DIY

Happy Friday things:

• Last night I kept falling asleep before finishing writing.  Yesterday my post was almost 'zzassss ddddd'.  Huh, looks like I forgot to post that... done now.  Anyway, despite how tired I was, I awoke a little after four o'clock this morning.  Instead of trying to go back to sleep, or playing games on my phone, I cleaned the bathroom and mopped the kitchen floor.  Winter salt got cleaned off the floor in time for mud season.  🤣  It was nice to come home to a cleaner place.
• There was a list of things to do today in my brain.  It got lost.  😉  There were a few things I remembered from it though and I worked on those things.  Tomorrow I should start a physical list. 
• Seen on the roof of a construction site in town:

• My afternoon was spent at DIY Craft & Thrift.  There will be a bag sale on Saturday.  Anything (almost) that will fit into a paper bag for $10.  I won't be there for most of it, and helped a little today.  Keziah is hoping for things to fly off the shelves and into people's lives.  Here are some pictures I took:

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Finished listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Tired Thursday

Some happy Thursday things:

• Another work week is over, yay!
• When I got home, I was so tired I took a nap.  Usually I at least eat first. It was a nice nap.
• After dinner and conversation with Keziah, I fell asleep on the couch.  I was in a bad position and it hurt to wake up.  Thankfully,  Nanni was curled up near me.  That helped the hurt go away.

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Continued listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Planning

Happy Wednesday things:

• It was my task after work to bring Gideon to DIY Craft & Thrift.  I stayed and visited with the family for a little while.  The store was super busy.  It is so good to see that. 
• At home I did my best to plan out the first ten days of hiking for Bel and I.  This first bit of time on the Appalachian Trail will be partially supported.  The friend that is taking us to Georgia will be staying close until we come back a week and a half later.  We have to be back in New Hampshire for an SCA event on March 22nd.  That is the event that Keziah and I step down from being the Baron & Baroness of Stonemarche.  Yay!

• My twelve week Leave of Absence from work has been approved. Now it finally is starting to feel real.  I have so much planning to do!
• Sunset!

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Continued listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Ice

Happy things for Tuesday:

• Work was tiring.  I had over 27,000 steps after work and expect to exceed 28,000 before I climb into bed.  At the end of the work day, when I thought no one was around, I put the Black History Month flag earrings (I crocheted them a few days ago) onto the company mascot.  They don't want us to take pictures at work, but I think they look good.  I was spotted by someone, but they promised to not tell.   They thought I was hugging the blow-up mascot.  🤣
• At home I sorted through some socks and relaxed.  I have too many socks and I hope to get rid of some more before I leave.  
• It was warm today.  Well, February warm.  The temperature reached the upper 40's.  I was outside at work the last two hours and it felt wonderful. Things are melting and that makes me happy because there will hopefully be less ice for me to slip on.

The stairs out my door that I didn't shovel after the last storm.  The wind would have blown it all back anyway.  I shoveled other paths.  The stairs were barely visible a few days ago.  

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Continued listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Clouds

Here are some happy Monday things:

• Yesterday I did a little bit of hiking.  Today I am not as sore as I expected.  This is good and makes me happy.
• The dental work I needed is done.  Barring anything unforeseen, I'm good until my cleaning in the fall.
• Things didn't go entirely as planned.  I'm very grateful to Keziah for taking care of something that I was struggling with.  
• I took the time to read the will and other important documents that I filled out around two years ago.  It is one of the things that needs to be completed before I head into the woods.  I'm one step closer.
• Pretty clouds!

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Continued listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Hike in the Woods

It was a good day, here are some happy highlights:

• My friend Stephanie and I met up for a hike in the woods (Kuncanowet Town Forest). We also brought her dog, Kip.  Kip takes a little bit to warm up to new people.  I'm not new, but it has been a while since we've seen each other.  Kip showed us that I was part of the pack (at least for today) by stopping to wait for me when I got behind.  This happened often.  Such a good dog.

