Thanksgiving Day

Greetings and Happy Thanksgiving. We've had a terrific day and I hope you have also and been able to spent time with your families. Carol, Ian and I spent the early part of the day taking care of the final preparations before our guests arrived. Elaine and Steve arrived first. Lois and Jim picked up Margaret at the bus station around 1pm and came straight to our house from there.

Carol did a great job with dinner and several pies,
Elaine brought homemade rolls and Lois brought
the wine and a four layer cake.

Steve and Ian watching the football game.

A little pre-dinner socialization.

Buffet style serving and we were set to feast.

Lois is set to enjoy.

The view of dinner from a couple of angles.

We spent a long time at the table talking followed by desserts and coffee, then viewing on the laptop pictures Bev had taken during her summer stay in the county. After everyone left and we had things cleaned up Taylor came over after having had dinner with her family at her grandmother's. After a bit I caught an evening nap and we watched one of our DVDs "Sahara". It's been a real nice day.

Happy Thanksgiving

We'll be having Carol's side of the family over for Thanksgiving Day Dinner.

Here's the star attraction, foodwise.


Peoplewise here's the star attraction...The Cook!



This is the night before. Carol has done a lot of pre-cooking and prepared some ready to cook things. I'll update this blog after our guests have left.

This weekend's happenings with some self inflicted plagiarism

I wrote my mother an e-mail yesterday that had some news about what we were up to so far for the weekend, then today in an e-mail to my sister Judi I updated that news. Well, now I think it makes for a newsy family blog so I'll repeat it again.

Ian was briefly home Friday as Carol met him at the train station, he dropped her off back at her office and took the car home, then left for the Order of the Arrow event in China, ME. I didn't get to see him ( I picked up Carol after work). We had a pretty busy Saturday. I worked on closing a leak from the bathroom skylight, put up some shelves, drove down to Windham to pick up a few things and combed out the dogs and trimmed their toenails, not something they like, I'm not to fond of it myself. Carol did some sewing, did the wash and washed the living room carpet and baked a couple of pies for Thanksgiving. Our movie for last night was a Brit film called Cold Comfort Farm, light comedy. Today Carol, Patches and I had lunch at Lois and Jim's and when we returned home Ian was there. He was here for a couple of hours then we took him back to the train station to head back to school. His last class before Thanksgiving is Tuesday morning after which Taylor's mother, Julie, is picking him up then they'll drive over to Franklin Pierce to pick Taylor up. Her last class is late in the afternoon so he won't be home until sometime after 10pm Tuesday night. We're having Carol's family over for Thanksgiving.

Just because she's so darn cute here's
a picture of the lady Eowyn

Back to the movie "Cold Comfort Farm", every now and then Carol and I like to watch a Brit film. Something clever and amusing and this flick met our expectations. The Netflix description "When Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale), a young society woman in 1930s London, becomes suddenly orphaned, she's forced to take up residence with a group of her unsophisticated, oddball relatives at their farm. Despite protests from the bedridden, iron-willed matriarch of the farm, the aspiring lass tries to achieve some semblance of order and class in the house -- and in her own life. Cast also includes Eileen Atkins, Ian McKellen and Joanna Lumley." Actually Flora solicited several distance relatives and chose this particular group of odd balls to move in with. She had quite a challenge with them but with determination and clever planning she won the day in making positive changes with them and herself. The many characters each had their own idiosyncrasies which were quite funny but lived together under the suspicious eye of the and brings it all together quite neatly at the end. Life should be so tidy... but what fun would that be.

A new road to the same place

After about a year of construction a new by-pass connector along the route we usually take to the Portland area finally opened yesterday. It allows drivers to avoid the center of Gray Village where six directions of traffic come into a double traffic light intersection in a tight area. Its been a long time coming. Carol and I are pretty psyched about this...just a little is enough.

Out of the fast lane

It's nice every now and then to just stay home on a Saturday and Carol and I managed to do just that this weekend. Particularly true on a cloudy November day. For quite sometime Carol has been wanting to rearrange the living room including swapping some furniture from the attic and other parts of the house in and out of the living room. So we moved stuff, rehung stuff, setup a new cable TV outlet, cleaned out nooks and crannies. The final result is pretty nice, dogs don't know where they are though.

