened we started working on cooking dinner and then my Aunt, Grandma and Robert and I played the new game I got from my sister-in-law, Ticket to Ride. It was really enjoyable. Robert and I have played it a few more times since then too.

Daisy enjoyed spending time with her four-footed cousins and playing and hanging out. She behaved really well and just in general has been turning out to be a really great dog.

By the time we came home on Christmas Day we were glad to be home. Robert was off to the fire station for the night. The last few days we’ve been cleaning and working and spending time together and cooking and just enjoying ourselves.

Today we took Daisy to the dog park… she was scared but she did ok. She was jumping on the people a lot, which is bad but I think it was because she was nervous. I made more of the brown butter, brown sugar shorties today. Yum! Best cookies ever.

In the morning I have to take Daisy to the vet again. She has worms again or still has them or something, not really sure. I am going to a different vet than I did the first time. The first guy was just junk, so not going back there.

Need to get to bed. Oh, I’ve recently been trying out Paperback Swap (.com)… it’s great! I love it!

Best part of Christmas 2008 – Seeing how much my nephew really believes in Santa this year. He was using the NORAD Santa tracker all day to see where Santa was, talking to his “elf on the shelf” Phillip Johnny Bob, decorating a cookie for Santa… he just really believed and it was so precious to see his innocence for once. He usually a bit of a cynic and a know it all, as most 6 year olds are I guess. But on Christmas Eve he was filled with wonder and joy. It was awesome.

We had a great time at Caddo Lake State Park. It was a really unique place. So much so that at one point, kayaking down the river, I saw a sign with a Texas flag on it and said “Look, they’re from Texas too!”. To which my lovely husband said “Duh!” Oh well. It was just so different from the part of Texas we are from that I felt like we were someplace else entirely. I also felt like we were getting away.

I haven’t downloaded the pictures yet, but I hopefully can do that tomorrow. Highlights of the weekend – going on a 6-mile kayak on Caddo Lake. My amazing patient and wonderful husband kept paddling even when I was very tired and getting a bit cranky. He was so excited to be out on the water, it was great.

We cooked fajitas on the campfire for lunch Saturday, and made a combo turkey/beef meatloaf in the dutch oven for dinner (on the campfire) along with foil packets of asparagus and red potatoes. And then we had s’mores with dark chocolate. Yum!

Sunday we had my attempt at the Weight Watchers version of chili dogs, using turkey chili, turkey dogs and wheat buns. It worked pretty well. We also did some geocaching which we hadn’t done since we were in Mexico for Christmas. It was awesome to be outside, being active together and just being together. It was really refreshing for Robert, who has been completely stressed lately and it was a relief to me to see him so visibly relax.

It was a good trip. Today, I got some decent work done posting. The kitchen is another story – it’s trashed! It will get done though. Tomorrow we are getting physicals for life insurance and I have a Weight Watchers meeting. It should be a busy day. I hope I can get some work done.

I was just telling Robert the other day that in the past 6 months I have finally come to understand the saying “time flies.” In the past, I honestly almost never felt that way. Days continued to go by slowly, no matter what was going on. The past 6 months have gone by in a blink or less. This week, I feel like I haven’t even gotten started and already it is Thursday. We are planning to go camping this weekend so I think tomorrow will be filled with preparations for that.

I think no matter what we do this weekend there will be some kayaking involved. My poor husband has been itching to do some serious kayaking lately and it just has not happened. I am not sure yet where we are going either. Obviously someplace with a lake.

I increased my paid posts by 1/3 last month (75 vs. 50 in August) so that made me happy. It is still not as high as I want to be, but at least it is forward progress. I am struggling to make time to work on posting AND work on other story ideas and find places to pitch them to. I guess it is something I need to learn how to do. I need to make more money so I can get my savings account built up, take some classes and just generally have more flexibility (and security as far as back up funds). I need to get better at keeping myself on a schedule and if I can do that,  I think it will all fall into place.

