h20skibum

Have a safe trip and a great cruise.

I missed out yesterday, because I was isolated in my room, reading all day. That is the first Thanksgiving I didn’t overeat. The grandkids finished putting together the Lego Elf house for under our tree, and enjoyed playing with the train and monorail. We will have them on Monday, so they will be busy putting together the gingerbread house from Lego. I was feeling better today, with no symptoms. Daughter and grandkids were over today to help eat leftovers, and we had a Playdoh sculpting contest. A few of the creations. We have a lot of fun with that,

Very impressive Greg. I love it.

My daughter sent me this picture of Ricky. Evidently he likes fireplaces too.

@dani negreanu you were right, the new Robert Crais book was a quick read. I started and finished it today. Now I have to look for something new to read.

I had that same feeling about Harry, especially with the way it was left in the end.

I was glad it showed up. I finished the new Michael Connelly book with Harry and Renée. It was the best of the ones I read lately. I read the new Nelson Demille book, The Maze, and thought it moved slowly. I also read the new Lee Child book, No Plan B. I thought it jumped back and forth too much before they brought the story line together. Maybe it is his collaboration with Andrew Child, but I liked Lee’s earlier works better. I also finished the new CJ Box book, Treasure State.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate. So our reduced size, Thanksgiving meal, with just our daughter and her family, just got a little smaller. We were out for a walk yesterday when I started feeling off. Trouble breathing, fever and chills. Took a Covid test last night, and it was negative. Fever and chills are gone this morning, but still don’t feel like myself. I hate that Susan has to do all the prep work now, since I have decided to isolate today. I don’t want to take a chance of passing something to my daughter or the grandkids. Looks like I will be starting that new Robert Crais book today, instead of enjoying time with the family.

If you are putting it somewhere it is covered, make sure you have enough clearance for the cover lifter. I have heard stories of people preparing areas close to their house for a hot tub, only to find that when the cover lifter rotated the cover, it would hit the overhang, and they could not open it. That isn’t something everyone thinks about. Of course, the larger the hot tub, the more height needed to rotate the cover. If you look at the picture of Jim’s hot tub, just picture one half of that cover rotating up to open it up. If it was back in his covered portion, it would probably hit the ceiling.

Ours is a 4 person one that we have had for a little over a year. We both love it, and we use it almost every day, even in the cold winter up here. I don’t think we would like anything smaller. I did put a gazebo over ours, so we can use it rain, snow, or shine. For ours, I do our maintenance once a week, and it takes about an hour to pull the filters and clean them, test water and add chemicals. Every 4 months, I drain the tub, clean and refill. Test water, add chemicals and replace filters. It takes about a half day. This is the empty tub when I drained and cleaned it last week, and the hose was in to start the refill. For us, it is a great way to relax. Ours is a Coast Spa that we bought from our local Pool and Spa dealer.

Granddaughter still has a nasty, persistent cough, but at least her high fever is gone. She is still on antibiotics. Grandson also picked up a cough, but that was the extent for him. Between the two of them, and my daughter trying to limit contact with sickness because her immune system is weakened, that’s why we pared down our Thanksgiving this year. Thanks for your prayers for our daughter. That is great news, Sue. Google, or self diagnosis is the wort thing you can do. I know the kind of stress it can put on someone, so it is always best to trust your medical professional. We have been there, done that with the medical insurance hoops with our daughter. There needs to be a better way to do it. And congratulations on the weight loss.

Today would have been my Mother’s 94th birthday. We always celebrated her birthday during our family Thanksgiving celebration when all of our close and extended family would gather at our house. We had hoped to restart that extended family Thanksgiving this year, but circumstances have delayed that now for another year. Much like Susan’s mother hated celebrating her birthday, because it fell on 9/11, my mother hated that her’s fell on the anniversary of JFK’s assassinatIon. I still remember that date. That Friday, I was at afternoon recess when the news broke.

It was 16°, feels like 6° this morning when I got up. We may be lucky and see it up to 40° today. It has been cold enough that ice is starting to form. I think someone screwed up with the lighting pattern here.

We are in the Sub category here and the Pop category and the all important Yins category

We started watching it on Friday. Have watched two episodes already. A lot of symbols keep popping up, so it will be interesting to see where it goes.

My son, who lived in both Orchard Park and Williamsville, just sent me this. He says he is glad he no longer lives there. Susan and I made the drive to Erie, PA this morning. There is only about a foot of snow here, but the sun is shining. The next storm will start around 10 tonight.

I loved it. But maybe my experience was swayed, because we were sailing at about 1/3 capacity in October, 2021. A great 8 day itinerary. In case you missed it, this was my review from that sailing. It brings back good memories.

My day so far…. Up early, and we started like most days, with a soak in our hot tub. It was 29°, with a feels like 20°. It is nice that it is covered, and only about 5 steps from our family room patio door. I have the enclosure up, to keep the wind and snow out, and I am testing out a patio heater to see if it will warm the space more. Even without a heater, it isn’t bad. Then, we were off for a five mile walk in the cold. It was snowing a little by then, but not much was sticking. Found a lone, lost flip flop, but I hope they were not wearing it today. This afternoon, Susan took our daughter to her appointment with the surgeon. I am afraid she will have horrible, rush hour traffic on her way back. She hates driving in that. Me, I am running loads of laundry through at my daughter’s house, while they are away. Oh, and I have grandkid watching duty.

That is good. The first holidays are hard, so it is nice they have something like this.

I agree that summer is better. It is times like this when my son is glad he moved from Buffalo to California.

When I read on here yesterday, that Buffalo was supposed to get a couple feet of snow, I decided it was time to service my snow blower to be ready for winter. So that was one of my tasks yesterday. Now it is ready, but I hope I don’t have to use it this winter. I did see, on the news this morning, that Buffalo is now expecting 3 to 6 feet of lake effect snow. Erie, PA, where we are likely headed this weekend, is only supposed to get a foot of snow. Can’t believe it went from 70’s last week to this. 🥶

I was also sorry to read this.

It was news to me too, since I have been out of the cruising loop for a couple months. I looked at some of those menus, and it looks like they have pared down the number of choices, not only on entrees, but on deserts. Susan would get the apple blossom for desert almost every night, and now it looks like it is only offered one night. That is disappointing.

Well, granddaughter is home, but her diagnosis was pneumonia. Susan and I have a somewhat free day, so we are running all over western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. An early morning stop was at Christmas Land. Somehow, this is how I envision Greg’s house. Even the dogs would feel right at home. I did find Santa and, fortunately my name was on the good list. I can’t imagine how long it takes to put together a display like this. IMG_6249.MOV or, how much is invested in it. IMG_6250.MOV

Practicing our own method of de-stressing, we headed out for a walk at dusk last night. A little cool out, but we did see this group in the field. Yes, there were 10 of them.