Happiness is Revising Something Good

~ Jenny

I set my kitchen on fire a while ago, and now I’m revising it. Not just cleaning and repainting but rethinking where everything is, what’s important and what’s not. It’s not just useful, it’s fun, plus I get to look at stuff on the internet for ideas.

Since I torched my stove, I’m revising recipes for the microwave and other various appliances are realizing that I really don’t want another behemoth oven-with-burners in my kitchen. Experimenting with slow-cookers and air fryers and sandwich presses has made me look at my old dishes in new ways, plus I get new cookware to experiment with (pasta cooker in the microwave) so that’s fun.

I wrote a novel a while ago that got rejected, and now I’m revising it. Not just cleaning up typos but rethinking what the reader wants, what I want, tightening and focusing so it’s almost a new book. It’s not just important to my bottom line, it’s exciting seeing where the story goes now, plus I get to diagram it out on a white board which thrills my graph-paper-loving heart.

What I’m saying here is that not getting it exactly right the first time can be a good thing, and good things make me happy.

What made you happy this week?

76 thoughts on “Happiness is Revising Something Good”

  1. The arrival of my new robot vacuum cleaner has made me very happy this week. my old one kept on having fights with it’s charger’s power cord and not actually vacuuming.

    I hate vacuuming with a passion, so I’m quite happy to pay considerably more for the pleasure of not having to do it. This time I also got an automatic emptier, it sucks the detritus into a bag, that you empty every couple of months. Just wonderful.

    I do still need to vacuum, but only the areas that the robot can’t get to. If I dust regularly and the vacuum cleans daily, there is considerably less dust in the house as well so I only need to vacuum every couple of weeks and that’s just the edges.

    We are also coming out of lockdown in Melbourne starting with the aptly named Freedom Friday. We can now eat out, visit friends and there are no distance restrictions for Greater Melbourne. I had lunch today at a cafe, for the first time in months, it was lovely to just be out amongst people. And I spent most of yesterday afternoon at a friends place, again, haven’t been able to do that for months either. Really hoping that this is the last lockdown – 6 times is enough.

  2. I’m happy that I found my phone! It was not in the trash after all! The relief was enormous. Turned out it had slipped down between the armrest and seat of my chair and was lying inside/underneath it. We had looked there (Read: Sven had felt around under it, which I should’ve double-checked because he’s always very inaccurate when looking for things), but without success. Then MIL came, tilted the chair backwards and exclaimed: “I see it! It’s there!” I might have cried just a tiny bit.
    I was looking for socks the other day at an webshop and ran across all kinds of socks I wanna give as gifts to people I know, because they’re so perfectly designed. There’s this pair with a broccoli design that will fit one of my Swedish friends perfectly, one with a doughnut design for an american friend, avocado for my big brother, sushi for my mum and so on. Maybe the designs are hideous to see, but I think it sounds amazing, so I’m gonna do some shopping soon…! 🙂 Craxy socks make me happy. Or crazy designs in general – I love my chili pepper covered apron that my dad gifted me some 10 years ago. <3 Want more of that!

      1. The broccoli socks are very nice to look at, not hideous at all. Unfortunately they are 30% polyester so I could not wear them.

  3. I did something new for me–I read an essay aloud at an Open Mic session at a local art gallery. (Actually, “arts gallery” would be more accurate.) It was well received and, once I stopped shaking, fun. I hope to do it again.

    I’m also happy just because it’s fall–my favorite time.

  4. Well, we didn’t have a fir in the kitchen. We got hit by hurricane Ida. And we are one of the lucky families because even though we got over $100,000 worth of damage, we can still live in the house. It’s rough, but we are blessed to have a place to live!

    2. When I read this, I was amazed that I knew someone who did haute cuisine. A local restaurant does a dish served under a glass cloche on a bed of smoking fir needles. The cloche is removed when it is served, the smoke dissipates and your food is revealed, very artistic with a faint smoked taste. But keeping a fir in the kitchen in order to do this would be excessive

      1. Not just a fir. You’d also need alder, apple, cherry, cedar, grape vines, hickory, maple, mesquite, oak, peach, pear, pecan and walnut. On the other hand, you’d have a unique kitchen and could probably out-gourmet anyone.

  5. I finished up my 3rd term of Horticultural Studies this week. Got all my assignments handed in on time despite having a bad migraine mid-week. I have a break this week before starting my last semester.

