OK, again. Kim taught on Saturday, and my parents came over to help with the girls. While they were here, I reattached the downspout that fell off the house two years ago--a feat of which I am very proud, as I feel I pondered the job quite a while and then actually did the work correctly. I examined the neighbor's downspout and noted disapprovingly that someone, in the ancient (probably early Nineties) past, had simply driven a long nail right through the aluminum downspout and into her house.
"Well," I said, "I guess that's one way to do it."
Our house's previous owner had merely used the pop rivets sticking out of the gutter to precariously hang the downspout from small holes in the siding, which is a way of doing it that would make even a Melillo ashamed.
I, however, borrowed my dad's pop rivet gun. I drilled out the old rivets, positioned the gutter, and drilled new holes for new rivets. I felt very manly, bending this metal to my will. Even though it was thin aluminum that a kitten could crumple in a fit of playfulness. I nailed the old brackets back to the house, lined things up for some good manly late-Autumn cold-fingered standing-up-high-on-a-ladder drilling, and put in shiny new pop rivets. Hooray!
Now the hole that the dripping rainwater was excavating in my front yard will stop just a little short of becoming a new Sino-American trade route, and the daylilies that have been shrivelling therein can resume their mission of conquering the grassy swath between driveways.
While I was at it, I cleaned out the gutters. Then I mowed for the last time until Spring, and thereby also shredded the remaining brown leaves that were drifting about the yard. I had to rake up some grass and leaves, though, because I set the mower way shorter than usual, just to give the place a neatly trimmed look for the winter and--this sounds kinda prissy--to make it easier to roll up snowballs for snowmen. That might not ever happen. But I hate it when I try to make a snowman and get hunks of dead leaves and grass caught up in it. I'm thinking ahead, and remembering annoyances from years past.
I would have trimmed the hedges, but I need an adaptor for the electric clippers, or I need to find the non-electric choppy scissors-type ones, which must be lost in the garage somewhere.

I missed a coin club meeting today. Erin and Kim stayed home from church because Erin was running a fever. Jill and I went, although Jill is still on antibiotics for an ear infection. Kim's been down with a week-long sinus headache and general ickiness. And my Crohn's has been a little annoying for the past couple of days. So I guess it was a good month to miss the coin club meeting. Anyway, I currently have about $0.00 to spend on the monthly auction or the raffle, and I don't know if they had any kind of presentation lined up. In addition, my personal coin mania is at a momentary ebb.

Oh! And about knitting: None this weekend, not for me.

Last night David & Brooke and their progeny came 'round and we at pizza and played a card game called Kuuduk. I'm not sure anyone else really liked the game. They didn't seem to actually dislike it, either. I started out annoyed with it, but everything was annoying me (note to Brooke and David: If I seemed annoyed, it wasn't because you are annoying. It's because after mowing and raking, I was very sneezy, and had to take allergy medicine, which would make me annoyed even by a playful kitten, even if they kitten were of the rare cute variety.) But I kind of liked the game.
I also baked a loaf of bread and some rolls. It was a basic white bread recipe, but it was only the second time that I made it from scratch without the aid of a bread machine. This was a more complicated recipe than the first time, but I was less happy with the results. It came out the way it was supposed to, I think, but it was pretty plain-Jane vanilla blah. I stick with the very simple "peasant bread" recipe from the bread machine book, I suppose. It yeilded a moister, richer-tasting loaf.
Now I will go butter up some bread and watch "Inside Man," which I've heard is a good movie. Oh heck. I didn't realize how late it was. I still need to clean Jill's bottles and load the dishwasher. Why do I waste time blogging?