Fall break and books

If I was an overtly emotional person, I'd be squealing like a teenage fangirl right now.

But I'm not, so I'll post a Gif instead, lol.

via GIPHY

Why the giddiness?

My Fall Break has officially started. I have the next two days off and also the weekend, of course. Four days of relaxation.

Even better, it appears Fall will finally arrive. The temps have been record-high, into the upper 80s and low 90s. Lots of humidity and heat. Ugh. With this terrible hurricane predicted to sweep through, on its backside is the longed-for Fall weather we usually get in mid-September. Highs of upper 70s and lows of mid 5os, and NO humidity. Yay!

I put all my winter lounging clothes in the wash so I'll have my pile of fleece-y pants and comfy oversized long sleeved tee shirts to wear for the cool weather. Which hopefully will start on Thursday or Friday!

I've got plans for my mini-vacay, I tell ya, plans. In addition to reading and napping, I plan to go to my favorite second-hand/vintage store and get another book case. Why? I have more books!

Several friends and online acquaintances had asked me how to balance Bible reading, pleasure reading, and life. There is just not a lot of time for pleasure reading when all is said and done, but our church is a reading community, and we like books. We also know that reading quality literature helps us with Bible reading and vice versa. So to answer that question I turned to books. I bought two books about reading books, lol. I'm incorrigible, I know.

How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading, by Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren is a classic on the subject.

With half a million copies in print, How to Read a Book is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader, completely rewritten and updated with new material. Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. Readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its cover,” and also how to X-ray it, read critically, and extract the author’s message from the text.

Yay, sounds promising.

For the unique challenges awaiting the Christan and books. The book by Tony Reinke promises to help here. Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books is

A practical guide built on the gospel, Lit! models the skills needed to build a balanced reading diet of Scripture, theology, and devotional books, but without overlooking important how-to books, great stories, and books meant to be enjoyed for pleasure. Literature scholar Leland Ryken calls it "a triumph of scholarship," but mostly it's a non-pretentious book about reading from an average reader who wants to share important convictions and skills you can use for the rest of your luminously literate life.

I plan to (hopefully) arrive home with the bookcase Friday, and then reorganize my books. My commentaries have gotten separated...I want to put all the biographies together, and so on. Should be fun. I like organizing.

When I arrive home from school at the outset of a Break, I am wired and can't settle. I have a million things to do and I want to do them all at once. It takes a while for me to stop the go-go-go, as I do run up and down the halls at school at a thousand miles per hour. I need to accomplish many things during the day, and getting home on vacation I am still going.

I need to clean, of course, specifically vacuum and Swiffer the floors. Do the book thing I mentioned above, and then actually read some books. Also I need to sort through my Health care options, because Open Enrollment is here. The gas guy is coming to clean the gas heater and turn on the gas. It's supposed to turn cold so that is good timing. I'll hopefully do some crafts, needing to make more bookmarks as gifts. Christmas is coming. Maybe a movie, though with my renewed book passion I am trying to stay away from media.

Fall is a beautiful time. I hope you're enjoying your Fall!

Spider season

You know when you have something you carry or use many times per day, but there's something about it that irks you a little bit each and every time you use it? A tiny struggle to open, or difficult to extract, or hard to hold...something? My handbags have been like that.

I've bought about 5 handbags over the last two years and none of them have suited. I switched from using a backpack to handbags and I've never been satisfied, quite. I hate to have cumulative aggravations during the day. I'm aggravated by enough things already (noise, other people, the wrong temperature, clothing, and so on, lol). I don't need to be aggravated by the thing that I have to carry everywhere with me.

I don't need a huge bag because I don't carry that much, but I do have to carry my wallet, checkbook, Kindle, cell phone, glasses repair kit, pens, and cough drops. See? Not so much.

On Vipon (the Amazon.com discount couponing site) I saw Messenger Bags on sale for half off. I LOVE a messenger bag! As with backpacks, kinda mannish, messenger bags are too. (I do not like lady fru-fru stuff). I bought it for $12. The canvas is sturdy but supple. The pressure points like where you grab it or the corners or the zipper, are reinforced with leather. There are several pockets outside and in. I can carry it cross body, which I like to do at the grocery store. Hey,have you ever watched those security camera vids where someone steals a wallet out of your purse, or steals the purse, /snap/ LIKE THAT? Cross body, man, with the pockets and zipper against your hip.

Here is a pic. I personally think messenger bags are stylish and cool.

