I missed a day!

I missed a day!  I can hardly believe it!  It's rare for me to miss a day of posting on the blog, but I did it yesterday.  My feeble excuse is that I was busy :)

Early in the morning, I traveled up to Newton with realtor and friend, Bruce N.  We met with the bishop of the ward our cabin is in, a fellow named Valjay Rigby.  I described the situation with my brother moving out here with him, and his response (along with his wife's) could hardly have been more friendly and welcoming.  Any of my readers who are not LDS (Mormons), but who are moving into an area that has lots of LDS – my advice to you is to get to know the bishop of the ward your new home is in, along with all the ex-bishops you can find.  Not only can they get you plugged into your new area quickly and easily, they know everybody.  When you have a question about how to get something done, who to lean on for some particular kind of help, or even something completely off-the-wall – these guys will either know the answer, or they'll know who to ask.  They are an invaluable resource, and they don't care whether you're LDS.

We also visited the post office and signed up for a P.O. Box, so the cabin can now get mail.  This is something my brother needed as he filed his change of address notifications.

Later in the day, Debbie had another physical therapy appointment (the second go-around with an electrically-driven steroid patch), and we went grocery shopping for our Thanksgiving Day meal.  We're going all-traditional this year, and it's just the two of us (unless one of you wants to stop by!).  Roast turkey, stuffed (of course!), mashed potatoes, cranberry-orange relish, and pumpkin pie for dessert.  The next day the turkey carcass is going into the pot to make stock for a giant tureen of tlapeno (Mexican chicken soup).  We've done that once before, and it was fantastic!

Today we have the last forecast day of relatively mild weather (should break 50°F).  Tomorrow we have 3" of snow in the forecast.  So today I'll be scrambling to get all the outside stuff done: sprinklers and hoses put up for the winter, backhoe and forks removed from the tractor and snowplow mounted, pickup cleaned out and ready for the trip back to Virginia (which starts just over a week from today, the Wednesday after next).  When I mentally tote all that up, it seems like about 3 hours of work – but something will likely go wrong, and if past experience is any guide, I'll be luck to finish by sundown :)