Thanksgiving, with Australians

We had 18 people for Thanksgiving: Mom and Dad, me and Diana, Josh and Gwen, David and Elizabeth and their kids plus a couple extra, Tabitha and Chris and their kids. And Gwen had her laptop, and got her family in Melbourne on Skype, and it turns out that Marguerite, brothers Chris and Nick, Nick's son, cousin Duncan, and a couple of friends, had gotten up early on Friday morning and joined us with their Thanksgiving turkey and trimmings--can't really call it "dinner" because it was 6am for them.  Gwen had planned for the video call but the whole "we're having Thanksgiving dinner with you!" was a surprise, and quite touching. So we had a total of 27 for Thanksgiving.

Snow at the Farm

We drove up to Blacksburg on Sunday night to spend a little time with Josh and Gwen, then headed to the Farm on Monday evening. And it snowed Wednesday morning. Everyone (Dad coming in from his contract office, Chris and Tabitha, Josh and Gwen) made it to the Farm; fortunately no one had to fly, as airports were a mess in the midAtlantic. Roughly five inches, and the first time we can remember snow accumulatig before Thanksgiving--it's more commonly January. Diana and I and Josh and Gwen went sledding.
And then the power went out, around 1pm. It looked as if we might have peanut butter sandwiches for Thanksgiving, or else haul the whole clan over to Elizabeth and David's place on Thursday morning. But the lights came back on at 7pm, and we were able to go back to cooking, washing, setting places and playing Skip Bo as normal.

Dentist

I got crowns installed for my front six teeth; the temps were done a few weeks ago, and today was the day for the permanents. I was half an hour late for my appointment, because it was scheduled for 2pm, but I associate the dentist with "tooth hurty".
When the process was done, she asked if any of the teeth were bothering me, and I replied that the most painful part was paying for them. She said that I could have gotten crowns for a dollar apiece, but nobody ever wants that type, because they're buck teeth.

Deeply Deeply Skeptical

"Americans should be deeply deeply skeptical of government power. You
cannot trust people in power. The founders knew that."

James Comey
FBI Director
October 12, 2014

Crowns

Got six crowns installed today. My whole upper lip and nose were entirely numb, and it turns out that it's very nearly impossible to sip tea (or anything else, but what I had was tea) when you can't feel your upper lip.

If I have any more crowns, I will qualify to be an emperor.

NaNoWriMo

I'd been floundering around for the first few days of this year's NaNoWriMo. I had the general idea for the plot, based on a slightly fantasy version of the Vicksburg Campaign, and I had some idea of the characters, and I had my Scene Planner cards all ready, but it just wasn't coming together. A thousand words one day, 500 words the next, and one section that wandered off into a different universe entirely. Last night I was quite discouraged, thinking "This Is Not For Me". This morning I said "You know, this story could be Star Wars: 1862 Edition", and from that I was able to write a 2500 word plot outline in which pretty much everything fell into place. Still a few plot questions to answer, here and there--"What does Ming Duo do during the climactic battle", for example--but I have enough that I can get started actually putting together a narrative. Huzzah!

Yes, there will be a fair amount of Find & Replace on the names before all is done. "We can fix that in Post."

Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?

So it could be poultry in motion.