Waiting.

• The trail seemed well packed so we didn't use our snowshoes.  Later, that wasn't the case and the snowshoes would have been useful.  Since I wasn't wearing snowshoes, I hiked with my not quite full backpack.  I sank into the snow often.  This was good training though and I haven't done enough of that.
• The weather today was nice for hiking on snow covered trails.  It was above freezing and partly sunny.  I had to unzip my jacket.  The frozen ponds and the white floor of the woods were pretty.

Brook

Pond

Tree part that reminds me of a peahen. 

The bridge that nobody uses (in the winter).

Our path.

• Sunset at home.

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Continued listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Ice

Here are some happy things from today:

• Our driveway has been very icy.  It still is, but I spent some time today chopping away at it.  Now it is less icy.  It was good to get outside for a little while.
• There is a mascot for work that I can't really describe.  We have a large blow-up version that is decorated for Black History Month.  It has tie-down hooks on it close to where ears would be if it had ears.  We keep it inside, so they aren't being used.  I tried to crochet the Black History Month flag.  My plan, should I find the courage, is to place the flags off the tie-down hooks as earrings.  

They aren't very rectangular.

• Before dinner I cleaned off the table and worked on the puzzle.  After dinner I cleaned off the table and the friend that is visiting and I taught Gideon how to play Cribbage.  He caught on quickly.  It was a good game with all of us close until the last hand.  I won.

This is the board at the second to last hand.  Gideon was in the lead, with me Blue, and our friend Red not too far behind.  Red and blue caught up to Green in the next hand.  I pulled ahead in the end.

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Continued listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Snowshoes

Happy lazy Friday things:

• The majority of my morning was spent laying around playing games.  That was what I am generously calling the self-care part of my day.
• Eventually I got up and did some things.  One thing was to try and snowshoe.  I actually went out on the back property.  It has been such a long time since anyone has really been out there that the trails are hard to find.  What is poking out through the snow are thorny brambles.  I wasn't able to make a loop, so I went out a bit and came back.  It took almost an hour to only go about one third of a mile.  Breaking through the snow to make a trail was good exercise.  I loved seeing animal prints in the snow.  Some were probably some type of canine and some were either squirrel or chipmunk.  There are now fresh snowshoe tracks, too.

• In the evening, Keziah and I went to talk with the next Baron and Baroness of Stonemarche.  If all goes well we will be stepping down and they will be stepping up in about a month.  They had some wonderful questions.  I think they will do well.

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Continued listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Skunked

Happy Thursday things:

• Work went well.  I am officially back on the safety committee.  Since I'll be taking a leave of absence, I was going to give others a chance.  Not many others want to be part of the committee.  I think they didn't look hard enough. I'm glad I am part of that again. 
• After work and food I had a wonderful, long nap.  It was weird, but nice, to wake up and feel rested.  I was up just in time to have a late dinner with the family.
• We have another house guest.  They have been here most of the week but I have a weird schedule and didn't see them until today.   We had a fun game of Cribbage in which I was totally skunked.  This is a bit of a payback since I almost skunked them the first two times we played.  We also had some great conversations and I kept them up too late.  
• I didn't take any pictures today.  I took a screenshot of these beautiful dragonfly keys though.  I love seeing how people use their imagination to turn different things into art.

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Continued listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Sound

Happy Wednesday things:

• Work placed me with the task of pick to buffer.  This position is walking back and forth picking up packages from the belt and putting them onto a rack.  Within four hours I reached 10,000 steps. One of the nice things about being in that area is being able to hear the music.  It was nice to be working in that area.
• After the break I was moved to Problem Solve.  This is where I like to be.  For some reason, it became a sound effect day for me.  Either in my head or out loud I made sound effects to go along with what I was doing.  A device went beep, so did I.  I quietly made sounds when opening boxes or taping them shut.  The Senior Station Manager came by to see how we were doing, helped by putting some boxes on the line, and came back pushing a hamper while making sound effects.  It was wonderful.
• I'm still enjoying the changing color light bulbs that I bought a while ago.  I'm starting to figure out how to sync the lights to music.

