I just woke up at quarter of 7, as the sun was rising. It looks like another beautiful sunny day.I was awake a little bit earlier, but went back to sleep. Yay!

Yesterday I was quite grumpy because I had to spend 3 hours in the morning at the Fellowship, talking about safety and security. There are people who want to be authorized to carry weapons in case of a shooting incident. She said she can't protect us without a gun. I said I don't want to live as if someone is going to come and shoot me. I am not willing to kill anyone to protect me or anyone around me. I got pretty upset about it.

In the afternoon, I managed to spend a couple of hours outside, clearing the grass away from around the blueberries and putting on wood chips. It was very sunny and pleasant, although cool in the shade. Ray and the Captain cut some wood. I am always nervous when they do, and Captain gets exhausted. He had already done a lot of gardening in the morning. He lets Ray do most of the work, but likes to contribute to keeping us warm in winter time. Even Vanessa trimmed the rose and cut back some zinnias.

I made dinner from a Rachel Ray recipe, a sort of soup, that we thought we be good on a cold day, but it turned out not to be very cold then. Her recipes are sort of frenetic, designed to be made quickly after work, which I appreciate, but is not really my style. Vanessa cut up a lot of the vegetables for me. Rachel thinks it can be done while the meat is browning, but I got behind. I also didn't have crushed tomatoes, so used tomato puree. It was very tomato-y. Neither Ray nor the Captain really likes tomato soup. But it was fine. Every night I ask the Captain to pick some lettuce (and other things) for a salad. Every night he comes in with just a few lettuce leaves, a couple radishes, some herbs, a spinach leaf or two. Ray adds a carrot from the grocery store and we all have a taste of something good. It gives me great pleasure to be able to eat something from the garden, even in mid-November. There are still peppers and one or two tomatoes as well.

No Britcoms last night; they were showing Christmas from Radio City...a little too early for my taste. We switched between DaVinci code and the Outlaw Josie Wales, two pretty violent movies. I hadn't seen Josie before. Someone (maybe my Dad) had been telling me about it recently. But we managed to turn it off and go to bed before 9:30. The machine is recording the rest, so I can watch it another time if I want.