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I take nice photos of the yard I love so much and post a lot of them everywhere. That's because it's a pretty yard, with flowers and birds and trees.

But the yard holds a deadly secret. Its allure belies a malignancy that is only revealed in certain seasons and at certain times a day. When the sun rises and the rays are low, the interconnecting mesh of Ninja-dance inducing spider webs all across the yard are revealed!

From tree to tree, from branch to ground, at FACE LEVEL, we see the threads of heart-pumping horror glimmer in the rising rays of the sun, only to fade into the background mere moments later. Unsuspecting amblers striding these greenways will soon feel the full horror of the stickily detestable threads as they, too, inevitably begin to Ninja-dance their way back to the safety of the house.

Having walked into one too many webs in my day, I keep a spider web busting stick by my front door. Spiders have dared, yes, dared, to stream their dance of horror webs across the awning in front, so the stick is always at hand's reach as I cautiously open the door a few inches to grab it first.

Wielding my stick like a nutcase, fie, no matter how I appear to others, my stick dances like a crazy divining rod hovering over water. Jerking it to the left and right in front of my face, I crab walk toward the garage where my car hides inside, hunkered safely from its likely use as a web-foundation string for the more daring and skillful spiders attempting to use it as part of their deadly scheme. Indeed, just the other day I opened the door to the car, after having left it out for the night, and a gossamer thread attached to the mirror wafted away. Fortunately the wind was blowing in the other direction and the thread sailed on into the yard and not into my face. That was a close one.

They proliferate in September, the time to reproduce and hatch new babies before the frosts get 'um. The egg sacs overwinter. At the Cooperative Extension at the University of Georgia, we read,

Barn spiders are to blame for creating the webs most often walked into by people. “I would bet that almost every home in Georgia has a barn spider on the porch or somewhere nearby this time of year,” she said. Hinkle has one on her deck, one at her back door, and one at her front door. They’re handy to keep around, she said. Being nocturnal, they construct new webs every evening, where they wait to trap insects. Rusty brown with legs extending 2 inches, they’re noticeable this time of year.

“Their webs trap all sorts of flying pests,” she said. “People get annoyed when they walk into these webs and get silk covering their faces, but I consider that a people problem, not a spider problem.”

NO, IT'S A SPIDER PROBLEM!

The yellow garden spider and the orb-weaver both make large webs, too. Ugh.

OK, so some say that they're good to have around to trap lots of insects in their massive webs, but either you've got lots of insects in your yard, or lots of spiders. Problem, if you ask me.

I wonder if there will be spiders in the new earth? If so, then maybe God will have given me enough grace to, er, love them? For now, I just stay inside until the frost comes and it's safer to walk around the yard.

Have a good weekend everyone, and watch out for spider webs!

The Many Changing Moods of a Fall Sunrise

It's late fall in Georgia, which means we still have warm temperatures, still have birds in the air, and still have leaves on the trees. There are even flowers blooming here and there. It will eventually change, of course. We'll have cold weather, frost, dark and rainy days, and sometimes even snow. But the leisurely fall is something I always mourned the absence of when I lived in Maine for 30 years. Fall in Maine is more of a sprint, a short burst of color and low humidity with startlingly azure skies. Then poof, it's gone. Winter settles in quickly and depressingly. Sunshine is in short supply. The dark lasts most of every day. Winter is a lengthy season. Fall seems to be one of the shortest.

However, in Georgia, the seasons seem equally spread out in the calendar. Fall is one among four other seasons that have their time. And what a time. I do miss the vividness of the foliage in New England. Leaves in their yellows, reds, oranges, and golds are extremely bright and lovely to look at. The foliage in New England in Fall is unparalleled.

But with it comes harsh temperatures that force one to bundle up in the shuddering, teeth chattering, snow and sleet scraping, snow tires swap, boots clomping, feet stomping, cabin fever cold.

Not so here. A few cold days may be followed by a week of mild. The penetrating and settling-in frigidity of a months long New England Winter is absent and instead we have a pleasing array of landscapes and temperatures, with outdoor activities still a possibility throughout.

I experienced a gorgeous sunrise this morning. I went out in just my sweats and shirt and walked up the street a bit taking photos of these scenes. No frost came out of my mouth. No shiver passed over my body. I was in 54 comfortable degrees, ambling around the property with my walking stick, in the pure quiet (except for the hearty and vigorously cockadoodledoing rooster).

