update of randomness

Last November, I committed to baking all our bread and cookies. Since then, we have saved at least 25% of our former food budget each month! Go, me!

We're in the other house now. I'll get pictures sometime.

I've downloaded a few books to this netbook, with Kindle for PC. I like it very much with one problem... can't lend the book! Going to be paper for me from now on. Didn't Amazon have some deal where you could buy the digital rights for a few bucks extra after buying a paper copy? I might do that sometimes if I Just Couldn't Wait.


Going to go check on dinner now. Venison, carrots, potatoes and fresh whole wheat bread. NOM.

oxfords: a query.

I want a nice pair of oxford shoes not sweatshop made. Leather, black. Suggestions welcome. I have huge feet, women's 11ish, men's 9.5-10 (US.) Best if priced under $100.

my best birthday present

was the O'Melays, who were the visiting friends! I didn't want to out them until they got back to their lovely farm. It was such a delight to finally meet Tabitha who I have known for almost seven years. The kids all got along swimmingly. Tabitha's children are generally between my kids in age: Tristan is one year younger than Abby, Kassi is nine months older than Gilbert, Toly is nine months younger than Trixie, and Rome is nine months younger than Gloria. This meant that there were multiple playmates for each O'Melay. Tristan flitted between the older girls and Gilbert and Kassi played with Gloria and Faith. Toly and Bede wrestled with each other like puppies, and Rome floated around the edges.

Everyone got a mild cold and stuffy nose but the only one really sidelined by it was Tristan, who spiked a fever too. Poor dude!

Overall the visit was wonderful. They came down so Karl could build a wall in our new garage to partition it off for Sean's office, and that was accomplished. Karl is amazing. Tabitha and I made food, as previously noted.

I also got other gifts: Sean got me The Complete Sherlock Holmes and Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, both of which are great.

So all told, a Very Happy Birthday!

WLH++, feeding the horde, computer upgrade

Today is Wirt L. Harris's birthday! Happy birthday, Dad!

My friends are here and have been here since Saturday morning. The house has ten kids and four adults and it is loud and happy! We eat a lot. On Saturday we cooked three dozen eggs, two pounds of sausage, a pound of bacon, two pints of beans and about eight pounds of venison. (Saturday was to feed sixteen people since Sophia nd Josh came too.) Sunday we ate some of the Saturday leftovers and also cooked eighteen eggs, a couple pounds of ham, two five pound chickens and two pounds of broccoli, along with three loaves of bread and twelve dozen cookies. Today we made an enormous pot of venison chili, ate it all, (again, with Sophia and Josh's help) and finished off three-fourths of the cookies and another thirteen eggs.

I have to make bread tonight so I can bake it in the morning. Yum!

In other news, my birthday is tomorrow and I have my birthday present to myself: hardware and software upgrades for my beloved Dell Mini 9. He (his name is Aristotle) got a new hard drive, new RAM and a new OS! I've been accruing these bits and bobs for months and got the last piece of hardware today, an external DVD drive. It was all I was waiting on and now I'm installing Windows 7. I'm very excited!