Welcome to Thanksgiving Week!

Yes, starting this past weekend, it's been all about Thanksgiving.  That means baking pies, apple crumb, graham cracker crusts for the mousse pie, rolls for dinner, and shopping, shopping, shopping.   We also try to take time to articulate things we're thankful for.

We also started our Christmas shopping over the weekend, and had another fight with the Leaf-people who live in our trees.   After a three-hour wrestling match, we believe we've finally gotten them all relocated.  DING!  Thankful: leaves -- done.

We also had a Strange and Malodorous Smell come to live with us.  It was a cross between rotting citrus and dead mouse.  Yeah, that good.   It's been driving us nuts for days, because it's in the kitchen, and we COOK there, and nothing we cook smells quite THAT bad.  We took everything off the counters and washed them down with bleach.  Didn't help.  We took cleanser to the stainless-steel sink and flushed the drain with boiling hot water.   Nope, didn't help.  We were THIS close to taking apart the sink drain to see what died in there, when we noticed one of our garden-window-flower pots in bloom.  It's quite lovely.  Paperwhite.  It's also the source of the stink.  DING! Thankful: House doesn't smell like a grapefruit/dead rodent smoothie anymore.  (EW!)

Mental note -- paperwhites are OUTSIDE toys.  Holy crap.

Thank God we got that figured out before Thursday.  My parents come for dinner, which means making sure the house is neat (it's always clean, but not always neat if you know what I mean).  Not that my Mom is Marie Barone or anything, but still.  So, I'll be trying to straighten things up in between ferrying Hathlet to doctor appointments, hockey practice, and helping him study for two exams he's having in the first week of December.  DING! Thankful: exams are in science and math -- Hathlet's two best subjects.

This coming weekend will start the annual decking of the halls, as it were, with roughly 100 feet of icicle lights to hang on the house.  We bought new LED icicle lights, so DING! Thankful -- the festooning of the house will NOT be preceded by four hours of "one light goes out they all go out" as we try to get the traditional icicle lights done.

This ladder-and-lighting extravaganza will be followed by inflatable snowmen, Santas, trains, and a 10-foot carousel.  And that's just outside.

We've got a table to set, a hutch to bedeck, roping to hang, and at least three different Lemax village scenes to set up.

Not to mention the tree.  This year we have a train to rig up that will chug around the tree about half way up.  Can't wait for THAT experience.

Knowing Hathlet, he won't be happy until every last little thing is done.

I'm also starting a job search, as my current position is going away, and I am apparently not qualified for any of the four NEW positions they are creating from my current job.  I don't quite understand it, and quite frankly pisses me the frak off, but hey, this is the season of giving thanks, right?  So I'm DING! Thankful --  I've had such a long run here, and that I have a friend in HR here in my company willing to help me out.

So with all of this going on, needless to day, I missed a bunch of Jovi items that were published over the last buncha days, and will try to get it all caught up this week :)

I know that many of you have sent me email looking for and/or imparting information -- you're the biggest DING :) I'm thankful for all of you out there in Joviland who help make this site what it is.

Happy  Monday!

~ Hath