December 14, 2011

Another island in the fog

While Monday was clear again, there was no valley fog.  However the fog was back on Tuesday and spent the morning climbing towards us.  It arrived about noon and spent the rest of the day wafting in and out.

I baked cookies as planned on Monday, but not the peppermint swirls I wanted to as I discovered we were out of peppermint extract.  I did find an interesting recipe for chocolate zingers which have both black and red pepper in them.  As you bite into them you can taste the bittersweet chocolate and as you finish, your mouth is left with a zingy tingle.  Very good!

I put the last of the cookie sheets in the oven about 3:15 and got started getting dressed to get firewood and go for our walk.  JB was in the loft trying to get his computer to work.  I had one boot on when I saw two coyotes going up our east ridge.  They were beautiful - about the color of Dinga only lighter and much larger.  Then the dogs spotted them and started barking and scratching at the door.  I told JB, who came down, grabbed the gun and went out as I held the dogs back.  He fired off a few rounds, and managed to kill a tree branch.  I was trying to get my other boot on.  The timer for the cookies rang just as he was going to come in, and then his phone did too, up in the loft.  Somehow he got in without letting the dogs out and answered his phone just before it went to voice mail.  It was the call he was waiting for - Jake, to help him with his computer.  One of those focal points in time that seems to be a magnet for everything to happen at once.

He still cannot get into his computer, so Jake sent me an e-mail with a link to a file to download.  I'll copy it to a cd and Jake will call this evening and walk him through it.  He had changed his domain and then couldn't get back in, and it has all his bead research information which he has not backed up.  Thank goodness for a son who is a genius with computers.  Personally, I don't understand much about them other than what I need to use them.  I have noticed that my moods can affect them though.  (I do not jest!)  Which is why I really enjoy doing many things manually as we do everyday Up Here.

One the the aspects of living Up Here that took me a long time to get used to is the lack of need for window coverings.  I have always liked my privacy and living Down There that meant drapes and/or blinds that I closed as darkness fell each night.  Up Here we have no close neighbors or public roads.  There is no one to look in our windows.  But the first year I had drapes on the living room area, bedroom and bathroom windows, ostensibly to keep out the night chill.  Larry and Elsie, whose house front is two stories of glass, have no curtains at all.  So having finally realized that I am really not concerned with the deer and bears watching us, I took down the drapes and put up some lacy valences that Elsie gave to me.  I do have curtains in the bathroom, although they are still towels, but color coordinated.  When we finish the walls in the bathroom, I have a nice, wildlife printed valence I will put up, and then probably get some top-down, bottom-up shades.  The drapes are now our inside doors to the bedroom, the bathroom and the linen closet.  There are blinds inside the glass on our front doors and we close them at night so the dogs can't see out.  They are also great to keep out the hot summer sun in the morning.

Because we knew the temperature would be down into the single digits last night, I set the alarm for 1:30 a.m. just to be sure one of us got up to re-stock the fire.  That was painful.

Thought for the day: I believe I shall, in some shape or other, always exist; and, with all the inconveniences human life is liable to, I shall not object to a new edition of mine, hoping, however, that the errata of the last may be corrected.   Benjamin Franklin