Thanks! Definitely nice to blow of the world for a spell, every now and then.

Thank you, and good to "see" you! It's actually a pretty good fireplace; there are big thick pipes running through the lower parts of the flue and after they heat up a good bit, there's fan system

Thanks! It was a lovely and very peaceful night. And the electricity stayed on... yay!

I believe it was Mark Twain who said something along the lines of "Worry is like making payments on a loan that may never need to be repair." Cats definitely have the right idea!

She is old, and she is wise!

I mostly take a hard pass on most political machinations; I just want to be left out of that loop because the narrative of the moment invariably doesn't align with anything even close to how I perceive

I'm very much in favor of being myself, too... but the world seems so filled with boxes people like to stuff us into, for convenience's (and laziness'?) sake...

Fact. You end up feeling like you mental and physical tank is empty... but there are still many miles to go...

Most interesting conversation? Over our morning coffee, Mrs. D and I were revising our earliest Internet days, part of which involved a rather scholarly study of how the world was redefining the meaning

Thank you! Thankfully, we were both still feeling pretty decent during the wedding... but afterwards was just pitiful!

For a while there, simply breathing became something we were increasingly grateful for!

Things are getting better, yes... just a shame we ended up getting ill.

All in all, it was a good weekend, and we were given some mandatory rest after,

It was one of the things I speculated might happen when the whole pandemic thing struck... the isolation making people a lot less resistant to various "normal" winter illnesses... give how many

We're on the mend, and trying to view it through the lense of getting a little "mandatory rest."

It's was an unfortunate ending, but I'm choosing to take it as a message that maybe it was just time for us to sit our asses down for a while. We've been going non-stop for a really long time.

Thank you!

Thank you! It's sure to be a fantastic occasion for everyone! And thanks for the good wishes.

Thanks! I'm sure it will all be a wonderful experience!

Utilities are up, insurance is up... because homeowner's insurance is based on value and the assessed value of our hous is up 20% from last year, due to the crazy real estate markets, and supermarket staples