Oh my. Christmas. It's in the stores bigtime now, too! The Daughter is miserable because there's no Halloween. That was our "big" holiday in the States - she would decorate the house up to an unbelievable extent. We used to have a lot of the foreign residents in our housing complex come by to take pictures of their children trick-or-treating at our place. The Chinese seemed to particularly love it. (-sigh - No trick-or-treating here. But we do have some pumpkins and things out around the house.) But all the Christmas hype (and music) before Halloween and then no Thanksgiving at all.... wah!
The order of the universe is out of kilter! But good luck ignoring the Christmas Music. It's like earworms.
Friday Five -
1) No more job interview on Halloween. Which is ok, really. I'm not sure I wanted to work full-time. That is especially evident when I wake up early in the morning and shuffle out to get a cup of tea in the kitchen, and see the fallen leaves blowing by and people bundled up waiting for the bus. Being inside is very appealing on cold mornings. There have been predictions of a particularly harsh winter this year. A good time to be in the house, really, if it's an accurate picture. Not shuffling out eary to go to a dismal desk job.
2) All the paperwork is sent to Ireland re: the Daughter's citizenship ap. Not one of the "overnight" letters made it to us or to anywhere we sent it overnight. (Not sure about the last one, to Ireland, yet. It did leave the country yesterday and is
supposed to be delivered today.) ParcelForce refunded the charges on item #1, still waiting on item #2, and trying to collect from FedEx on item #3 is probably impossible. So anyway, now we wait to see if it was worth all that insane running around at the last minute. I do hope they'll let us know, one way or the other, before Christmas. But I doubt it will happen.
3) My driving instructor can't seem to get my home phone to work. We are receiving calls from others, and both of our mobile phones get through, but he gets a message that it's not a valid number. I sent him the Daughter's number (my phone is only on when we travel or in emergencies) and got a response he'd be in touch. Which he hasn't been. I had to cancel my lesson this week waiting for the FedEx from the USA, anyway. It's good I was home, because the FedEx came right about the same time as I would have been out terrorizing the other motorists on the road. However, I'm having heck getting in touch with D.I. again, and wonder if he really doesn't want me as a client? I know I've damned near given him heart failure a couple of times now.
4) Mad cow disease. So there's a case of BSE up in Aberdeenshire. That's not good. I've been looking at all my jars of canned beef stew ... but I'm thinking they're ok. This will not be good for beef exports from the UK though. Assuming they are not screwed up badly by Brexit anyway. It just keeps layering on, misfortune for this country. (As awful as BSE is, at least it is not of the country's own making.)
5) We are going to bundle up in a few and take a nice walk to our favorite tea shop. They have a lovely Yogi Chai and it's a nice place to just sit, relax, and chat. The Daughter has a new job (part time) to start in about two weeks and is very excited about things going on with the Uni, and so I'm sure she'll want to talk about it all. It will be a nice afternoon. Maybe doing a little window-shopping on the way home. I think I'll take my camera, in case we walk through the Botanic Gardens. The trees there are just a riot of color, now.
