Today's Update - 5 Jan 2015

Happy New Year!  Yes, a little late but I think finally true for me and I hope for you as well.  I know some of you are having a tough time of it based on your posts in other locations.  Please know you and your families are in my thoughts. 

At our house the flu has been swept away and only one chick still has the remnants of the sinus junk that is going around and she wouldn't have that if the infernal weather would make up its mind.  Yesterday I sat around in a tank top and shorts, temperatures in the mid-80s, drinking iced tea and sweating while I got some much needed yard work accomplished.  Late last night a short but furious - and unexpected - rainstorm drenched us and the temperature today has barely reached seventy degrees.  The mid 70s are predicted for tomorrow and then the temperature is supposed to subsequently fall once again into the low 60s for a few days and then spring back up into the 80s once again.  This is what my parents used to call pneumonia weather and with good reason.  Ugh.

Well, it at least it will let me open the house up while I do the dirty, dusty job of rearranging the attic and some shelves out in the barn while I reorganize and store the holiday decorations.  I love decorating for the holidays; it's the undecorating that is a real drag.  Right now you can barely move in my living room where I'm packing all of it away and sealing up the storage tubs with duct tape ... that's fun (not) but it keeps the dust and silverfish out.

As soon as I get the decorations put away - likely to take through this weekend to finish - I need to inventory and restock my garage pantry.  Gave my parents quite a bit to take home with them and we've used a lot of my home canned convenience foods while everyone was ill or busy beyond bearing.  I also need to restock my Vigo garbanzo bean soup mix (via Amazon since it is much cheaper than store prices) since I used most of it at Christmas rather than making the soup completely from scratch as I normally do.  I expected to have more leftover that I could use in canning projects or freeze but even though I cooked more there were fewer leftovers.  That was either a sign of a good meal or good appetites, neither of which hurts my feelings at all.  LOL.

Spent a few days at our BOL right after Christmas as well.  That was nice.  Celebrated my father's 72 birthday while we were there, set off some fireworks that were left over from last year, burned off two bonfires worth of downed tree trash, and managed to reorganize the upstairs bonus room I use as a library.  Didn't even have to go to the grocery store as we utilized what was in the BOL pantry.  Drove back right before New Years Eve to avoid the nasty traffic that is normally on the interstate and have been putting the house to rights ever since.  Today the kids started back to school ... college and homeschool ... so I've been without my helpers and my back is saying some rude things to let me know how displeased it is.  Tomorrow I'll try and work smarter keep the body parts from cussing me.

I have managed to get what I feel is a reasonable draft calendar going for the completion of some of the stories in progress.  I'm tired of the mess I've got on my hands.  You might see fewer stories being updated on any given day but the updates should be more consistent from here on out and the stories will be finalized as well.  So long as I stay on task I plan on completing a minimum of two stories this month, maybe even three.  I want to complete one or two each month for the remainder of the year.  I have other stories in the pipeline but until I get some of what is in progress wrapped up those others will simply have to stay on the hard drive.

Today's story updates are:

The Linderhall Legacy
http://linderhalllegacy.blogspot.com/
(surprise, surprise, surprise!)

A Bunch of Wild Thyme
http://bunchofwildthyme.blogspot.com/

Zombies Aren't Real ... Are They?!
http://zombiesarentrealarethey.blogspot.com/

Up On Hartford Ridge
http://uponhartfordridge.blogspot.com/

Oh, and I'm sorry about some of the slow-loading pages with too many vids on them.  I think it is a combination of pictures and vids that does it when they are too big or in HD.  I actually don't have any vids for you today.  I'm looking for some useful stuff rather than just playing around like I have for the last few weeks. 

So, with all that said, Enjoy!  And see you tomorrow .....