I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting on Tuesday. I joined the program about 2 years ago and used the online tools and lost about 30 pounds. When I met Robert, we quickly discovered that we both love to try new and interesting foods (and chicken wings) and we love to cook. That 30 pounds came back AND it brought along some friends as my mother would say. So, I need to get that taken care of, seriously. Luckily, my husband thinks it’s ok to make that monthly expense a priority as it will improve my health in the long term. He is also thinking about joining at some point, though right now he is so busy with work it isn’t going to happen. Maybe in another month.

I need to take some photos of the quilt blocks I made for exchanging with my cousin. They are super cute, as are the ones she sent to me. We are exchanging them every month until our quilting retreat in March. I will try to do that later today.

So, my internet requests on freecycle finally paid off. Someone contacted me that had two boxes of pears and about 75 canning jars. Woo!

And, over the weekend Tom Thumb had apples for 88 cents per pound. So, I bought about 26 pounds. I picked up the pears on Monday afternoon and took them straight to my Aunt’s house, along with my canner, jars, the apples, cookbooks…. I had a full car!

It was all really good. The only bad part is we didn’t even get started in earnest until 5pm.

Round 1, three quarts of apple pie filling. Round two was 12 pints of applesauce. Round three was six pints of apple/pear butter and one pint of apple slices. Round four was eight half pints of ginger pear preserves. Round five was me going home and going to bed since it was 4am!

The thing was, there was still an entire box of pears left. Oh my!

Since these were nice, from the tree, home grown pears (and probably organic) they were seriously tough to peel. Wow. My knuckles were swollen from holding the peeler by the end of the night. I went to bed with an ice pack wrapped around my hand! But, my Aunt and I both agreed that while it was hard work, it was fun to be together and you really can’t beat free pears.

My Aunt is planning to use the remainder to can sliced pears, make carrot cake jam, some autumn fruit conserve or something and one other thing which I can’t remember at the moment. Robert doesn’t like pears so much and she and my Uncle really like them, so I was willing to leave the extra box in exchange for her help on the apples and such.

After all of that canning and being up til 4 am, yesterday got kind of wasted. I slept until noon. Got up, used a few pears to make some Pear Pecan bread (adapted from my Apple Walnut Bread recipe), took a shower and then headed out to a Stampin’ Up gathering at my friend Correna’s house.

Yummy Apple Walnut Bread (from Seventeen Magazine sometime in the early 90s…seriously!).

• 1/4 cup butter or shortening
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 2 cups chopped apples
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9×5 loaf pan. In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Remove from heat and stir in sugar and egg. In a medium bowl mix flour, baking soda, salt and spices. Stir flour mixture into sugar mixture then add fruit and nuts. Spread batter into pan. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

My Notes: For this batch, I used pears (shredded, not chopped, and liquid gently squeezed out) and pecans since that is what I had on hand. I omitted the cinnamon and nutmeg and used ground ginger. Delicious! I am pretty confident you could use applesauce (or pear puree or whatever), pumpkin or any other fruit or veggie that bakes well. Zucchini, of course. You can adapt the spices for whatever flavor you are looking for. Flaked coconut would probably be good too, but the bread wouldn’t be nearly as moist.

When baking, because of the moistness of the apples/pears/whatever I always have to bake this up to 15 minutes longer than the recipe suggests.

I am guessing this would make good muffins as well, you would just have to adjust the baking time. Enjoy!

Too much to write and no time to do it.

My freecycle posts have paid off. I am getting a lot of canning jars tomorrow and Tuesday and, a few bushels (potentially) of pears. My Aunt is coming over Wednesday and we will make pear stuff and applesauce and all that. She is bringing herself to work and her tools.. apple peeler/corer/slicer thingie, food processor, etc. Also, she loves pears. Robert doesn’t so I will limit the amount of pear stuff I keep but, having her here will help me get the apple stuff all done so it’s all good.

