Halloween

7 am

                Up early enough, barely, to write. I really ought to meditate, had all day yesterday and did not do it. I suppose what I can do is write very briefly, then meditate, then do buns and bring bfast to the bus. Today will be pretty much filled up with meeting with students, and cleaning the lab whenever I have free time. I am hoping the meetings will be done early, so I can concentrate on the cleaning and starting to get things ready for next week – urine lab!

                I spent most of yesterday grading. Did bring in the plastic, and of course there were dishes and laundry to deal with. And I cooked a very delicious and quite easy rabbit goulash kind of thing. I guess we’ll have that tonight before we head to Young Frankenstein playing at the theater tonight. That should be fun.

                Funny how in years long past Halloween was such a hugely big deal. At this moment I might well be putting finishing touches on some costume or other as the girls got ready to go to school with them.  And this time I barely remembered it was happening.

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Storm clean up and qurk

8 am

                Aftermath of the BIG STORM. Well, the biggest thing is that I will need to spend time today undoing everything I did yesterday. As in: take all the plastic that I put in front of the rabbit cages off, dry it, fold it up and put it away. The empty cages that I brought inside will stay there, at least until I need to bring the worms in, then I suppose I’ll put them back out. We put all the deck furniture away, but that is fine, needed to be done eventually. I moved around a lot of cinder blocks to anchor the plastic, so those will get put in some neat pile somewhere. And I took the big wire cage down and put it on the ground where I figured it was less likely to blow. I can leave it there until I need it again next spring. Oh, and I’ll need to clean the pellets off the sunroom floor. I very cleverly decided that I would bring the small plastic bin of feed inside to use for feeding in case there was torrential rain so I would not have to open the feed bin and let rain in. but silly me – forgot about whoever lives in here. They were quite happy to root through the bin and get out the sunflower seeds. And strew the pellets all around the floor. Well, at least it wasn’t too bad here. A bit of wind, but not that much. And really only a little rain. It is still overcast today. I assume the college is open, but I am NOT going in. I will take my lovely Tuesday and deal with meeting with students tomorrow. I did go in yesterday morning. Only met with 3, so that is not a very big dent and it will take up most of tomorrow to meet. Really 15 mins is not enough to go over what they’ve done and where they should go from here, half an hour each is better. At least I have 2 sets of pairs. I’ll have to send out a message today to get a schedule started for tomorrow.

                One nice thing I did yesterday was start the angora for more boucle. This time I am using Bathsheba’s so it will be a nice soft gray. I think I will still use the white merino for the core. Another nice thing we did was make a run to the grocery store after G got home because she really wanted to make cookies and we were out of butter. It was in the worst of the wind, so it was very exciting. Actually, once we got out there, it really was not that windy, I think it had been worse earlier in the day. Anyway, all 3 of us went. It was fun and silly. Well, I should not be so blithe about the storm, as I think things really are quite bad in NYC and probably all along the coast. But I still think it was odd of them to close the college.

                Other things for the day – laundry of course, and dishes of course. Mostly sorting laundry. I’ll put on some good music or some radio to listen to and just do it. I did make 3 loaves of bread yesterday, and yogurt, though the yogurt did not turn out that great. I think I may start some more today. And I made a jar of buttermilk that I will start draining today for qurt.  Or Quark. Or how ever that is spelled. And I just got mightily distracted looking it up and found that qurt is the dried version and now I am  curious about how it is dried. I think it is also salty. Hmmm. Must try. And I ought to buy some dehydrator pans or non-stick sheets so I can dehydrate some blueberry leather. Another idea – to make some blueberry jam with the big bag we have in the freezer. The thing I am most grateful for re the storm is that we did to lose power to the freezer. Maybe I will get out some rabbit and think of a nice dish to make for supper. Saute, then slow simmer, then make a kind of gravy. That would be good. I was inspired to cook dried black beans yesterday in the pressure cooker and used them to make rice and beans. Not really exciting tasting, though.

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BIG STORM still coming?

7:15 am

                Odd day. I am here in the sun room awaiting the BIG STORM the anticipation of which has shut UMass and MHC, not sure about the other colleges. And K is finding out if recycling is cancelled for today also. I’ll have to go check if we got Mapleline. As yet, it has not rained at all and the wind is just mild gusts. So I guess we’ll see. It’s not actually supposed to arrive here in force until tonight sometime. So why did they close campus???? It was rather nice last night when I still had one group to grade, and I read the college closed email, so I stopped and instead I – made yogurt, started a bread, and even started some cabbage fermenting. Very exciting stuff. I may have added too much salt to the cabbage, it is already swimming in extruded liquid.

                So today, in this “gift” day? Well, it is basically just getting my Lovely Tuesday a day early. Except that K is home all day so I don’t get the day all to myself. And depending how things are I may even go in to meet with students about their projects. And then I may go in tomorrow to do the same thing. Well, other than that, I will bake some bread, tidy which is ALWAYS needed, work on laundry – also ALWAYS needed, especially after being away over the weekend. I think I will look over some rabbits in terms of plucking. I tried to batten them down a bit by putting some boards and cardboard on the sides of the cages to protect them a bit. Really before winter hits in earnest I should do more of that. And if I can I would like to do more boucle yarn. That came out really good and the hat I made from it is lots of fun.

                The visit with the English cuzes was fun. They actually stopped by on their way to Williamstown, so we visited there at the farm, then on Sunday we brought brunch fixings to their place. And I cooked it all. Well, they helped in terms of washing stuff that I needed, and helped with the English muffins. Not that I minded. I much prefer being busy to just sitting while someone else is busy. And the visit was very nice. The house they have rented is old and very quirky. And it of course makes me think more that we really could rent the farm in the same way. They charge $250-$350 per night depending on season. As K said, it would mean “public proofing” it, as in taking stuff out that we really didn’t want messed with. One option would be to rent the big house and one of us stay in the apartment. Which might mean moving the TV back and forth so they would have a TV in the living room. Or getting another TV that would sit somewhere available to plug in. which I would hate because then it would get plugged in at bad times (meaning ever if I am there).

                G will be moving to her friend’s this weekend. That will be very sad for me, but probably better for her. We’ll have to schedule suppers out or something on occasion.

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Big Storm Coming

8:30 am

                Slept so late today! I suppose bc of the dark mornings. Which I assume will change tonight when we go off daylight savings.

                Busy day ahead and wow tons to do:

·         Wash dishes and at least marginally clean the kitchen

·         Laundry laundry laundry

·         Pack for the farm

·         Feed buns

·         Grade grade grade

·         Drive up to the farm

·         Figure out plans to see the cuzes

The grading is of course the most important, but I can do that at the farm once we get there. And the reason for going is bc the England cousins will be in Williamstown, so at some point, I’m thinking maybe Sunday am, we will go over there for a visit. Maybe we can do bfast or something.

                I am actually really tired. Well, I just got up and immediately started writing. In the living room, but no nice fire to sit by. There is apparently a massive storm coming mon or tues – a hurricane that is heading up the coast and we may be hit. For some reason they are saying there may be snow, exactly like the huge snow we had Halloween of last year. So we will see what happens. We have plenty of wood, plenty of food. The biggest problem will be if the electricity goes out and the freezer does not work. Must keep working on the dehydration thing. I could make more rabbit jerky if need be. And I just got our meat share, so I will thaw something from that to take for supper tonight. Sausage? Or the steak? I am also thinking that I will bring a big bag full of hats to offer to the cuzes. They can each choose one they like – I think that will be maybe 5.

                The rest of the blood lab went well enough, though the staining was not great and I have suggested we get rid of that old stain and get some new.  I now have massive chunks of data that I need to send to them all. And I decided to ask a little survey to get more info, and so I will have to compile that too. At least the assignment is not due until week after next. And next week we just confer about their independents so, although I still have blood stuff to put away, I don’t have anything big to set up until the urine lab. And then that is the last one that has a big set up. Just lots of grading to do.