The weather has a lot to do with mood. When I see the impressive and dramatic skies, I think of my Lord who created it. I come back inside to RefNet.fm and listen to majestic hymns, feeling warm because He has given me a comfortable home, well-appointed. This has been a delightful morning, and I'm grateful.

These scenes are at my home, within a ten minute span. The Changing Moods of Sunrise in Georgia!

Fall Break Ahead!

I work 190 days per year, not 350. My salary reflects the fewer days worked, but what I love about my schedule are the frequent breaks. At this point in my life, I appreciate the time off very much.

The school year's first break is happening this week. On Monday and Tuesday we have two half-days with the kids. In the afternoon and early evening after the kids have left, teachers will meet in conference with parents and hand out report cards. As a parapro, I won't be meeting with parents. So I'll catch up on work my teacher wants me to do, such as cleaning, correcting, preparing, copying, etc. The different schedule makes the kids wild, but on the other hand, we will only be with them until noon.

On Wednesday we have a full day of teacher workday. Kids will not come to school at all. More work, cleaning, catching up, getting ready for the next quarter of school, which is 9-weeks long. We also have a Blue Cross meeting to prepare us for Open Enrollment, and other meetings as they come up.

Thursday and Friday I will be at home. No school for anybody. Fall Break begins! I normally use Fall Break as an opportunity for the gas heat guy to come and turn on the gas and clean the pilot light. Since one needs to be at home to let him in, Fall Break is good timing for me to get the heat on without having to take a day off work. It's been hot this fall, though. The temps are still in the 80s. Friday it was 90 degrees. I can't wait for the heat to break. I've scheduled the heating guy for Thursday but for sure I won't need to use the heat for at least another week, according to the weather predictions.

Hurricane Nate is going to make some impacts to North Georgia. We are going to receive 2-4 inches of rain, probably today. I hope driving to church later this afternoon is safe enough. We'll get winds, too, with some gusts that may down power lines or trees. The tropical air will make things sticky, humid, and warm. Sigh. Fall, please come!

I went to my favorite store Friday after school. Lamps, art, mirrors, and dish sets were 75% off. Can't resist. I need a new lamp and I am down to one bowl.

I found a great lamp for my living room. I LOVE my art glass lamp, but I've had it as the prominent living room lamp for 13 years. The lampshade was looking brown and the lamp itself was tottering, as the top where the bulb holder comes out was separated from the lamp itself. I bought a white lamp with a delicate pattern, for only $10.

My art glass lamp was brown and I liked how it picked up the glow of the wood from the bureau beneath it. However this white one brightens up the space with its eggshell appearance and actually it illuminates brightly. I think it is because the lampshade is whiter. The other one had turned pretty brown now that I look at it. Isn't it funny how you don't notice things in your home after a while. When you look at old items with new eyes you go, 'Whoa! I didn't realize how dingy this had become!'

I also bought a new shade for the reading lamp I have next to my reading chair. It's embroidered, and it also glows nicely when the light is on. The old shade had browned also.

Books were only $1 and I found a John Grisham novel I had somehow missed. I picked it up, started it on Friday and now I'm almost done. It's called The Broker, about a power player lobbyist-lawyer in Washington who was sent to jail, got pardoned 6 years later, and is now in Italy with a new identity and protection from the CIA. What the Broker doesn't know is that the CIA is going to leak his whereabouts to the many hordes that want The Broker dead, including the CIA, because he knows too much. Will The Broker clue in before it's too late? I don't know!. When Grisham is on his game you can't figure it out ahead.

I'll finish the book before church later, I hope. If I stop noodling around on the internet, that is. I also bought a thick paperback called The Terror. No it is not a spooky Halloween book, it's about a ship called The Terror and a failed Arctic expedition. The blurb says,

The Terror is a 2007 novel by American author Dan Simmons. It is a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to the Arctic, in 1845–1848, to force the Northwest Passage. Most of the characters featured in The Terror are actual members of Franklin's crew, whose unexplained disappearance has warranted a great deal of speculation.

Those explorer guys always seemed to get stuck in the ice pack! Amazingly brave, they did heroic feats and returned as heroes. However not all of them always returned. Some whole expeditions  did not return at all, and unlike the successive terrors that happened to Job where always one person "has escaped to tell you", this book proposes a story of what happened on a failed expedition where no one returned to tell the story of what occurred.

