A brand new cup of January

Happy new year!

Happy New Year. (I'd clean forgotten we needed a new Tea Room thread!)

Quiet pottering sort of day here. Mr JG has just washed up the delicate wine glasses from last night and scoured the roasting tin. Miss JG survived 4 days of matinee and evening performances - plus a single performance day at either end. The cast and crew were getting more and more tired and sick as the week went on. She and LMJ were tucked up asleep in bed at midnight. We opened a bottle of fizzy wine with our friends, watched the fireworks on the TV and they left around 12.15.

Good morning and a happy new year to you all!



Our birthday boy (my youngest is now SIX ) had a great day out at a place called Gator Land where we saw lots of...........................



Wait for it............................



Aligators



And birds and gators and snakes and gators and fish and gators and as a break, we saw some crocs



But it was a grand day out. The best bit was in the walk in aveary when we bought seed covered sticks (talk about value added, a lolly stick dipped in glue and then dipped in bird seed for a dollar ) and got mobbed by the budgies. Watching small kids covered with small birds is a hoot



So today we are off to my youngest brothers for a short visit and if he arranged it with a friend of his, a spot of hunting for me I love his friends place but last year I was the only one let hunt there that didnt even SEE a deer, never mind shoot it! In fact his friend took the gun from me and we went driving all over his property so he could get me one but nope, not a deer in sight. He was really upset, esp. as he is from an older generation who hate to disapoint a lady



And best of all I am going to get a few days away from my lovely hubby who is absolutly panicking about my new buisness to be. I have reached the "Send letters to potential customers!" and he has flipped, he really has! "Have you thought of THIS, THAT, THE OTHER, what if if if if if???" Talk about tireing So a couple of days away will be bliss. Well, it will



Have a wonderful next few days, see y'all mid week

Sounds like a wonderful birthday GB, actually love idea of the budgie sticks. What a great birthday your boy had.

Grump!

Penny and I had our usual quiet New Years at home (avoiding the drunks on the road) with all sorts of snack food and a bottle of bubbly (not champagne --- blanquette de Limmoux -- the original bubbly made by the Benedictines about 100 years before they tried to make bubbly in Champagne). And listening to NPR jazz specials they have for New Years. Got to bed by 1 and then about 3 AM woken by an alarm chirping "low battery".

That is supposed to be soft enough but perhaps just for city dwellers. Living out in the country as we do, even that will wake us. And not so easy to fix because which one is it. Because out fire insurance covered "replace electricity including all upgrades to bring fully to code" there are lots* of the things, some not far apart, and our old ears aren't good at determining which is complaining. Have to do things like opening and closing doors, going around smothering each in a pillow in turn, etc. to see if that makes a difference in the sound.

Nor do you normally have a supply of 9v batteries around but in this case we did as last time we didn't (again over a holiday with stores closed) so I bought some extras. The standard advice to replace on a regular basis works only when there is some regularity in power outages. These are all "wired" alarms with the battery just for power outages and so how long they last depend more on how many hours power out in a year than age of battery.

* At the base of the stairs and in each upstrairs room a pair, smoke and CO

Evening folks!

We've been having a fairly relaxing time here today, just a few movies and a nice walk in the rain with the dog... Not sure who got muddier, the dog or the kids, but they all had a quick nap when they got home so 10 minutes of peace for me! Quite pleased that the world is almost ready to get back to normal though, hopefully the work will start coming in later this week...

No chance of a New Year's Day walk here for me yesterday as the monsoon season arrived. I saw a party of Ramblers who were just starting their walk, and poor souls were like drowned rats. The prospect of a day's walking soaked to the skin can't have been a good one . . .

Today is Sort Out day.