There are many ways to tell that Autumn has arrived but my favorite is when the trees start to change.  I love this tree.  It's in one of my neighbors' yards but it's my barometer for how far advanced Autumn is at any one point.  It's iinteresting to me that each tree has its own schedule for putting on it's colorful coat.  This tree is a Maple (I believe) but so is the one in front of my house and my Maple still looks like this.

Just the edges are turning colors.  It's a bit strange this year because it usually turns only yellow but we are seeing some orange in there this morning.  It's beautiful.

The summer clothes are packed away and the winter woolies are now clean and hanging in the closets and folded in the drawers.  For the next month or so, the closets will look neat.  Then life takes over and we are less careful putting things away.

My pink rose bush is putting on one last show. It has been blooming all week with such beautiful and fragrant blossoms.  It's unexpected especially since we had to scrape frost off the windshield one morning last week.  These are hardy bushes.

I usually have at least one pair of socks going .  They are,after all, a highly portable project and can usually be worked on while talking or at lunchtime at work.  At this moment, I have 4 pairs otn.  This is in part because when I get my hands on a new skein of fingering weight yarn, I feel a desire (almost a need) to work with it.  And when I got in an order of Stroll sock yarn from knitpicks which included a few skeins of their neon sock yarn,  I wanted to start several more pairs.  

Pk has a pair of neon green socks which are one of his favorite pairs.  I got three other neon colors (red, purple and blue) and the blue is now becoming a pair of fibonaci striped socks.  I am only using 1,1,2,3,5,and 8 and then 8,5,3,2,1,1.

It makes for a vaguely random lookng stripe and makes the sock seemingly go quicker.  At this time, these are for me but with the holidays coming, these may go into the gift pile.  The last pair I made ostensibly for me, went to Kate for her birthday because they seemed to be for Kate.  I have enough yarn to make a second pair so maybe these will go into the gift pile and I'll make me a pair in January.    

(photo from kntpicks)

One of Pk's other favorites are his Fire socks.  That's what he calls them because they are yellows and reds.  He wears them to job interviews since he thinks they are lucky.  Well, they are wearing out so I went looking for a new yarn to make Fire socks 2.  I think this will work.  It's wool and nylon and feels a bit tougher than some other sock yarns.  Once I finish one of the other 4, I'll start them.  Unless I can't wait and start them later today.  The will is weak.....

Another sure fire sign of fall is the Flu shot (gotten 2 weeks ago at the insistence of my employer) and the arrival of pumpkin flavored everything.  One of the local self storage companies has  capitalized on this trend by saying on their sign "We have pumpkin spice storage units!".  

I am taking part in a research project.  It's being administered by a man in California.  It's about happiness.  You go to www.trackmyhappiness.org and sign up.  The app is free and several times during the course of your day, they send you a queery.  "How are you feeling?".  Right at that moment (or as close s you can safely make it), you answer a few questions about what you are doing and how you feel about it.  Once a week they do a roundup of all your answers and extrapolate when you are happiest during your day.  At the end, the data will be published but you get your own results on an ongoing basis.  It's been interesting so far.  I learned (after one week) that I am generally happy even when I am at work.  Who knew?  Check it out.  It's free and you can learn something about yourself.   And that's usually a good thing, right?

We're watching the Manchester Derby (or Darby as the announcer keeps callling it).  Pk is in a quandry because his team is Arsenal and in order for them to stay at no. 1 on the chart, Manchester United has to win.  He dislikes (strongly strongly dislikes) them as a team but has to root for them so his team can stay on top.  We have never watched sports together (not a sports family) but we do enjoy watching soccer games on the weekends.  

I have nothing I have to do today and it's a nice feeling.  We haven't had fried chicken for a while so I'm thinking I may fry some for dinner.  There may be a game in our afternoon plans or maybe we'll look for some sci fi movies from the 50's.  Yesterday we watched the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  It was great.  They are so different than our more modern movies.  

I'll leave you with this profound thought from the wall of my favorite chocolate store.  Eat chocolate.  It's good for ou!

On Tuesday, Peter Kevin showed me a game that he saw on Facebook (FB is good for that).  It's called "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes".  I guess with a title like that, how could he not be intrigued.


