Six Nights Down, Eighteen to Go; and Other Thoughts

So far I've recorded four Christmas stories for Sisterfilms' Advent story discs. However, one of them is long and stretches over three nights. With some difficulty I've searched through about 5,000 possible songs to go with them and found some that were appropriate. Now I just have to write and record the introductions for each and then I'll have the first disc or two ready to mail along with the Advent box. Whew!

On Sunday, while eating something fairly innocuous, I seem to have cracked or broken a tooth. It hurts some, but not horribly, so I agreed to wait till a week from Friday to see a dentist about it. Still, this situation reminds me of something my college roommate used to say: "Your teeth should fall out the day before Thanksgiving!" (She didn't say it to me, of course. Well, not often, anyway.)

I'll be bringing homemade cranberry sauce, the sweet potatoes, and a pumpkin pie to Thanksgiving dinner. In Maine, Thanksgiving is all about the pie (at least in my family). So I believe there will also be apple pie, coconut cream pie, chocolate pie and butterscotch pie available. My aunt was baking a pecan pie for the Fire Department's pie sale; I wonder if that means I should make one of those too? Later this week I'm going to try a pumpkin gingerbread trifle recipe that was in the very last issue of Gourmet magazine. I got vegan gelatin substitute so that I can make the pumpkin mousse edible by my vegetarian relatives; it looks as though it takes more than a teaspoonful of brains to use that stuff.

Reading hasn't been going awfully fast unless I can count the things I've been reading aloud. I'm dipping into a romance novel (at least it's supposed to turn into one eventually) that I picked up at the church book fair. I did read a good bit of the Sunday Times and Portland Sunday Telegram and spent time on the phone with each of my daughters. And so to bed.

Deep Thoughts, or maybe not so deep

1. Maine has a relatively low price for vanity license plates, so it seems a lot more people have them here. Just now walking Rusty we heard barking coming from a car. I knew what kind of dog was barking before we got abreast of the car, because the license plate said LAB NOIR.
2. That reminds me to give you a link to a hilarious YouTube video by one of my favorite humorous mystery writers, Jeff Cohen. On the DorothyL list, we're always talking about the different subgenres of mysteries -- Jeff lays it all out for you here.
3. We just came back from a benefit supper for my 2nd cousin's husband, who was in a car crash about 3 weeks ago. They are among the many, many un- and underinsured as far as health insurance (and probably carried the minimum legal car insurance too, to save money). I wish we didn't have to have this kind of thing, but at least it was heartening to see the large number of people who attended, worked on the supper, donated raffle prizes and bought raffle tickets. This is the third such supper we've attended since we've been here -- the others were for people we knew slightly. Long lines out the door are common at these events. Everyone knows it could be them or their loved ones another time.
4. Kind of a grey, gloomy day, but then again it's 38 degrees out at 7:30 pm, I was able to walk Rusty wearing just a fleece jacket over my Norwegian sweater, and no hat, mittens, or special footgear was needed. When I hear about blizzards in Colorado, the skies opening up in Florida and Georgia, and possible flooding in Fargo, I can't complain at all about our weather here today.
5. Now it's time to go watch the remaining two episodes of Planet Earth that are on the disc, so I can review it on my other blog. I hope there is less "Nature red in tooth and claw" on these two than on the first one.
   

