Endings and Thanksgiving

I thought I'd get some of that expanding foam insulation that you spray and then it expands to fill holes - to spray in a few places under my patio where I think snakes hide.  I went to my handy-dandy True Value and asked a guy about the foam insulation and he advised me to use wood putty instead.  He said snakes could eat the insulation?!  I said, "really?  I didn't think snakes would do that."  I should have gone with my gut instinct but I figured...he's an older guy, he should know what he's talking about.  I got home and worked and worked the inner and outer putty together and then leaned down to place it over one of the holes - a little leery that a snake might bump its head against the putty on the other side - and I have no idea what I did but somehow I got some grass off to the side to move, I thought it was a snake and fell on my butt thinking a snake was going to get me.  And the putty didn't work anyway.  So I remembered the caulking I had from the upstairs bathroom, found it in the basement and caulked the poop out of 2-3-4 holes that were under my patio and sidewalk.  It ain't pretty but the holes are filled - mission accomplished.

Friday night I got together with my two girlfriends from 4th grade at one of their houses which was in Ankeny.  I made brownies - the box said I'd get 12 brownies out of my 8 x 8 pan.  When it was time to cut them I'm like - no way will I get 12 - those would be bite-size.  So I went for 9 brownies and those still looked kind of small.  I said we were going to have 6 brownies out of the pan and proceeded to cut.  All three of us enjoyed a very large brownie for dessert :)  One of my friends found the "newspaper" we helped print in 5th grade, there was four or five different editions that were a hoot to look at.  Hand written, on stencils, run on a mimeograph machine - remember those days?!  We laughed about how the "newspaper" would look today done by school kids on a computer.

Yesterday I went with another friend to my first ever estate tag sale - that was an experience - and crowded.  There was stuff and more stuff.  It was fun to have experienced and I told my friend to let me know when she finds out about more sales.  I walked her to her car and she handed me a plastic bag with three bananas and a dog treat for Butler :)  I laughed and told her Butler would definitely enjoy the treat.

After running errands I filled three more bags with leaves from the driveway and some of the front lawn - this week if the last week WDM will pick up yard waste.  I also bought some spray foam insulation to spray by the front door of the porch between the floor of the front porch and landing that people stand on when ringing my doorbell.  I sprayed and watched the foam kind of expand - and tried to rub my gloved finger across the foamy stuff to "level" it like when you caulk - that was messy - and then left it for a while to finish doing its thing.  I looked at it about an hour later and good googly moogly - some of it expanded like three inches above the flooring.  Down to Mike's work bench I go to find one of those little, long, skinny saws with a handle that was more like a hand grip to cut the excess insulation off.............

For some unknown reason I decided to watch "The Sons of Katie Elder" (John Wayne) yesterday afternoon.  I'd watched parts of it before with Mike but thought I'd watch it all the way through.  It's pretty good but I was so amazed at what a great shot John Wayne was - have you ever noticed that :)

Endings - well there was one today and the other will be Tuesday night for me.  Today - NASCAR.  Tuesday - Dancing With The Stars.  Heavy sigh.  I'm down to Bones on Thursday night and The Amazing Race on Sunday night (which has 3-4 more weeks and it's finished).  It always makes me a little sad when the NASCAR season ends because it's such a long season (mid-February to almost Thanksgiving).  I'll be going into NASCAR withdrawal until February 26th when the Daytona 500 is back.  The race was rain delayed - which was good since I did my normal NASCAR nap during that time.  At the end of today's race Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart tied for points for the Championship - it went to a tie breaker with Tony Stewart winning because he had the most wins (and only wins) between him and Carl during the last ten races.

I need to finish my Christmas letter so I can get it printed, and print my labels so I can get my Christmas cards out this coming weekend.  I asked Dad if he wanted to put out a Christmas letter - I had typed Mom and Dad's letter for several years and printed their envelope labels.  Dad decided he's not sending letters this year - so I just have to make sure I get my stuff done.

The weather is supposed to be nice so I'll drive to Pella to be with Dad for part of Thanksgiving.  HyVee is open in Pella and he wants to buy a few things for our Bread on the Waters grocery collection project at church, so we'll do that.  He mentioned something about eating at one of the restaurants that is open for lunch - so we might do that too.

I hope everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving!