Home from Thanksgiving. We (Beth, Missy, and I) went to Laura & Thomas's for TG this year; first time in several years that we've been there. Good time, too. Beth was going to go pick up Missy in Muncie Tuesday morning, but had an appointment, then the appointment was cancelled, so she and I went down there Tuesday afternoon when I was done with work. She had to be out of the dorm by 6, and they told the students to take as much stuff home with them as they could. So, I guess they are doing some sort of deep cleaning of the dorms, maybe fogging or something? Staying for the long weekend was not an option for her. Anyway, we got her and took her home, then got on the road by around noon Wednesday bound for Indiana, PA. Got there in the late evening after a rather uneventful drive. Thursday was parades, football, Azul, and turkey...I don't think we left the house all day. Friday we went out for lunch and a middle eastern place, then the girls went shopping while Thomas and I went to the axe throwing place. They weren't open until later, so we went geocaching all over town instead for a few hours, then did the axe throwing. Thomas is pretty good...he's in a league and does it regularly, it seems. Missy and I also threw and did pretty well for first timers. Good times. Leftovers for dinner. Saturday we left in the morning, headed to Eighty Four PA to visit the Caspers. Brian had just had a hip replacement days before the visit so we knew it wasn't going to be a long one. He was moving around but still in a lot of pain. He did get a Zimmer Biomet hip so that's good. Even got a Vivacit-E liner. We had some pizza and a good visit with them for a while before hitting the road again. We got back home around 10:30 in the evening.

The plan after getting home was to go to church in the morning and take Missy back to school in the afternoon. However, around 6 am or so I had to suddenly get up to barf my guts out a few times. So, for me the plan of the day was changed to drink water and eat crackers and sit and watch tv all day. Skipped out on church (including driving the van as I was supposed to do this week), and Beth took Missy back herself in the afternoon. 

Earlier in the week, I finally got Beth onto Mint Mobile! She has been the one with the best luck on Red Pocket but I'm moving us all out. Eventually. Our plan was about to renew so a day or so before I got her transferred. And I get a credit on my account for referring someone! Yay that.

The Yuletide Treasures craft show in Columbia City was this weekend, and wowee. The show started off with a rush and didn't really let up for a few hours. Before we knew it, we had sold out of potato and minestrone, and by afternoon we had sold out of the Christmas soala (all 3 dozen). By the end, we had sold a whopping 120 jars of soup, donated 2, and made $1440. Our biggest show ever, I think. Natalie even came by to help out around noon and stayed until the end. Beth wasn't sure how that happened, but she had needed a ride home from work the other day and kind of invited herself to come help. It went ok though, no big deal. So, only one more show to go for the season, and we are so short of jars now that we're really afraid we won't be able to get enough for Wawasee. We'll see, I guess.

Today was a wedding between two kids we saw grow up, sort of. Mayson McCoy and Annie Forks got married at the sporting clays place out near Bourbon. Reception at the same place. It was a very nice wedding, but we didn't stay because we had "friendsgiving" with our small group at the Burgess'. A carry-in of sorts, but Heidi made pretty much an entire Thanksgiving dinner including some really good smoked ham. No Bible study this time, just visiting. Fun time.

Last Wednesday I got to play teacher for a bit. One of the directors at work is an adjunct professor at Grace College, and he teaches a course in manufacturing techniques. He asked a while back if I could show his students all about injection and compression molding, and I agreed. Unfortunately the injection molding machine was down as of the day before, so I couldn't run it for them, but I did talk at great length about polymers, UHMWPE in particular, crosslinking, vitamin E, compression molding, injection molding, and all other sorts of poly guy stuff. I wondered if I could fill in all the time allotted but turns out I can talk for a long time about poly.

 As it does every single year, an enormous biomass of leaves has fallen in our backyard. There was a big wind storm last week which finally blew them all down (oak leaves hang on for way too long), and I was saying to Beth that I'm not sure how I'm going to get the leaves raked and hauled away with my bad shoulder (the adhesive capsulitis is still raging...and not getting any better). But she brought it up at our small group last week that we needed some help, and it just so happened that there are a bunch of kids in and friends with our group who needed a service project. So Kelsey set something up with her kids and some of her friends and their kids, and on Monday morning a whole bunch of ladies and their kids showed up with rakes and cleared the backyard in a couple hours. I'll admit I was afraid that the small (elementary school aged) kids we had would just play around and not get much done, but they all worked hard. There was some jumping in the giant leaf piles, though. But Beth and I were amazed that it got done so fast and so well. 

While the leaves were being raked, I felt bad that I was just working from home that day and not helping, but as it turned out I was getting sick again. Just half a week removed from feeling awful, I'd been feeling better for a few days and then went back to worse. I left work a couple times because I was so dog tired during the day. Huge volumes of snot. Coughing. Achey. Tired most of all.

Thursday the van went into the shop. The rear brakes have been screeching for a couple days, and with us going to PA for Thanksgiving, I thought we better get it in. However Ab & Tom's was booked solid for about a month, so I called Boggs and they could get it in the next day. I'd rather go to Ab & Tom's but like the truck last summer, we had to get it serviced before they could schedule it in. Anyway, we have all new pads and rotors on the rear wheels, and it sounds much better. $545.57 worth better, ouch.

This wasn't the greatest week ever, but it could have been worse. The sickness that started last weekend continued for most of the week for me. I was basically off work for a few days, never even went in to campus until Thursday. I basically just called in for meetings and went back to bed when they were over. It wasn't the most productive of weeks. However, I did go out to get a covid test on Wednesday, which was negative, so it was just a garden variety flu it seems. Beth wasn't feeling great either, but she pushed through and was well enough to make soups for her first show.

My group at work got together at Raj's house Friday afternoon. He and his wife made an Indian meal for us, which was delicious, and then we played Kan Jam (a frisbee & target game) for a while afterwards.

That first soup show of the season was Saturday, at the First Brethren Church in town. Beth wasn't sure how the show would go since this was the first one back from the pandemic. They haven't had this show since 2019. It seemed like the traffic was pretty light and there seemed to be fewer vendors than before, but we still did pretty well overall. We sold 59 jars, donated 1, and made $708. We also have a credit card reader now so we can take charges, and that paid off since several people just defaulted to that and didn't have any other options to pay. About a third of our sales were via credit cards this time.