❂ Weekend Plans? Nov. 20-22, 2015 ❂

What's up?

I am going to a craft sale on Saturday. Supposed to be all "indie handmade" stuff, so I'm looking forward to finding some good Christmas gifts, hopefully the consumable type, since nobody I know needs much stuff.

Other than that I have NO PLANS except a couple of runs and the usual chores. I also have lots of nice library books and the DVD of Avengers: Age of Ultron from the library.

I'm heading out this afternoon to Prince George for some Search and Rescue meetings. I get to fly (hooray) and will also get a chance to see some friends who live down there. One of them is kind enough to pick me up from the airport this afternoon. Back Sunday afternoon in time for the AGM dinner for the historical society. Got the year-end, financial report, and the program with all the reports done for the meeting late last night! My life should get a bit simpler after this. I'm missing the first ski club Moonlight ski Saturday night, though, and my dog is in puppy jail (the kennel) for the next two nights.

There are weeks when I just want to throw my hands up in the air and admit that I haven't a clue as to how we're supposed to be doing things nowadays. So I'm glad that next week is only a 3-day work week with two days off for the US Thanksgiving. I've got a mix of things going on, both work-related as well as personal. Mostly this weekend will be spent, trying to get things in order so that when the youngest son comes home on Wednesday, he has food and bed and other forms of warm fuzzy.

Tomorrow is our last home football game of the season. Kinda looking forward to it being over as the team is pretty bad this year. We might even be last in the league.

This weekend starts my Thanksgiving break. I get the entire week off! And I'm already planned for the week back and have that Monday prepped so I didn't bring any work home! Maybe I'll actually get around to cleaning..... Probably not. :)

Somehow the fact that it is a weekend hasn't settled in yet. Not doing much. My mom is back from visiting my brother.

Apparently I am cooking tomorrow. Chicken and dumplings, tri-tip grilled, beans, a rich broth for making various soups for the cold weather next week.

Other than that, reading I hope. My son & his wife are coming to visit this next week to share all their photos from New Zealand, then of course Thanksgiving which is still very much unplanned here, but will be more so after tomorrow when we go shopping.

I'm battling the lazy bug today, still in my PJ's @ 5pm, only just convinced myself to get of the couch & it's already calling me back - but at the same time I'm a bit restless from doing nothing all day... It's the first day of 2 weeks holidays for me tho not unexpected that its been a lazy one :)

Tomorrow I'm going to visit Mum & Dad & get the roof-racks put on my car as my best friends' car just had the air con stop working (only a month after the warranty ran out - doh!), so we're taking my car to the festival instead of hers...

Monday I'm taking Tilly to the vet for another steroid shot, her coughing is getting worse again & the tablets effects are lasting less than 24hours, so time for another injection anyway, but also so that mum doesn't have to tablet her while I'm off at the festival...

Tuesday & Wednesday I will be packing & preparing food to take with us & then Thursday morning we're off til Sunday night :)

I'm meeting @drachenbraut23 and @souloftherose today for brunch at a Mediterranean cafe in Golders Green, then walking over Hampstead Heath to visit Kenwood House, before continuing over the Heath to the Hampstead Oxfam second hand bookshop. It's very blustery and a bit wet out but I'm sure we'll have a good time.

Today my older son carries on with his tradition of returning home. When he moved out for the fourth time 18 months ago his younger brother said:

"You are quite an expert at moving out. You're also an expert at coming home again."

Out of the mouths of babes.

I am looking forward to having him home. It will have its challenges but it will be great.

Unexpectedly I'm dealing with a trio of stray cats after hearing something bump the window on the deck last night. Behold, three kitties. Two black and one gray like my girls. One is still a kitten of about 14 weeks, one appears to be a year or so and may be last year's kitten. Mother is gray. All are watchful, but don't go any farther than the top of the steps when I went out on the deck with some food and water. We can't take in three more cats, but I will feed and water them and see about getting some help wrangling them. They're skinny, but the food might help keep them warm in the sub freezing temps at night. I also put out a box with some brown paper in it as it might make a good nest for them. They seem to like the patio under the deck, too.

Sigh. I know cats are independent, but they're not wild. I've seen a 4th stray as well; an orange one with a severely damaged eye. Possibly it was infected, but I never got close enough to him to check. He probably won't make it, but maybe I can save the little family. They're building a really large animal shelter in the town to our south and maybe they can help inaugurate it.

Woke up this morning to no power...high winds knocked them out for most of the town. Got it back on just an hour or so ago. Plan to start a new quilt today, and maybe a little housework now that the electricity is back on. I spent last night with graph paper designing the quilt. It'll be for my son's Christmas gift. It's not likely to be finished by December 25 however. I have no problem with giving a half-finished project as a gift and then taking it back to finish it. :)

A morning errand run with Better Half included a visit to the Shongweni Farmers Market, nominally as socialising practice for our SPCA-graduate dog. The SPCA stand had two vans full of used books for sale, so naturally some jumped into my arms, and I could feel that they weren't the only ones to benefit from that move. The haul included

You don't have to be mad to have a Cat ... but it helps -- both Better Half and I found the cartoons laugh-out-loud funny.
The mission at Griquatown 1801--1821: an anthology -- I wonder if they mention a somewhat obscure claim to fame of this obscure and remote place: it had its own coinage (now very rare indeed) a good century before anywhere else in southern Africa.
World Food Café -- I might have resisted if I'd read the back cover properly: it's vegetarian.

And two books, a Piers Anthony and a Jasper Fforde I had in other editions, and forgot I owned.

I'm interested in hearing more about the mission at Griquatown.

Looks like tomorrow will include a visit to the vet. Another one of our cats have this cold/virus. That makes four of the five. This one had lost a pound between checkups. There was no apparent reason for the weight loss. I'm thinking the vet will want to see her and not just give us antibiotics like they did with the other two.

Alas there hasn't been a repeat visit of the feline trio. We left food out, but it hasn't been touched. I hope they have other places they visit for some food/shelter. Maybe they'll be back. I hate not knowing and it makes me sad.