Seasonal Confessions: Do You Believe in the Great Punkin?

Very good point, DwiD, very good point.

elf pies, hmm, now how would one season that?

*ducking and running*

The roofers are here! The neighbor's dogs are going nuts. The men are having trouble finding a place to park the big truck. Let the wild rumpus start! I'm going to cover up the computer stuff soon and get out of here.

Congrats on getting roofers, roybird! It will be over before you know it. I hope to get some soon. So far they haven't bother even to come look at my roof. I will add nagging roofers to my to-do list for today. The trouble with vacations is that stuff piles up while you are gone. After you deal with it all you need another vacation.

Roofers and barkers and trucks, oh my!

Roybird, have fun, get a great roof, come back well covered...... ;-)

Hey Roybird, I hope your roof goes on fast, properly, and with no plant damage.

I am getting a new living room window right at this moment. My DH had procrastinated until I lost my sweet composure the other day. I mean, we have already had a bunch of snow, cold, and wind. Sometimes one just loses one's sweet composure. Anyway, all is peaceful now and he and two friends are madly hammering and sawing and doing useful things. The old window is out and the new one should soon be in soon, and the weather is pretty decent for such a project today.

Beautiful weather today here and roofers are working hard tearing off the old shingles. I'm afraid the forsythia, Dr.Huey rose, and one apricot tree may never be the same. The noise is not as bad as I thought it would be but still makes me jump at times. I've mostly been out all day and am going out again for tai chi stuff soon. This work was supposed to start mid-October but weather prevented it. Pajarito, I hope you don't have to have a tear-down like this. It looks like hurricane Katrina hit us. Mulch, I sometimes have to "encourage" Kevin. He procrastinates and is very busy with his own agenda, which he may also procrastinate on but at least I don't know about it!

A better day to put a window in isn't going to be had for several months. Today is gorgeous here.

Note from personal memory: Roofers once dropped hundreds of nails onto our alley and driveway (dirt). Even a magnet didn't find them all. Two years later, we were still getting flat tires from them.

Glad window and roofing repairs are moving along nicely! We have been very busy today as well... we got a new sign for our RV Park, which is called a 'bag sign'. Basically, it is like a humongous banner that goes over existing signage. Well, our sign is two sided (the sides come to a point in front)... each side is 12 feet by 10 feet, and this thing wraps all the way around and is secured in back. Well, as we are trying to be frugal, we didn't want to pay someone for installation, so it was DH and me and an assortment of ladders. We started at around 10:30 this morning, and finished about 45 minutes ago. Thankfully, one of our tenants is a painter, so he lent us a very tall ladder that I'm not sure we could have done this without. Anyway, the new sign is up and it is fabulous! I ordered it through another DG member because I had seen one of their signs on the garden art forum. A really good price and a beautiful sign!! I will post a pic tomorrow after we do finishing touches.

Yes, picture, please! Well, we are going to need some more good weather for the roof. It is in much worse condition than expected, will take longer to complete and cost considerably more than the estimate. Not good news at all. We may end up having to put things in storage and go live somewhere else while the work is going on. Tomorrow we will be getting a little break from all this. Meeting a friend in Albuquerque who was my best buddy all through grade school. She's in town for a convention and we will take her out to dinner (while we still have some money left). We haven't seen each other since high school, though her mother and I visited back and forth a couple of times! She is a good Christmas card sender and I return e.mails so we have sort of kept up. Should be fun. And believe me, I need something fun right now!

That sounds like a lot of work Brenda, but probably less work and cost than a whole new sign.

Mulch, I'm glad you're getting a new window. Cold and wind are miserable enough without letting them in your house too.

My ferocious tiger is laid up today, quite literally laying on the desk while I type. He was in a brawl with a nasty stray tom cat last week and one of the bite wounds got infected. The vet had to knock him out and put a drain tube in. I took the cone off his head while he's on the desk because I can keep an eye on him. Poor guy, what a day.

Bummer on the roofing project! At least you are getting it fixed.

Our new window is in, and is already an enormous improvement. He will replace the trim around it today. Actually he is now talking about replacing the other windows!!! Will wonders never cease!

Hope the kitty gets to feeling better soon. Infected bites can be nasty, I had a Weinereiner (Spelling!) who had that happen once.

The roofer who said he would look at my roof has not yet showed up. Not a good sign, I would say. I have no idea what is required. I had someone -- not a plumber, here, to work on my watering system. Difference in price -- $70 for the new guy, $400 minimum for a plumber. I have now got the watering system disconnected from the hose bib -- so it can be reconnected at will. This will be a big help. Now I need to get someone to blow the system out with a compressor. Shouldn't be too expensive if I can find such a person.