He showed me the article about it and told me "I think we could do really well at this".  I quickly read it and disagreed strongly.  "I think we will stab each other with pens.  Remember hanging the insulation and sheet rock?"


While we are compatible most of the time, when there is a task to perform, we sometimes have a bit of a power struggle-unless one of us (me) decides that it's just not important enough to me to argue. 

The bomb

What is this game?  I hear you asking.  Well, you have two stations and a few people (as few as 2 and as many as you want).

At one station, you have a computer with a program that loads a bomb.  It looks like this. (and it's double sided)  At the other station, you have a Defusal Manual.  The hard part is that the person with the bomb is not allowed to look at the manual and the person/people with the manual are not allowed to see the bomb.

Your object is to defuse the bomb before it blows up.  Sounds ok?  I thought so until I read the manual.  Holy cow is it hard!  The starter bombs have only 3 modules and they give you 5 minutes of time.  Did I forget to mention they are timed?  And you only get to make so many mistakes before you go BOOM?

The modules (there are 14 different ones altogether and the computer generates a bomb for you from those 14) have to be defused by describing to the manual readers what you see.  And what you see is often very hard to describe.  One part is symbols.  Some of them are familiar.  Most are not.  We made up our own names as we went along.  For instance, there is one Kate called "octopus leaning on wall" and that's what is became.  My favorite is "Donald Trump's comb over".

The defuser tells the group what he/she sees and they tell him/her how to defuse each module.  The hard part is that the defusal manual is filled with logic problems.  These are second only to Story Problems as my least favorite type of puzzle.

The manual

Since it was just our anniversary, I bought this (14.99 so if we hated it, we weren't losing much) for Pk and invited Kate and Patrick over on Wed night to play.

We had a blast (pun intended).  At first look, the manual is impossible.  Really.  We are smart people and there was one module that took us forever to figure out.  The directions are purposefully vague but eventually we figured it out.  There are so many details and you don't know which ones might be important so you just tell everything.

We quickly learned who was better at which module and which ones to do first because they are easier.  And we blew up. A lot.

It was a lot of fun.  It's not competitive but cooperative which is a switch for an adrenaline producing game.  Communication skills are important but so is being able to take in a lot of information and distill it down into the important parts.  Quickly.

You can check out the manual anytime.  It's a free download.  The software for the bomb generator is not expensive but you do have to purchase it.  (and now that I have used the words "bomb" and "defuse" so many times, I will not be surprised to be stalked by Homeland Security.....).

If you had asked me on Tuesday, I would have said, "run away!" but now, I recommend this.  It's so different from any other game we've played and it's tiring to play.  It's strangely satisfying to defuse a complicated bomb in the time allotted.

Other than video games, life here is good. Pk pulled a muscle connected to his "baby back ribs" (the dr's words, not mine).  He's having a good deal of pain and started a course of steroids today and has to stay away from the wood shop for 3 weeks.  He's not a happy camper.  He's been scheming out there and thinking of Christmas.  I will padlock the garage if he doesn't stay out.  I want him to heal.

I am going to get out the winter clothes this weekend and put away the summer cottons.  While I hate to say goodbye to the light clothes, I love the way the closets/drawers are all neat and straightened when I get finished.  Saturday night we are having dinner with one of Pete's woodworking buddies and his wife who knits.  I wonder how many other couples are knitter/woodworkers.  Do you think crafts people are drawn to one another? 

Have a spectacular weekend!

Happy Columbus Day. What an odd thing to celebrate, "discovering" a land where someone already lives.  I'm glad I don't have group today.  As I put the notice on our board that we are indeed open on Columbus Day, one of the group members started on a rant about Columbus and fair treatment of the Indigenous people (his language was much more colorful).  I don't want to fight the same battle we fought last year and the year before that and so on and so on and so on....

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This past weekend, Pk and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary.  He totally surprised me with this.  I used to have a Mickey Mouse watch but the clasp on the band made my skin break out so I mentioned casually that one day I'd like one with a stainless steel band.  He remembered and this will be mine today.   As Katie said, "it's pretty simple for something Disney".

We celebrated our day by going to someone else's wedding.  Our former neighbors (who we thought were already married) got married Saturday.  At a local bar.  Outside.  I have no problem with the wedding being at a bar.  It would have been nice if it weren't so breezy and cold.  I pinned the boutonnieres on the young (and not so young) men.  They didn't know what to do with them.  One offered me a 20 dollar tip!  Who knew you could make money pinning flowers on young men?

