Friday Five!

Yep, good idea on the C19 vaccination. The biochemists & microbiologists (and infectious disease specialists) I know say it's like an iceberg. You may seem to have only a mild case on the surface, but the virus can be wreaking havoc internally. And the more times you have it, both the more damage and the more likelihood of long covid.  If I had to pay for the jab I would have, but I couldn't really justify the cost of the jab (a few hundred) with the cost of getting a prescription (another few hundred)since it would only be really protective for a few months, so if the governor had not signed her proclamation I would simply have gone back to "Year 1" covid precautions - mask and avoid people and being in public places. Which, as an old retired lady, I have the luxury of doing. If I did not want to go out of the house, it would be possible for me to never leave it and still do nicely. (Albeit going stir crazy.) I don't go out a whole lot (other than for walks and to the library & allotment), but it's nice to have that option.

I saw the news broadcasts about the storm. Yoiks! That looked bad. Was watching the news out of Glasgow and it looked like (as tends to happen there) buildings had been tumbled and/or partially dismantled and a lot of trees down with power outages.  Hope all was well there where you are and the gardens at the Priory are not too chewed up.  Hope your new volunteer comes back, too!

Thanks.  I went down today to help open up and do an inspection and all seems to have survived very well. Even the ancient trees in the woodland gardens were like “pfft.. what’s the fuss about?”  Lots of twigs and stuff down but nothing big, and no masonry down either.

Our friends from Ayr (close to Glasgow) are due to arrive within the hour so we will get a first hand account of what they experienced. It certainly doesn’t sound like they have had any issues on the drive down. (It is a 4 hour drive without stops)

Good to hear all is well. I hope your friends made it in without incident.

Good to hear all is well. I hope your friends made it in without incident.

Thanks, they made it here just fine. No delays at all.

We went for a walk around town, had a beer at a local brew house then back home. The weather looks to be lovely for the next few days.

Barnard Castle and Bowes Museum today is the plan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard_Castle

1) We had our first really significant hard freeze last night. Had gone to the allotment on Wednesday and got the last of the tomatoes off the vine. Later today I will be going over and pulling up the dead plants to either bin or put on the compost pile for next year, depending on their state of potential fungal infection. It's always sad when it's time to shut it all down over there, but I need to get started on that. Garlic needs to go into the ground in a week or two, so the ground needs to be readied.

2) I have flats of tomatoes all over my living room floor. Very shortly a few dozen of them will be in a pot on the stove to simmer down, and eventually they will be canned once they've condensed enough. At least the house will smell good, even if I get tired of peeling tomatoes at some point.  This is probably going to be a multi-day canning extravaganza, given how many tomatoes there are. Which is nice, as it means tomato soup (etc.) in winter this year.

3) We were going to go apple picking today, but the daughter has meetings at work and had to cancel her day off. Next date is Tuesday. Apparently there is a potent nor'easter coming in on Sunday along the coast. No idea if it'll make it this far inland, but we were to go to an orchard over in  Vermont that's been there since 1775. Fingers are crossed there will still be some apples on the trees and not all knocked down to the ground.

4) My online French lessons are going surprisingly well. (I chalk it to those years of studying Latin in high school.)  Reading it is a heck of a lot easier than understanding the spoken form, though.

5) Three weeks to Halloween, which is on a Friday this year. Earlier this week I loaded up on candy to give out to the kids, since last year I ran low and had to streak to the shop only to find one lone bag sitting on a row of very empty shelves on Halloween itself. Will be prepared this year! I hope the weather cooperates - the kids need some fun in their lives.

1) We had our oldest friends staying with us this week. We all met in college 52 years ago, we’re married a week apart and shared a house togethers during our final year. We have kept in contact ever since and are still great friends. They have lived in Scotland this past 25 years and a few months we stayed with them. We are fortunate to all live in tourist areas, so there is always plenty to do when we visit one another.

2) This week we visited Barnard Castle, the Bowes Museum, Guisborough Priory, Mount Grace Priory, Roseberry Topping and Captain Cook’s monument. Lots of walking involved.

3) This morning I was on duty at the Priory. Yet another pretty day, and warm, so we had plenty of visitors, 88 adults and 22 children by the time I handed over to the next guide at 1pm.

