Nice, Senoufou! We should all send you books to contribute to the village collection. Happily, after this visit I have a stack of books my son pulled out of his dad's garage and the shelves here that I'll be mailing to him after they return home. I'll also mail a box of the Sam Scott mugs and a couple of his fancy bowls that my father collected. My sister also had some of this wonderful pottery and gave these two a pair they really like. I showed them some of what I have here and they picked the ones they want, allowing me to finally do what I planned, share them in the family. I ended up with most of them from administering the estate and having to pack up everything to clear the house.

It is no surprise that this week has seen me put on a couple of pounds so I'll do a few days of alternate day fasting to keep myself in my five pound range. Easy enough today since the kids are over at their dad's overnight, trading off between houses. (And while he's there, my son has to reset his dad's router because the password was lost. . . it begins.) They'll be back for open face turkey sandwiches, so the fasting will probably have to begin on Thursday, after they leave. I also love those sandwiches. The rest of the day I'll keep it to the fruit and vegetables around here.

In December I can resume my volunteer activities that were largely ignored in the preparation for the heat pump installation (almost finished) and this visit. The heat pump still needs a cosmetic addition, a metal case over the lines running up the wall, and a new heat pump thermostat. My nextdoor neighbor has solved that shopping problem by offering a briefly used thermostat she has on her hands. They had a unit installed that failed after a couple of years and was replaced last year. The thermostat they bought for the first unit was replaced by one that came with the newer unit, and she didn't want to toss it because she paid several hundred for it. She wants to see it used so will send it over here. I will add another panel of my fence between our yards into the "paid" column because she won't let me buy the thermostat. I have about five panels left, two of them I was planning to put up by the end of the year, now I'll finance the third myself above the cat-sitting cash, and put it up also. It has been slow, putting up this fence, but it beats the alternative of never doing it because the total cash output was more than I wanted to afford at once. Once I have all of the lumber and screws here it takes a couple of hours to put up a panel.