More news, and photos, later.

Living in Texas for the past three and a half years I have gotten somewhat used to the seemingly unending heat. It’s just always hot here, or, it seems that way compared to where I grew up in Indiana with nice Lake Michigan breezes.

But lately…

I have had the windows open constantly. The air conditioning hasn’t been on since sometime last week. It IS like Indiana in the fall. Woo! The only unfortunately part is that Robert’s allergies are bad enough thatw e do have to close everything up when we go to bed. But, it still stays cool enough that we don’t need the air on. Awesomeness! I really get excited when we can save big chunks of electricity.

I am doing pretty well on posting this week and actually beginning to get my income on target for the budget that I would like to have. That is definitely a good feeling. And I think in my last post I mentioned that I would tell you my motivational secret this time around. It’s a bit odd I guess and probably won’t work for everyone, or even a lot of people.

My husband is my motivation. Not in the way you might think either. There is no pressure to make tons of money or anything coming from him. There are some clear targets that need to be hit as far as contributing to bills and all that  but honestly, they aren’t all that high. So, the motivation comes from him in a different way.

I was sitting at home one day last week, not feeling like doing much of anything at all. Then I thought about Robert and how much he would love to have the job I have. And then, I thought about him actually having a job like mine. And how he would be going 90 mph with his hair on fire to do the very best (and make the very most) that he could. And I realized how truly lucky I am that I have the opportunity to do this. And that I have him to support me (not in the financial sense, but in the emtional sense). I expressed an interest in this opportunity and did some of the ground work and he has been behind me 100% the whole time.

What an awesome gift. Why on earth would I waste it? Motivating? To me it was.

In other news… I made some amazing muffins this evening. I got the recipe over at Owlhaven for these Baked Apple Donuts. I didn’t have any apples on hand, but I had two pears, which was just the right amount. I didn’t bother chopping them, I just ran them over the cheese grater, peel and all. They are seriously good.

I think next time I will substitute applesauce for the butter in the actual batter and then just brush some melted butter over the tops instead of dipping them in butter (eek!) before dipping them in the cinnamon sugar mixture.

At the same time, I baked some brown rice in the oven. It came out pretty well, same as when I make it on the stovetop, but, it was easy and got accomplished while the muffins were baking so that was nice. We had the brown rice with left over proteins from the week – chicken in sun dried tomato sauce and bbq brisket.

I’m really looking forward to the weekend. It will be nice to spend some time with my husband. It’s been a  really long week for him (starting on September 8th since he hasn’t had a day off since then!) so I haven’t had a whole lot of time to spend with him. I’m not complaining… it will just be nice to have some good quality time together. And, he has Monday off. Yay!

So, it’s almost midnight. I am not sure what time zone wordpress thinks I’m in as it says it’s 4:58am. I’ll have to look in to that one.

My pre-midnight snack

I recently (like 30 minutes ago) made some hot chocolate. It was definitely NOT from a paper envelope. My hot chocolate was memories, thoughts, and awesomeness. You see, The chocolate itself was real, and real 77% cocoa from Amsterdam. My husband brought it home from a business trip. He always brings home chocolates from Europe. I told you he was a good man! The base of my hot chocolate was some organix milk. I’ve recently discovered that while I do not care for “regular” milk from one of those cardboard containers, the organic stuff is pretty decent. I’d prefer glass but can’t find it for the most part. Not glass AND organic.

To the milk and the chocolate I added a touch of sugar, a bit of Texas honey (gotta keep it local!) and some super yummy and amazing vanilla that I bought at a market in Mexico. I served it up in my recently acquired Donald Duck mug. My husband brought it back from his Dad’s house. I found it in a box in the closet and brought it out. I asked if it was ok if I used it. Of course he says. I say good, cause I LOVE Donald Duck! Oh, wow, so did my Dad my husband says to me. There are a lot of people I can do without in this world. I wish I had had the opportunity to know my father in law. To even talk to him once. Or for him to even know we were getting married. He died the month before we got engaged. I’m not sure why it gets me teary eyed and really sad to think about. I just wish I had known him. His kids are the coolest ever.

