It seems hard to remember that a little over a month ago we were dealing with ridiculous heat at an outdoor event celebrating the fall equinox. At least it wasn't super-stupid humid -- but the dryness meant we were dealing with a fire ban, which put a real damper on the celebration ( Read more... )

I've been watching the path of Hurricane Helene. It's hitting hard in Florida, and while Tampa Bay isn't in the direct line of fire, Hillsborough County is going to get hit hard. Already at least one person has been killed as a result of a road sign from I-4 in Tampa being blown onto a car ( Read more... )

As we're getting ready to head off for a week-long outdoor event, I decided it was time to get some mending done. A button that had fallen off a shirt, another with a buttonhole that had stretched and loosened until it no longer held the button. Socks with small holes in otherwise sound cloth ( Read more... )

I'd been looking forward to enjoying the beautiful lilies in the flowerbed in front of our house this summer. They'd come up quite nicely, and I'd noticed that a number of them were producing smaller lilies around them. After three years of growth, they'd probably be ready to subdivide and replant this fall ( Read more... )

A new year is a fresh beginning. So it's a good time to take stock of the previous year and where we want to go in the future ( Read more... )

I've let a number of things slide over the past few months, since show season started up again. For a while I let some basic bookkeeping slide, which is dangerous when we're operating on relatively slender margins and a couple of conventions are sitting on checks. I got that caught up, although it took a major push to force my way through it -- not ( Read more... )

Today I thought we were going to get the lawn mowing taken care of, and in the evening we'd be going to the monthly meeting of the local sf club. Except things didn't go quite as planned. First, we had some miscommunications with the new lawn mowing people, so that got delayed until tomorrow. And then I get a message on Facebook that the club ( Read more... )

Today we loaded in for the last sales event of the show year. It's a show we've never done before, so we have no idea how well it's apt to do, so there's that mix of apprehension and excitement that come whenever we try something new. But there's also a certain amount of let-down to know that, after this show, we currently have nothing lined up for ( Read more... )

Why is it that when you have one misfortune, you just keep having more? Yesterday after the convention we discovered the brakes on our business van had gone out. Then a family member reports a problem with a tooth. Then I get an e-mail from another family member, letting me know that they're having furnace problems ( Read more... )

It's amazing how much small things can irritate a person. A paper cut often hurts as much as a deep gash. A tiny grain of sand in one's shoe feels like a huge rock ( Read more... )