Well Hello There!!!

 Hello ... HELLO!!!  Can you hear me now??  Woohoo ... if you're reading this, it means you have survived another trip around the sun.  From all the messages I read all day long on my phone, it seems absolutely EVERYONE is glad that year is gone.  Too bad it will hold over for awhile longer, but I'm sending out good vibes to everyone that it's going to get better!!

Thank goodness there wasn't much celebrating going on around here yesterday.  To my great surprise, the neighborhood was VERY quiet.  There were lots of lawn mowers going and noisy blowers, but no fireworks, at least not during the day.

Cooper and I took a nice long walk in the back yard while he smelled every two inches of ground.  No kidding, he followed his nose around the grass until he came to this.  Apparently he is a gopher dog.  Well hello there ... there is yet another BIG one carousing in my back yard.  I left him alone for now.  There were too many football games to watch.  

A little further around the yard and what should I see?????  My newest acquisition???  April fools!!  He's a beauty, but sadly, he's not in my back yard.  If you have horses, you pretty much have to give up everything else.  They take lots of care and attention.  There's one on my radar, but I'm not sure my back is up to the challenge.  

It was a quiet New Year's Eve as I put on my Chef hat and began to make a huge mess of the kitchen.  If I keep this up, I may have to actually use my dishwasher.  

This is the second meal from the box.  Not quite as hard to prepare, but there were lots of steps.  As a photographer, I can tell you that images of food are not what they appear.  This nicely browned pork chop has been cooked to death to get the color.  Then you spray oil on it to make it shiny!  At any rate, this is what it SHOULD look like with perfectly placed broccoli.

This is what it DID look like.  I didn't arrange the broccoli, but at least it's greener than the picture.  The pork on the other hand is only brown because of the sauce.  Surprisingly, it was quite tender.  My rice turned out nicely too, cooked with a bit of ginger. 

That little red pepper for heat ... it wasn't in the box.  Instead there was a green Thai chili, hotter than my stove.  It went in the trash.  I have to say however .... this was a GREAT meal.  The sauce had peach jam, chicken stock concentrate (I need to find some of that stuff) and fresh ginger.  I would even serve this to company!!!  No other meals were prepared or desecrated ... that plateful was two meals for me. 

 In the afternoon, I did a little more sewing of bindings on to quilts that I'm hoping to take south with me.  Maybe I can finish them up on the road.

I spent the rest of the day watching football.  We're getting down to the end of the line where you are either heartbroken or exhilarated!  Rookie quarterbacks abound, making it an edge of your seat day.

At long last, this non-pro party animal gathered up Mr. Cooper and headed off to the land of what sounded like war in the back yard.  There were a few booms here and there initially, but nothing until my phone lit up.  What the heck was THAT?  

Well hello there!!  A message from my ex-Arizona neighbor Chris.  Happy New Year to you too.  I turned the phone off.

That seemed to bring about a frenzy of fireworks and gunfire.  Amazingly, it only lasted about 30 minutes.  I don't mind the fireworks so much as someone who has probably been drinking, firing off a machine gun that close to my back yard.  I was surprised it stopped so soon.  There was not another sound most of the night.  I know because I was still awake!!  

I'm pretty sure the final result of all that will be me falling asleep while watching the rest of today's football games.  

HELLO THERE 2024!  We have been waiting for you with bated breath!

May everyone have a wonderful happy New Year's Day!!!!  Bring on the aspirin!