If I'm smart, I'll get the laundry ready and going before the rain hits. I'm blessed to have a washing machine and dryer, so I don't have to go to the laundromat anymore, but the units are in the detached garage. I should get moving with this chore before the rain and wind hit. So with that, arrivederci until next time!

Trip to the Sunflower Farm

My long awaited and eagerly anticipated day out at Washington Farms occurred today. I went with a friend to the famous farm which features corn maze, pig races, hayrides, kids' activities, and on the other side of the entry gate, a sunflower farm and pumpkin patch. This is the non-kids' side and it is the part we went through.

The Sunflower Farm and pumpkin patch, and shed containing jellies, honey and relishes, offers free admittance. There fields of yellow after yellow, and also colorful peonies, is a draw for many photographers. My friend likes to take photos too, and so we left early so as to arrive at their opening time and also while the sun was a bit lower.

We were fortunately spared any effects from Hurricane Andrew, thankfully, so it wasn't rainy. It was a bit breezy which was great because the day was saturated with bright sun and a hot temperature! I thought by October 8, the second week the Farm is open in the fall, that it'd be cooler. But it was OK, we only spent an hour poking around the flowers and took shots of all we wanted.

The parking lot filled up within minutes of the 10am opening but our time in the sunflowers was free from crowd and loud, as the families with children went on into the Farm area itself to enjoy the many activities that were offered over there.

The Farm had posted a short note last week advising that the traditionally lush fields of flowers was quite diminished this year, due to the drought. I'd noticed driving home on Friday that as I passed the yard on the way to my driveway that the bushes were severely drooping sadly. The drought effects are really becoming noticeable now. It was the same with the sunflowers, though many individual flowers were still available to photo (or cut if we wanted to pay $1 per stem). The ground was indeed hard and dusty and the flowers were pretty droopy.

We were happy, though, because there were still areas which were beautiful in which to poke around and bask in the beauty.

Afterward we stopped and got a couple of tacos and yakked for about an hour, then did a very few errands, and headed home. It was relaxing and perfect! A nice day out which was followed by a nap, completing my assignments for two classes I'm taking, and then playing with photos!

Here are just a few of the 75 shots I took today.

Sunflowers are enchanting

A few years ago, a friend invited me to her garden. I was to help her pick and she would share whatever I desired to take away from our joint labor. I'm from the north, ME and RI originally, and I was at that time recently relocated here. I was unfamiliar with the long growing season and the variety of goods one can coax from the Georgia ground. Even though sunflowers can be grown in ME, I had never seen them.

The surprise of her garden, to me, were the sunflowers. I loved seeing the tall giants and bright petals. I took some photos, but later regretted I had not taken enough. I wanted to bask among them while I was there but also wanted to view photos of them from every angle later.

Sunflowers entranced Van Gogh too. Wikipedia records this,

Van Gogh began painting in late summer 1888 and continued into the following year. One went to decorate his friend Paul Gauguin's bedroom. The paintings show sunflowers in all stages of life, from full bloom to withering. The paintings were considered innovative for their use of the yellow spectrum, partly because newly invented pigments made new colours possible.

Van Gogh wanted to paint "big flowers" He said,

The peony is Jeannin's, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is somewhat my own.

I understand the attraction. They are majestic flowers, and the yellow is bright and happy. Here are a few photos of that day in the garden.

I'm excited to have planned a trip with a friend to a sunflower farm in early October! I plan to take LOTS of photos! From the Farm's website photos of the sunflower garden, it seem they have a species that's a bit shorter than these 16 foot mountainous blooms I'd visited some years ago, so it will be a fun day exploring a new type of sunflower.

Fall is a great time of year in Georgia. :)

The chair that got away

Let the weekend begin! My landscape: ice water with Bountiful Basket lemons in good ole southern mason jar; laptop, and waiting for me later, my reading chair by the breezy window. Ahhh. Did you hear that sigh, Madison County?!

This weekend is one in which I've anticipated since June. Georgia summers are hot, no surprise. But in mid-September the humidity and heat breaks into the loveliest fall seasons anywhere. Temps lower to the 70s during the day and 50s at night. The air is clear and bright. It's refreshing and wonderful to be outside again.

That is what is predicted by meteorologists for this weekend. I can't wait.

It's a Bountiful Basket Weekend, so that means going to get the Basket Saturday morning, and then returning home to wash it all and process it. I soak it all in the sterilized sink in tepid water with a cup of vinegar mixed in (to kill bugs or germs). By process, I mean storage for lengthier life, and cooking the rest right away.

