I’ve been invited out to a friends house for Thanksgiving this year.  I’m very grateful for the invitation; I’ve had a hectic autumn and it looks like a hectic winter is approaching, so not having to clean and cook and entertain at my house this year is a blessing!  The only drawback is that I won’t have as much leftover turkey as I like to have for leftover meals.  So I guess I’ll be buying a turkey breast anyway and cooking it up here at home so we can have leftover turkey no matter what.  I’ll be making a cranberry-orange-apple relish dish to take with me to the dinner to share with the other guests.  It’s a recipe I’ve had for about four years now, and I like it a lot.  I hope the other guests will like it too!

We’re going to a Halloween costume party this Friday and I’ve finally got my costume all ready to go.  I decided to make my own costume this year, just for the fun of it.  I decided to dress like an angel and managed to find some nice angel wings and a halo at the costume store.  I bought a very pretty white nightgown for the angel gown, figuring that I can actually wear it as a nightgown later.  (Yeah, I’m practical like that!) My boyfriend is dressing up like a devil; we are representing ourselves as “Heaven and Hades.”

I’m really looking forward to the party - it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a costume party, and I really enjoy them a lot!  I hope we win the best couples costumes prize!

We decided to go for a fall foliage drive this weekend; we heard that the fall foliage was near peak, and we wanted to have a little bit of relaxation and enjoy the scenery.  So we packed up a picnic lunch and headed out for a short but scenic drive out Route 211 into the mountains.  With the price of gas so high we couldn’t drive too far, but we found a nice scenic overlook spot with a picnic table and enjoyed a nice lunch of cheese, bread, apples, and sparkling cider.  The weather cooperated, it was a warm, beautiful clear day and we could see for miles!  All in all it was a very pleasant day today.  I’d like to make an annual event of doing this!  I hope the price of gas doesn’t make it impossible to do next year!

Goodness knows I’m getting tired of hearing “the sky is falling” messages from people about how using cell phones is bad for you.  For years people have been trying to link cell phone usage with brain cancer, and now they are trying to link it with decreased fertility in men?  Good grief!  Get over it already!  If there is decreased fertility in men, where exactly are they holding their cell phones?

I called my best friend today to wish her a happy birthday.  She said that I was the first one to wish her a happy birthday (other than family) and was glad to hear from me.  I asked her how her day had been, and she said that she had to work today.  She said her feelings were hurt because last week one of her co-workers had a birthday and the co-workers threw a party for her, but no one at work acknowledged her birthday today at all.  I felt really badly about that because she is a really good person and does not deserve to have her feelings hurt like that.