I’m pretty swamped with stuff right now, especially all the publishing tasks that I need to catch up on (with the way we’ve set up our new routine, it really only makes sense to spend one day out of the week working on publishing tasks, rather than an hour or half-hour each day. So if I miss a day, or don’t finish all of the week’s work on that day, things tend to spiral pretty quickly). But things are going pretty well overall: I’m making slow but steady progress on writing, and the wife and kids are doing pretty well. Everyone’s warm, fed, (mostly) happy, and still alive.
For Thanksgiving, we’re going up to Bear Lake with my wife’s family, since my brother-in-law has a timeshare there, and it’s closer to Couer D’Alene so it’ll be easier for the family up there to come down. But Bear Lake gets pretty cold this time of year, so we’ll have to pack warm. Also, with the recent developments in Russia and Ukraine, it occurs to me that Bear Lake might be one of the best places in the lower 48 to ride out an initial nuclear strike (though definitely not the best place to ride out a nuclear winter). Hopefully we don’t have to test that theory.
In any case, it should be fun to spend some time with the family, and to watch our kids spend some quality time playing with their cousins. Since my mother-in-law doesn’t want to do any cooking at the timeshare, she’s farmed out most of the work to everyone else, and had us bake a turkey so that she could collect the drippings for turkey gravey. Looks like white bean chili with leftover turkey is on the menu for the next couple of weeks!
My job is to make the cranberry sauce. I’ll be using my Mom’s recipe, which is super simple, and also super tasty: combine one pound of raw cranberries, one whole unpeeled orange, one whole apple, one cup of sugar, and one cup of pecans and blend until smooth. Chill before serving.
Have fun! 🙂