Lanesboro and Squirrels

Yesterday, Richard and I took a trip to Lanesboro to visit our friend Bucky and to see Richard's ex-mother-in-law. It's always fun to visit with Bucky. He is a really good story teller, and we just about died laughing hearing him talk about his hip surgery and the aftermath (swearing in Norwegian at the hospital staff).

After our visit to Lanesboro, we had dinner at the Old Tyme Cafe and Catering in Chatfield. The food there was excellent. We both had their prime rib dinner. It came with a salad, soup, bread basket, and choice of potato. The meat was cooked just right and had a wonderful flavor.

This morning I discovered that the squirrels had once again pulled the stoppers out of 3 of my tube bird feeders. So, I decided to get some new ones that wouldn't have the same issue with the stoppers. Here's a picture of the new feeders:



Almost immediately after I put out the new feeders, the chickadees and house finches came to check them out. They were followed by a flock of juncos and a pair of cardinals picking the spilled seed off the ground. The squirrels have been back also, but so far they haven't figured out how to drain the new feeders of food. It will be interesting to see if they can. I'm always amazed at how smart they can be.

Thanksgiving Wrap-up

Yesterday was a busy day, but in the end everything turned out very well. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised, but Richard ended up cooking a LOT of food. He (with my assistance) made a pumpkin pie, dressing, gravy, banana bread, stuffed celery, and sweet potatoes. Other people brought food as well, and the main course was a smoked wild turkey that Richard's oldest son had shot. The wild turkey was actually quite good. It had a nice smokey flavor and didn't taste gamey at all. We ended up bringing a nice portion of the turkey home with us...of course, we had to watch out for the buckshot. LOL!!!

Wednesday night, Richard went to a bible study, so I stayed home and watched "An American Werewolf in London" and finished watching "Pan's Labyrinth". I had seen AAWIL before, but it was nice to see again. The transformation scene is certainly a classic...as far as "Pan's Labyrinth" goes it was much more violent and mostly contained more "real life" situations than I had expected. The ending suprised me a bit, but it was rather haunting and left quite an impression.

Yesterday, we watched "Shrek the Halls" and "Fool's Gold". Both were enjoyable comedies. I was just hoping that Shrek would have lasted longer.

Snow

Yesterday, we had just barely enough snow so that we had to shovel...well, actually I swept some of it away with a broom and we shoveled the rest. The cold weather is settling in a little earlier this year than last. At this time last year, the ground was still soft enough that I could dig in it, but that's not the case this year. Maybe we'll have an early spring as well. One can only hope...

I've been having a lot of fun on facebook lately. I had joined several years ago, and it wasn't all that great. It seemed like all it was doing for me was generating spam. I decided to try it again since a number of people that I know are on there regularly. They've made a lot of really nice improvements!

IBM and Mayo Joint Event

On Monday night, the GLBT employee groups of IBM and the Mayo Clinic had a joint reception and tour. The reception took place at the Seibens building, and approximately 40 people attended. The food that was served for the event was excellent. I especially liked the smoked salmon.

After the reception, we had a tour of the Plummer Building and got to go up into the tower and hear the carillon being played. It was quite fascinating.

The tour guide was quite knowledgeable and gave a really nice description of the history and architecture of the Plummer Building. I'd certainly recommend the tour to anyone that gets a chance to take it. I just wish I would have taken my camera.

Weekend

Yesterday, we hung up curtains in the master bedroom. It's about time we put some up...anyway, getting the rods hung was a lot more work than we expected, but that's the way home improvement projects go. The curtains do look nice now that they're in place. We also found a magnetic rod so that we could put a small curtain on the sunroom door that goes outside. It looks very nice too. Now, we just need to find something that will work for the large patio sliding glass doors.

Besides working on the curtains, we also fixed the handle on the snowblower. A bolt in the handle fell out last winter, so we needed to replace it.

In the evening, we had some friends over for dinner and a movie. We had pizza from Papa Murphy's. We tried the steak gorgonzola pizza and one of their stuff crust pizzas. They were both delicious!

We watched the new version of the movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth". It was entertaining, but the story line just couldn't hold up to the original.

Today, the scab on Richard's ankle came off after he had a shower. It's healing nicely. It's not completely healed, but it's a big improvement. He also decided to go to church, so things are getting back to normal here.