Well anyway. Lots was done today. I went on a grocery binge. I, um, don’t think I’ll be needing anything next week. So when I came home I decided I was tired of shuffling things around in the pantry and hauled them out, cleaned it up and organized it. Poor husband won’t be able to find anything, even though I feel like it logical (the veggies are together, beans are together, flours are all lined up, etc.). It was no small feat. I am blessed, oh so blessed, with a pantry that makes other women jealous. I could not get a good photo this evening. I will try again tomorrow.

We have filled up the gas cans. We have groceries galore. We’ve brought in all the small things from the yard. We’ve battened down the hatches so to speak. We’ll see what the morning brings with hurricane Ike not so far away from us. We are supposed to get winds in the 60mph range and a lot of rain. My biggest concerns are keeping the packed freezer cold enough if the power goes out and that my tiny baby plant sprouts survive it all ok. Oh, and that my poor husband makes it through the day at work tomorrow (and Sunday probably).

Let’s pray it turns out more like Gustav and less like Katrina. And paray especially hard for anyone who did not evacuate Galveston. I hope they all did. Because it could take a direct hit.

I call this God chipping in on the water bill...

I was quite happy for the rain today. All my new seeds can use a good, long drink. And, when that drink doesn’t add to the water bill, it’s always a good thing. I just wish we had our rain barrels, but, it’s one of those capital expenses that’s in the future budget. We just haven’t gotten there yet. Being green and saving money takes a bit of an upfront investment at times!

Some curtains from my younger days

My other project was a repurposing of some old curtains. When my parents came to my wedding in June they packed up their camper with lots of my old stuff. So, I have been going through it slowly, getting rid of what I no longer needed, enjoying finding things I hadn’t seen in awhile and all that. One thing that arrived was some curtains I had made for my bedroom back home sometime in late high school or early college, I think.

There are currently blinds on all the windows in our house and no curtains anywhere. I hated to throw away such large pieces of fabric but I couldn’t think of any fabulous uses of them if I cut them up either. And, the hems and whatnot for curtains were already sewn. I asked my husband what he thought of the curtains for the guest bedroom, which is painted light blue and being slowly decorated in a Texas/Americana theme. We both thought they seemed a little too light colored . And, that room gets first morning sun so it needs something a bit more light blocking.

The perfect solution for curtains that aren't the color you want!

So, while I was at Michael’s today doing something for a Christmas present in the works, I picked up some Navy Blue Rit Dye.

Mmm... dye soup!

The curtains dyed very well and stayed a dark navy, which surprised me. I was expecting them to wash out a bit but, I guess things actually work when you follow the directions! I hung the curtains up with clothespins in the guest room to see how they looked.

Trying out the new look

I think I will leave them up for a few days to see how it feels in the room, see it in different lights, etc. I also think the two curtains are large enough that I can cut each in half and have a set of curtains on each window (instead of just one per window). The window area at my parents house was three large windows across I think. So, that will be another thing to consider.

A close up of the curtain details

The curtains are a little bit darker than this picture shows but I was happy with the way the design came out. It is printed on the curtains in a sort of rubbery raised up design so I thought it would come through the dyeing process ok.

I discovered this morning if I split one of my homemade muffins in half, it fits into the toaster. Or rather Robert did and made sure to tell me about it before he left for work. Blackberry muffins. Yum! I used the Joy of Cooking basic muffin recipe and added some frozen blackberries. I have found the Joy of Cooking to be a great reference for basic recipes or ideas on how long to cook something and all of that. It’s really good for basics.

I finished my first dish cloth last night!

So, my dish cloth came out kind of rectangular instead of square but since it’s the first one, I’m not too worried. I need to learn to make my stitches more even and find a pattern that I like. I got some more cotton yarn today so I can get right to work on another one. I also got some tabs to work on making a homemade planner. And since my husband is at the fire station tonight for meeting until who knows when, I might actually have time to get a good portion of it done.