4) The guide that took over from me is new this year and had reached her 3 month probationary date so I interviewed her before I left. She is turning out to be an excellent addition to the team.

5) Our daughter has been in Australia this past 2 weeks so I walked over to her house,  picked up her mail, and took her car for a spin to ensure the 12v battery stays charged.

Sounds like a lovely week for you and your friends. That's a long time to keep tabs on each other!  Congrats on that. And your daughter is lucky to have you there.

Hope you were able to get a Covid jab.  Here's the latest that I've seen about it in England, and the source is reliable. They are saying there's no new variant, but that immunity is waning. And that if you're in bed with "the flu" it's probably Covid-19. 

Thanks.

We decided to not bother with a Covid jab. It would cost £100 each. Maybe we’ll come to regret it but so be it. We get our flu shots tomorrow then in couple of weeks I get my Shingrx booster shot. My wife will get the first of her Shingrx shots next month when she turns 70

Don't blame you, it's a lot of money. Be careful.

Shingrx. Ah, that was not a pleasant one, but it's a really good one to have. I remember my grandmother getting shingles and going to her house every day to check on her while my step-grandfather was away at work. (I was in, I think, first grade?)  Made her tea and toast every day, and got her anything she needed. She was in a lot of pain - I remember that to this day. It's really pretty cool that there's an immunization against it now.

Don't blame you, it's a lot of money. Be careful.

Shingrx. Ah, that was not a pleasant one, but it's a really good one to have. I remember my grandmother getting shingles and going to her house every day to check on her while my step-grandfather was away at work. (I was in, I think, first grade?)  Made her tea and toast every day, and got her anything she needed. She was in a lot of pain - I remember that to this day. It's really pretty cool that there's an immunization against it now.

10+ years ago, while still in the USA, our insurance covered Zostavax the older, live, shingles vaccine.  My sister had had a nasty bout of shingles so we were pleased to get some protection. Zostavax was a single shot but its effect was known to decline over time. It has since been replaced with the more effective and longer lasting Shringx.

Skidding in under the wire.

1) It was a beautiful New England day today. Cool on the verge of chilly. Breezy. Multi-colored leaves everywhere. Sunshine in a sky with puffy white clouds.

2) I was supposed to can six pounds of chicken today that I got on sale yesterday, but got really lazy. I'll do it tomorrow. Today I spent that time sitting on a bench under the trees, watching the squirrels do their thing. Not many days left this year to do that.

3) We had a freeze last night, but I had brought in all the plants that are going to over-winter other than the strawberries. They seem to be fine, still, in their pots out on the balcony.  Supposed to freeze again tonight, too. I just put clear plastic bags over them. But eventually they'll have to come indoors. I've read that they should go dormant. Hopefully so, and then that they'll sprout again in the spring. This is the first year I've had any luck getting plants from strawberry seeds.

4) We went over to Vermont earlier this week. Lovely drive, clear roads. Had to visit the Chocolatorium (purveyor of some of the best dark chocolate I've ever eaten) and some of our favorite other small shops. Had a thermos of hot tea and some pumpkin bread at the covered bridge by Norman Rockwell's old homestead, where we stopped for some quiet resting time. Paused in Arlington at the very old (early 1700s) cemetery, as we do whenever we are nearby, to pay our respects. It had a very odd feel to it this time. I can't quite explain it, but on comparing notes later we agreed that it felt like the dead were not resting comfortably and that they were aware we were there. I have no doubt that some of those revolutionary war veterans were spinning like dervishes.... In any event, there was just a "you are not alone here" kind of vibe to the place that neither of us could shake. (Which was definitely disturbing!)

5) Made a big pot of "allium soup" yesterday - several onions, a leek, a head of garlic all sauteed in olive oil, then a quart of chicken stock and a lot of black pepper added. When everything was ready it got pureed in the blender, put back on the stove, and dehydrated potato flakes added to thicken, and finished with a bit of nice butter. It was really good, as yesterday was cloudy and "blustery", as they delicately put it on the 6pm news. Served it with some cheddar cheese scones. (We ate the whole darned pot, which was meant for three meals!)

1 Cleaners came first thing and we chatted with them about a change of team. The lady who had been the main person for the last 5 years has had to retire at age 67 because she has fractured her spine with little prospect of it recovering enough to return to physical work.

