There is a TV on the table in my sunroom to use for testing VHS and other devices for eBay; it used to be in my bedroom for exercise DVDs and streaming my Essentrics site - it stopped working properly for a while so I replaced it. (An antenna unit fell on it and after that clunk it kept turning itself off and back on when in use, though it seems to be ok now). Today just for the heck of it I finished wiring the sunroom for data and tested it on that TV. It turns out it is a smart TV and I can view a things like NetFlix and Amazon without a fire stick. It also receives WiFi, but since the TV is wired it's faster. I have not voice activated anything in there - I don't need it eavesdropping. It's on the table where I also have my current jigsaw puzzle that I've finally returned to working. The room was too hot much of the summer and I got out of the puzzle habit for a while. This tough one is finally falling into place.

This work meant a trip to the attic. I'm more flexible than I was early in the year so that helps, but the exploration I had to do following the line in the attic still wasn't very pleasant. I was masked for the dust up there. I have a couple of more rooms to wire, maybe I'll get to it now that I've started on the project. I had put in Cat-5 phone lines but haven't had wired phones for years. I can reuse those lines and replace the phone plugs with data ports.

It looks like we'll be doing lunch for xmas this year, because the convergence of different families means the young'uns need to parse out their time. We do what we must. Charmion, I remember reading several times of your concerns about driving on The 401, so it's good if one of your young ones is convinced to be prudent and drive that road when it's safer.

Dorothy, how is it going with settling in for the winter? Will there be any more trips to Beaver? Do you think R will sell the Mill? When are you planning to go back for a visit to Whidbey?

It was Alice's birthday yesterday, and a sad reminder when it came up on Facebook. Over the years we wrote back and forth, but I could have called, it would have been easy enough. I'm thinking I should do that more, just because.