Friday started as a mild day and we got some minor shopping in.
We then joined Howie and Lee Needelman on the dining patio of The Market Basket restaurant as the sun was setting. Although the establishment had patio heaters out, the one by our table was not very effective, more for show than for heat. The food was good, a couple of burgers for the guys, a salmon and wilted lettuce salad for Deb and Lee enjoyed the Chicken Picatta; we all enjoyed a cup of their excellent potato soup. As the wine was half priced, we shared a couple bottles of a Grayson Cellars California Pinot Noir, with enough left over to take a partial bottle home. The only down side was that Deb left her credit card behind, discovering that it was missing Sunday afternoon. She wasn’t able to retrieve it until Monday afternoon.
Birthday celebrations this week include nephew William Picken’s 25th birthday on Wednesday, November 4, and neighbor Tom Babb’s 52nd birthday on Thursday, November 5.
Saturday, Halloween, brought us to the Zoom device for our bi-weekly family conference. Only Ed & Meg plus Jake and Audry joined us, but it was an enjoyable visit, hearing about Meg’s visit to her mother in Florida and catching up on Audry’s dad’s battle with health issues. Ed and Meg are getting their boxes unpacked and sorting out their new apartment - time now for the hanging discussions ( art, not each other) continuous relocating of furniture until each is settled in its proper location in relation to each other and each purpose.
For Halloween, we in Omaha were treated to a warm and mild evening.
All our neighbors sat on their porches or in their drives, watching over their bushels of candy and commenting on the goblins on parade. We had a record high number of 24 customers. Our previous high was 17; our next door neighbors, Tom & Beth Babb, who have lived here 24 years, noted that this is the highest total they’d ever experienced. Everyone was socially distanced, properly masked and not too greedy. This year seemed to be the year for the very young. No greedy middle schoolers or scary teens nosing around. They were all probably at a superspreader event passing around the COVID!
Sunday again was a lovely weather day. Earlier in the week, we had finally bit the bullet and given up the paper edition of the local daily, The Omaha World Herald. We held out as long as we could, loath to give up our morning ritual of sitting on the front porch, drinking our coffee, listening to NPR and reading the newspaper, occasionally lifting our heads to talk to neighbors walking their dogs, or nodding to those headed off to work. However, when the automatic billing hit the credit card for a whopping $195.00 for the next three months, we called a halt. The electronic edition is only $52.00 per quarter so we are now fully paid through mid 2021 and learning how to navigate the electronic edition. Printing out the crossword and jumble puzzles have been our only challenge so far. We are not true Luddites, but this passing of a tradition is particularly mournful. At the risk of sounding old and crotchety, we were reminiscing about our early married days when we received both a morning and evening paper delivered to our door. They each had different comic pages, puzzles, and an update of the news of the day. Of course now it is all electronic and the news changes by the minute. Too much!
Sunday afternoon, we traveled to Abigail’s to review progress on the deck.
The contractors were nearly finished. Luckily we arrived in time to make a few strategic changes as to placement of a staircase and movement of a few rail posts. All is complete except the top rail, and for Mark to complete the horizontal pipe railings in the spring. this is a truly marvelous addition to the home, now with a place to cook a hamburger, sit in the sun and drink a cup of coffee or knit in nature. We see many years of enjoyment from this addition.
Sunday evening we finished the binge-watching of the mini-series “The Queen’s Gambit.” We heartily recommend this short series as a very enjoyable presentation with new faces in some of the leads and a story well told. Another recommendation was the movie “Enola Holmes” an ongoing story of Sherlock Holmes’ younger sister; the lead in this tale is carried by Milly Bobby Brown, the child star of “Stranger Things.” Based upon the way the “Enola Holmes” show ends, we expect there will be future installments.
Monday we did some shopping and then joined Deb and Tim Duggan at our local bar and grill, Tracks, for a hamburger and glass of wine on their dining patio. Again a glorious evening that ended early. We came home and spent another hour on our front porch, listening to the night and musing on the outcome of the next day’s election.
Tuesday, Election Day, was uneventful as we had early on mailed our ballots in to avoid any potential COVID problems at our polling site. Marsha Gallagher and Ted James stopped by over the noon hour and we spent a friendly hour socially distanced and masked up on our front porch, catching up on their doings and exchanging a couple of books we were enjoying. As this was Drinks Night Tuesday, Deb and her buddies congregated on our back patio around the fire pit, lit a fire, and mused upon the state of the world and the impending outcome. We retired early, eschewing the opportunity to get caught in the breathless score keeping going on on all the media outlets.
We found out soon enough on Wednesday morning that it was not smooth sailing. All day we avoided as much of the back and forth as we could. Wednesday evening we hosted the Needelmans and the Hosford’s around our fire pit, enjoying LaCasa pizza, a wilted spinach salad from Ann’s kitchen and a praline cheesecake from Lee’s kitchen.
Sunset is now occurring shortly after 5:00PM and, with the Indian Summer weather, it is perfect for a small fire in the fire pit, or a glass of wine under the patio heater.
Thursday was spent with Mark journeying to Hospice House to help with loading the canna rhizomes into a truck bound for a north central Nebraska farm cellar to spend the winter. Deb continues on her massive project of clearing and filing thousands of photos and documents we have been accumulating over the years. The project continues. Roast beef hash with poached eggs nestled on top for dinner as we caught up with Judy Woodruff and the PBS Newshour - our only source of national news other than the morning NPR habit.
As of early Friday morning, Biden is only 6 votes away from an electoral vote win. We are thankful that Omaha has become a sole “blue dot” in a sea of red. Our 2nd district is handing one vote to Biden - the other four go to the orange one but we are proud of our ability to be a sane spot in this mass of MAGA world stupidity. We will be headed out next week for another round of COVID testing, trying hard to maintain our health as the pandemic surges around us. Stay well, stay distanced, mask up, wash your hands and have hope that the madness will end someday.