I always try to spend time with him when he is home since there are  several nights a week when he is not. I’m sure he would let me work on whatever I wanted any night of the week. But, it’s important to both of us to spend quality time together. I at least attempt to get most of my work and play done before he comes home so the evening can be for us. It’s nice!

One of the last blooms on the crepe myrtle in the front yard.

I can’t believe I haven’t written anything since Tuesday. I’ve been pretty busy. I’ll stick to the past few days since those are the easiest to remember.

On Friday my Uncle Dave came over to build some garden boxes for me. They are a 4 foot by 4 foot square and about 18 inches tall. He was going to bring me a load of free compost from the city he lives in (residents can get one truckload per month for free) but the compost wasn’t ready yet. So, all we could do was build the boxes. Once those were done and he went home, I used a gift card we had received for the wedding to buy a LOT of dirt. I guess we could’ve waited a few weeks and tried again for free compost but, now is the time to plant the second round of things like green beans and such. So, I felt the need to strike while the iron was hot so to speak. My husband would probably tell you this happens to me a lot. I get an idea and I go about 90 miles per hour into it without a lot of planning. But, this is a good idea. More fresh, home grown produce awaits us at the end of this idea. And, even if we don’t get great yields we can replant the boxes in the spring. Or, if we decide we hate gardening we can turn them into sand boxes once we have kids or something. So, by Friday evening one box was filled with dirt and we had figured out how much more we needed to buy.

After the sun went down I came in to make up a batch of “plump pea dumplings” from 101 Cookbooks. Basically you put fresh or frozen cooked peas, ricotta, Parmesan and lemon zest into a food processor. Once it’s pretty pureed you wrap teaspoons of it into wonton skins and make little dumplings. I made about 50 and then I was out of wonton wrappers. (Robert brought home more today so I can finish them). They fry up into yummy little bits of goodness and, once you wrap the filling in the wonton, you can freeze them individually and it makes a great quick bite later on. We really like them a lot and I was in the mood to make up a big batch. I will probably finish up the filling on Monday.

Saturday morning I got up early (by my standards at least) because I had a crafting day ahead. I made lunches for myself and my Aunt Patti and headed towards her town for the “crop til you drop” event my friend Darla had planned. She is hoping to do this the first Saturday of every month. I have ALL of my wedding photos and some amazing and wonderful fairytale paper to work with so I was quite happy to work on my wedding album for the whole day.

Saturday evening I was supposed to go to my friend, Julie’s bachelorette party. Due to some craziness and then some phone tag, I didn’t end up meeting up with her at all. I feel badly that I didn’t make it. I’m sure she had a blast without me though. It was quite a party that was planned in her honor.

My husband spent Saturday doing a multitude of things around the house. He got the rest of the dirt we needed, washed and hung several loads of laundry on the clothesline, ran the dishwasher and just generally made my life easier. He’s good like that… I feel very blessed to have him. I used to be very frustrated at still being single in my late 20s and when I hit 30, but, now I understand. He was SO worth the wait (and not because he does laundry).

Anyway, when it became apparent I wasn’t going anywhere, we put the rest of the dirt into the garden boxes, planted/transplanted a few things and put in some seeds. We are growing three kinds of chard, four kinds of lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, basil, spinach, cilantro and green onions for our second round of gardening.

A cucumber from our first round of planting, finally growing!

So, anyway… Today was a really packed day. I got up and started cleaning the kitchen while I made a pot of coffee. After I relaxed with a cup of coffee I got started on our dinner since it was supposed to cook in the crock pot all day. I made stuffed peppers with coconut rice and mangoes. It was SO good!