    I re-potted various indoors plants that had been neglected over the summer. The overnight temperatures finally dropped into the single digits so brought plants back inside to over winter. Found places for everything but I’ll be re-organizing for the next few weeks as I figure out the light levels for the various plants.

    Spent yesterday afternoon working outside. Everything but the dahlias and Swiss chard came out of the vegetable garden in my neighbour’s yard. The dahlias bloomed late and are stunning so I’ll leave them alone until we get frost. I still have flowers in pots blooming so will enjoy them for a few more days.

    My new forest green Doc Martin’s arrived. First pair in about 25 years – I forgot how comfortable they are. My feet are very happy.

  6. I am on my vacation. We go to Ithaca NY every year when we can to hike and visit their book sale, which is fabulous. We waited an hour to get in, I filled my giant rolly bag for $25, and then we went to the Farmers market for lunch, which is equally fabulous. It’s a permanent structure built at the end of a lake with open air stalls under a high ceiling stung with Edison style bulbs.

    Bought some Asian pears, my favorite, and then chose between Thai, Japanese, Tibetan and Mongolian food. It was great. It’s this little odd place outside of the standard culture all around us (about two hours away from where I live) where people care about books and supporting small local businesses and everyone wears their mask without complaining. I sorta kinda really want to move here someday.

      1. I am not local, so have only eaten at a few places. I don’t even know of they survived the pandemic, unfortunately. All my food choices this weekend were under one roof at the farmers market, so if you go on a weekend, definitely hit that. The book sale is only going on until Tuesday though. To happen again in May.

    2. Ithaca is a really cool place to visit. I haven’t been there in a few years as it’s about a 2 hour drive for me as well. Maybe I need to plan a trip there before the weather turns nasty.

    3. Have you ever eaten at the Moosewood restaurant? I don’t know if it’s still in business or not but I and some friends went there several years ago and had a wonderful vegetarian meal.

      1. Haven’t eaten there, but I have one of their cookbooks. My cousin is vegan and ate there. She was pleased.

  7. I was pondering why I often feel I am pushing to get things to go a certain way. I really have a fabulous life, but it’s like I had this idea tucked away somewhere that life could be (should be?) tidy. I have never been a perfectionist, but perhaps a “predictionist”? If I try a recipe and it doesn’t turn out as I expected it to, the air pressure light in my car kicks on, my boss wants to revisit something we already decided about – all of these things have made me feel back in some part of my mind, that I wasn’t doing a good job of life – which is obviously stupid. I am going to try to turn over a new leaf and not let things that happen in life mean something about me and my abilities or accomplishments!

    And I have Halloween lights up, and I have LOTS of chocolate, so life IS good.

  8. I finished my novel, White Lightning! My body seems to be celebrating my sleeping more.

    I ate Indian food with new friends and bought extra, bringing my own containers so we could continue to eat later. My kids like butter chicken and naan.

    We watched Squid Game as a family, including our new dog, Bell, who’s been tough to settle in, but Bell actually fell asleep and snored while we ate spaghetti and watermelon and watched people fight for their lives.

    It’s sunny outside. I treasure this light before the dark winter days begin.

    1. Congratulations on finishing the book (and the good food)!

      I agree with you about the light. I’m making myself get outside when it’s sunny as I know we’re about to enter winter.

  9. I was very happy to finish the quilting on my quilt. I’m halfway through binding it.

    I also have found estate sales. I’m finding them to be quite fun. I expect most of my belongings to go the same way when I’m gone. I love finding useful, nice items for a 1/10 of the cost of new that I’m rescuing from a landfill and will use. I like to think that the previous owner would be happy that someone who will use their thing was able to have it. It’s like a treasure hunt. As a bonus, I get to tour houses and see more of the local area and neighborhoods near me. This past weekend the trees were gorgeous with fall colors.

  10. My seaside holiday was wet and windy, but I enjoyed the colourful pebbles on the beaches, and taking pictures of rocks and rockpools. And the drive there and back, through Snowdonia. Oh, and my sea view.

    I’m planning a big sort-out of my workroom, to support me in changing my focus from the day job to my writing and photography. It’s going to involve lots of filing and accounts, but also putting up my big noticeboards so I can pin ideas up, and just getting clear about where I’m going, now I’m ready to semi-retire. Made me happy to clarify my new work this morning: fiction writing, collaging and making books with my photographs, and making my gardens.

