Teppy, you will be glad to hear the GF pumpkin bread came out scrumptious. I did not have to resort to the GF brownie mix I bought just in case. FTR, I couldn't find the Better Batter at Whole Foods, but they did have the King Arthur GF flour and, holy shit, it's expensive. But the pumpkin bread turned out very nice.

Excellent! Mmmm...pumpkin bread...

askye, those are great stories

smonster,

you need to take her to small claims if this stretches out.

I really need to write down the stories, G'ma had some really interesting experiences.

I still have tons of Xmas stuff to do. I've finished: 1 cowl for my brother's gf, 1 scarf for my nephew, 1 dishtowel for my dad.

I still need to finish: scarves for Mom and brother, a cowl and scarf as another person, scarf for my aunt, dishtowel and dishclothes for my dad - this is for his beach cottage. I was going to make him a scarf but I wanted to do something different.

Plus wrap the presents that I have to send out in the mail tomorrow or Tuesday depending on my schedule. Plus deposit my pay check tomorrow and order stuff from Amazon.

Neat stories, askye, and yes... write them down! I'm starting to think of a plan to get a lot of my mom's stuff down, maybe a combination of recording and writing.

A seventy year friendship is an amazing thing.

meara, I hope the water issue is no big thing and easily fixed.

you need to take her to small claims if this stretches out.

Blood from a stone. She has no $$, she volunteers at the zoo and works for pay 2 days/wk. I did tell her she could pay me over time. No response yet. She's supposed to be getting a full time job in January.

My dad's mom maintained a penpal relationship with a friend from college for over 50 years, even though they never saw each other again. My brother met her when he spent a summer outside of LA. This was her friend - [link]

My brother did some audio recordings with my grandparents a few years ago, although unfortunately my other grandmother was too far gone with Alzheimers to really contribute.

And speaking of stories, my grandfather told me a good one recently. He and an Army pal were on the way home to Georgia from California, by train. They arrived in New Orleans Christmas Eve 1944 and got to drinking. At the time, there was a curfew for military personnel in place - they couldn't order drinks after midnight - and MPs roamed the streets to "escort" service members back to their lodgings. So he and his buddy were at the Roosevelt Hotel at last call for military... and ordered twenty-five shots of whisky. He doesn't remember how they got back to where they were staying, or if they had to find another place to sleep. Unsurprisingly, they missed their train home at 9 am and had to wait all day, hungover, for another one.

Oh, New Orleans, 'twas ever thus.

Time to see if I can go back to sleep.

Hope you're sleeping, Smonster! I'm not, possibly due to the two-hour nap I took at 3pm. No idea why I was so sleepy, since I'd also slept in, and not done jack.

But now it's Sunday night and I am awake. Argh. And was reading a YA novel until it got too horribly predictable and obvious that the heroine will soon be facing a horrible and embarrassing downfall. Which I don't really want to read. So no helpful catharsis of finished book to make me sleepy...

Nah, was reading about crime on NOLA.com. Not exactly restful.

Yeah, I went to bed really early - this cold is kicking my ass - but popped awake about an hour ago. I plugged in my work phone, drank some water, read a bit, and then got on here. My neighbor's dog started barking and very oddly, Frankie kind of barked several times. He NEVER barks. But they've both stopped and he's back asleep, I'm sure.

Really, though, now, back to bed.

Yawn. I hope sleep was had. I am out of town for a bball tournament. Forgot to disable my alarm. Oh well, up now.