Last Year of the 60's Decade - January 17, 2025 @goldenoakfarm

Juncos are such small birds and hard to photograph on the ground. There was a good sized flock of them out my office window early Friday morning and I tried to get as many of them as I could in the photo.

The phone was ringing as I tried to get shots through the window before they all flew away.

I managed to get one of them before I had to stop to answer the phone. My helper friend was out shopping and had questions. My brother called before I was off that call to ask if I had his Baked Beans recipe. So I had to hunt for that, unsuccessfully.

Then I had to do the milk order and I was also trying to finish my post. And Chaos Friday was off and running. I had opened my birthday present from my sister much earlier.

She has been watching the new edition of All Creatures Great and Small and I had said how I much preferred the old one as it followed the books much more closely. I had all the books and had read them several times.

I’d not gotten the DVD set as it was very expensive. I didn’t watch the videos much because they weren’t captioned and I couldn’t hear the conversation at all well. She had found such a good deal on the DVD set, she got a set of these older ones for herself to watch. She’d never seen them nor read the books. She still prefers the new ones.

Now this means major rearranging of the DVDs and videos as I can free up nearly a whole shelf when I take out the videos. I bought a lot of Christmas DVDs this year and I need the room!

When my helper friend got back from the big shopping, I’d gotten a shower but had not cleaned up the kitchen yet, so once we got the shopping put away, I did that.

Then we went upstairs and hauled out all the boxes coming down and he got them all downstairs in the living room (mostly) and office. It was time for him to go then.

I made some lunch and sat down for a while when I heard a horn in the driveway. I had forgotten I had PT in the afternoon! I dashed out and went to that. I have 4 or 5 more widely spaced sessions left as I am getting stronger. I just need to commit to doing the exercises at home on the days I can. I’ve been terrible about that this month.

We stopped on the way home to get the mail and I had gotten 4 cards. I had also gotten e-mails and texts and phone calls off and on all day.

Mid afternoon my contractor arrived. He’d repaired the lazy susan shelf and planned to see what the problem with the cellar bi-fold door was and to have another go at the washer, which was still making the squealing noise as it starts to spin.

We got the shelf in and I hope it lasts another decade or so. I didn’t feel like loading it; I’d do it on Saturday.

The bi-fold door was fixed with 2 washers under the bottom support, so that was easy. But the washing machine, not so much. He got all the right screws back into the sides and took the transmission, etc all out again and tried to see if there was anything obvious, but nope. So we put it all together and tried it and now it clunks instead of squeals when spinning, but only as it starts spinning. Sigh… He’s going to do more research.

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I had ordered Lazy Lobster Thermidor for supper along with coleslaw and a popover.

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This restaurant makes the biggest popovers I’ve ever seen, and they are sooo good and so not on my diet! I forgot to get photos but I wish I had of the popover! I had a triple chocolate cupcake for dessert. If you are going to trash the diet, might as well do a good job!

My brother picked up the order for me and they forgot the coleslaw. Sigh…

At 5PM I pulled the shades and lit the Christmas tree for the last time. I watched videos in the evening and was in bed by 8PM.

On Saturday I need to write my Thank You notes and start taking down the house decorations. Then I can start on the tree. It’s to be cloudy and cold all weekend and there’s a good amount of snow coming in Sunday night.