Today is the first cold day we've had this fall. It was cold enough that I wore my coat. It's been cloudy most of this week too and yesterday we got a ton of rain (leftovers of Hurricane Zeta). It's getting dark noticeably earlier now too and the trees are getting more color and some are losing their leaves. It's starting to feel like winter. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, though...I'm looking forward to some sunshine.
Frank had a really crazy week, as I predicted, and it's not over yet. He worked every night this week, starting on Monday, and he is working tonight too. He's also working Sunday night, Monday night, and Wednesday night next week. Monday was a POS install...only 2 of those left to do, I think. The rest of the week he has been doing drive thru timer installations. He didn't get home Tuesday morning until nearly 7:30 (lots of problems with the POS install). He thought he'd be home by about 3:00 or 4:00 on Wednesday morning, but instead didn't get home until about 5:15. Thursday morning it was 4:00 am. Today he actually got home by 1:45 am, which was a very welcome surprise (for both him and me). He actually thought he was going to be gone all night. He was scheduled to do a drive thru timer installation at one restaurant last night and a different one tonight. Then because of the rain, they had to change plans because the rain was going to interfere with being able to do everything. So they decided to do the part that could be done in the rain at both of those restaurants last night and do the other part at both restaurants tonight. (Neither of these restaurants is in Frederick...both over an hour away, and not near each other either!) As it turned out, they were able to do everything at the first restaurant after all and it was actually easier than normal so they finished at the first restaurant by shortly after midnight. At that point, they decided to just wait and do the second restaurant tonight as originally planned. Frank has definitely done work during the day every day too although he hasn't had to work all day. Most days, though, he only got 3 or 4 hours of sleep before waking up again and getting sucked into doing some work so he's been exhausted, of course, and I've been a bit of a mess worrying about his health and / or that he'll get in a car wreck since he's so tired. Today, however, he slept from 2:00 am until nearly 9:00 am, so that was wonderful and I'm feeling a lot less stressed at the moment. It's a good thing he got some rest too, since today has been kind of crazy. Someone got in a wreck this morning near one of the restaurants and took out a utility box which knocked out power, internet access, etc. for not only that restaurant but also one of his clients for his business. So he's been a little busy taking care of those things. (The restaurant that lost power also had a gas leak earlier this week...the night Frank was there working, as a matter of fact {although it had nothing to do with him} which forced them to be closed the next day until the leak was fixed so it hasn't been their best week!)
Okay, so that's been Frank's week. He and I did manage to go vote today...we decided to take advantage of early voting. So did a lot of other people, apparently, because there was a huge line that took about 45 minutes to get through. The voting location was the high school near us and the voting was in the gym which has an outside door so the line was outside...and stretched all the way around 3 sides of the gym and down a very long sidewalk. I was really, really glad I thought to put on a coat for that trip! It's good to see that so many people are taking the time to vote, though. Here we are at the end of the line (the white building to the far left of the photo is the back of the building we were waiting to get into; the door was on the opposite side, in the front. You can't really see in the photo, but there are people lined up all along the back of the building.)
Of course, the line is a lot longer than it would be normally since people were standing 6 feet apart. Still, it was a pretty decent line! Luckily we got home just in the nick of time to log Seth back onto his computer for his two afternoon classes. (He finished all his other work earlier, which is why we decided to go vote at that point, since he didn't need to be online.)
Seth had an online Deacon's activity on Tuesday evening...they did a scavenger hunt. Each person had to bring four common items that everyone would be likely to have in their home. They took turns holding up an object and everyone else would race to find that object in their own house and bring it back to hold up...whoever got there first "won". (I guess they actually didn't keep score.) Seth seemed to have a lot of fun and I think the smaller size of our house was a definite advantage. The first item he had to find was a roll of toilet paper and the half bath was literally a few feet away from where he was sitting on the living room couch! (The three objects Seth picked were a Lego mini figure, a salt shaker, and a pair of socks.) Anyway, I thought it was a fun idea. Seth also had an online presidency meeting on Thursday so they could plan the next month of activities. He had to do that by phone, though, because Frank was already gone to work and I had book chat last night so neither of us were home. Seth met with his counselor on Wednesday, but that is the last visit for a while. Things are going pretty well right now (his counselor thinks so, too) so we decided to take a break for a while. Other than that, Seth has just kept busy with school. A couple of days, like today, he finished his work early.
