My 'Peeps'

There are just limits to what you can get done in a weekend, especially when you have two dogs who are anxious to compete for your time. I appear to be Calvin's "safe person" and when he is threatened by Ruby, he will hop up on top of me in my chair looking for protection. This annoys Ruby, because Calvin is now hogging her person. (This is not to say that the dogs do not love the other people in the house -- I just appear to be the household alpha.)

The Christmas tree did not get straightened up in its stand today, because that's a three person job really and I was not going to get that level of cooperation. But one of the tubs of Christmas decorations has gone back to the basement and most of the decorations are actually up which is a good thing.

The driveway was also shoveled by Julie and me in various shifts. Julie does not quite realize that the apron is part of the driveway, but I have explained this to her and hope to have better luck next time. Gretchen suggested that I should fire up the snowblower, which probably would have been the best idea if I already had gas and was sure that I had the appropriate snowblower oil *and* had an empty gasoline container. Maybe before the *next* major snow. Today's was about five inches, which is definitely a depth where the snowblower becomes worthwhile.

I bought more plugins and software upgrades while they are on sale. Now I just need to *do* something with them...

And I cleaned off the top of the bookcase in my bedroom, putting the stuff that had accumulated there away for its safety. I'll need to remember where I put it when I need it. That's the tricky part. :)

Tomorrow, it's back to work and I have a *lot* of things to do. Happily, I updated the password that was going to expire today when I logged in *yesterday*...

I headed down to Tobias Music for their holiday Taylor Tone Show, where many Taylor guitars were compared. It was a lot of fun and I picked up a few new bits of knowledge that I hadn't had before. Mind you, I carefully didn't play any guitars this trip, because no guitars are currently allowed to follow me home. :)

My Taylor 710ce-l9 limited edition short-scale is still on consignment there and can be seen on their website. If you're looking for a standard Taylor dreadnaught, it's a good deal...

This song started, like so many songs do, with the chorus arriving and demanding to be attached to the rest of the song. It just took a while to figure out exactly what the rest of the song was, along with getting the tune into some stable state. But once you get the first verse down, everything starts to make sense...

And it's in the key of G! The nice normal key of G. Pay no attention to that Em7 and Cadd9...

Anyway, I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside )

Apparently, I am going to write the design for a feature.

Now.

Let's see how this goes...

Gretchen hopped in the car with me and we headed out to get lunch and after that to the La-Z-boy store out in Schaumburg. This required driving past Woodfield Mall which was closer than I wanted to be today. Traffic trying to get in was fantastically backed up. The furniture store, on the other hand, had fairly light traffic. Gretchen had done research on-line looking for a suitable chair and had narrowed it down to two models. Since the chair was for Gretchen, this seemed fair.

We were looking for a chair that was correctly sized and built for Gretchen to be able to sit comfortably and get in and out of without difficulty. One of the two models turned out to be the correct one, so it is now on order and will show up eventually in a fabric that should suit our needs.

Once we got home, I ran out to Sam's Club to pick up hamburger for meat loaf tomorrow. Then Gretchen and I went to Home Depot where I picked out a suitable Christmas tree. It is reasonably tall, but narrow, which seems to be how they are coming lately. This may be advantageous. We'll see. :)

And that was quite *enough* shopping for Black Friday.

Tomorrow, Snowmageddon is supposed to occur. We'll see how it goes. If nothing else, I have two teenagers here to help shovel...

It was a lovely day. Cold and windy, but lovely inside due to the magic of central heating.

The entire family participated in preparing Thanksgiving dinner. Julie tried out a new bread recipe that we all like a lot. K helped get the turkey into the oven. I made the stuffing. Gretchen made the mashed potatoes, apple salad, and the cranberry orange relish (the last with help from Julie). And we all ate too much.

There are leftovers. Tons of leftovers. If only I had the recipe for potato pancakes from T-Bob's...

I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, wherever you are!

Our usual Chinese takeout place is closed on Tuesdays and I felt like having Chinese food tonight, so I ordered in from a different place that I've been wanting to try. It was pretty good. I was able to get orange beef there, which I haven't had in quite a while. It was mostly soggy, which is the hazard of not getting it at a sit-down place, but it was still tasty.

They also have assorted moo-shu dishes, so I will be trying one of those next time. :)