First week of October

Hmmm - what to write about?  It was all pretty much hum drum stuff.....

The "briar patch" is about half cleared out.  Buying a second pair of leather work gloves and wearing long-sleeved shirts has helped.

We had to replace our windshield after noticing a fairly significant crack on the driver side a week ago.  Safelite came to the house to do the work.  That was nice.  We had a $250 deductible.  That was not nice.

We had a fellow from church who is HVAC trained come over on Wednesday to service our heat pump and to set our really confusing thermostat.  He hosed off a whole bunch of dryer lint and that helped the house feel cooler during our first-of-October heatwave.  Happily, we are now experiencing regular October weather - windows are open and it is VERY nice outside.

I had to have my bow rehaired.  Even though it was just rehaired less than a year ago, it was done in dry Phoenix.  In humid Columbia, the hair absorbed too much moisture and it just couldn't tighten properly. 

I saw the Downton Abby movie with Elise Tuesday night.  Being a huge fan of the television series, I was delighted with the movie.  It won't win any academy awards but it was certainly fun to re-visit all the characters and have some closure.

We did another visit to Home Depot to check out prices, I sent a couple of emails, and we are finally a bit closer to our home improvement decisions.  We ARE going to have the foundation lifted.  We WILL get the huge crack in the driveway taken care of. I just need to see if the polylift solution will work for us.  I will call about that this week.  If we can take care it if that way, it should save about $5000 on driveway repair.  Regardless of how our driveway problem gets solved, we will have to visit the bank because we are going need a loan to get all of this done and just pay it back from the sale of the house.  Ugh!!!

Steve and I both visited the doctor on Friday - Steve in the morning, me in the afternoon.  And, we both watched a movie with Elise that night.  She brought over "Edge of Tomorrow" which Steve had never seen.  I enjoyed watching it a second time.  Earlier that evening, we had Dan and Malinda Crouch over for dinner and catching up on our families.  Steve was their home teacher for years. 

This weekend of General Conference has been wonderful.  Elise watched all the sessions with us.  Julina drove over from Indiana and watched all but Sunday afternoon with us.  She stayed with Steven and Tamara overnight in MUCH more comfortable accomodations than we could currently give her.  We all enjoyed a family dinner Saturday evening and Steve made a huge breakfast for whoever wanted to come this morning.  I had to be gone for two hours both on Saturday and today to substitute for the cellist in the Heartstrings Quartet!  Bill Miller, their usual cellist, asked me to sub for him way back in the spring and I agreed -  not realizing that it was conference weekend and way before Julina had decided to come for a visit.  Happily, by the time I had to play today, Julina was already gone so I only missed out on seeing her yesterday.  The up-side is I made $200 which I will use to buy new cello strings which should have been changed three years ago!

That's all, folks....