We're home from our travels through Indiana and Ohio.

We just bought an early Christmas present - a Yamaha digital piano! I'm one step closer to acquiring those much-needed keyboard skills every musician is supposed to have. YAY!
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There's an ebook on sale today I might download, but the only conspicuous consumption on today's agenda involves yesterday's leftovers. Yum.

Have a great Thanksgiving Day!

Every day I run across new inspirations for more and more projects and hobbies. I write a lot of them down. Even so, there are so many and they fly past so fast, I'm trying to figure out how to capture and prioritize them better.

Or maybe I should get better at not capturing all these ideas, and put more effort into doing the projects I've already got in mind.

Another piece of the roof fell in again. Where is the builder???????????????????

Remember that leaky wall edge/window.

Well, a piece of the ceiling fell in today. Not surprising, after being woken up by sound of loud drips, it rained heavily last night. And cracks and the ceiling bulging, with what looked like water. And then heard a loud noise, when downstairs.

What a mess.

NB: Now cleared up with help of landlady and house person. Still arrrgh. :(

My mom has a small grain mill (about the size of a stand mixer or tall rice cooker), and buys wheat berries at a local (to her) bulk food store. This way she's got real whole wheat flour - even the "whole wheat" flour that we buy in the store isn't truly whole wheat. It's got less stuff removed than white flour, but real -actually whole - whole wheat still has some bits removed that would otherwise go rancid sitting on the shelf.

Comparing prices on what she spends on the grain, it's actually cheaper to go this route as well. Once again it costs less to go with the healthy option. Funny that.

She just does wheat flour, although the mill can apparently handle a variety of other grains as well - corn, quinoa, etc. It's pretty simple, but does provide some control over how fine the grind is, so I could make a fine wheat flour, and then crank out some coarse corn meal.

This is something I'm now increasingly interested in doing. It would help to find a nice bulk foods store in our area where I could pick up the grain, although I'm sure it can be ordered via the internet as well.

Okay. Here’s the info on ThunderClaus. I am currently scheduled to be on the Santa set for the next four Mondays, at the Regency Mall, at the corner of Green Bay Road and Durand, in Racine. Our set is at center court just outside Burlington Coat Factory. My schedule will be 10AM till 1PM, 2PM till 5PM, and 6PM till 9PM. If we experience weather problems, like a snow storm on Sunday night, I will not be there. So, I hope to see some of you come by.

We've started thinking about next year's garden already. We had a good start this year, but we didn't harvest and use or preserve as quickly and thoroughly as we should have. And, I'm wondering if we couldn't get that amount of space to produce a lot more food for us next year.

So, we're starting to plot and plan. I'd really like to try the "square foot gardening" technique. What I read about it seems to make a lot of sense to me.

We're well positioned to make an earlier start this year. We've already got a spot worked up in the back yard, so preparing it for next year will be quick. Last year we spent a lot of time early on just busting up the sod. We've also got the mini indoor greenhouse for starting plants.

So now we need to decide what we want, where to put it, and when. If we stagger it all properly, we should have a nice steady supply all of fresh veggies through the summer and full.