Most every week we watch a movie on Saturday night. This weekend's rental was "The Station Agent". A guy at work mentioned it to me, a low key, character study type flick. Here's the Netflix description - When his only friend dies, a young dwarf named Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) relocates to an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey, intent on living the life of a hermit. But his solitude is soon interrupted by his colorful neighbors, which include a struggling artist (Patricia Clarkson) coping with the recent death of her young son and a talkative Cuban hot dog vendor (Bobby Cannavale). - as you watch the first half of the movie you might wonder why anyone would bother filming this story but things progress where the characters find a comfort zone with each other while coming to terms with the factors that affect them from other aspects of their lives. Some quirky/odd things that go on, nothing fancy but we liked it. Actually the movie dovetailed well with the rest of our day.

Relief at last

Political commercials, over the last few months and the last 2 or 3 weeks in particular, we've been bombarded with one candidate or issue's ads, one after another. Many were easy to ignor, some got under my skin. Seen once and I'm able to let it pass but on repeated viewing it was almost to much, even on the person/issue I supported. Now we can focus on other things. Like, "Save the cheerleader, save the world" - Heroes.

Vote

This is one of the greatest days to be an American. We get to choose who or what we want. Republican, Democrat, Green, or Independent - spent money, cut spending, ban smoking while standing on one leg in traffic, or what color the sun should be. No matter if what I want has a chance or not, standing in the voting booth with that ballot before me starts the Star-Spangled Banner playing in my head. This privilege of citizenship is not taken lightly. We are the government we elect and it shouldn't be done by a minority of adult citizens. I hope you all voted.

Saturday visit with Ian at UNH

Yesterday Carol and I went to UNH to visit Ian which timed well that the UNH Woodsman Club that Ian belongs to were holding their only home meet of the year. We brought Patches along with us leaving the house at 7am, the event started 9am. A cool, crisp, sunny November day indeed with a steady breeze blowing most of the time. Club members had been preparing the event the night before, setting up the wood to be used then getting up early Saturday to make the final preparations for the 14 teams participating representing 6 colleges. Colby, Unity, UMaine, UVermont, Dartmouth and the host UNH. Both men and women compete in all the events which to the best of my memory were: wood splitting, axe throwing (at a bullseye about 20 feet, no moving targets), buck sawing, 2-person cross cut saw, vertical cut, horizontal cut, chainsaw, wood toss, an obstacle course, log rolling ( not the " in the water" type), and a mystery event. That turned out to be firestarting - teams were given a small box of matches and a large coffee can with soapy water - team members were then sent across a large grass area, at a full run, about 300 feet to the woods where they were to gather wood and kindling, no tools. Tools could be used back where the fires were to be built. It turned out to be a wild, fun event that Ian's team did a great job on. I may not have what each event was called correct but they're close enough. All these were timed events except the axe throwing. The UNH club both competed and did the setups and cleanups necessary to take place during the entire day which kept them all busy. Ian competed in axe throwing (3rd best score, real good for a first timer), horizontal cut (nothing like watching your kid swing an axe between his feet), wood tossing, log rolling, cross cut relay, and the fire building. It's funny how some of this make a connection to stuff he did in scouting and at the same time contradicts what he was taught in scouting but it comes together well. I must say Carol and I were very impressed with all the students participating. Focused, great spirit and sportsmanship, team work, it was terrific being around them. Between his activities we got to spend some good time with Ian. Patches was quite a hit with a number of people, they were several other dogs around as well. Since Carol and I had tickets to the Portland Pirates hockey game (lost 2-0) that night we had to leave before the club would finish with the cleanup but the time we had with Ian was fun as was the entire visit. If I get a chance I'll post some of the pictures I took of other students competing later this week.

This is a series of pictures I made from a video I shot
of Ian throwing the axe for a bulls eye. Note the axe
in mid air in the center photo.

Ian waiting to go on the block he'll be chopping through.

Ian rolling his end of the log.

Fire building is well on it's way.