2 We drove to Saltburn for breakfast (6 miles) for a walk through the valley gardens there then along the prom and pier. Lovely day, lovely breakfast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltburn-by-the-Sea

3 I walked down to the Priory at lunchtime to chat with the guides at changeover and pass on some information
https://gisboroughprioryproject.org.uk/

4 Worked in the garden, shredded some brown cardboard and mixed it with the greenery my wife had removed as she prepares her flowerbeds for the winter planting. The hotbox compost bin was soon heating back up to 120F as the decomposition gets going. It has been at 190F recently.

5 Called a friend to chat about his granddaughter’s surgery for ovarian cancer. She was back home and doing well. He is 96 and can’t get his car insurance renewed so has finally made the decision to stop driving, much to his daughter’s relief.

1) It's Halloween. It's breezy and cool out, with leaves blowing everywhere. Perfect Trick-or-Treating weather. I don't think we're going to have much of a moon, either. But it's cloudy anyway. 

2) We put a few decorations up, but not as much as we wanted. Most of ours are in boxes in our store-room. To get to the storage facility the car must be working. Wednesday night in the rain and the dark as we were making a run to the grocery store the left rear wheel started making noises I've never heard a car make, and I've driven some beater cars that broke down in spectacular fashion, on occasion. Subsequently it made the "metal on metal" sound when the brakes were applied. We limped it back home and parked the car. (Thankfully it was only about a half-mile.)The car shop said to have it towed, but they don't have a courtesy shuttle any longer to bring me home or to get me back there to pick it up. The local flex-bus service no longer goes anywhere near the car shop. I literally have no way to get to or from the shop without the car working, short of hiring the airport limo guy. So by waiting until Monday when they had one available, the shop is going to loan me a car until it's fixed, which means I'll ride over with the tow-truck driver early Monday morning. And no car until then. Ok. Whatever. I just want my car fixed. I'm sure this is gonna cost me a bundle.

3) Several days ago I bent over to reach for a garden tool. That threw my back into a spasm, which apparently forced one of my "unhealthy" lumbar discs out of place, which resulted in extremely unpleasant sciatica. So, any movement other than laying down flat was painful. So I was in bed watching YouTube and on comes Billy Connolly. Who got me laughing so hard that I could neither breathe nor curse the resulting shooting pains properly. It just went in a vicious circle there for a while. At some point in the night the offending disc decided to retreat, pain killers did their thing, and I was able to be up and around again. So today I managed to have a coughing fit (no idea why) and guess what's annoyed again.... sigh.

4) I have a capybara suit I have to get into (without bending wrong) to wear while handing out candy in the almost immediate future. Can't let the kiddies down.

5) Thank goodness the grocery store delivers.

1.We have been in Lincolnshire all week with my wife's siblings and drove back on Friday, arriving home in the afternoon.

2. My wife's sister from Edinburgh had driven down to stay with us here in Yorkshire 10 days ago before the 3 of us drove down to Lincolnshire to meet up with the others who had driven in from Cheshire and Surrey. She plans to leave on Saturday and drive back to Edinburgh.

3. We don't do Halloween so nothing to see there.  Our son still loves Halloween so he had his house decked out as such and enjoyed having kids visiting.

4. Unpacked and started washing clothes.

5. Hung out with my wife and sister watching TV and doing quizzes on her last night here.

I live in a large apartment complex, mostly populated with immigrant families from South Asia. Unfortunately this year we had few trick-or-treaters, even with the weather being perfect. The moon did come out and the temperature was good.  The few that did come came in large (6-10 at a time) groups, and I don't blame them for that.  Maybe a tenth of the number that came by last year. Sad.

I should be in a diabetic coma until next weekend from all the leftover candy. Sitting here waiting for the frozen pizza to cook and ready to root for the Blue Jays this evening.

The folks down in NYC had a good time, though, it seems. [Wish I could afford to live there.] - 


https://www.youtube.com/live/cZw8zDT8BPQ?si=QLXdV1fG_DG0KLZC

We had our regular Saturday night family get together at our daughters place playing dungeons and dragons, and having a good night. There are always 6 of us and this week there was plenty of leftover chocolate from Halloween. Plus our daughter and her partner, who got back from a month in Australia on Wednesday, also supplied some special goodies to eat.