Two Thousand Six – November

11/01 A hair cut that almost wasn’t.  I guess I need to quit rolling my eyes when folks tell me how unique I am, if for no other reason than my name.

11/02 Much to my delight, it was 70° in my kitchen at 5:00 am!  A Brownie-in-the-Night installed newfangled thermostats.  Sweet!

11/03 Avery still had a cold, so it wasn’t such a bad thing that we had to stay home and tend to the Security System and Cable.

11/04 Swamp Hike:  97 minutes, 5.32 miles, 3.3 mph, HR=111.  I managed to crash and burn with Hanna.  I’ve done some damage to my left knee, time will tell just how much.  Neil Simon’s “Lost In Yonkers” at the Guthrie.

11/05 UTI.  The old knee is giving me a good example of why mobility (or lack of) should be a consideration in choosing a new home.  I don’t realize how many times I’m up and down the stairs until it becomes difficult.

11/06 Caribou Coffee #15.  Kudos to those who noticed it’s a day early.  This evening finds me in Rochester as my annual physical at the Mayo Clinic begins bright and early tomorrow morning. 

11/07 I got my flu shot, did you?

11/08 The instructions say not to drive for 24 hours.  I don’t understand why, because I feel fine.  I’m outta here.  Seems my Beloved Brownie put up some shelves and organized my garage, even washed the floor!

11/09 Fun to show up at the office unexpected.  My poor over full calendar!  I guess that beats an empty one, right?  Almost every afternoon the Dogs get all excited when they mistake the neighbor’s white Escalade for Mr.B’s white van.  One would think they would figure it out eventually.  I can go up and down the stairs with alternating feet again!

11/10 Avery still isn’t quite over her cold, so we stayed home and took it easy.  We went to Norwood/Young America for a pork chop dinner in celebration of the Carver County Attorney’s reelection.  Avery enjoyed herself.  I met someone who lives in my Grandmother’s old house.

11/11 Coco:  103 minutes, 6.21 miles, 3.6 mph, HR=119.

11/12 94 minutes, 10.75 miles, 6.86 mph, HR=107 and “Bad Santa” on the Wave this morning.  Annual meeting of the Carver County Historical Society.  The familiarity of names and places is interesting and comfortingly familiar somehow.  Dogs stealing food off the counter and/or island has always been a problem around here.  It seems to be getting worse of late.  This morning when they ate a whole Tupperware container full of frozen home made blueberry waffles was the last straw!  I dug out the Invisible Fence device that’s designed to be used indoors to keep your pet away from certain areas.  I planted it right in the middle of my kitchen island.  The dogs are now terrified to go in the kitchen.  This would be a good thing, except the door I want them to go in and out of is in the kitchen.

11/13 When Mr.B left last night, he stuck his head back in the door and hollered; “It’s snowing!” I decided to not look and leave it for a surprise this morning, but I can’t say I’m disappointed to find there was none.  Now that it’s falling off, I wish I had taken a picture of the scab on my left knee.  The snow plow man put up his markers today.  Tonight Mr.B fixed it so that Invisible Fence device is hidden inside the back of one of my island drawers.  This has helped a lot in narrowing the field and should allow the dogs to get in and out safely.  Good bye, Netflix.  I’ve got two whole seasons of “Lost” sitting in iTunes that should get me through most of this winter’s indoor exercising.

11/14 Hanna put her front feet up on the kitchen island this morning.  How quickly she forgets.  Since she didn’t get “zapped”, I turned up the power a bit.  Coco is still not venturing into the kitchen at all.  Caribou Coffee #16.

11/15 Coffee with the Raconteur.  Dinner with Gabriel.

11/16 For some reason, I have no internet service at home.

11/17 Avery and I went to “Mary Poppins” at Macy’s.  Much more crowded than last year, no way were we going to get in that line to see Santa.  We grabbed a pizza and had dinner with Mom and Dad.

11/18 Avery spent the night.  I made blueberry pancakes for breakfast and later this afternoon when I was cooking the last of the batter to freeze pancakes for the toaster, both dogs got “zapped” in their unsuccessful attempt to steal them off the cooling rack on the kitchen island.  Ha!

11/19 Hanna:  99 minutes, 6.09 miles, 3.7 mph, HR=118.

11/20 The Minnesota History Center for the opening of their “Baseball As America” exhibit.  We also took the opportunity to look around a bit.  I will have to return with Avery.

11/21 Lunch with the Accountant.  Caribou Coffee#17.  A game of checkers.

11/22 Today finds me profoundly grateful for the unconditional love of my family.  Few are as lucky as I am.

11/23 Happy 6th Birthday, Hanna!  Maxwell Loop:  102 minutes, 6.23 miles, 3.7 mph, HR=105.  Dinner at G’ma Lucy’s apartment party room.

11/24 I tried to get a picture of Avery wearing a dress that was mine, but she really wasn’t in the mood to have her picture taken.  The dress just barely fit, so it’s unlikely I’ll get another try at it.

11/25 Coco:  92 minutes, 5.69 miles, 3.7 mph, HR=94.  Christmas lights!!!

11/26 Hanna:  87 minutes, 4.99 miles, 3.4 mph, HR=104.  A banana falling out every time I open my freezer made it time to make the banana chocolate chip bread.  I ended up with four big and three small loaves!  In an effort to be rid of the last of the sherry, I also made beef stroganoff.

11/27 Rent-A-Geek day.

11/28 I made serious progress with my Christmas shopping today.  All from the comfort of my office.  Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing?  Caribou Coffee #18.  Click here and save the site in your “favorites”.

11/29 Yikes.  Someone is coming to look at my house on Friday afternoon.  All of my old playlists have reappeared in iTunes.  Go figure.

11/30 I’ve deleted a whole bunch of old stuff.  You folks don’t look at it anyway (well, the Raconteur being one exception and I still haven’t decided how I feel about that) and it’s silly for me to pay for it’s storage when I’ve got it backed up locally seven ways from Sunday already.  I’ve also printed the entire journal and will put that in my safe along with the even older one that’s on my bookshelf at home.  Hmmmm, remember those old iTunes playlists I mentioned yesterday?  Gone today.  Replaced by some that were more current, yet not the most current.  When syncing to my network I’ve been saving both files.  Seemed like a good idea until now.  I’ve got disk full errors because the synced music folder is very full, yet I can’t delete anything because I’m not connected to the server.  And when I connect to the server, I’ll be deleting things off the server file which isn’t what I want either.  I’m thinking it would be most efficient to dump iTunes from the laptop and use a stationary machine.  Is there a known issue with iTunes on a Media PC?