A world of "surprises"

Don't you just 'love it' when there is a 'surprise power outage' at your house? We got a call on Monday that there would be a "planned power outage" Tuesday morning for 8 hours until 7 A.M. Now remember this is the beginning of winter AND many people must get up to go to work on weekdays.
So, Monday night we set our phone alarms to help us get up for work, remembering that there would be no helpful alarms clock, but forgetting, of course, that there would be no way to make coffee / tea in the morning, no hot water for a shower, & no lights for the fact that at 5:00 AM it is dark at this time of the year. PLUS, there was the fact that it was forecast to be the coldest night so far this autumn - it was 18! when we got up. So, there we were, cold and sleepy, no caffeine in sight & pretty darn crabby that this was occuring. We made our lunches, washed our faces in cold water, brushed our teeth, fed the critters (poor Buddy was buried as deep as he could be in the pellets in his cage-he's a reptile so was REALLY cold), and made our way to town where we stopped to get some coffee / tea and then went to work.
Not a stellar way to start one's day.

Rosevale: This last weekend we picked all the green tomatoes and the peppers that remained, picked the rest of the apples, took up the lettuces, turned the compost piles, nearly finished the new garden bed (broke off one of the bolts while putting it together so couldn't quite get it done), put the fall fertilizer on the lawn, put up the hoses & tools, and just generally "battened down the hatches" for winter.

tales of drM: I'm getting ready to be gone for a week (it's Quilt Camp time), so have lots of testing to do and am working in the greenhouses to take notes & do pollinations so there'll be seeds of the "wild babies". I always try to get it set up so my assistants won't have to worry about all of that stuff too much while I'm gone.

PO patter: "tP" has actually had 2 eight hour days in a row! - one where the 'higher ups' had him come in early and one where the mail volume was actually low enough for him to get it done on time. He really appreciated that - it was getting pretty hard on him to be working that much. "All that money is great, except I'm too tired to spend it." I told hime he really didn't need to worry about that - I could take care of THAT for him, LOL.

hobbies, hobbies: My time has been spent working on the Woman's Textured Sleeveless Pullover - http://cascadeyarns.com/patternsFree/C179_Greenland.pdf - and a bit on my SFS socks.

AH! but next week is Quilt Camp and I shall be "playing up a storm"!

"tP" has been enjoying his time at the bowling alley with his league companions - it seems that it is really the only time he has to do much else but work. He gets a bit of reading in before bed in the evenings sometimes, too.