I feel like I didn't get a ton accomplished this week but I did get some things done...I guess they just took longer than I anticipated. I'm still working on reading Smoky the Cowhorse. It's not super long, but it's also not super engaging so I usually only read one chapter a day. I also read a little bit more of one of the ADHD books, although not much. There's some good stuff in there, though. After uploading photos to our Costco account for days on end, I finally finished that project. I haven't made much headway with digitizing the movies but I got a small start on it. I also started working on crocheting an afghan but ran into problems and basically had to start over so I haven't made much progress on that yet either. Hopefully I will make more progress this coming week. On Saturday I pulled out a pattern and some fabric for a skirt that I purchased literally 5 years ago (yes, I have many unfinished projects!) so I can finally make it (hopefully). The fabric is plaid, so it has to be "matched" at the seams and I haven't done anything like that since I was in college so I couldn't remember how to do it. I did some reading in a few sewing technique books I have and watched a few YouTube videos and also called Mom and talked to her about it for a while. I did some preliminary work on the pattern pieces that day, but it was getting late by then and I was tired so I didn't start cutting pieces out. Unfortunately, I haven't got back to it yet! (Hopefully tomorrow I will.) I stayed up quite late that night watching the first half of the BYU football game (the first half ended around midnight). I would have liked to watch the whole thing but I didn't want to be exhausted for Sunday, especially since we actually got to go to church.
At church the 1st Counselor asked if he could talk to me for a few minutes after the meeting but then afterwards he said he was mistaken and the bishop actually wanted to talk to me instead. The bishop didn't call me until Sunday evening which sort of left me wondering for a while, although I figured it must be a calling change. And I was right...I'm going to get released this Sunday from both of my callings (ward music chair and Primary activities leader) and I'm going to be sustained as an advisor in YW for the middle class (what used to be Mia Maids). I am kind of sad to leave my Primary activities calling...a calling I've literally wanted for years and finally got, then only got to do it for 4 months before everything shut down! But I am excited to work with the YW and the YW counselor I'll be working with is one of my best friends (she was one of my counselors back when I was Primary president) so I am really, really happy about that! The bishop told me when he talked to me that he had been planning on me being the ward music chair "forever" but he finally gave in and changed his mind! He said my name comes up often for callings (yikes!) and he always said "no, she's not available" because he wanted me to continue being the music chair. Kind of makes me wonder what I got out of! 😉 Anyway, I'm glad that I ended up with this calling and I have actually been feeling lately like it was time for a change so it all feels right, even though I will miss both callings. I got to talk to my friend (the YW counselor) for a while on Wednesday and she filled me in a bit on the girls and what my responsibilities will be, and she's super excited to work with me too. I guess the bishop told her "no" the first time she asked, too! On Sunday, besides church, we had online RS and quorum meetings and I really enjoyed the RS lesson, where we discussed Sister Eubank's most recent talk.
For book chat last night we discussed The Odyssey and now we are reading a book called Song for a Whale. I don't actually have a copy of it yet, though...waiting to get one from the library. I always really enjoy book chat.
I watched several more Education Week presentations this week, although I'm not remembering what a lot of them were now. I watched one on eliminating negativity, another one about dreams & revelation (pretty sure I've never had a revelatory dream...except possibly once or twice...most of my dreams are complete gibberish!!), and at least one other which was about linking people together on a family tree. That one was excellent and I think I need to watch it again. I've probably forgotten a few others that I watched.
A few weeks ago we got a small indoor grill thing and I tried it out this week by making steak and asparagus one night. It was yummy:
I think I'll be using this grill a lot. We cook a lot of meat (low carbs) and this grill is nice because you can program how you want your meat done (medium well, medium rare, etc.) and you put a thermometer in one of the pieces of meat and it lets you know when it's done. We have a tendency to overcook meat (because Frank wants his meat well done and is very leery of pink meat) but this meat was perfect (and Frank even let me do "medium well" instead of "well"). I also like that it closes while cooking so all the grease is trapped in there. It has it's own splash plate that I can remove and easily wash every time we use it and it also has a pan below the grate that collects all the grease / juices so the meat isn't greasy and the kitchen stays cleaner too.
One more thing I almost forgot about...on Monday Frank and I had a tele-meeting with a financial planner. We talked to one of the planners at the financial planning company that Frank used to work for, FSA. We were able to ask lots of questions and figure out some things we want to do to plan for retirement as well as the best way to invest some savings that we have. It was really helpful.
That is all of our news from these parts. I will finish with a few photos of our pretty backyard view:
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