Tonight, I still have to read some newspapers, do my lower leg exercises, finish the last few pages of Walking Nature Home (by Susan J. Tweit - a great book that I enjoyed a lot), do my stretches, and check my email. I did my 4 miles at dusk on the Mesa Trail and back and forth to the airport. With 5 shirts and a jacket, I was toasty warm!
Today was such an ordinary day compared to yesterday's 7 mile adventure - down the Blue Dot to the Rio Grande, south on the River Trail, up the Red Dot, 1/2 mile on Piedra Loop to a short connector trail starting at La Senda Road and back on the White Rock Rim Trail. I drove home in the dark. Not easy when you're blinded by headlights of oncoming cars. I'd like to do all the rest of the hikes down to and along the Rio one day. We'll see how much snow comes in with the predicted winter storm.
I did go worship today at the altar of Walmart and Vitamin Cottage - always enjoyable. I love to buy healthy foods at Vitamin Cottage.
I bought a case of Charmin Basic toilet paper at Walmart - it's the only Charmin that doesn't clog our toilet. I bought ammonia with the intention of stripping the very slippery laundry room floor (still a hazard from waxing it lo so many years ago). If I could strip the wax, I wouldn't need the obnoxious throw rugs which are now themselves becoming slippery as they lose their non-slip backing. I remember, though, the last time I used straight ammonia for stripping floor wax (more than 30 years ago when we were starving students living in the mobile home in Gainesville, Florida) I damaged my lungs so much that I got bad bronchitis for many a winter. I'm re-thinking the ammonia idea and will check Metzger's Hardware tomorrow for non-ammonia floor stripping products.
I also bought a Black and Decker blender. It's made in China. The instruction manual says variously don't run it for more than 2 minutes and don't run it for more than 1 1/2 minutes. Lord only knows which time is correct. Then it says in one place use Pulse for 5 seconds, says 10 second somewhere else and 2 minutes in another place. Bologna - 5 seconds sounds about right!
I will cancel the Thursday appointment to have the chimney sweep look at the woodburning stove. Since I wiped it down with plain water, it makes no smells. I can take care of replacing the kaowool blanket and broken brick by replacing them myself or have the chimney sweep do it next summer. I'm going to call Big Jo's Hardware (don't you just love hardware stores??) to see if they stock the stove parts since they are a Quadra Fire dealer.
Christmas lights are on in the big living room, spouse is happily laying on the couch enjoying the fire and Cold Case. At 9pm, he'll turn on the Rockettes Christmas special on PBS. Life is good.