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Started listening to: Take a Hike! A Long Walk on the Appalachian Trail, by Tim Hewitt.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Warmth

Here are some happy things from today:

• On the way to work I finished listening to Hiking Through.  The author, Paul Stutzman, hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2008.  There are different flavors of how people hike the trail.  Some are purists, like in this book.  His journey took him on every path of the trail with his pack, no detours.  When he went to town he would return to the same spot after his break.  Others flip-flop which is starting one place and jumping to another, back and forth.  There are other ways too.  As with my job, I hope I will put safety first.  It was a good book, I'm glad I finally finished it.
• At work I am thankful that most of my day was spent in Problem Solve.  I worked almost twelve hours.  It was really good to come home.
• Going through boxes over the weekend, one of the things I found was a corn heat pack that my mom made years ago.  It has been cold and I was chilly, that corn pack felt so good!

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Finished listening to: Hiking Through, by Paul Stutzman.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Snow Drifts

Some happy things from this blustery day:

• On Mondays I try to get up early so I can get to sleep early.  Often, I stay in bed too long and fall asleep.  This is counterproductive.  I was able to get myself up and going at a good time this morning.  When I went next door for breakfast, Gideon was still home.  School had a two hour delay.  It was nice to have breakfast with Zed and Gideon.
• We put three of the four cars into a parking garage this weekend because of all the snow.  This seemed to work out well.  There were a lot of trips for us to get the cars today because Zed had to work.  Had it been a day that the store was open, they would have stayed in town.  Three drivers and four cars (we are car sitting) meant three trips to get the cars.  It also meant only one car to clean.  The wind was blowing so much today that the path I took to get to the driveway was filled back in when I returned maybe 25 minutes later.

Snow bank in the driveway. 

• Sitting on the couch I went through another of my boxes full of stuff.  I ended up with a mostly empty box after sorting things out. That is two mostly empty boxes in two days.  Things got thrown away, recycled, or put in another box to sort again later.  I think my next step should be to have empty boxes to sort things into so I won't have to do it again.  The amount of things I have is getting smaller in baby steps.  Yay!

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Continued listening to: Hiking Through, by Paul Stutzman.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Snow Day

Here are some happy things from today:

• Childish?  Perhaps.  When I changed my sheets this morning I did shoulder rolls (or my interpretation of them?) going from one side of the bed to the other.  It helped make the task more fun and loosened me up a little before shoveling. 

The day kind of went snow, ice, rain, ice, snow.
It was a good day to stay inside and be dry.

• When I moved from the main house to the mother-in-law apartment in the back I left a bunch of stuff behind.  I began the task of going through some of that today.  One of the things that I found were papers for a class I did fifteen years ago to train people to work the gate at our Birka SCA event.  We have waivers that get signed and Keziah made up some names to show people how it is done.  Since we are a medieval group she chose some Tudor names.  The best part is that she even tried to make the signature look like Henry the VIII.

• My Google account has been getting full.  I took some time to back up the photos that I hadn’t already backed up from last year.  One of the things I like to do when I hike up a mountain is take a picture with my hand and that of anyone with me around a geomarker.  I am happy to say that there are a good number of those pictures from last year.  I wonder how many geomarkers I will find during my long hike this year.  I wonder if I will get tired of taking pictures of them.  I sure hope not.  
• Zed went outside for a little bit to clear off his car.  He came in frosted with snow.  I am again thankful for people who plow.

Look at that curl!

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Continued listening to: Hiking Through, by Paul Stutzman.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

More Snow on the Way

Here are some happy things from today:

• Yesterday I mostly filled up a container with my dress clothes.  Today I added makeup and a few other dressy things to that container.  I probably should get rid of the makeup.  It is something I seldom use.  I tried some of the lipstick and was reminded how I don't like the feel of it.  It is packed up now, and that is good.  