While I was working on putting dinner together, Robert came in and started working on lunch. We had delicious reuben sandwiches and a spinach salad. I love reubens and they are so easy to make at home. Now if I can just get Mom and Dad’s sauerkraut making tools down here to Texas and Robert can find a good rye recipe, and we can grow some monster cabbages, we’ll be all set!

In the afternoon I continued the laundry parade we have every weekend and got things out on the line and actually put away when they came into the house. I also cleaned the kitchen yet again (it’s neverending when we get into cooking). Robert had to go to the fire station for the monthly equipment check. It’s my least favorite fire department time… Sundays when he has equipment check AND he stays over. It takes away a big chunk of our weekend time together. But, it is important to him and I am proud of him for being a firefighter so, it’s bearable.

Anyway, while he was gone I pulled out some cookbooks to find a loaf of bread I could make to go with our supper. I found a spinach Parmesan “bloomer” in the bread machine book that I could finish in time for dinner. So, I got to work on that. It mixed and did it’s first rising in the bread machine so that makes the process a little less work (and mess) intensive. While that was working I dug into the archives of the Down to Earth blog which I am finding VERY interesting.

I also moved some things out of the dining room so we can finally put the table back where it belongs. I made my first batch of mint suntea. I’ve been making mint tea for a few weeks for a nice, refreshing iced tea drink on the stovetop. I thought it would be great to work on making it like I used to make sun tea when I was a kid. It worked pretty well, though it wasn’t as minty as my stovetop batches were. I am wondering if I make a mint simple syrup in a big batch to add to the sun tea as I make each batch if that would help. I will keep experiementing and once I have the “perfect” batch I’ll post up some instructions. So, plant your mint now so you will be ready!

My mint pot overfloweth!

Robert came home eventually and was tired out so he took a brief nap while I was finishing up dinner. I left the bread outside on the back of the truck to do it’s final rise. I figured it would be a nice warm place… the loaf got quite large. Unfortunately when I slashed it as the recipe called for, it fell quite a bit. I guess the knife wasn’t sharp enough or I did it wrong or something. Anyway, right before I got ready to preheat the oven I thought, if I was going to run it anyway I should probably fill it up. So, I pulled out the cookbook again and whipped up some blackberry muffins with some frozen blackberries. The batter made 12 regular size muffins and 9 mini muffins. All of that went into the oven and I cleaned up the kitchen one more time and sat down to relax a bit.

I woke Robert up once it was all finished and we had a really good supper of the stuffed peppers and spinach bread. And, he didn’t even mind that it was a meatless supper. We’ve been doing that about once a week now.

After supper we had a few minutes to relax together before Robert had to go back to the fire station for the night. He filled up the dishwasher for me while I got all the leftovers put away. We kept half of the spinach loaf out for eating this week and put the other half in the freezer for later.

After Robert left I worked on bringing in laundry and watering the various pots, troughs, and now boxes we have for our garden. I put the soaker hose through the new boxes and found a way to keep the water flowing between the two boxes with one soaker hose.

My rigged up soaker hose solution

Finally, when I really wanted to sit down and just veg out in front of the tv, I pushed myself a bit longer to go into the hobby room and clean off my sewing table. I got that done and sat down with two mending projects. I could find my good scissors OR my rotary cutter so after I reattached the handle to my LaPorte County Library tote bag and fixed the sleeve seam in Robert’s tshirt I was done sewing. Bummer since I was really looking forward to doing some sewing.

Since I couldn’t sew, I dug into some boxes and found my knitting book and the one dishcloth I started ages ago. I looked at the stitches and my hands almost immediately remembered what to do. So, I turned on the tv and knitted a good portion of the dishcloth while watching tv. I made it much too wide when I first started it so it may be more like a placemat or small towel, but, that’s ok. I can work with that too.

This will be the first dish cloth I have knitted.

Now, finally, I am getting ready for bed. I really wanted to post before the weekend was over. I didn’t make it officially since it is after midnight but, at least I got my activities down. I’ll have to recap some of my thoughts and ideas tomorrow.