  11. This week has been complicated.

    (Short recap of this saga: have had somewhat mutual crush on a friend since 2019 that never went anywhere, pandemic means nothing ever did, I went to go drop off his birthday present at his work in March and he basically walked off and ignored me after I did that and seemed to be fake-focusing on work all of a sudden. After that, he has been avoiding anywhere we’d mutually be, we have had very little contact all year since. All year I have presumed he had stopped liking me entirely, especially since I’ve been publicly shunned/friend dumped like that in public before and holy crap, I have been triggered.)

    Sunday: a somewhat psychic friend of mine told me out of nowhere that she “checked in” on the crush’s “energy” (she has photos of us together) and said “he has no idea there’s anything wrong.” I just got super mad about it all. Like I haven’t talked to him for almost all of this entire year (not usual for me) and he hasn’t noticed anything is wrong?!

    Monday: I had two days off from work to burn vacation time and decided to use Monday to finally exorcise this whole crush thing once and for all. I threw out a lot of the “signs” objects I found over the years, I cried, I journaled, I did EFT/tapping, I literally cut red yarn as in cutting the cord, I was determined to be done with all the sad and mad I’ve had going on for most of the year. I wanted to be over it.

    I will note that part of this came from this NYT article I read on some girl going to a shaman and doing a cord cutting ceremony thing about an ex, and then the shaman is all “you may hear from him after that,” because they somehow kind of know when you do that. Hers was in Australia and called two days later. I was all “bullshit, that is never going to happen because he always disappoints me.” Like, I kinda wished but at the same time, no?

    Off and on during the week, mutual friends start bringing him up to me.

    By Wednesday or so I had declared myself done with it, was feeling better and in the immortal words of Sally Albright, was tentatively saying, “I really am over him.”

    And on Wednesday circa noon, another mutual friend asks if I want to go see Rocky Horror this weekend, sure. Later that night, he says that crush is also now going. I am all fuck a duck, I have no idea how to deal with this.

    Last night: it is entirely possible that aforementioned psychic friend may be right on this. Crush hugged me for a long time, commented multiple times on how long it’s been since he’s seen/heard from me, was being friendly/nice, took pictures with me, bought me props for the show…also I lost my glasses that I needed to drive and was freaking out and ended up calling him on his way home to rescue me. I ended up finding the glasses so that didn’t end up being an issue (it was heinously raining anyway and he had to work the next day, so let’s not make that worse).

    Whether or not it’s still a romantic whatever, who knows and probably never happening anyway. But apparently he isn’t hating me after all out of nowhere. Not sure where to go from here, but things were not as bad as I thought.

    1. OMG .. fuck a duck has always been one of my favorite expressions.. dont hear it much anymore .. and sending you lots of good energy vibes for however this turns out ..

      1. It’s a fun phrase, especially where I live because the ducks are infamous. I used to work by a river where the ducks ah….got up to what ducks do.

        1. I just finished reading “Perestroika in Paris,” which has many animal characters. Two of them are mallard ducks, Sid and Nancy. There is a raven, Raoul, who has many caustic comments to make about ducks. My favorite is this: “he had seen flocks of mallards squawking constantly, as if shouting to humans, ‘Shoot me! I can’t stand myself anymore’”.

  12. I am happily procrastinating right now. Okay, maybe not right now, but I’m sure I’ll get around to it. I should be at Walmart, picking up my prescriptions from the pharmacy and checking into a flu shot. I should be vacuuming the hundred square feet of floor. I should be committing sortilege on the things that don’t bring me enough joy to stay and gather my dust for me. Then I should dust.

    Oh, look! I am procrastinating! I didn’t put it off after all. I think I’ll get dressed and go to Walmart and procrastinate there, or I might be tempted to do some of that cleaning.

    Happy. 🙂

  13. I just happily watched a female figure skater on the Skate America Grand Prix figure skating competition skate her heart out. She exuded joy, happiness, and delight, all at the same time. She will not win this competition but she brought a breath of fresh air to what has been becoming an increasingly boring, stale, everyone looks and skates the same, era of figure skating.

    1. I don’t watch ice skating, much. Maybe Olympic or world championships. Maybe. But Frank Downey wrote Dance of a Lifetime, about two ice dancers, Warren and Sophia, from their thirteenth year through their twenty-first, and two Olympics. Books 1, 2, and 3 are on my shelves, some of the only physical books I own. (I have them as ebooks, too.) Your description is exactly the way he described them.

      1. That sounds like something I would be interested in reading. Unfortunately my library system doesn’t own them
        I may have to ask for them through inter library loan.