Sunday we went to brunch at Smithville Inn.  It was delicious and such a nice day, we walked around outside and looked in all the touristy shops.  I found a new guy to add to the Toy Squad on my desk.  He's a zombie and is appropriately ugly.  I am calling him Beau.

We happened upon the same flea market that we see every year at a tiny church on our way home.  I found a medium sized enamel roasting pan for 5 dollars. It's not as big as a roasting pan for turkey but it's has deeper sides than a 9x13 pan.  It will be good for roasting chicken and vegetables. 

Fall is firmly settled in here.  The leaves are starting to change and the temperatures are definitely more autumnal.  I have to put together a list of available appointment times for each clinic I run.  We usually do them for the upcoming 12 weeks. I gasped out loud two weeks ago when I realized it was 12 weeks until Christmas.  I'm not sure what our plans for Thanksgiving are, other than we will eat turkey.  I had everyone at our house last year and will probably do the same this year.  I enjoy cooking for a crowd.  And since the menu is firmly fixed in tradition, it's not difficult to plan.  After all these years, I have the timing down pat.

So, Happy Monday to you all.  In the spirit of Columbus, go out and conquer the world.

Hello!  I am Donna Lee.  I feel like I should introduce myself since I've been gone so long.  Why is thiis, you may ask?  No real reason.  Just life.  

How was your summer?  I can't believe it's been an entire season.  But it is now Autumn.  I can tell because we had a N'oreaster over the weekend and today I am wearing a wool sweater.  

The easiest way to bring you up to date is to show the images of my summer.  It started with the storm that tore up trees and gave us this amazing color

This was taken without a filter.  The sky was such a bright pinkish color.  I didn't know at the time that the tornado that touched down in a nearby neighborhood had ripped up a tree and plopped it down onto Patrick's mother's house. (she is fine)

Our July 4th celebration included a new dish for us.  A "boil".  It was kielbasa and shrimp and corn all cooked together.  It was delicious.  We served a drink we call Sangria but is really closer to a wine cooler with fruit in it.  It's light and refreshing. 

There was blueberry pie!

And sunsets by the river.  

We had a small but very tasty Kumato harvest.  They are meaty and sweet and taste more like tomatos  than any other tomato we have ever grown.

I am making socks (like the Earl Grey pair for my husband)

There was eye sugery to correct a detached, torn retina.  No, I have no idea how it happened.  It is not unusual for people in their 50's who are nearsiighted.  Now, 8 weeks later, my signt is improved but not back to normal.  There is a small blind spot that may or may not get better.  If not (and I am inclined to believe it's as good as it will get) I'll learn to live with it.

We learned to make caramel corn.  It was easy and was delicious.

I am working on Moria Mittens..  I enjoy color work once in a while.   It's fun to watch the pattern develop.

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And finally, I cut my hair.  It was originally done to make it easier to grow out the color in my hair.  Then I decided I like this color and am not ready to have a head full of white/silver hair.  I'll probably grow it back to my shoulders.  I like that length and it's easy to take care of.

Lastly, we servived the visit of Pope Francis.   I opted to stay out of Philadelphia for the weekend and our agency was closed (which we NEVER do).  There were volunteers who stayed and took care of the few small issues that came up.

And now we are beginning my favorite time of year.  Our annversary is next weekend (34 years!) and we are attending a wedding that day and then going to brunch the morning after.  Hallowe'en  follows close and then it's a quick slide through to Thanksgiiving and Christmas.  

Work is going well.  I still enjoy my job but have had to give up teaching with Handle with Care.  Pete is worried that I will get hit in the head and cause problems with my eyes.  He never asks me to stop doing things so when he asked this time, I paid attention.  I'll organize the classes and help with the verbal deescalation parts but no more physically taking anyone down.  This is my baby and I am sad to say goodbye to it.  It's been 12 years and I'll miss it but Pete is right.

So, that is what went on over the summer.  It sped by as always.  How are y'all?  Was the summer a good one?  I think I am back here.  I wasn't sure but I don't think I'm ready to say goodbye.  So, 'till next tme,  Have a good week!