Cooler Weather and Drizzle

I was up early to get ready for the Ladies Breakfast on Wednesday.  Grace had asked for a ride so I had to pick her up by 7:45.  While I was getting ready, Karen texted me to call her.  She had planned to come over with Dave to visit while the fellows went shooting but with the weather they had decided not to come.  We had pretty much determined after watching the news that there would be no shooting so I was not surprised.   We will get together next week instead.

There was a small, but fun, group for breakfast.  We laughed a lot talking about camping experiences.  Another topic was the Instant Pot which is sort of a computerized pressure cooker.  Nedra said she cooked acorn squash in 8 minutes and Bonnie made fall off the bone ribs in 20 minutes.  I need to check this out.  You can get frozen food out and still have dinner in under an hour!  Amazon apparently has the best prices and there is a huge Facebook group sharing recipes.

Since Ted wasn't going shooting he wanted to locate Shooter's Station where we are scheduled to go next week.  So that's where we headed when I returned. We found it easily and then stopped at shoe stores where I bought two pairs of shoes and Ted bought one.  We are thinking ahead to the British Isles trip and what we will need.  After a grocery store stop to get some things we needed for dinner, we headed home.  We turned the fireplace on, had dinner and settled in for the night.

New Year's Eve dawned cool with continued drizzle.  Ted went to get one of our propane bottles filled because the furnace has been running at night.  When we are awake we use the fireplace but turn it off when we go to bed.  I wrote out a few bills and balanced the checkbook.  When the stock market closed I pulled the end of year IRA numbers to get an idea of what our RMD will be in 2016.  

Because Fr. Roy was only having an 11:30 pm Mass we chose to go to St. Paul Church at 5 pm.  It was ok but I missed the banter of Fr. Roy, the country western songs and the dogs.  We will go back to OLG on Saturday.  Afterwards we had dinner and then drove through the 3 mile light display in the city of Hidalgo.  The drizzle made it hard to find the route and street lights were non-existent.  We eventually found it but next year we will come on a dry night and ride the tram so we can both enjoy the displays.

A hummingbird bird in lights.

We started the drive home on streets with no lights at all.  Between the unfamiliar road, the darkness, the wet road and oncoming lights it was scary, at least to me.  When we got to familiar territory I breathed a sigh of relief.  I had watched the ball drop in Dubai at 2:00 pm and figured that would be it for me.  But we stayed up for NYC and then CST before heading off to bed.  Three celebrations for one event.

The bad weather continued so we made no plans for New Years Day.  Ted figured out the TV at the clubhouse and parked himself there for the entire afternoon.  I used the down time to do laundry choosing to go next door to Bentsen Palms where you can park right in front of the laundry and don't have to walk far.  They also have six washers versus our two so your chances of getting machines are better.  No one was there so I was able to put all the laundry in at the same time and then into dryers.  I read a book until it was time to fold.

I stopped at the Clubhouse on my way home where Don had joined Ted.  He had another game to watch so I came home, put the clothes away and ate my leftovers from the night before.  When Ted eventually came home he did the same and another day had gone by.