16 Things

1. Tonight for dinner we had pork enchiladas. Yesterday for dinner we had pulled pork sandwiches and cole slaw. Sunday for dinner we had pork roast and mashed potatoes and gravy. All this because we bought four little pork roasts at Costco on Saturday. They came as a set and cost about 14 bucks. We froze two, and cooked two in the crockpot on Sunday. So we got three meals out of those cute little roasts for a little over two bucks a meal (not counting your incidental side dishes). That's good porky value!

2. Speaking of food, Joe dropped in on me at work today. We're only about 10 minutes away from each other between 9 and 2, Monday thru Thursday. He snuck up behind me in my little cubicle and put a cinnamon roll on my desk. I was startled, in a good way. The cinnamon roll was left over from a meeting he'd just been to and was made by the Church cafeteria.

3. Speaking of the Church cafeteria, I had lunch there with Joe on Friday (at the Church Office Building). I love it there. It's so old school. The men are in suits and the women are in hose and sensible shoes. An elderly man was playing show tunes on the piano. I had meatball soup, green salad with chipotle ranch dressing, and a piece of disappointing key lime pie. The daily newspaper is stuck up along the walls and people eat at the counter and read the paper and scoot their trays down the row so they can read a different page. Like this:



4. Enough with the food.

5. How about that Super Committee!

6. Emma and I have been playing Monopoly lately. I used to let her win, but she legitimately walloped me on Sunday. We started a game before church, continued after church, and then finished up the next morning before school. I fought hard to the end but knew I was in for it when she had 15 hundred-dollar bills, all four railroads, both utilities, a bunch of other properties, and all I had was 90 bucks and St. James Place. Emma gloated wildly during most of the game, kicking her legs on the floor and crowing jubilantly whenever I'd land on one of her heavily developed holdings. She started feeling sorry for me near the end, though, which was touching. She counts in Chinese when she moves her token around the board. Sigh.

7. Speaking of tokens. Sometimes in Monopoly you draw a Chance or Community Chest card that says "advance token to Boardwalk" or some other spot. When I was a kid the words "advance token" meant absolutely nothing to me. I knew it meant you had to go to Boardwalk, but "advance token" was like a foreign language. It didn't dawn on me till I started playing with Emma that it was a command to "move your little metal dealy to Boardwalk." Of course! Advance your token!

8. Emma was a mermaid for Halloween last month. Here's a picture my dad took of her:



9. Halloween was so warm and pleasant. Joe sat out on the driveway in a lawn chair and handed out candy. It was really fun to trick or treat with Emma that night. We started early and stayed out late. She got a super bucketload of candy, but she's more into the having than the eating. She's still got a lot left.

10. I made a vow to not have any Halloween candy because eating the fun-size everything always starts me on a slippery slope that doesn't end until January. So far so good. I'm compensating with pork.

11. Joe threw a Thanksgiving lunch for his office last week. He deep-fried two turkeys. Then he brought home a bunch of leftovers and we had them for dinner.

12. A few weeks ago we had 17 Siberian elms removed from the side of our house. They were ugly and also making cracks in our neighbor's driveway.

13. This is what they looked like before removal:



14. A skinny little guy with a pony tail and cigarette perched in his mouth crawled up the tall trees and dismantled them with his chainsaw. He had just the right build for the job.





15. And this is what it looked like when he was almost done.




16. I was going to call this post 22 Things for November 22, but I have run out of steam! It's tired and I'm getting late. Sayonara.