It’s a good thing that today is Friday, because I do not think I would be capable of doing much in the way of productive work that requires actual thought if I had even one more day at work this week. Today, luckily, was spent doing stuff that is mostly mindless, and so far the decongestants I’ve been taking to ward off the oh-so-fun sinus pressure that’s been slamming me the past two weeks seem to also be keeping this little winter cold at bay.

I wasn’t the only one looking a little ragged around the edges. I think everyone’s had a hard week, in some way or another. We’re all tired and very much in need of a weekend, and so it was no surprise that the office started to empty a bit earlier than usual for the end of the week, until my boss and I were the only ones left.

I’d made an appointment to drop off my car for regular service today, before I discovered that Richard had today off (in my defense, he didn’t actually discover this until yesterday), so he had to get up early and drive me in to work after we dropped off my car, despite having an extra day to sleep in. The plan had been for him to also come out and get me in the afternoon, but the traffic coming back toward Sacramento was even more horrendous than usual (as per yesterday’s comments, there *is* traffic in our area, but I am usually traveling against it instead of with it, and so in this area, at least, we can usually pretend it isn’t actually there). So instead I caught a ride back with my boss, who very nicely dropped me off in Davis. The plan had been to swing by the new yarn store to pick up something left there for me (there is a long, involved story about this, but since it has to do with something I plan to make for someone who might read this, I will wait to tell the story until later), but my timing was off and the store was closed.

I was supposed to pick up my car this evening but it turns out that the handle to open the hood is broken (I am very baffled by this, since I don’t think I have popped the hood since the first month we owned this car) and they cannot get the part until tomorrow, so Richard waited for me in Davis so he could drive me home.

I was so exhausted by the time I got home on Wednesday that I could barely keep my eyes open to check my email, so we did not get around to watching Wednesday’s episode of Lost until tonight, and…sigh. For the last episode before a show goes on a two month break, it was disappointing. Again. At least there was also a new episode of Battlestar Galactica to make up for it.

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The past two days I have been driving down to San Francisco with my boss for meetings, and at this point I am so tired I can barely think at all. The traffic going down was nightmarish both mornings; yesterday we left at 6:30 and it took three hours and we were late for the start of the meeting, so this morning we left a half hour earlier, and it still took us three hours and we were still late for the start of the meeting (but at least not as drastically so as the first day). This kind of traffic is one of the main reasons why I could never live in that area. Yes, there’s a fairly decent light rail system, but that doesn’t go everywhere, and I cannot imagine having to face that kind of struggle to get *anywhere* at all, any time I decided to get in my car.

Still, though, the meetings were fairly calm and standard, and I did nothing more strenuous than sitting all day – either in the car or in a chair, madly typing in preparation for the report we’ll be asked to produce later, and even though driving can be tiring, neither of those explains why I am feeling so utterly drained.

The soreness tickling the back of my throat, and the fact that my nose is starting to run, however, do explain it. Hello, first winter cold.

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Last night, while we were watching the election returns come back, and getting more and more excited, I told Richard that even though I could be happy if the Democrats took only the House (and oh my, how they took the House!), I wanted so badly for them to take the Senate too. Because as humiliating as it would be to the current adminstration to lose the House in such a deliciously resounding way, I had little faith that they would ever *get* it, as long as they still held some form of power.

Last night when we went to bed there were two seats in the Senate still undecided. This morning I got up and headed off to a meeting in San Francisco while it was still dark outside, a meeting where I woudl have no internet access at all, and I asked Richard to please text me updates throughout the day.

Oh, what beautiful, sweet words he kept sending. Montana went blue. Rumsfeld ousted. Prop 83 already challenged (and likely to be declared unconstituional). And then the most marvelously wonderful words of all. The Democrats have not only taken the House, they’ve taken the Senate as well.

I feel like, for the first time in six years, there is hope. I am not naive enough to think that the Democrats aren’t just as capable of royally screwing things up just like the Republicans, but right now, it is just too damn hard to feel anything right now but giddy optimism.

51% in 2004 was not a mandate, no matter what Dubya claimed. 2006, however, sure screams “mandate” to me.

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Richard and I have been on permanent absentee ballot status for the past few years now, ever since we were working for that company that had us traveling all over the state, to the point where we could never guarentee we might actually be home to vote in a polling booth. The past few times we’ve had to vote, however, we’ve been a trifle lazy about getting them mailed, and so have ended up dropping them off in person on the actual voting day. This year was no exception. Richard filled his out last night, but I didn’t finish mine until this morning. I dropped my ballot off at the closest polling place to our house, and as I walked out, much to my surprise, I was asked if I would be willing to take part in an exit poll. Why anyone thought our little podunk town was worthy of exit polling, I will never know, but I cheerfully agreed because I am all about manipulating the statistics any chance I can get.