Random Thoughts and Events

• Rusty is in big, big trouble. This morning he broke a window! He has a bad habit of scrabbling at the windows when he sees a squirrel or cat outside, but up till now this has only resulted in more frequent window cleaning. But, this morning a neighborhood tabby was on our garage roof, which is just under our bedroom window. Rusty was standing on the bed, barking at the cat, and reaching over to attempt to get it through the window. Then I heard the tell-tale sound of breaking glass. Bad dog! Onkel Hankie Pants reports that the window (like the rest of the house) is both new enough and old enough to cause problems in replacing the glass; it won't be easy to get the window out without wrecking it, so we will be looking for someone who can come over and replace the glass in situ. Otherwise I guess it will be cardboard and a 3M plastic shrinkwrap for us.
• I never cease to be amazed by the wonderful entertainment available on the Internet. (And I'm not talking about the political news, although some of it is pretty entertaining). Lately I've been enjoying listening to Neil Gaiman read his new young people's book, The Graveyard Book.  If you go to www.mousecircus.com , you can hear it too -- in its entirety, one chapter at a time.  I highly recommend it to young persons and older ones alike. Gaiman has a great sense of humor as well as a genius for spookiness.  Hallowe'en fun!
• Mystery readers everywhere are saddened to learn that Tony Hillerman, author of the Leaphorn and Chee mysteries set in Navaho country, has died at age 83. I recently re-read Dance Hall of the Dead, which won him the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and enjoyed it as much or more than the first time.
• We had a bean supper at church on Saturday, and I signed up to bring potato salad. We were out of eggs, and I didn't want to experiment, so mine was the plainest potato salad imaginable -- the basic recipe from Joy of Cooking except that I omitted the parsley, used cider vinegar instead of red wine vinegar (another thing we're out of), and sprinkled some paprika on top.  I feared we'd be bringing home leftovers and eating potato salad for a week. But when we finished our supper, my bowl was already empty and washed! Sometimes plain is good.  
• Casting my mind back, back, back, to high school U.S. History class, I believe that initiative, referendum and recall had something to do with the Progressive movement. How odd, then, that Minnesota doesn't have those options, and Maine does. Hence, we have been faced with two or three ballot questions each time we've voted here. Actually, there's usually at least one that's a state bond issue -- this time it has to do with clean water. But we also have a referendum and an initiative. The referendum has to do with a tax the Legislature passed to fund Dirigo Health(Maine's baby step toward universal health care). It's on soda pop, beer, wine, vitamin waters and juice drinks, bottled iced tea and no doubt, bottled Frappuccinos.  So, there is a heavily funded campaign against it called Fed Up with Taxes! bankrolled by the beverage industry. I was already leaning toward voting No (a No vote lets the law stand as it is), but what pushed me over the edge was the sight of the Coors beer truck with a big "Fed Up with Taxes! Yes on 1!" sticker on it. Somehow I doubt that Coors has my best interests at heart. For the amount of pop we drink in a year, an additional 11 cents for a two-liter bottle isn't going to break us.
• The initiative is for a casino in Oxford County, to the west of us in a part of Maine where the promise of jobs will get people to vote for just about anything. I'm not a big fan of gambling (I can waste money just fine without it, thanks), but if it's going to be here, I'd rather see the Indian tribes running it. Instead, although the initiative started with a young local businessman, the proposed casino development would now be run from Las Vegas. Even its proponents admit that the proposal as written is deeply flawed, and one of its flaws is that it enjoins no further casinos be built in the state for 10 years.  It's going to be No on 2 as well.
• I feel for Cordeliaknits and other Californians. They have 12 Propositions to vote on! Two of them, the referendum on same-sex marriage and the initiative against inhumane practices of factory farming (profiled in this week's New York Times Magazine) have received a lot of publicity, the other 10, not so much. 
• We've had one political call today (in support of Question 1, noted above, and I'd be surprised if the call wasn't made from out-of-state) and one which asked for me by name and encouraged me to vote, without mentioning any candidate, question or party.
• We've had more political surveys taken from us over the phone this year than in any year that I can remember. Is it because we live in a less-populated state now, or because we still cling to our landline? And we're not even considered a swing state, although the McCain-Palin campaign has made a bit of a push in northern Maine since we don't have a winner-take-all electoral vote and they could possibly pick up one vote there.

Scattered Sunday

I'm trying to blog every day, but today has been a rather scattered day with no clear focus.

• I wore my prayer shawl to church. It was made for me when OHP went to Baghdad for a few months back in 2004. He insisted then, and still does, that he was in no danger, and indeed was in the then-fairly-safe Green Zone nearly every moment. Still, the shawl was a comfort. It was made by a dear lady at Up the Hill UMC where I worked then -- she was one of those pillars of the church who did everything from outside painting to quilting to singing in the choir. Not long afterward she became a shawl recipient herself when she developed an aggressive brain tumor, and we lost her about the time we moved to Maine. So this shawl has a lot of memories attached.
• Senior Pastor (who will be gone in 2 weeks, not by his choice) wore a lovely spangly white stole today and preached a good clear sermon on baptism with no warm-up jokes.
• Brother #1 is improving, but now it looks likely he will remain in Big Hospital for a couple more days. Maybe just as well as we are expecting another big snow and windstorm tomorrow.
• Local genealogical society met this afternoon and we had a rousing discussion about various uses of the computer for genealogy purposes. There was also an article on genealogy in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine, which pointed me to a 2001 article in the New Yorker, which I can read since I have the complete New Yorker (up through April 2007 now) on DVD. We also had several visitors, which was nice.
• Both Cordeliaknits and Sisterknits were much involved in worship at their respective churches today -- Cordeliaknits preached at Professors at Prayer UCC and Sisterknits was the liturgist at our old church in City of Lakes. Evidently both efforts went very well. I'm very happy at the good reports I'm hearing of the new minister at our old church, and pleased at the good sense of the search committee in choosing a young minister (under 30 I think).
• Four boxes of Christmas ornaments are photographed, the lights are off the tree, and it only needs a few moments of OHP and me together to get the tree out to the curb, where we hope the town will pick it up. (Otherwise he'll have to take it back whence it came, our woods, or perhaps to the town landfill set aside for leaves, brush etc.)
• And that's all I can think of at the moment.