7 Quick Takes (Vol 88)

Hello again! How can it be Friday already?? If it is Friday then we know that it is time for Quick Takes, that weekly round up of all the things that I can’t seem to make into a blog post no matter how much I might try.

Remember to click on the picture above to be whisked, at the speed of rapidly approaching winter, over to Jen’s site to see what everyone else has been doing this week.

1.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday I walk early in the morning with friends. I might have mentioned it here and some other blog posts that I can’t seem to find. But this time of year it is dark in the mornings. I mean it is DARK when I leave the house at 6:45a. And part of our walk goes through some woods. And there have been a couple of bear sightings. And there are coyotes.

So I try to remember to take a flashlight. I am sure that I can scare anything off with my tiny Maglight. Right?

At least we occasionally see a Bald Eagle. But the number of people that we see has dropped off dramatically since the first part of September. Everyone else are wimps! So what if it is 40F in the morning. You get moving and you really warm up. Try walking when it is 2F. My toes don’t like it but I make them come with me.

2.
I am just starting to read through the letters in my “tub o letters” that I pulled up from the basement. I will be telling you about it next week I think. I love walking down memory lane.

But it also makes me sad because when I read though all these letters I keep thinking of all that we are losing by now being a cell phone/txt/email society. Who saves their emails? I save some but not that many.

3.
This week HHBL and I made the decision that we are tired of living in this “staged” home and had a small revolt. We took the gosh awful beige slipcovers off of our wingback chairs and moved them back where we had them for almost 10 years. They now are on either side of the fireplace where they belong. And we can actually use them, and have been sitting in them every evening and sometimes during the day.

And today I am moving my beloved red chair back into my office. It is my favorite reading place and it has been kept from me for almost 9 months.

Take that stagers and people who don’t want to buy our house!

And I think that some where along the line here there is going to be a post about this whole house on the market time. It is still percolating in my feeble brain.

4.
Well, after 5 days of rain the sun actually has come out and we might have a few decent days. I am hoping to get the back garden “put to bed” tomorrow. It is so much easier to handle all the leaf blowing if they aren’t getting stuck in the hosta etc. And I really don’t like it when I put off the garden clean up and then have to get out there when it is cold, say the first part of November. I don’t know how many more 70F days we will have so I am taking advantage of it.

And I am getting out there early because…..there is baseball on and I don’t want to miss it.

I am so strange.

5.

Max and I continue to wage the battle of the dog hair. I am seriously considering learning to spin so that all of this doesn’t go to waste. I furminate, I vacuum, I furminate, I vacuum. I just don’t ever remember him shedding quite this much so I am not sure if I should be thinking that this is going to be a particularly harsh winter? I mean, I am going to order wood today for the fireplace. Maybe I should stock up?

Max is putting out enough of this soft and downy stuff to make at least a couple of sweaters a year.

I am sure that I could sell them on Etsy.

But if it rained would I smell like wet dog?

6.
We all know that I like to cook. If you don’t know that then you haven’t been hanging around here very long. And sometimes I like to open the frig and say, “Hmmmmmm what can I make with this stuff.” Sometimes it is good. Sometimes it is mediocre. And sometimes it is really good, which was last night. And then I have to think about how I did it because I didn’t write anything down when I was actually cooking. I need to remember to keep a piece of paper and pen nearby when I am doing this.

Left over pasta, garlic, onion, tomato,butter, white wine, heavy cream, parmesan cheese, oregano.

I think I can reproduce this one so if I can then I will put the recipe up. It ended up being very similar to the Tomato Cream that I always order at Jimmy Dadonna’s (they don’t have a website hence no link) in Solon. Only I suspect that mine was a WHOLE LOT healthier than theirs. I added only a splash of cream to mine where as I suspect Jimmy Dadonna’s adds an entire cow.

But it was really good. And we had a bit of left over steak so I sliced that very thin and added it at the last minute, just to warm up.

Yum.

7.
You just never know who will see your blog I am telling you. I reviewed a book here a while back. Low and behold the author tweeted a thank you and linked to the blog. Just made my day. Not that it got me much more blog traffic mind you but it was still a tee hee hee for me.

I lead such a wild and dangerous life you know.