. Spinning .

More and more I want to cut ties to humanity when I see how it’s determined to dumb itself down.

Australian Santas must change "Ho-ho-ho!" to "Ha-ha-ha!" to accommodate the idiots who believe this is degrading and offensive to women.

(Thanks to Fragments from Floyd for the link)

For some reason I always manage to make an excellent turkey, but one thing that made things special this year is that most of the herbs in the stuffing, a butternut squash side dish, and the wine was home grown and home made.

The wine–well, it’s the usual grapes from out back that I made in  2005 but just neglected after it’s final racking so it sat in two jugs for two years until this summer when I needed the 5-gallon containers for the new wine.  It looked a little brownish and it seemed a bit harsh so I wasn’t as careful to save as much of it as possible when I bottled it.

It’s likely the best–or nearly the best, the raspberry was probably the best–wine I’ve ever made, though it doesn’t taste like a dry wine.  It tastes like sherry.  It’s very good and the only reason I can come up with that it does is that even though I didn’t use flor sherry yeast and didn’t get the flor on the top, a small exposure to air and light evidently did send it on its way towards becoming sherry, and it has mellowed in the bottle these last three months.

Now I wish I hadn’t been so hasty in dumping it as I got near the bottom sediment.   

Giving thanks for memories of family and good friends, moments in time that will forever remain in place.  Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

…the first sorry flakes of this winter’s snowfall.

And I still have no heat in the shop.

Oh, poor Sally.  It takes me months to finish her work and when does she finally get to come and pick it up?  On a Sunday, when I charge rates at time and a half.

My back is aching from standing all day and if I take a deep breath it gets stuck.  Leftover pork roast with gravy for dinner, and worth the bit of prep, baked apples with brown sugar and butter and sour cream.

Going to read a bit, get caught up on things this evening.  Some more work planned for tomorrow.

Am absolutely exhausted and hurtin’.  Because of my own lack of productive energy in the shop for a while, I just hustled and did some heavy duty framing in the last few days.  And those days were at least ten, usually twelve, and one sixteen hours long. 

I really wish I had had the smarts to go to college right out of high school and develop some kind of career instead of wasting time and intelligence bouncing around without focus to come down to a skilled labor position.  And one that is rather taxing on the body, if not the mind.  This body in particular, and with no heat other than  a small space heater in a 20 x 20 foot wooden barn.

Maybe in my next life I’ll have the brains both to do well, and to know enough to do it when I’m young enough for it to matter.

It’s after nine and I’m still in the frameshop.  I got in here before eight this morning.  I am tired.

My own fault; I’ve been letting things slide into a pileup for months, a habit from a couple of years that had me badly out of tune with routine and life.  So it’s time to pay the piper.

But I have been writing a lot on a hypertext fiction project and learning the Storyspace software to work in. So it’s write, cut a mat, glue and nail a corner, write, write.  Sometimes I sneak in a read, but at a page or two at a time it’s hardly anything to post about.  I should be in better shape by the weekend.

I know, I know, I know: My slowdown has wheeled to a near stop here.  However, I’ve been writing both in my Storyspace project (the damn thing has grown from 75 writing spaces to over 200) and have posted about it in Hypercompendia.  I’m enjoying it so that’s where my head’s at right now.  I’m sixty now and can do as I damn well please.  For the most part.

Which brings me to the money-making part of my life, the picture framing and the necessity of getting caught up with that before the clientele forms a lynch mob.  There’s an additional problem that’s developed here besides lack of enthusiasm; my propane heater needs to be replaced and the serviceman strongly urged me against trying to use it as is.  He said that it’ll either gas me if the pilot goes out and I haven’t noticed (I suspect this has been happening for some time–but the barn is so open to the elements that it hasn’t killed me yet) or it’ll blow up (now that’d be a more serious problem).

I’m trying to justify the money I make here versus the outlay of a new stove, the phone bills and advertising.  But then again, nobody’s paying me for my writing or any of the other things I’d rather be doing.

Took these early this morning and forgot to post them.  No Photoshopping here, not even cropped, so you can see the sign across the street, the overhang of our roof, the laurel bush in front.