I have no idea what my roof will entail -- a teardown sounds terrible. Roybird, I am sure you have many places to stay in Santa Fe, but if you and your DH wish to escape from the roofers, I have a very nice spare bedroom and bath. You would be more than welcome.

More roof troubles at the farm. Farm house has a big leak and requires many buckets to catch the water. I left money to repair it but the person who takes care of the place for me in exchange for grazing rights to the pecan orchard -- is having a hard time getting motivated to get some one in to repair it. In Mississippi they like to do things themselves. I always try to get them to hire a professional, but somehow they don't want to. In fact,. the entire trip to Mississippi ended up being very expensive. I ended up buying a new -- second hand tractor -- old one -- very second hand when purchased-- isn't in very useful condition. So I have a new tractor with front end loader and bush hog. We hope to sell the old tractor to partially pay for new tractor.

I am with you roybird. I won't be taking many people out to dinner for quite a while -- or doing other things as well.

Thank you for the invitation, Paja. One thing about having relatives here is that there are several possible places where we could stay. We even have one relative with an extra house!, altho they do rent it out short term from time to time so not sure when it is open. Sorry to hear about your roofing problems. I think you should call several people or companies to look at it. As you have pointed out there is a wide variety in costs and labor. Today, the roofers were at work by 8 a.m. and currently going at it directly over my head. D.H. talked to the foreman this morning and he thinks they can "get the paper down" by friday. The paper is not actually paper, I take it, because it is water-proof. ( Maybe. ) The weather report predicts snow and rain for Sunday or Monday. We have yet to find out how much over the estimate this is going to cost.

Sheesh, this is certainly in the when-it-rains-it-pours category. Sorry about your two roofing projects Paj.

Wow, I am sorry to hear of all the roof issues... I hope the expense and inconvenience isn't too great. How long does it take to fix the roofs?

Glad about the new window(s) Mulch! How are you feeling these days? Is your healing going well?

As for our sign, if we had had it re-painted (which I couldn't find anyone to do anyway) it would have probably cost well over $1,000. We considered painting it ourselves, but that would have been very difficult as the top of it is about 20 feet up. This sign was only $450 including shipping, so the effort required to put it up was well worth it.

Good job on the sign bsavage. It will help me find you if I am ever up Dolores way. I hear it is really nice up there.

Great that you got your DH to fix the window, mulch. I know how hard it can be to get DH's going at times. Maybe he got cold.

Yes, roybird, I figured you could stay with relatives and friends in Santa Fe, but just in case you didn't want to stay with relatives -- my offer stands. Home construction is like having a bandage removed. It hurts in the short run but is well worth it.

Yes, I am pretty unhappy about having to have 2 roofs repaired. At least the one at the farm is just a repair. The roof is metal and holds up well if it is properly sealed. Big if. It keeps having trees fall on it during hurricanes. Whoever decided to build this house in the woods wasn't thinking too carefully. One by one the tallest trees are falling down. and we have removed some, too. The roof has done very well considering.

Looking forward to seeing the pic of your new sign.

My DH got cold all last winter with the window, which is why he finally noticed it needed replacing. My complaints about geraniums shivering for three years had not impressed him, but a freezing gale across his body finally got his attention. Unfortunately, I was sick so much he had the gallery all to himself without my help most of the summer so he could not put in a new window.

So we agreed it should be done in the fall. But fall is when he most loves to fish and the window disappeared off his priority list altogether. When he told me he was "thinking about it" Friday, I lost my sweet composure. That did not cause him to get cold, more like a fire got lit under him. We all have our moments I guess.

Anyway, he is actually enjoying the project and has decided to do the front door while he is at it. This is the door he tore the trim off a few YEARS ago and never finished redoing. The one I was verging on painting red because I would like it red and he would hate it red and I hated it left half undone. But I had no energy to paint it red and no real desire to do so while he was stuck with the gallery without me anyway. But thinking of next spring I could feel my paintbrush starting to twitch...

So life is chugging along with a few surprises here. Migosh, the door getting fixed too???

Nice, Mulch! Hooray for DH!

Yes indeed. Who could imagine the power of a twitching paint brush?????

;-)

I confess, I fear Dahlia may have been glamoured by the Winter Fairies and taken to their realm!