I have decided that we really ought to declare the day after election day End of Election Spam Day, and make it a national holiday, complete with the ceremonial burning of the lawn signs, and shredding of the election fliers, and most important of all, erasing of all those horrible recoded election spam messages on answering machines across the country. Really, do people actually ever pay attention to any of that stuff? No, wait, let me answer that one myself. There was exactly one piece of election spam in our mailbox that I not only paid attention to, I actually saved it so Richard could read it too. It made us laugh so hard that we both immediately decided to vote *for* the person the flier was so rabidly against, because it was for a local city council election, and the guy in question is admittedly an annoying loon, but really, sometimes the loons should be encouraged, if only to give us something to laugh about. And really, these past few election cycles there’s been precious little to laugh about.

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When we got married, my little sister and her husband bought us a coffee maker for our wedding present. It was a lovely coffee maker, being the type that could be preprogrammed, so that many mornings we would wake to the rather abrupt sound of the bean grinder starting up, followed immediately thereafter by the massive skittering of cats who had just had their wits scared out of them by the aforementioned grinding of beans. The coffee pot worked hard, brewing up pot after pot of coffee for us and our house guests for the past five years.

Notice I am speaking of this wonderful appliance in the past tense? A few weeks ago, the grinder part of the coffee maker started to go. No problem, we figured, since luckily not only had I saved my old coffee grinder, I knew where it had been stashed in the kitchen. But last night, as Richard tried to brew a pot of decaf, it suddenly decided to shut off, mid-brew. At first we thought maybe there was a problem with the power connection, but the outlet wasn’t tripped, and restarting the pot didn’t seem to work, and plugging it into other outlets didn’t fix the problem, and we were forced to conclude that our wonderful little coffee maker had finally decided to pass on to wherever it is trusty kitchen appliances go when they die.

It is hard to buy a new coffee maker. It’s not like you can just go out and grab one off the shelf. Research is required. Brands must be compared. Reviews must be read, and merits must be weighed. Do we go with another pot of the same brand? Do we pick one that has a thermal carafe? What about one that dispenses coffee one cup at a time? Which feature is more important – the abilty to grind the beans in the same contraption as the brewer, or the ability to program the pot so that one wakes up to freshly brewed coffee (with or without the preceeding cat skitterage as noted above).

Richard worked from home today, so he decided to go out and see what kind of options we could pick off the shelf, while I spent a small amount of time online, reading about the pros and cons of all the major brands. He called me from the store and as he read me the brands, I looked them up and then listed out all the points covered in the various user reviews, all without any success, until finally we decided that this sort of thing should not be rushed, and that we should take our time in finding a suitable replacement, So after more research, we finally found the one that looks right for us.

Our new coffee maker has been ordered, and will hopefully arrive soon. In the meantime, we are having to make do with a cheap and flimsy (temporary) replacement Richard picked up – the sort of thing that will likely fall apart if we look at it cross-eyed, but which ends up cheaper in the long run than running to the coffee shop every morning on the way to work instead.

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Despite the dip into fall weather this week, with accompanying fog and grey skies and even the occasional splutter of rain, this weekend turned out to be absolutely lovely. I don’t expect to be able to open all the windows and turn on the fans and air out the house in November, but right now, that’s exactly what we are doing.

We had a whole list of little errands to run today, but luckily none that required us to be anywhere until about 10am. I was up by 7am anyway, unable to sleep any later, so I decided to make good use of the extra time and peeled and chopped a few pounds of apples to turn into apple butter. This is kind of an experiment, based on a recipe we tried a few weeks ago that didn’t turn out like what we were expecting, but instead turned into a delicious apple butter, so the hope is that I can somehow duplicate it, in a large enough quantity to pour into jars and seal away for next year.

Today was the first day of the new schedule at the church – they’ve added a third service in between the original two – and to kick it off, they’ve also started a little breakfast buffet that runs in between the first and last services. So we decided to take advantage of that and went over to church a little early, instead of doing our usual run to one of the local bakeries for breakfast. We ended up sitting and chatting with some friends, which was nice, and then joined the ending of the new service (the choir was encouraged to do so, since all the singing in this new service happens at the end) and discovered that another long-absent friend had returned. There was choir rehearsal and then church, although Richard and I snuck out right after the choir sang so we could get a head start on all the things we had planned to do today, which was good, because we had a lot to do, and in a short amount of time.

