Beautiful day off, like an Indian summer, only in November

We both had today off in lieu of Remembrance Day yesterday.

It was warm today! Double digits! Jeff finished a step for the front door yesterday and today he replaced a couple wall boards on his shed.

I did some of weeding on the rose garden and some weed whacking.  I brought the hummingbird feeders in to soak so I can get them cleaned up and put away.

I’ve enjoyed watching a red breasted nuthatch at our feeders this weekend. Just one. I don’t think I’ve seen a nuthatch here at all before, but Jeff swears we’ve had them before, often, so maybe I’m finally old enough to have lost my memory. …..Yes, I just did a blog search and I’ve had them on our list of birds here in 2009 so he is right and I am old.

Jeff has a pork roast in the oven that he covered in a herb rub.  Oh my goodness it smells good.  I bought a couple bundles of fresh beautiful carrots from our neighbour at the farmer’s market. Can’t wait to have them with the roast.

Other excitement today, Zeus killed a mouse in the basement! What a killer, eh?  Good boy.

Christmas

I have been so aggravated by Christmas creeping into our stores before Hallowe’en.  It is WAY WAY WAY too early for Santa Clause parades and Christmas tree sales and Christmas carols!  WAY TOO EARLY!  December 1st is too early for Christmas carols. This is going to make everyone so sick and tired of Christmas by the time it comes.

However, I did start a bit of Christmas shopping. It is a great plan for me to start early so we can get them in the mail to Ontario before it costs us a fortune for guaranteed pre-Christmas deliver. I think I start early every year though and peter out before too long.

Christmas will be very different for us this year, and not so quiet! We haven’t gone home for Christmas since our wedding in 2007 because it is such an awful time of the year for travel, both for the actual travel and because of the pets and heating the house.  But this year we will have company!!  My mom and sister are heading east on the train to spend the holidays with us!  (less presents to mail!)

It will be nice. I’ve coped okay having our quiet Christmases, and sitting in on family Christmases on video chats, but it is a little hard to have our beautiful Christmas dinner over in 10 minutes and Jeff watches football and it is just so strange not having a house full of family.

I have no idea what we’ll do for the rest of the days they are here, but maybe we’ll save some wood to stack or something.  Keep them busy 🙂

New Blog Features

Over on the right hand side I’m trying out a “On this day in…” feature that shows posts I’ve made on this date in previous years.  Like today for instance, it has been 7 years since sweet little Surf left us.

If you are an email subscriber for the blog, you may have noticed that I’ve been posting some early entries from 1983.  I found a school journal from grade 2 and grade 3 and they are so hilarious! My spelling is atrocious.  I’m entering them in a few at a time, and preserving the bad spelling.  If you want to follow along, they start on Feb 3, 1983

And in other news

It is 5pm and almost completely dark.  Ugh.  I hate driving home from work in the dark.