                Last night a person came who had called about a bunny. They had wanted the chocolate “baby.” I had to clean him up as he was quite tangled, and as I was doing it, I found that he had this rather big lesion on his ear. Not sure what it is. I decided to clean up the white male (that I had intended to keep myself) so I could offer them that one instead. Then I soaked the ear and tried to clean it up. It is odd, it is not just a scab from a cut, but looks actually tumorous. Now I am wondering if it could possibly be from a bott-fly?? I didn’t see any little larva, but it could still be very small. I should have done the vasoline thing to see if anything in there poked out. Well, they really wanted the brown one, lesion and all, so I sold it for less than usual with instructions that if it got worse they should bring him back. We’ll see what happens.

               

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Lovely Tues

7 am

                Tuesday. LOVELY TUESDAY! I feel as if I would like to spend the entire day today doing absolutely nothing. I won’t as there really is a lot to be done, but at least I will start slow. I will write my pages, meditate, do my stretches. Feed the buns, eat some breakfast. Then who knows. I will decide later what to tackle when. I dreamed that I came home and our new housemate had invited this whole slew of people over and they were throughout the house. They were also very strange and of all ages. And I went into our bedroom and found the tiny heater that K had left running all day. And I was knitting, somehow P and P and the boys were involved as were my kids, and in the middle I was trying to teach a young G to knit, and it involved sticking the needle into a stitch and pulling through a chocolate chip. Only she ate the chocolate chip. So there you go. Dream journal like I used to keep so assiduously and then finally threw away. Maybe it comes of reading Cloud Atlas til just before I went to sleep. It has finally reached some level of satisfying, or at least I can anticipate satisfaction bc I just looked ahead and realized that each of the situations I’ve been reading about, and been so abruptly yanked from each time, gets returned to. So maybe we get to actually find out what happens to all these people. I certainly can’t figure any of it out, not sure if secrets get revealed or what.

                Yesterday was quite a day. I had the first blood lab and it was more or less chaos. Not only that but I really screwed up. They all painstakingly gathered blood into the capillary tubes which they sealed and we put into the centrifuge, then I promptly shut it and turned it on without screwing the cover over the samples to hold them in place. So they all went spinning off and crunched up. It sucked really really royally. I felt awful but there actually wasn’t time to get very upset bc everyone was so busy trying to count the wbcs. And it was a three ring circus with me trying to help them. I have no idea if their data is anything at all. Well, who cares, it is what it is. And towards the end, 4 of them were willing to get another  sample for the centrifuge so we got 4 hematocrit counts and I was able to show everyone that was still there by the time it finished how to measure it. I will add my own count to the data sheet. And maybe we will combine data from the 2 labs. It took me a long time to clean the centrifuge with lots of bleach. There is probably still glass in it somewhere. Anyway, I didn’t end up getting the bus until 6. And even with that I left the lab a mess. Well I will finish cleaning and setting it back up tomorrow.

                K had made supper (fish, and some packaged rice and frozen vegetables, surprise!) which was good because it was so late. Even though I made the casserole on Sunday for us, it would have taken forever to heat it up, so we will have that tonight. And then I sat and read CA, and after that I fed buns and actually had the slight bit of energy left to ply the boucle with thread. And I started a bit of new overspun angora to do more boucle. My goal is to get enough to make a hat of it, see how that turns out.

                Well, there is a lovely sunrise appearing. I am sitting in bed partly bc it was so dark when I started. Looks like it might be an actual lovely day today. And I think maybe this weekend will be the end of Daylight Savings so the mornings won’t be so dark. But it will get dark so very early. And stay that way until March.

                I’m actually feeling a little lonely this morning. I suppose I could get down there and finish the weaving, then get my friend to come over to weave. Except if it is a lovely day, I don’t want to spend it in the basement. So I could see if she wants to come anyway and we can spin upstairs.

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