First up was a run to CostCo, to stock up on veggies and food for lunches and some great stocking stuffers and presents (because I am all about getting the holiday shopping done as early as we can get it out of the way). Next up, after unloading the car, was trip in to Davis. Richard needed to return a power cord to one of his writing buddies who’d left it at the cafe yesterday, and I needed to swing by the new yarn store to drop off the yarn swatch I did for them, and to pick up a pair of needles for my next lace project. And then we met back up at Borders, taking advantage of all the lovely weather by just parking the car and walking all over town to do our errands instead of driving. Finally, fruit smoothies for lunch, followed by a trip to the grocery store to stock up on baking supplies, and then back home to unload and put everything away.

While Richard ran off to the drug store to pick up some prescription refills, I stayed home and whipped up a batch of pudding (which upgrades from ho hum to positively divine if you simply replace 1/4 cup of the milk with 4 ounces of cream cheese). Then I stirred together another batch of pumpkin bread and handed him the recipe for the low fat, no sugar added banana bread recipe that we found and he really likes, so that he could put it together instead of me, thus successfully avoiding my having to deal with, in any way whatsoever, any nasty overripe squashed banana goo.

So now the house smells delightfully of baking – luckily for me, the spices in the pumpkin bread far outweigh the banana (I am not a fan of banana, if that wasn’t obvious). The apple butter is still simmering away in the crockpot, adding an overlay of cinnamon to the whole mix. The air coming in from inside still holds a faint scent of the rain from the other night, and the cats are not the only ones walking through the house, pausing by the open windows, taking in the smells and the sounds of this very late, and oh so lovely autumn night.

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Do you know what is better than having one friend with a yarn store? Or better than having *two* friends with a yarn store? Having those two friends decide to form a partnership and open a store that allows them both to coordinate not only what they can buy, but what they can provide to all of us very lucky knitters. And that is exactly what is going on right now in Davis these days. There are a lot of us eagerly looking forward to the official grand opening of the new yarn store, which is scheduled for the 15th, and what better way to ensure that it will open in top condition and on time than to go over and lend a hand in whatever they might need at the moment.

I haven’t had a lot of time this past week to head over to help, but today the game we’d originally scheduled ended up being cancelled, so I decided to see if they could use me, and headed off to Davis, leaving Richard to go join a group of fellow Nanowrimo participants for a writing session, and the cats to lounge around at home, sleeping and stretching and otherwise generally fending for themselves.

I had a wonderful time at the store, labeling things and typing up inventories, and making a few swatches (I even came home with another ball to swatch in my purse). It was especially wonderful to see how much they’ve already set up, and imagine how it will look once it opens.

Richard came over to see the store-in-progress as well, and then the two of us decided that as long as we were in Davis, we might as well have sushi for dinner. And then we came home to curl up in the living room, surrounded by purring cats, to watch a very cheesey film from long ago – Gremlins II. We actually watched the first one last night and it is kind of embarrassing to realize that I had not remembered just how very bad it was. I never saw the second one when it came out in theaters, but Richard had, and it was just as bad, although this time it was bad on purpose (the second is very much a spoof).

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It’s November now, and yesterday it even rained, and there are fall colors and pumpkins and wintery things everywhere I look. This, of course, means that my mind turns toward baking, because winter and baking go hand in hand. Since I had the day off from work today I decided to get a head start on some of that baking. The church bazaar is coming up in two weeks, and I usually try to get a half dozen or so loaves of bread squirreled away in the freezer so that I’m ready to donate a box of goodies for the baked good sale that always does so well.

This morning I made the first batch of pumpkin bread for the season. I would have made more, since I was certainly in the baking mood, but I ran out of eggs and oil after the first batch, and while I was in the mood for baking today, I was also feeling a bit lazy. Days off with nothing much that has to be done tend to do that to me. So instead of making more bread, I let the two loaves cool down and packed one carefully away into the freezer, and then cut into the other one, because it is always important to test your baked goods just to make sure that they came out okay. And it did. Oh my, it did.

Pumpkin bread is one of those things that I refuse to modify for the sake of health or diet or any other reason. The recipe I use is the same one my mom has made for as long as we can remember, and it involves three cups of sugar and an entire cup of oil and four eggs. The only remotely healthy modification I have ever made is to use egg substitute instead of real eggs, but that has never been done in any futile attempt at lightening the bread, but is instead a result of the fact that those are usually the only eggs we ever have in the house and I cannot be bothered to go invest in a carton of real eggs just for this.