Update

Richard saw both his hand Dr. and his foot/ankle Dr. His hand Dr. chewed him out a bit and told him he shouldn't work for another month...and then he ended his visit by tugging on Richard's beard, ruffling his hair, and telling him to have a nice day. LOL!!! I about died laughing when I heard that.

So, Richard has another 4 weeks off from work. At least the HR people at his work were understanding and gave him the time off without any problems.

Richard's foot/ankle Dr. gave him a good report. He said we're bandaging up the ankle and his leg properly and we should continue doing what we're doing. It's just going to take a long time to heal. There's a good scab where the vein burst, and we just need to be careful that we don't accidentally pull it off prematurely when we're changing the bandages. I looks like we're going to have a daily routine now of dealing with Richard's feet.

Ramblings

Richard found out today that he won't be able to go back to work until in December. I guess the Dr. that did his carpal tunnel surgery didn't think his hands were healed enough for him to start working again. It didn't surprise me all that much, but I also didn't think his Dr. would want him to wait another 4 weeks...maybe that will give his ankle a chance to completely heal before he goes back to work too.

A big "thumbs down" goes out to XM Radio today from me. They removed my favorite channel (76 - Fine Tuning) from their line-up. Unfortunately, they also don't have any channels in their new line-up that play Celtic music which earns them a second "thumbs down". The suggested replacements for Fine Tuning just aren't good enough...for a third "thumbs down" they now have a 24/7 Bruce Springsteen channel. Bruce Springsteen is a good song writer in my opinion, but his band stinks big time (every remake of one of his songs has always sounded better than the original). Listening to that channel 24/7 would be torture! They also added a 24/7 Grateful Dead channel. The Grateful Dead are certainly cultural icons, but their music is average at best. Well, maybe the "dead heads" are going to listen to it for their daily flashbacks, but it seems like it could get pretty old and boring rather quickly for anyone else.

I'm not going to quit my subscription to XM because they still beat all the local radio stations, and they still have some really good channels to choose from.

It Happened Again!

On Thursday night, the varicose vein in Richard's leg burst again on him. I think he even bled worse this time than the first time. We ended up spending a long night in the emergency room.

I didn't go to work on Friday. I was too tired and stressed out, and there was a big mess to clean up here at home. I spent two hours trying to get all the blood out of the carpet in the bedroom. I got most of it out with the "Little Green Machine", but there are still some visible spots. At least the tile in the master bathroom and sunroom and the linoleum in the kitchen all cleaned up good.

Richard saw a foot/ankle specialist in the afternoon on Friday. He was at least more encouraging than the people in the emergency room. Richard has a plan of action now for addressing the varicose vein problem...now, it just needs time to completely heal, and we hope it doesn't burst again in the meantime. It's got us rather stressed out right now.

On Friday, we also had our first snow of the season. Here are a couple of pics of the snow:

Musings

Richard seems to be recovering fine after the surgery. He's actually felt good enough to be outside raking up leaves from the yard. We have a huge American Elm tree in our yard and there are a lot of other trees in the neighborhood, so getting the leaves taken care of is a lot of work!

We had a few thunderstorms move through the area today, and it's looking like more are on the way. We're even supposed to have snow by this weekend. Hopefully, we'll have all the leaves bagged up and disposed of by the time the snow hits.

My feelings about the election results are a bit mixed, but I'm glad it's over! Now, we don't have to watch all the awful mudslinging ads on TV or get any annoying calls on behalf of the candidates. Some of the candidates and measures I voted for won and some didn't...but I just can't stress enough how grateful I am to not hear any more of the awful mudslinging ads.

A short celebration

In my previous post, I mentioned that it was time to celebrate...well, that didn't even last 2 hours.

Richard had a vein in his ankle burst while he was in our kitchen. Luckily, I was around to help get the bleeding stopped. We were quite worried that we wouldn't be able to stop the bleeding since it was squirting out whenever his heart would beat. I called 911 and took a couple of long tube socks and tied them crosswise over the ankle. It was the only thing I could think of doing at the time and it did the trick. By the time they came with the ambulance, the bleeding was stopped but I sure had a mess to clean up...and we've had to re-bandage his ankle every day since then. It's taking a long time to heal.

Richard had carpal tunnel surgery last Thurs. He's doing fine, but he was pretty helpless right after the surgery. I had to help him do everything. So, the last few days I've been nurse, cook, dishwasher, housekeeper, pet wrangler, and lumberjack...not much time for any fun.