A new second hand store has opened up an eighth of a mile from me, and is on the street I go down to pick up my Bountiful Basket. If you're from RI this store is like Job Lot and if you're from Maine this store is like Marden's. If a truck carrying Nike's crashes on the highway and the boxed get damaged but the shoes are OK, they can't really sell the clothes as new, but they will sell them in bulk at a reduced price and off the booty goes to the 2nd hand store. Like Amazon.com Warehouse Deals. Inventory changes daily.

I am not a shopper nor a consumer and I strive to "want" very few things that I don't "need." But last Saturday I stopped in on my way home just to check it out. It would be good to know if there were useful things in this nearby store that I could buy inexpensively. There was the usual jumble of new clothes, 20lb bags of non-clumping litter, small kitchen appliances, expired cereal or candy in bulk, and in the back, some furniture.

I have a nice dining chair at my table where I spend a great deal of time. It's Italian, so that equals pretty and well-made. It's about an inch too high though, and the circulation gets cut off behind my knee. I compensate by wearing one-inch flip-flops so my feet rest ergonomically at the floor, but still, it's a good chair just the wrong height for the table and my legs.

In the 2nd Hand Store, I saw some chairs. There were nice upholstered chairs for $30, which is a terrific price since upholstered furniture is expensive. I hesitate to buy any kind at any yard sale unless I know the person, because I'm convinced the chair will be infested with rats or bugs. In one lonely corner I saw a dusky gray Lexan or Lucite chair that had no legs, but runners.

I sat in it. It feels like the glass slipper when it went on Cinderella. I sank into it and it was both sturdy but comfortable. I knew that I knew it was a good chair. It wasn't marked with a price but considering upholstered living room chairs and recliners were listed at $25 or $30, I suspected I could grab the chair for $15 or even $10.

Then I talked myself out of it. "You already have a chair. What will I do with the chair I have if I get this chair? I have no room for more furniture. Skip the chair. Make do."

I went home. I thought about it Sunday. I regretted not getting the chair. I have only felt that way once or twice. Because consuming things means they're consumable, and my life is eternal, I usually don't stress about making or not making purchases. But this one nagged at me.

I looked up the type of chair it was and to my dismay I discovered that it was an Ikea Tobias Chair, selling for $100-125. They apparently are much beloved and highly sought after. I KNEW it!

IKEA photos

They were closed on Mondays so I had to wait until Tuesday to go back. The chair was gone, as I suspected it would be. Someone else was not as dumb as I was and nabbed that thing up right away.

Losing out on that deal, and a really comfortable chair, will haunt me forever. Sometimes my frugality and my practicality comes back to bite me. And a good deal on 20lb non-clumping litter just doesn't feel the same.

Happy shopping and happy weekend!

Life on the farm

I call my place a farm, it's a semi-farm. All the properties around here if they aren't an outright farm, are a semi-farm, keeping some animals. Horses, a few chickens, a cow or two, or in my case, sheep.

The weather turned unseasonably cold, but it'll be back up to the high 60s/low 70s in a day or two. That's the great thing about Georgia weather in the winter- it might get cold but it doesn't last long. Here is the cold/freeze map-

However the growing season is pretty much over. The farmer's market goes until Dec 2 though. Farmers & growers might squeeze one or two more weeks if they cover things. I plucked my last little pepper from my plant. I ate it in eggs for breakfast yesterday.

The yard still looks lovely. The leaves don't turn much here. That's a school playground across the street.

The last morning glory?

The neighbor on the other side of the house's windchime. Her son made it.

The sheep are comfy in their winter coats. I'll have to wear a coat this morning. Practically for the first time ever. I am subbing for a friend's outside car duty this morning. It's 29 degrees. Yes, I'll need a coat if I'm going to be outside for 40 minutes. I'll get teased about this. I haven't worn a coat in 8 years. When I have outside duty it's usually at 2:00 and the day has sufficiently warmed up enough for me, this Yankee.

My friend gave me this cute tea for one set. It's by Whittard, a British tea company established in the late 1800s. You put the hot water and tea in the top and set it on the cup, which warms the cup. It is terribly cute and I got wildly excited over it. I enjoy tea every day.

The utility company put up this new pole near the fig tree. I like the yellow letters and the cool medallion on top. I'm going to add this photo to my Color Series: Yellow page.

So that's all that's happening at the homestead. I love fall in Georgia.