        1. The treebook version was from Lulu, which I think was or is a vanity press. The entire saga (170+ chapters) is at StoriesOnline.net under his pen name, Don Pendleton. You’d need a paid membership to read/download it.

          make a temporary gmail account. send me an email at gary dot s dot jordan at gmail dot com, and I’ll send it to you. My copies date from when it was freely available, and under his own name.

          1. Gary, I have a Gmail acct that I very rarely use. I’ll email you as you suggested. And thanks! It’s rouan1 at gmail

  14. So many happy things. Got a last minute job on on Hearts Abishola. 2 days work Last Friday and Monday.
    My dear friend came for the weekend. We watched Come From Away on Apple+
    It’s a Tony award winning musical about the town of Gander Newfoundland and the planes that were forced to land there on the morning of 9/11.
    It is a heart uplifting story about a terrible moment in history.
    Twelve people playing multiple characters. I think it’s brilliant.
    This morning we watched it watched it again. I was invested in every character that each of the 12 played. It was unexpected laughter. I can’t recommend this enough, and for every kid who never saw a Broadway play, this is a great example of what a Broadway play is and should be.
    If you’ve never seen it, it’s worth your time.

    1. I’ve seen Come From Away in theatre twice, and totally agree. I would watch it every day if I could. It’s magical

  15. I donated platelets today, so some lucky cancer patient has a chance at life.

    I’m a breast cancer survivor so this is something I try to do often.

    Also the Red Cross gives $10 gift certificates to Amazon.

    2. Kaye55, I donate blood too but can’t right now as I have to wait for a year from when my treatments for breast cancer ended. That won’t be until early July of next year.

  16. Stopped at my local farm stand on Friday and got carrots, red beets and spagetti squash. I roasted the beets and carrots. The carrots are now a soup. he beets are in a walnut and rice salad. (The squash I’ll cook later.) This week’s meals done.

    Plants are still on the porch. We haven’t had a frost yet. They get more light outside so they’re happy.

    Pixie went to the groomer and did really well. She gets her dental on Thursday. That brings us closer to Gotcha Day.

    Still reading Pratchett and really enjoying myself.

  17. I spent a week with all the grandchildren at a family reunion. It was wonderful, even though I got sick at the end and spent the last day of vacation in bed.

  18. I had a more social week than usual, with a reunion dinner of a group of us who used to work together on Wed. and a church service Th. morning at a local retirement center. I’ve not seen some of the women since before pandemic, so it was especially lovely. It was also a double-header for writing, with my poetry partner on Monday and my memoir partner on Friday. For both, mostly revision of existing work, but nice to see them, even if only on Zoom.

    2. The before pictures would just be a lot of soot and a burned out stove.
      Which, come to think of it, would make pretty much ANY after picture look good.

      1. I seem to recall that you posted a picture of the stove at the time, so it’s in the archives somewhere.

  20. We’re expecting a big storm tomorrow in S Cal so I went marketing today. I cooked lemon chicken, which was delicious, and enough for tomorrow. No way will I go out in a storm. These people here do not know how to drive in the rain.

    1. It sounds like you’re getting more than just normal rain. More like “build an ark” time.

      1. Yes. I think N. Cal got hit badly during the night. I think our worst part will be noonish. I’m snuggling with the dog.

  21. I reread The Book of Firsts last week. I recall Ms. Anders having Mika use “revised” several times, which with today’s post, I think it is in the sense of “revisit.” She says up front that she uses Canadian English (you know, with the correct spelling, eh?) so I’m wondering if that is a Canadian usage where we might say “reviewed?”

    1. Examples:

      “For my core subjects, I’m usually far ahead on the reading, and only need the most basic revision for exams. – Anders, Karan K. The Book of Firsts (A Very Secret Garden 1) (p. 140). Andrea K Hosth. Kindle Edition.

      There wasn’t anything that gave me trouble, so I just used the topics as a handy structure for revision. = Anders, Karan K. The Book of Firsts (A Very Secret Garden 1) (p. 242). Andrea K Hosth. Kindle Edition.

      Not able to decipher what he was doing, I simply started revising. – Anders, Karan K. The Book of Firsts (A Very Secret Garden 1) (p. 382). Andrea K Hosth. Kindle Edition.

      1. ‘Revising’ is what you do before an exam: you go back over topics to ensure they’re fresh in your memory so you can regurgitate the information on demand.

        It also means to edit or update.

        1. Many Americans would use reviewing instead of revised. I reviewed all the material covered in the seminar. I would say I revised the essay in order for the information to be more coherent. Revised has the connotation that the basic material is changed in some way. Reviewing familiarizes you with the material but doesn’t change the basic structure.

