Different weekend

My parents came for a visit this weekend. I don’t think I’ve seen them face to face for about a year. I know they haven’t come since Covid showed up, and they generally don’t travel during the Winter.

Things were subdued for obvious reasons. Mom likes to shop, but that didn’t happen. We all like to go to dinner, but that didn’t happen either. We had some upscale takeout from one of the popular restaurants around here instead.

We did a lot of visiting and that was the important part.

My daughter found a good deal on a floor model washing machine. It was in Boise, so we all made a drive to pick it up. I brought it home and left it in my truck until she could make arrangements to transfer it to a different truck for the trip to Sun Valley. That was our big outing for the weekend.

I have my blog tour stops in place for the coming week, but need to get the volunteers lined up for the following week. I’ve already heard from a couple and will get some things mailed out before bedtime tonight. I’ll just have to catch up on the others later.

Honestly, I wouldn’t trade the family time for another blog post.

Old What’s Her Face and I rearranged part of the garage. Some old things are headed for the dump. I found a couple of other things my brother might make use of. We made space for a 5 cubic foot freezer. It’s small, but we think it’s awesome. I’ll probably test it out by frosting a couple of beer mugs tonight. If that works we have about half a pig coming soon. This thing has been boxed up in the garage for too long, and it was time to deploy it.

Still watching for the first review for The Ballad of Mrs. Molony. I hope a few more show up. It’s a fun story, respectful of readers’ time, and perfect for some Halloween fun.

How was your weekend? Hope you got to do something fun.

A blogging kind of day

I didn’t set any gigantic goal for this weekend. Life has been throwing me curves lately, and plans seemed like a bad idea.

Today was a day to pick something up, finish it, and move to the next project. With that in mind, Lisa Burton Radio is assembled and scheduled for Thursday, and so is the following Thursday. This actually feels kind of good to get ahead a tiny bit. I used to track every questionnaire I sent out, and do appropriate follow up, but I stopped doing that this year. People seem to be benefitting from the interview slot, but they need to have some skin in the game too. There are probably ten or more questionnaires out, but it’s up to them to respond and get back with me. Makes my part of the process less stressful, and that’s a good thing. I’ll be here for you from now on, but I’m not twisting arms to fill the interview slots.

I also spent some time writing, assembling, and scheduling my next post over at Story Empire. It’s up on Wednesday, and I hope it comes across well.

Oh yeah, there is this post too.

Life continues to throw us curves. The range decided to go out, including the oven portion. We’ve been doing without it for a couple of weeks now. Between the barbecue and the microwave, we’ve survived. Now that Frankie seems like her old self, today was time to address our appliance problem.

The old range was original to the house, so seventeen years old. In this day and age, that’s a good run.

The debate of the day was whether to pay for the range or finance it. Holding back a tiny bit of cash seems like a good idea in light of current events. Free delivery swayed us to use our Sears credit card. In event of another emergency, we have a few bucks available, and can make minimum payments if we have to. If everything evens out, I’ll probably take two months to pay it off. That way we get a couple of paydays in there and don’t strap ourselves.

Delivery will happen next weekend. At that time, I’ll probably wake up Tituba, my sourdough starter and christen the new oven the right way.

To her credit, Old What’s Her Face chose a very reasonable range. There was a time when both of us did a lot of cooking. As the kids have moved out, the appeal of a Wolfe gas range isn’t there any more. We wound up with a decent Kenmore electric that matches all the rest of the appliances. Honestly, I’ve always had good luck with Kenmore stuff.

After signing the papers, we walked over to Old Chicago for pizza and beer. We called it an early night, because my wife has to work this weekend. A few Winter Olympics and I’ll figure out what tomorrow has in store. I might even add some new words to my work in progress. Maybe I’ll paste together a new background for Lisa’s Facebook page. I have some new images that might be fun to use as Polaroids on her table.

The dogs are getting some ball time right now. All posts are more popular with a picture, so here’s Otto being a crazy man with his oversized tennis ball.