I also decided that I should get to work on trying to reset the pomegranate jelly which we tried (and failed, apparently) to make a few weeks ago. For whatever reason, pomegranate jelly is one of the mecurial of jellies to make, in that you can follow the recipe exactly the same, and one batch will set while the other refuses to gel and instead has to be labeled as pomegranate syrup. This year, of the three batches we made, only the first one set. This year, however, we decided that there was enough time to try a few experiments and see if there was any way it could be salvaged (ah, the knowledge one can find when armed with a high speed connection and Google). So I carefully measured out pectin and stirred it and boiled it and created a little highly concentrated pectin soup, and then even more carefully stirred together one cup of unset jelly and a little sugar and just the right amount of pectin and boiled it for exactly two minutes, no more and no less, and sterilized the jar and boiled the lid and poured in the jelly and put it all together and wonder of wonders, it looks like this just might have worked. So now the next step is to do this to all the rest of the jelly (about a dozen jars) and see how many more of them I can salvage, and then next year try to figure out what the magic formula is so I can avoid having to jump through all these extra hoops next time around.

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My dad sent out an email yesterday that he had attended his very last physical therapy session, and that the surgeon who did the operation on his neck says it looks like it’s healing fine. And with that, the whole saga has ended. I am still wrestling with the fact that this whole thing started less than two months ago, and yet, aside from the slowly disappearing scar on his neck, you would not guess to look at him what we all have gone through. Before we all know it, he will be back to work, flying off on another assignment. Come this time next year it is going to feel as if it was a million years ago. At least that’s what I’m hoping.

We have taken a new tactic in dealing with Checkers. Normally, for a skitterish cat like her, I would go slowly, and let her come out to us, but we’ve learned that this doesn’t work. I started dragging her out of her little cave in the computer room (she’s living in a corner shelf, by choice, and seems quite happy there) and putting her on my lap for pets and attention, and that seemed to make her more willing to come out when she saw me enter the room. But she’d still shy away from Richard, so I recommended he start doing the same thing. And what an amazing difference. Now that she’s not dashing away from us when we walk in the room, she is spending more and more time out of her cave, bouncing around on the cat tree (where she has decided that the second shelf is the place where we are to come and give her attention immediately, or else she will holler at us repeatedly until we do). And even better yet, as she’s gotten more comfortable, she’s been standing up to the few remaining ‘bullies’. Sebastian still comes in and growls at her, but she ignores him completely, and he’s starting to give it up. And Zucchini will come in and stare intently at her, but now that she is mostly ignoring him, he is far less likely to try to chase her. The situation between her and Rosie still remains tense, but even that seems to have been reduced to an uneasy truce. Maybe in a year or so they can be in the same room with each other without one or both of them growling, and I will feel as if all this angst and drama was a million years ago. At least that’s what I’m hoping.

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Today is the first day of November, and it is ushered in, somehow most appropriately, by a grey sky and misty rain that was just enough to smear all the dust and grime on my windshield into a vision-obscuring mess, but not enough to wash the gunk away. I have parked my car completely in the open this morning, however, in the hopes that if the sprinkles continue long enough, maybe by the time I head home, it will have been enough to clear the window so I can see.

Today is also the first day of NaBloPoMo, which is the bloggers’ answer to Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month). In the spirit of an early Holidailies, or rather, to kick start my rather rusty posting habits, I’ve committed to posting every day of this month. That means that if I can keep this up, all of you (my three remaining trusty readers) can count on brand new content every day for two months straight. Notice that I did not promise that it would be scintillating content; just that it would be new. Which is certainly an improvement on the rest of this year.

Anyway. Last night was Halloween and we did our usual very exciting Halloween thing (which isn’t very exciting, but then Halloween never is when you no longer can go ringing doorbells asking for candy). We made meatballs and spaghetti for dinner, a novel thing since I cannot remember the last time we had actual ground beef in the house (usually it would be ground turkey, or the faux ground beef). We passed out gummy body parts for candy – something which apparently made a hit, since a number of little kids thought it was pretty cool to get gummy eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and severed fingers in their candy bag. This year we watched The Fog, a movie with an interesting concept – crew of plague ship comes back from the ocean for revenge on the ancestors of the men who burned them all alive – but a predictable outcome. The good thing is that we weren’t looking for anything highly intellectual – lame horror flicks are far better for watching when you have to hit the pause button every few minutes.

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