          2. Actually, I think we’ve probably adopted your usage outside the context of education. Although it’s a bit management-speak. I’d look through the material, or reread it, myself.

  22. I drove to San Francisco to the cousins’ — the usual Sunday routine — being lucky enough to do it between gusts of rainstorm. They live in an apartment building complex and I park in their basement stall when I visit. Today, on the way home, I pulled out of the parking garage exit and looked downhill to wait for a break in the traffic. I noticed that the street tree to my immediate right had partly come down over (this being San Francisco) a parked car. My guess is that the car probably doesn’t have anything worse than scratched paint, but will probably require fairly serious help to extract. The bridge traffic returning was nose-to-tail at speeds which occasionally reached a brisk ten miles per hour, but never more. Turned out that the probable reason was some inches of water midway. When I got home, my brother told me that the power on our side of the bay had been off for about two hours.

    Happy to have had a good day with the cousins!

    Also happy that I was able to spend most of yesterday turning a spoken program on the interment of the Unknown Soldier on 11 November 1921 into a PowerPoint presentation (I’m giving it on Zoom next month for the centennial). I hunted up illustrations and photographs and what-have-you — I was hoping to find Rosa Ponselle’s piece, but no luck — and I think it turned out pretty well. Also it’s ready ahead of deadline!

    And I think I have the basics for my December logic puzzle and might be able to finish it early, always good. In this case, competing hostesses are serving holiday dishes which require (if you’re showing off, which they will be) specific pieces of obscure tableware. Things like mango forks, though I might want to include some weird and wonderful serving pieces like baked potato forks, asparagus tongs, and so on.

    1. I have “Iris” by Durgin (an art nouveau pattern which rarely gets used but still I love it) and I have always lusted for the terrapin forks. My BFF asked me how often I have had terrapin (never) and if I would know how to prepare it if I did have it (no). But that is not the point. I do have the citrus spoons and they are basically worthless for eating grapefruit, unless you cut the segments free first, in which case you can almost use a normal spoon. The strawberry forks though are essential.

      1. Kimball, Christopher. FANNIE’S LAST SUPPER: Re-creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer’s 1896 Cookbook

        . . . I wondered about the diamondback terrapins and thought that a fishing trip to the Chesapeake might be in order. I called the Maryland Department of Fisheries to determine when the season opened and what the legal limit was. A hasty return phone call from Diane Samuels made it clear that I had made a terrible gaffe, as if I were inquiring joyfully about the season for clubbing baby seals. After being informed that there was no season for the turtles of the Chesapeake—she used the words “strictly prohibited”—I asked how long the ban had been in effect. “Oh, one year,” was the reply. Well, it’s always the last sinner in church who protests the loudest.

        1. Thank you!. This reminded me that the 1921 edition of the Boston Cooking School Cook Book was buried on my book shelf, aka, the Fannie Merritt Farmer Cookbook. And it did indeed have instructions for making Terrapin a la Baltimore, Terrapin a la Maryland and Terrapin a la Washington. It lost me when it started in on separating out the meat then mincing up the innards and the bones and dividing up the liver then cooking it all together in butter, etc. Sawdust is tasty if you cook it in enough butter. It did say that while it was not as choice as terrapin from Chesapeake Bay, the terrapin from Florida and Texas was acceptable.

          I used to have a mold for steam pudding and actually tried to make a steamed Lemon Pudding using Fannie’s recipe, carefully following the directions. This book actually has about 10 recipes for steamed pudding. Mine made a very fragrant doorstop. I have since given my mold to Goodwill. There is a reason steamed puddings are no longer made.

          1. Our tastes have changed, and also our ingredients have changed. The old GOURMET magazine — the one with the drool-worthy centerfolds — recipes always seemed to start out, “take a pound of butter and a quart of heavy whipping cream,” and my belief, like yours, is that after that, the other ingredients, including the sawdust, probably didn’t matter much. According to Christopher Kimball, the Chesapeake terrapin are the smallest — weighing in at four pounds or so, on average, while the others weigh from a hundred pounds on up.

            These days the lazy person makes traditional steamed puddings in an Instant Pot. Allowing for people preferring to record more successes online than failures, apparently it works out very well.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4o1wYwkv9g

  23. My power stayed on! Happy! Usually, it goes out immediately when a storm comes through, but this time it just blinked and stayed on. However, another 125,000 Washingtonians lost theirs, and many of them are still out. The wind storm warning is up until Tuesday morning, so here’s hoping we get through Monday.