It's worse than that. The flu gnomes got her. I just received a ransom note.

What do they want?

Oh dear, that is terrible. Tell the gnomes if they don't cough her up immediately we will go get the weather transporter and send them to get captured by pirates themselves, and they will quickly understand the downside of the ransom game.

On the subject of flu, here is a funny but all too true video on how to make your own flu vaccine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIjm9w_-tNY

That is a GREAT video. And it's Canadian.

I am still deciphering the ransom note, which has been translated from some other language. The syntax is definitely not English, as the verbs are at the beginning of the, uhh, phrases (can't really call them sentences).

So far I've deduced that they want us to go up to their mountain colony with a load of stuff. We are told to go to Canmore and wait for further instructions. We'll need skis. Some of the stuff they want:
winch
grappling hook
fireworks (hah, good luck getting that through customs!)
a laptop (I wonder if maybe they picked the wrong word??)

Oh, poor Dahlia! Picante good luck with the gnomes. They seem demanding. I had a very nice dinner out in Albuquerque last night with my best friend from grade school and D.H.! Here is the picture. She looks younger than me! But I am more wiry and spry! We had so much fun catching up!

So nice that you were able to get together with your old friend!

Wonderful picture! You do look quite ancient (ya right......) Actually you look no older than your pal there, just with some experienced hair coloring (as in it lightens with age?) ;-)

Now, that is rotten news about Dahlia. We definitely need to mount some kind of rescue mission. But can we actually trust the gnomes? Somehow I doubt it.

The flu video is without question the best commentary on all that foo-faw-ra I have yet seen and it will be widely shared by moi.

Some people's hair gets old faster than they do, that's all.

Yes!

Aww, very sweet. Some people are allergic to hair dye (me) and spend too much time outdoors without proper sun protection. Hmmm. By the way, great video!

This message was edited Nov 4, 2009 5:02 PM

Statistics on the flu shots for the annual flus are that they are about as helpful as doing nothing. Gotta be for something quite lethal and they have to be made right. You add the formaldehyde after the virus has multiplied, not before.

It sounds like you may have been making some at home yourself. Got any left? I am unvaccinated and there is no "stuff " up here anyway cause artists are low priority. I am thinking that my vulnerability might be an asset if I need to get out of any tedious social functions in the near future.

There ya go! Wow, what an idea: "Useful ideas for what to do with the Swine Flu. How it can benefit your life! You will be amazed!"

So, we have one: Tell your unwanted social contacts, hey, sorry, I can't come to that party cause I have >*gasp*< Swine Flu!

What else? Got a bad deadline at work or school? "Sniff snort, sorry boss, I had my presentation all just about ready but, hac hac hac, got that swine flu real bad, do you think our clients are all vaccinatedd? should I come in anyway, kaff kaff kaff spit...."

I am sure there are tons more situations when having swine flu is a great advantage and smooths one's path through the thorny patches of life........

Behind every hog there is a silver lining.

For the right price, I'm sure I can get you something of interest. Which disease do you want and do you want it alive or dead? Mercury free. Lifetime guarantee.

;}

Hmph. I have a friend who works in a lab where they have the plague (aka the Black Death). You got somethin' better than that?

No, sure don't.

But here's another swine flu sales idea.

Kids got swine flu? Get creative in the kitchen! Yes, test out all your old out of date or rotten food, on your kids! They won't be able to taste it anyway! And you might discover a cure! So, go ahead, get creative! Remember, penicillin comes from mold! You too can discover great things! Swine flu. Making life better for America.

Good to know, Doc. I'd like something that would get rid of wrinkles, build upper body muscle, and make me feel very peaceful and jolly all the time! Pick your price. We can give it a scientific name so it will sound too intense for most people and still be useful as an excuse. Oh, here is a true story! One of my idiot neighbors told me yesterday that cats give people leukemia. I didn't correct her because she is on another planet and maybe such is the case in her world.

I don't know if my pneumonia was due to complications of swine flu if it was just another cold that made a run for my stoopid lungs (I have asthma and every time I get sick it goes right to my lungs). I didn't get it tested ($$$$). I did get 2 weeks off work. I spent most of it in bed. Being self employed, having 2 weeks off work is not such a good thing.

That is actually true if you just define leukemia as having fur all over your pants.

As I just mentioned in another thread, the CDC has redefined swine flu as any "influenza-like illness", which is sooo handy for inflating the numbers.

Ooops, cross-posted with Jude.

This message was edited Nov 5, 2009 4:35 PM