My children decorated this box for me over twenty years ago.

• In an attempt at training, I walked up and down the stairs for about fifteen minutes with my backpack on.  The backpack isn't full, but it isn't empty either.  I hope to make this a routine.  
• It started snowing a little before sunset here.  I heard 4-8 inches of snow when I watched the weather.  The person that plows for us suggested over a foot was expected.  The reason this is sort of important is that I wanted to leave my car in the driveway, kind of out of the way when he plowed, and shovel just my car out.  The plow guy wants the space to put the snow and turn around.  So instead we moved all but one of the cars to a parking garage in the city.  We will only have one car to clean off and move tomorrow.  That makes me happy.

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Continued listening to: Hiking Through, by Paul Stutzman.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yesterday I made a list of things to do. Today I got some of them done. Here are the happy things I accomplished and just things that made me happy today:

• One of the things I need to do before I leave is to clear out my room.  To that end, I specifically pulled out dress clothes from my closet and drawers and packed them up. I have a few more things that I might put in there, but I think I got the clothes. I'll label it so if I need nice clothes, they will be easy to find.

• Choosing a bear-proof container wasn't as easy as I'd hoped. I only picked the one I did on Monday after being able to open it. It took two of us and an old credit card in the store to get it open. Today, it took a bit of work, as well as a nitrile glove and that card, for me to get it open, by myself. I'm thrilled that I was able to do that! 

Opened!

About half full, but it could be packed tighter.

This is what I put in there.

• In the afternoon I met my friend, Amy, at the mall for a walk. Since the last storm, untreated areas are most likely very icy. I know our driveway is. We opted to walk inside instead of outside. We haven't seen each other in a while and it was nice to catch up.
• Gideon and I started to play a game of Scrabble a week or so ago. We finished it tonight. Gideon, my thirteen year old grandson, beat me. I'm so proud.  

The final board.

Gideon won!!

• Keziah brought me a rose for Valentine's Day. It is so pretty and so thoughtful of her to do.

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Continued listening to: Hiking Through, by Paul Stutzman.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Food

Happy Galentine/Palentine's Day!

• Happiness is the end of my work week. Due to the upcoming snow storms and lack of available shifts, I think I can safely say that I am not working for the next few days.
• A few weeks ago work changed my direct manager. They seem to do that randomly. Today I told my new one about my upcoming plans. Apparently as a kid his parents owned a bed & breakfast in Vermont that would allow through hikers to tent in the yard. Anyhow, I have officially requested vacation time in March. I still have to request a personal leave of absence. There are some questions I have before I settle on the final date for that.
• The initial test of the new cookware went well. The pot comfortably holds two cups that I put on the stove and boiled. I then added a packet of instant mashed potatoes with cheese. Stirring wasn’t quite as easy as I hoped, but it got done. There was still enough room to add an eight ounce can of green beans. I don’t expect to bring canned veggies on the trail, but it was a nice addition to today’s lunch. Once I have a fuel canister I can test the stove with the cookware.

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Continued listening to: Hiking Through, by Paul Stutzman.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!

Art

Here are some happy things from today:

• Stepping out into the cold winter air I was greeted by a glowing mostly full moon.  It was quite light, for the middle of the night.  The moon shining onto all the snow was lovely.  February's full moon is called a Snow Moon.  This seems appropriate since we are supposed to get snow tonight when the moon is actually full.
• At home I took some time with the puzzle I started last week.  Many of the shapes are similar so it is going to take some time.  The border seems to be done, Yay!  It is so relaxing for me to just go through the pieces. 

• When Gideon came home from school I asked him to tell me something about his day at school.  He chose Art Class and got excited about a project they are working on.  He is to research a famous artist.  He chose Xu Bing.  Gideon seems to really like his piece of art called “Book from the Sky.”  I'm glad I asked the question because I learned something new.

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Continued listening to: Hiking Through, by Paul Stutzman.

Thank you for being here and being part of my daily happy things. Stay safe!