    I watched the new movie Dune on HBO+ yesterday. OMG, that is good. Very atmospheric, beautiful photography, excellent acting. I really enjoyed it. I expect I will see it at least once more while it is still on HBO+. Happy an anticipated movie was excellent!

  24. I got to see an author friend who was visiting from Florida (staying with another friend a little over an hour away in Schenectady, where I grew up). She usually comes up every fall but had to skip last year due to Covid. We had a lovely visit and talked about all sorts of things, and actually hugged (yay vaccines). As a bonus, she picked up a food order from my favorite deli (food I literally grew up eating) and delivered it to me. I get to eat that for dinner tonight and I’m ridiculously excited.

    I’m revising (doing polish edits before turning in) my latest Llewellyn book. It is due in two weeks and I wasn’t sure it was going to be finished in time, so I’m happy to be at the revision stage.

    Saturday the garlic went into the ground and the rest of the garden got put to bed for the season, except the insanely exuberant calendula which was just too pretty to pull, some kale and a butt-load of parsley that will both survive until they are covered with snow. There is so much parsley, I think I am going to experiment with parsley pesto for the first time, and stick it in the freezer. Putting the garden away is always bittersweet–I’ll miss all the fresh food, but man, it is a lot of work. So I was happy to have it done.

    Also took a huge load of crap to the dump on Saturday and my barn/garage is almost clean and ready for winter. So much happy there.

  25. I decided this weekend that I have too many outbuildings. My ex, my roommate, my son, and I spent Saturday deciding what to delete from my garage so that I can fit four cars in there. the easy stuff goes to the dump, the stuff none of us are ready to part with yet go to the tractor shed, when that get’s full then there’s the rickety Barn.

    NOBODY NEEDS all the stuff I’ve got stored. Granted it’s not all mine. I’ve got a good friend’s chairs she’s going to recover, another friend’s stainless steel vats, and soon to have a camper, car, and trailer in the tractor shed with my junk. The cars going into the garage are mine, my roommate’s, my son’s Miata, and my friend’s husband’s spitfire.

    If I had fewer outbuildings I’d have less junk and fewer people begging for storage. I’m starting to feel taken advantage of, and if I am, that’s no one’s fault but my own. I think the word I’m looking for is NO!

    Ha. As if.

    1. A Spitfire! My first car I bought with my own money was a yellow soft top Spitfire 1966, low to the ground. Boy was that a fun car. True to it’s colour, it was a lemon. My girlfriend had a MGB, DH had a red TR6 and another friend had a Sunbeam. We thought we were so cool. Moved to Vancouver where I had a rear end accident. Fixed and sold it, sad day. What fun.

      Is the Spitfire in good condition and does it run? One day we will be the old farts in the convertible again.

  26. I’ve been rethinking our Halloween candy-breathing dragon, looking to gain social distance. Established proof of concept this weekend…we’ll see what happens Sunday, when we expect 300 or so trick-or-treaters.

  27. Saturday there was a Mexican standoff between the granddog and a flock/pack of Thanksgiving turkeys. The whole family showed up adults and youngsters. One badass bird took center stage out front by puffing out his feathers looking like King Kong. Granddog went on the defence raising her hackles all the way to her tail bone. It was then I noticed her tail was tucked and she was trying so hard to be brave and stand her ground. We ran out and brought her in the house. I know turkeys can fly but I’m not sure about the babies. That was enough excitement to last awhile.

    P.S. she went home to her primary residence yesterday.

  28. I have been invited to upgrade my All-in-1 from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Normally, I’d wait for reports from first adopters that the bugs had been identified and exterminated, but I do have two laptops and two tablets, and I expect no loss of function. W11 is downloading now.

    Crossing my fingers.

    1. Over an hour to download. (My ISP might be at fault.) Thirty minutes to install. The screen I get from clicking on the Windows Key is different. It made my background screen go away, and now I have other choices. I don’t want other choices I want Menolly outrunning thread on Pern.

      There are probably a plethora of hidden changes. They have not affected me yet.

    2. I have my background back. Kahurangi National Park in the northwest of the South Island of New Zealand provided the picture.

  29. Reading that you have a new novel in revision that I might get to read sooni-ish made me happy. 🙂

    Also, my Basset Hound makes me happy every day. She’s not Fred, but she has more quirks than anyone would think could fit into a 50 pound existential crises prone, kami-kazi, mountain goat, adrenaline junkie, thief.

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