It’s that grateful time of year. A time set aside for a day of Thanks. A time to enjoy, or avoid family (I’ve done both over the years)…a time of year when it cools down enough that baking seems like a good idea.
During this Thanksgiving week I’ve enjoyed making Cranberry and Pear, and Sweet Potato Pies. The Cranberry and Pear pie recipe was a gift from my piano tuner, Stephen “The Piano Doctor”. Email me if you’re looking for a good piano tuner in the Sonoma county area. Stephen’s the best. I remember him kindly every time I bake this pie. It’s so simple and really delicious. (Everyone loved it).
The Sweet Potato Pie idea was induced by a recipe on an episode of Good Eats. (It’s really good that I don’t have cable tv. This was the one food network show I watched when we visited Val’s folks, about “sweet potatoes” and I wanted to make the recipe. I’ll be trying the sweet potato waffles soon too…I could have understood it if the show had been about Chocolate, but Sweet Potatoes?)
We had a wonderful visit with my family. Can’t believe it’s been over fifteen years since we’ve gotten together at Thanksgiving. (I’ve always found it easier to be thankful getting together with a friend, or maybe two, rather than joining the masses traveling on a November holiday).
Wishing you all the best, with many thanks to all our friends and family for being part of our world.
Sensei Smartt’s Aikido class tonight at New School Aikido Santa Rosa was wonderful as usual. Light, playful, insightful. An invitation to relax and have fun. Can’t wait for part two tomorrow. Thanks John!
(1)
Seems I’m not the only one having a tough week. I can relate only too well to my friend Kerry’s views from her recent post. I tried “Muffin Therapy”…you know, eat muffins or other baked treats, add coffee, enjoy. It’s usually good for a short fix, but even that didn’t work this week.
Maybe this is some cosmic joke…
Mercury turned retrograde on October 28, that was the day I decided to plug in the new hardware that seemed to take my main computer into a declining, fatal spiral. I don’t usually think to check my astrology before updating the computer, as I don’t want to believe that planetary alignment can really have a significant effect on my reality. I can only hope that as mercury begins it’s forward transit today or tomorrow, that life will get back into a happy grove. I read it on the Internet, it must be true! mercury retrograde
Everything finally straightens out on December 5, 2006, as he [Mercury] passes the point where he first turned retrograde.
Here’s to December! I’m looking forward to my world getting back in line.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!
When I upgraded computers at the beginning of the year, I thought I wouldn’t have to be working on computers for a few years. I thought the new hyper-threaded AMD processors were stable enough to make a reliable workstation. While I didn’t think it was good, I’d even gotten used to turning on the computer and restarting it before logging in so that it wouldn’t hang shortly after starting.
Well, after the episode with the new flash drive (see previous post), things got worse.
The strange 15 minute “warm up” time needed to start the computer just didn’t make sense. I had a spare power supply, (an extra I bought when the original broke after only four months) and decided that the power supply was the best place to start troubleshooting.
New PSU installed, I power up the computer. Excited that it starts up immediately, I quickly lose enthusiasm when none of the hard drives are recognized and windows fails to start.
I take the power supply down to the computer store to test, it tests as good. I find an enclosure that allows me to take my SATA drives and convert them to USB drives so the old computer can read them. This gets an A+ for useful devices! (All the drives work, even the one that I broke unplugging the data connection. Note: SATA drives have more delicate connections than the older ATA drives).
Maybe it’s time for a new motherboard. Sigh…